Apps can't sync with Rockbox

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Thanks!

When my iPod comes up in any of the music players i've tried in ubuntu, i click on it, but it can't read anything off it because i don't have the original iPod firmware. I thought it was pretty self-explanitory.

Other people have encountered this as well: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=421857

As far as I understand Danny he is having the same problem I had: when an iPod is attached applications like Rhythmbox or Banshee show the device and display the tracks on the device as they are listed in the iPod's database. The applications access the files on the device through the iPod's database.

When Rockbox is installed on the iPod all media files are just 'dumped' on the device and the iPod must then be treated as any old USB mass storage device with media files on it. (An iTunes/iPod database on the device is then not feasible anymore since it would require iTunes to keep it up to date, also this DB is of no use to Rockbox).

For Banshee there is a solution: disable the iPod plugin and add an empty file called '.is_audio_player' in the root directory of the iPod. Banshee will then treat the iPod like a USB mass storage device, ignoring the iPod database and directly accesing the media files. Details for the Banshee solution are here: http://wiki.banshee-project.org/Guide/DAPs/MassStorageDevices

That's exactly the problem. Is there some way the media players could detect Rockbox and then treat the files there as any old USB storage device?

I don't know about Exaile (never used it) but there is the fix for Banshee I mentioned and for Rhythmbox it's sufficant to disable the iPod plugin and enable the 'Portable Players' plugin instead.

On one hand everyone says "use free software" and if you do it you recognise that it does not work well together.
I would really like to see compatibility with Rockbox with Applications in Jaunty. Thanks. I'll be ready for testing.

We have three packages affected so I am closing the one for "Ubuntu" because it is just confusing.

Sorry, I have just realised that having "Ubuntu" affected was a simplification. My fault.

I have been spending some time patching Banshee for Android to work - so, I got to know the code a bit. I had an old ipod, I put rockbox on, as well, and was able to get it to work marvelously with Banshee by including the file .is_audio_player on the iPod root directory. You CANNOT leave it empty though as was suggested above. The file should contain:

audio_folders=Music/,Videos/
video_folders=Videos/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=application/ogg,audio/x-ms-wma,audio/mpeg,audio/mp4,audio/x-wav
playlist_format=audio/x-mpegurl
playlist_path=Playlists/
cover_art_file_name=cover.jpg
cover_art_file_type=jpeg
cover_art_size=320

It works great - it syncs music, podcasts, video, coverart (you need rockbox 3.0) and playlists (to Music/Playlists directory) perfectly.

I could easily write a patch for Banshee to have it look for .rockbox and then automatically use these settings. But, I don't think it is a good idea because a lot of rockbox users dual boot with the original iPod firmware and still want to sync the iPod db with banshee. If you want to sync to Rockbox instead, add that file.

Ok, I talked to the Banshee Dev. on IRC on if we can incorporate those settings from the above .is_audio_player file into Banshee. He agreed it was a bad idea to do it by default if a .rockbox folder is found due to the dual booting issue. But, I am going to try to create an option for the user that if .rockbox is found on an ipod it asks the user whether they want to treat the device an iPod or as Rockbox device with the above settings. I will try to work on it this weekend.

There is already some effort upstream for this http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561712

Syncing Banshee 1.5.1 with Rockbox 3.4 (both the latest stable version) is like a dream. Banshee displays the device as "Rockbox Device" and syncs all the music, videos (you have to preconvert them), and podcasts you could want, giving you options to sync automatically and whatnot. It even syncs album art! The other cool trick is that your Rockbox device acts as a remote for Banshee, meaning pressing pause on your device pauses the music in Banshee!

Following comment #9, I added the file .is_audio_player to my Rockbox device (ipod 60Gb v5.5) so that I could specify the location of Playlists directory when syncing with Banshee (1.8.0).

I've tried setting/adding the line "playlist_path=Playlists/" to the file, the default for Rockbox, but Banshee still added my playlists to the path Music/Playlists. Thus, it seems Banshee isn't reading my .is_audio_player file.

Following on from my last comment (#12), I've created a script which rsync's my playlists to the path Playlists/ (on the Rockbox device) and then converts from the format .m3u to .m3u8 (smaller files + seems to be preferred by Rockbox... can an option to use m3u8 be added to Banshee?)

This needs to be used after syncing with Banshee (i.e., shut Banshee down) with the Rockbox device still plugged in.

To change the location of the Playlists folder on your rockbox device you need to create a text file with the extention ".cfg" and then add this line inside that file:

playlist catalog directory: /Music/Playlists

Then load the .cfg file on your device via Settings--> Manage Settings --> Browse .cfg Files

See link below for more useful options
http://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-sansaclipplus/rockbox-buildap4.html#x20-382000D