Hi,
Ester,
What if I was to Sync after adding Manually to the IPod, then would
Audio tracks be generated for the stuff I had manually transfered
before.
Thanks for listening,
Alex,
On 8-Oct-08, at 9:20 PM, Esther wrote:
Hi all,
In comparing the spoken menu options on the iPod Nano 4G with the
way Rockbox works, Scott Chesworth asked:
Anyway, the
spelling option is there as a backup for when you haven't generated
those clips, I wondered, does the new nano have a similar
feature? I
guess what I'm asking is, what happens if you manually add content?
Do voiceclips or whatever Apple calls them get generated as part of
the process, or do you get the files spelled out, or just get
unnerving silences on those tracks?
With the iPod Nano 4G, if you manually add content you just get
unnerving silences. I posted about this a couple of weeks ago
(subject line: Content transfer to the iPod Nano 4G) because I was
trying to clear up this issue. Here's the basic distinction: when
you manually add content -- and by that I mean when you do a
VoiceOver drag and drop of some playlist or selected tracks onto
your iPod device in the source table -- the iPod updates its iTunes
database files by reading the headers and tags of the new files.
When you do a "sync" -- either by having your iPod automatically
update all its contents to mirror the music content in your iTunes
library or selectively by having your iPod update the contents of
selected playlists -- the iPod updates its iTunes database files by
reading the iTunes database file on your computer.
You need to have the iPod Nano 4G updating its local iTunes database
by a sync action with the iTunes database on your computer in order
for the sound clips to get automatically generated and added to the
iPod.
One reason some people like to select the option to "manually manage
my music and videos" on the iPod Summary page options is that this
allows them to transfer content from mulitple iTunes libraries that
might have different content or different versions/tags of the same
files. I've used this to move tracks from iTunes on my Mac onto a
first generation iPod Nano that is formatted and synced to an iTunes
library on a Windows XP machine. (I don't think you can do this
cross-platform stuff any more; it certainly won't work for any of
the most recent generation iPods.) But in order to use the more
advanced functions on the iPod, like smart playlists that keep track
of whether you've already listened to a podcast, or what your most
frequently played tracks are, or what the most highly rated or most
recently downloaded tracks are, you need to designate a single
iTunes library that the iPod syncs to and let the two library
databases update each other. That way your progress through an
audiobook can be transferred between iPod and computer, for
example. So you can continue your listening on your computer, and
have iTunes pick up the location of your last bookmark to resume
play seamlessly, and then, when you sync to your iPod before going
off again, have the new bookmark location get updated to the point
you've gotten to in your listening on your computer.
So the experiment I did was to change the settings on my iPod Nano
4G to check "manually manage my music and videos". Then I did a
VoiceOver drag and drop of a playlist onto the Nano 4G. (The
playlist included the last 3 podcast episodes in the VoiceOver
Getting Started Guide for Leopard, where I had previously synced the
first three podcasts to my Nano). Sure enough, the files transferred
under the manual exchange, but just as I said, there were no sound
clips generated for the Nano 4G menu. The new episodes show up in
the Podcasts section of my 4G directory after the sync'd episodes,
they can be viewed in the contents of my Nano under iTunes (with
VoiceOver announcing their properties), and they play just fine on
the 4G --- there just aren't any title information sound clips for
the entries and my wheel goes click, click, click on these tracks.
Everything else that I synced speaks nicely, of course.
Perfectly understandable behavior, if not quite what one wanted to
hear (or not hear) <grin>.
Here's the link to the post in the mail archives that details what
goes on with content transfer to the iPod for manual, automatic, and
semi-automatic syncs:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg42164.html
Yes, the basic solution to use text-to-speech sound clips for the
iPod Nano 4G isn't new; it was the scheme that Rockbox adopted.
There are still people who like other features that Rockbox
provides, such as support for playing other music file formats and
games (not sure whether these last were ever accessible). The issues
on the other side were battery lifetime (got better with new
releases, but was still a performance issue for Rockbox, support for
DRM'ed content (no Audible.com audiobook files or iTunes Store
DRM'ed purchases can play on Rockbox), and support for smart
playlists (some level of support was implemented). And there isn't a
Rockbox option if you use the more recent iPods (e.g, iPod Nanos
after the first generation, I think, or the iPod Classic).
Cheers,
Esther
On Oct 9, 2008, at 1:42 AM, Scott Howell wrote:
Apple has it setup so small mp3 clips are generated for not just
tracks and so forth, but for menu items etc. WOrks much more
smoothly than I experienced with Rockbox.
On Oct 8, 2008, at 5:05 PM, Scott Chesworth wrote:
Chris - What's equally worrying is that I checked how you spelled it
and thought about how i'd have done it for quite a while lol. I'm
sure you already know how your nano works by syncing little
voiceclips
for each file? Rockbox can work in the same way, Apple is jumping
on
the wagon pretty late on this one because I'm fairly sure the
rockbox
team weren't even the first people to have the idea.
Keep rockin the Mary Poppins...
Scott
