[m_memmory]

Can someone please assist me - I've now had my iPod for about 4 hours and I still can't actually get the thing to sync with iTunes.

I went and got myself a 80Gb iPod to replace the 30Gb X5L that was stolen last Friday and spent the last week making sure that all my FLAC files were being re-encoded into LAME MP3s with the proper tags (not my preferred way of file management but I know it's what the iPod uses so I thought I'd try to get used to it's default firmware) Installed iTunes and got the library all set-up with my files and all working. Even got it to check and download the album covers for all my music and that worked fine. All in all iTunes was sitting there quite happily with my music collection all set-up.

So I got my iPod and just connected it expecting it to sync up and be well away. However after about 10-20 mins iTunes crashes... no reason why is given it just stops while the iPod is still saying "don not disconnect". If I look at the there doesn't seem to be any music on it (even though while it was syncing iTunes told me that it had transferred about 120 songs over) I've tried reconnecting and it seems to try to restart (with iTunes telling me that my iPod now contains alot more "Other" files then it originally did - is that my music?)

I even got to the point of trying to "Restore" my iPod through iTunes to see if I could get it back to what it was originally. I've tried doing that 3 times now and only once did it actually work and restore (the other two times I was told that it couldn't restore as another program was trying to access the iPod or something)

I'm getting rather frustrated. For a while I've seen the great argument about whether file transfer via drag-and-drop was betting then syncing up via some software and iTunes was always brought out as being so simple and so easy - and always doing the job perfectly. The first time that I have to use software to copy music over and it fails.

Anyone got any ideas of what could be wrong and what I could do to get it working again? I get the impression that there's nothing wrong with the iPod and that it's iTunes that's crashing but I don't know why. Could it be because my media library is installed on an external USB drive (I'm awaiting my replacement internal so until then external is all I have really) Any ideas at all would be great full and any suggestions would be welcome.

From looks and ease of use I'm already liking the iPod (never thought I was one for shiny technology but there we go) so I don't want to sour my relationship with it over getting my music transferred over.

 

[biged]

Re-install Itunes?
I have had Itunes freeze before and I have disconnected when it said not to. I've never had a problem. But I also don't use LAME or FLAC so I really don't know what to say except that I would just re-install Itunes.

Good Luck, Ed.

 

[Jokieman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by m_memmory Can someone please assist me - I've now had my iPod for about 4 hours and I still can't actually get the thing to sync with iTunes. I went and got myself a 80Gb iPod to replace the 30Gb X5L that was stolen last Friday and spent the last week making sure that all my FLAC files were being re-encoded into LAME MP3s with the proper tags (not my preferred way of file management but I know it's what the iPod uses so I thought I'd try to get used to it's default firmware) Installed iTunes and got the library all set-up with my files and all working. Even got it to check and download the album covers for all my music and that worked fine. All in all iTunes was sitting there quite happily with my music collection all set-up. So I got my iPod and just connected it expecting it to sync up and be well away. However after about 10-20 mins iTunes crashes... no reason why is given it just stops while the iPod is still saying "don not disconnect". If I look at the there doesn't seem to be any music on it (even though while it was syncing iTunes told me that it had transferred about 120 songs over) I've tried reconnecting and it seems to try to restart (with iTunes telling me that my iPod now contains alot more "Other" files then it originally did - is that my music?) I even got to the point of trying to "Restore" my iPod through iTunes to see if I could get it back to what it was originally. I've tried doing that 3 times now and only once did it actually work and restore (the other two times I was told that it couldn't restore as another program was trying to access the iPod or something) I'm getting rather frustrated. For a while I've seen the great argument about whether file transfer via drag-and-drop was betting then syncing up via some software and iTunes was always brought out as being so simple and so easy - and always doing the job perfectly. The first time that I have to use software to copy music over and it fails. Anyone got any ideas of what could be wrong and what I could do to get it working again? I get the impression that there's nothing wrong with the iPod and that it's iTunes that's crashing but I don't know why. Could it be because my media library is installed on an external USB drive (I'm awaiting my replacement internal so until then external is all I have really) Any ideas at all would be great full and any suggestions would be welcome. From looks and ease of use I'm already liking the iPod (never thought I was one for shiny technology but there we go) so I don't want to sour my relationship with it over getting my music transferred over.

No clue, you'd probably find a lot more help at discussions.apple.com

 

[m_memmory]

Well I thought I'd just got it working...

I did a Restore on the iPod again wiping everything and starting from scratch. It started transferring over files and I decided that I'd leave the PC doing nothing but transferring but that I'd keep checking it to make sure that the PC wasn't going to sleep or anything that might stop the transfer. Got up to 9.5Gb of MP3's transferred over and I thought "great!" when iTunes then crashed (again)

Loading up iTunes again (without disconnecting my iPod) and it tells me that I've got no audio files but 9.5Gb of "other" files on the drive.

I'll try once more (and I'll try stopping the sync after every 1Gb or so and see if it works better that way) and if not then I'll wipe iTunes off the drive and start again. I'm sure that Apple didn't become number 1 in the world by having equipment work like this so I'm convinced it must work.

 

[Jokieman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by m_memmory Well I thought I'd just got it working... I did a Restore on the iPod again wiping everything and starting from scratch. It started transferring over files and I decided that I'd leave the PC doing nothing but transferring but that I'd keep checking it to make sure that the PC wasn't going to sleep or anything that might stop the transfer. Got up to 9.5Gb of MP3's transferred over and I thought "great!" when iTunes then crashed (again) Loading up iTunes again (without disconnecting my iPod) and it tells me that I've got no audio files but 9.5Gb of "other" files on the drive. I'll try once more (and I'll try stopping the sync after every 1Gb or so and see if it works better that way) and if not then I'll wipe iTunes off the drive and start again. I'm sure that Apple didn't become number 1 in the world by having equipment work like this so I'm convinced it must work.

Well my itunes works fine. heh. It could be a problem with your USB drive. is it an external drive? What are it's write/read speeds? Have you tried copying some songs over to your C drive and then syncing those up with your ipod to see if it crashes or not?

 

[blessingx]

I use my iTunes off an external USB drive.

Can you set it to manually transfer, restore and test? If that works and only auto sync is having problems that could be a clue.

 

[m_memmory]

I've reinstalled and I'm going to try the auto-sync again (but this time through a different USB port) If that doesn't work then I'm going to try doing manual sync and just sync about 1Gb of files at a time and see how that gets on.

There is one other thing I've noticed. All my MP3s are encoded from FLAC files using LAME through foobar. iTunes has been able to pick them all up and the album titles, groups etc but every album, group name and title all have a little box after them that shows up in the list but not in the details for the file. Does anyone know what this might be caused by or a quick & easy way to get rid of them? (it's like '[]' but joined together and only about half the height)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. If anyone has any more suggestions please pass them along.

 

[blessingx]

That could be a big clue. Looks like an illegal character that could potentially kill the iPods DB creation (which does everything off of tags). Historically iTunes is more forgiving than the iPod with corrupt files, etc.

There are Applescripts that may help on the Mac, but not sure what is a quick fix on the PC.

You may want to ask your question over at Hydrogen Audio also or at least the usual character issue.

 

[m_memmory]

Well maybe it as the re-install of iTunes or maybe it was using a different USB port but the sync actually worked!!

Also thanks for pointing me over to the other forums as they were able to tell me that it's a problem that iTunes doesn't comprehend the ID3v2.4 tags properly that foobar writes. Really annoying but unless Apple are willing to sort it out (who knows what the chance of that is?) then it's something I'm going to have to try and work around.

 

[Nomada]

Glad to gear you got your ipod working. Could you post back here if you find a quick solution to those little squares in iTunes? I have the same issue(also encode from Flac to Lame in Foobar). I've never really cared about it but if there's a quick & painless fix then I'd appreciate knowing.

 

[blessingx]

Has anyone tried Advanced/Convert IDE Tags? If so does it work?

 

[bubsdaddy]

I had crashes with my Ipod and iTunes when I used a USB hub. When I plugged straight into a USB on my PC all was fine. I still don't like iTunes.

 

[jcx]

http://www.rockbox.org/ - many iPods supported

I installed and ran Rockbox on my 1st gen Nano in much less time than than it took for iTunes to update itself and then try (and fail) to download the latest version of Nano firmware (you can copy/paste cmd lines from Rockbox' install guide into dos cmd window to save typing)

Rockbox reads .flac without further conversion, of course you're only looking at 40-50% reduction vs .wav so it takes up some room - on the other hand you can become a "source snob" and sneer at those using lossy compression

for the extreme source snob you can play hdcd in windows media player, capturing the decoded bitstream with Chronotron's WaveOut plugin, this produces 24 bit .wav files (I haven't verified if the dynamic range expansion to ~20 bits really happened though), then compress with the latest version of Flac to get "24bit" source onto your iPod
- almost certainly pointless given the iPod's limited s/n but some of the players do use 24 bit capable DACs internally, iPod's native op system refuses to play 24 wav files but Rockbox just Rocks On

 

[Cjattwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcx http://www.rockbox.org/ - many iPods supported

Err, Rockbox isn't supported on the iPod 5.5g yet, or the Nano 2g.

 

[m_memmory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nomada Glad to gear you got your ipod working. Could you post back here if you find a quick solution to those little squares in iTunes? I have the same issue(also encode from Flac to Lame in Foobar). I've never really cared about it but if there's a quick & painless fix then I'd appreciate knowing.

Well I did a workaround of loading all my MP3 files in foobar and then selecting them and taking off the ID3v2 tags leaving just the ID3v1 tags (which iTunes can work with) Admittedly this is an annoying way of working around (as iTunes should be able to use the proper ID3v2.4 tags)

Overall though I'm quite impressed with the iPod - love the fact it's so thin and and the screens so big (by comparison with the X5) I'm actually quite impressed with the iBuds as well (for saying they are the free cheapy buds that come with the player) - they are actually quite comfy & sound alright compared to the cheap crappy MP3 player I've been using the past week to keep me going. Of course my KSC75 will be used instead most of the time.