New user questions on I-Pod mini.

markn2wae

Mark T N2WAE
HI all, first post here!:D

I got an I-pod mini in near perfect condition from a garage sale and the battery is still relatively good (6 hours-30min. on a charge) and have questions.
Also the USB cord with charger, headphones, a "broken" I-Blaster sound dock (now fixed!) for $40.

I have looked at the net, and know all about the "mods" that can be done to the Mini (flash memory instead of the Micro drive etc.)

After reading about the I-Tunes alternatives, I loaded Media Monkey on my laptop and proceeded to weed out the stuff I did not want (heavy metal and rap stuff) I now have almost 60% free space on the 4 gig drive.

I understand that most programs let you "rip" files to your computer (MP3, WAVE etc.) and then the program sends them to your I-Pod in a format that the I-Pod will recognize and use for playback.

You now have a file on your computer and a copy on your I-Pod, so far so good, BUT what do I do with the files on the I-Pod that where there before I transferred my NEW ones?

Getting files BACK to the computer is never explained well (to me anyway) and this is just one reason I-Tunes may be unpopular with some users.

Having played with some other MP3 players, they got by with Windows "drag and drop" system of loading\unloading files.

I think there is a program that lets you do this with the I-Pod mini, but you must load another program on to it and it takes the place of the "I-Tunes" file system.

Downloading music is of no interest to me, I have all the music I need here, be it records, tapes, CD, RR etc. to use, and have several ways to get analog music to be an MP3 or other sound file)

Perhaps if I asked specific questions and then get answers?

A) Can I load the I-Pod Mini with another system to allow "drag and drop" file management?

B) If I keep it I-Tunes compatible, what program lets me move the music to any computer so I have a backup of all that is on the I-Pod?

C) If I "mess up", can I recover the operation using I-Tunes to reformat the I-Pod? (and then try something new again?)

D) As I never will keep ALL of my music on computer\I-Pod, I want it just for portable use, is encoding MP3's at 192K a good compromise of file size and sound quality?

That's all I can think of for now, it will get me started:thmbsp:

Thanks in advance for your help!:tresbon:

Mark T.:music:
 
Maybe things are different with Microsoft compatible versions of iTunes but with a Mac you can drag and drop music with iTunes.

I think that they assume you have the music that's on the iPod so that's why they don't make allowances for getting music off the iPod. However, there are third party programs that make copies of the music on the iPod and put it on your computer. For a Mac the programs include: Senuti and iSync.

iTunes is able to reformat the iPod.

If you have the early Mini then it is a pretty good one and of course the higher bit rate the better. You can't get much music on the iPod this way but I use Apple Lossless with my 5.5 gen 80gig and it sounds great. I use to use AAC (Apples format) at 128k and it sounded good but Lossless sounds so much better.

If you decide to put music on the computer, then you are able to have iTunes put a random selection of music on you iPod when it is synced so that having a diminished song capacity wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Chad
 
No drag and drop for Windows iPods. You're gonna be best off with iTunes and using AAC files. Alternative is Media Monkey which you use. AAC files are better sounding than say MP3 files.
 
Thanks, I might try Roxbox program.

There is a program called "Rockbox" that is supposed to replace the existing "I-Tunes type" file system, I haven't tried it yet, the manual looks overwhelming with bells and whistles (despite what the creators say!):scratch2:

Mark T.:music:
 
I have run Rockbox on my Mini, and am running it on my 4th gen 20gb. Works like a charm for me. Drag and drop is achieved like other MP3 players.

They have an installer that will load up Rockbox for you, then you can customize the build you want with other peoples releases. The installer just modifies the boot sector, then the new OS is loaded directly off the HDD.

With iTunes, you can restore it and bring it back to normal at any time. I have never bricked my iPod using Rockbox or iPod linux.
 
Thanks for the info.

I will try this after the holiday craziness is over and I have more time to play with it.:yes:

Mark T.:music:
 
As stated, Rockbox will do most of what you want.

By default...the ipod...which will act like a standard USB disk drive...doesn't read files from the drive directly. Things have to be sync'd up through itunes. This process entails the following. iTunes reads tag information from the mp3 (actually, it's int he itunes database already), takes the mp3 file, scrambles the file name, sticks it in a random location on the ipod and writes the file information to the ipod DB.

In this manner...it's not impossible to copy the music off...but it makes it a lot more difficult and time consuming. The folder the ipod stuff is contained in has a hidden attribute set...so you have to really fool with windows to get it to show.

Rockbox is not directly iTunes compatible. music is read either directly from the HDD a'la hard disk method...or it WILL use it's own database format that it generates from scanning the media on the player. There are tools that will let you convert the ipod DB in to the rockbox tabDB...and sometimes if you've got a bunch of itunes loaded music, the rockbox unit self can catalog and tagged the renamed mp3s. Rockbox will still retain the original ipod firmware and operation mode...so it's entirely possible to still sync stuff up, and in fact, that's how i had to copy movies over as Rockbox won't use the video decoder chip.

c) the great thing about rockbox is that it doesn't actually modify any firmware stored in ROM or FLASH and is merely a software hack. the unit will boot from the internal firmware, similar to the bios on a PC, but with rockbox...they modify the loader for the original firmware on the HDD (which isn't really firmware at that point, but, splitting hairs) which merely interrupts the process and loads rockbox. In fact, if you boot the unit and then flip the hold switch...it till boot the default ipod firmware. With that being said..if you by some chance bork the entire process and your ipod won't boot from disc...there's a hardware recovery mode built in to the silicon and you can simply reflash it to a factory new state without any problem. it's mostly this reason that both rockbox and the ipodlinux project have been allowed to exist without apple threatening legal issues. In fact, on one of the FAQ's for IpodLinux, they state that apple's lawyers say that since it's not a hardware modification it doesn't even void warrenty...not sure how they feel about rockbox...but there's been little pressure from apple to stop the project.

d) you could probably get away with doing 128kbps and be just fine. the great thing about loading rockbox is that you don't have to use MP3. rockbox will use a whole BUNCH of formats. you could abandon mp3 and keep a bunch of mid-bitrate OGG on your system...less bandwidth required than mp3 for roughly the same sound quality....that's a win-win.

as stated, there's an easy-install program. I used it on my cousins older mini and....it works just fine. you don't have to worry about bricking the unit like you did with the first hacked install methods....but even then..the chance of totally bricking the ipod was slim....since you're just modifying boot-sector..the emergency hardware disk mode prevents it.

aside from the main page (http://rockbox.org) which will give you all the basic info about rockbox. the ipod wiki section http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IpodPort will give you complete details about what's working and what's not working on what ipod. Both versions of the Mini are supported with the 2nd gen models having more stability.

the ipod isn't the most powerful hardware to run rockbox on...but it's functional. two years ago when my ipod port was still somewhat in it's infancy...there were major issues with CPU usage...which even after implmenting things on the co-processor...there were still slowdowns.Since you don't appear worried about high-bitrate audio, you shouldn't have an issue...but I remember usiing the EQ put a bit of a toll on the system. I don't know the clock rates for the mini 1g or mini 2g...one used a PP5020 SoC and the other used a PP5022 SoC. My 5.5G video had a PP5021C chip in it...which ran clocked normally at 75mhz per core...but i could overclock it to 90. at the time, the code wasn't optimized enough to really work that well...but i'm sure by now, there's lots of optimization that's been done (at least on 2G ipods) so, I highly expect you'll have a better result.

Rockbox though, is a steeper learning curve. It's got a lot of confusing ways of doing things and the dialog menus are....confusing at times. I hadn't ever used an ipod much prior...so it took me a few days to learn my way around it and I didn't have iPod method thinking corrupting my learning process. Once you learn it, you'll wonder how and why you survived with anything but. The software, sure, it's buggy, but the advantages and gains from installing it outweigh the negative aspects.

My IpodVideo was my first entry to the Rockbox world...and I loved it. When I lost that iPod, I picked up a Gigabeat S model. I've not only got a more powerful arm cpu to play with (533mhz clocked down to around 250)...but I can get a 120gig hdd upgrade for it...and since I like keeping FLAC on my player, it comes in handy. :)
 
Lots of stuff here, will take me a while.

dewdude

That is a lot of stuff, but looks like this will work for me (when I get time to do it!):sigh:

Thanks for the info!:thmbsp:

Mark T.:music:
 
To get you music off the Ipod:
Make sure your folder view is set to view hidden files.
User Windows search to locate all the music on the Ipod's drive letter.
Copy it from the search window to eliminate all the subdirectories and paste it into a directory on your computer.
Use MP3TAG and convert the tags to file names.
Done
 
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