Simple hack to allow downloading to iPod via iTunes

FireFly Media Server Firefly Media Server Forums Firefly Media Server Feature Requests Simple hack to allow downloading to iPod via iTunes

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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  • #1376
    mringwal
    Participant

    I’d like to propose a simple (configurable) change to the way firefly delivers the songs list to its clients.

    By adding the persistent ID and the relative song path to the song comment field (on-the-fly), this information gets accessible for people using iTunes and iTunes extension (on Mac via AppleScript, on windows its probably possible using the iTunes SDK).

    The path information would be a nice goodie, as for example in my group, everyone stores its music in a personal folder on a server, but firefly provides the complete set of music. If I find something interesting with iTunes, I have a hard time tracking that particular song down, using “find” on the unix shell. If it is stored in the comment field, this information is just there.

    More important than the path is the persistent ID which is used to retrieve the song from firefly. If this information is stored in the comment, an external tool can query iTunes for the selected songs incl. their comments and the name of the daapd share, and download all songs to the local hardrive or directly to a connected iPod (using for example GNUpot).
    Without this information, the external tool has to download the complete song list and do a match on artist, album, title and file length which is possible but a lengthy operation with 10.000’s of songs.

    Any comments?

    Matthias

    History:
    I’m using a linux box as media center and to play music over the room’s stereo set with the help of the Music Player Daemon. I really love iTunes for (fast) browsing and easy CD-importing. A script is able to copy the imported music to the media center. Firefly is setup there to allow access to the music collection for iTunes.

    BUT, as you all know, it cannot used to copy (shared) music to the iPod. Synchronizing iTunes to the network share turned out to be no option. At least for me, importing music from this share (smb over 54 MB WLAN) is way to slow (some minutes for a single album?). Besides that, the only real benefit would be the ability to edit mp3 tags.

    I’ve settled on not importing music to iTunes and trying to use iTunes as a way to select music and use external/free tools to copy files over.

    #10628
    rpedde
    Participant

    @mringwal wrote:

    I’d like to propose a simple (configurable) change to the way firefly delivers the songs list to its clients.

    By adding the persistent ID and the relative song path to the song comment field (on-the-fly), this information gets accessible for people using iTunes and iTunes extension (on Mac via AppleScript, on windows its probably possible using the iTunes SDK).

    This will be something exposed as part of the scripting module. I intend to allow arbitrary scripted changes to the tagging. That way you could stuff whatever you wanted into any of the tags.

    I have at least two major things in front of that though, but that’s something I want as well, so it will eventually get done.

    — Ron

    #10629
    mringwal
    Participant

    thanks for the information. if t the scripting part is already in planning, you can take my post as nice use case. do you have a short list of planned features somewhere? 🙂

    anyway, I’ve added this simple hack locally and can work on the “copy music to iPod” part which is harden than I thought, given all those open source /linux iPod tools. first thing I figured out is, that iTunes always writes the iPod DB back to the iPod when the iPod is unmounted by iTunes, or iTunes is closed. Adding songs to the iPod while iTunes is running therefore does not work.

    I’ll post a link, when a the first version more or less works.

    #10630
    Laiskumus
    Participant

    I would also prioritize this feature. It’s especially handy, if you have a laptop, and you don’t want all song’s of your music database to your small laptop hard drive. So some downloading feature would be nice.

    #10631
    kellyharding
    Participant

    This feature would be very welcome. It would allow me to use SyncTunes to sync a playlist to a device (ie I use SyncTunes to sync an iTunes playlist to a CF or SD card for use in my Zaurus as an mp3 player on the move).

    #10632
    chriscowles
    Guest

    I have at least two major things in front of that though, but that’s something I want as well, so it will eventually get done.

    — Ron
    ========================

    Has this gotten attention?

    #10633
    rpedde
    Participant

    @chriscowles wrote:

    I have at least two major things in front of that though, but that’s something I want as well, so it will eventually get done.

    — Ron
    ========================

    Has this gotten attention?

    no, this is slated for after next stable.

    — Ron

    #10634
    deannali
    Guest

    How to run off your Ipod through your Alpine CDA Cd Player without using a Auxiliary cable? Apparently there is a button combination of some sort, or some secret way where you can use your ipod to search through music instead of having the alpine cd player do it for you. The alpine cd player uses a dial to search through music, and we all know that searching through music on a Ipod is much faster and a little more convenient.
    _______________
    market samurai ~ marketsamurai ~ marketsamurai.com

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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