[Canola] iPod style sync?

[BoxOfSnoo]

I gave up my iPod nano to my wife, as her shuffle was dying. Now I am trying to use Canola to replace it but I find myself lacking a simple sync of a random (and size-limited) playlist from my music library...

I was trying to figure out how to do this from iTunes or desktop Linux as I have these available. I saw the iTunes + Automator thread but I don't have a Mac with Tiger & automator on it.

I was thinking along the line of generating a podcast based on a smart playlist, then using gPodder or something to download it. But I don't know if anyone has done this already? Is there any other way?

Thanks.

[grog]

You mention linux so I'll pipe in to say that I wrote a script for myself that uses rsync to update my tablet either via usb or network with a random selection of music based on total size of transfer. So I could specify 1gb & it would transfer over up to 1gb of music & cover art. If this tickles your fancy I could clean it up for public use post it. Let me know.

[combatdoc]

sounds cool

[Picklesworth]

You can get HAL to recognize your device as an audio player by placing a file called .is_audio_player in the root directory of the volume that will appear when you connect the device. For example, this is my .is_audio_player file on /media/mmc2:
audio_folders=Media,My downloads/Podcasts
output_formats=*
Now, when I attach my N810 by USB, Banshee 1.0 will list the device and allow me to copy music and videos to and from it rather nicely. (With audio transcoding if necessary, and hopefully video transcoding in the future!). It would be swell if that worked over Bluetooth and Wifi, but it isn't bad for now :)

As far as I am aware, most media players interact with HAL in the same way. Here is a little article (http://wiki.banshee-project.org/Guide/DAPs/MassStorageDevices) on the details of that is_audio_player stuff.

[BoxOfSnoo]

Consider my fancy tickled for BOTH of these solutions!

[brontide]

I have a ruby script under OSX Leopard iTunes that will export a "folder" ( of playlists ) to a directory ( of symlinks and files ) that I can then rsync to the tablet. That combined with an iTunes plugin to re-randomize random playlists it works great.

Unfortunately canola has been a real disappointment for me since it STILL can't open a number of unencumbered AAC ( .m4a ) files that are playable in the default media player. I reported the bug back in the beta 5 days and they still can't find the problem.

[handful]

Brontide: sorry for your trouble, but not everything can be fixed at the same time : / and in the same time, we need also to keep things working : /
It's the sad clichê of : you cannot please everyone : / and not everyone on the team can solve this problem, thus it's quite hard to pass something on top of something that is higher priority.

Formats are indeed some of the most problematic part and just mp3's and it's id tags massive amount of versions are enough to give us a lot of trouble. we are improving, but mp3s for example will always be higher priority. And default media player uses some libs that we cannot use that's why it can find more stuff.

well, you know that we did received your files, we already did some improvements, and now we need to put together beta10, but time x people is the major problm, thats why I am doing whatever it takes to open source it, but .. your problem for example is completly on the open side of canola, but nobody has even commented to look at it : / So I don't see as a solution.. as you would fall on the same problem people would fix only if it was priority.

Even with that, I think next release will help on this.

Marcelo

[brontide]

Brontide: sorry for your trouble, but not everything can be fixed at the same time : / and in the same time, we need also to keep things working : /

No worries, I use what works, and for not that means the built-in media player for music. It will work when it works and I've learned not to fret too much.

I did notice that the Apple dev center ( free signup ) has a reference document "iTunes Metadata Specifications" that might help with decoding the tag format they use.

[summatusmentis]

And there's absolutely no way to make iTunes proper sync to an SD card, almost identical to the way iPods do, but on the nokia's, is there?

[brontide]

Both Mac and windows iTunes have utilities that can export/sync a playlist(s) to a folder. For Mac's there is SyncTunes and for the PC there is iTunes Export and iTunes Agent.

http://www.nesfield.co.uk/synctunes/

[handful]

And there's absolutely no way to make iTunes proper sync to an SD card, almost identical to the way iPods do, but on the nokia's, is there?

Like brontide I also use synctunes (their website appears to not be delivering the software again) and I am now experimenting with the nokia media transfer for the mac, but I don't know hows that on windows...

Br

Marcelo

[mrklaw]

another option to sync to an sd card is Mass Storage Synchronizer (http://teavuihuang.com/massstorsync/) but I think it's only for iTunes on Windows.

[Slakker]

Pretty sure that you can use WinAmp to sync to an SD card...and it's a better media player than iTunes anyways.

[pixelseventy2]

I use amarok to sync podcasts. And I have smart playlists to copy files to an ipod shuffle, which could work for you