Colin Guthrie wrote:
Chris Fleming wrote:
Nick Parkinson wrote:
Having just set up my iPod to work with linux yesterday evening. I started thinking about integration Mythtv. My current thinking is that the best way to do this is to build some scripts around gnupod (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnupod/gnupod.html) to deal with the itunes database, it also has the capability to convert from ogg to mp3 format. So initially I just plan to get some scripts working that will sync the tunes and playlists listed in mythmusic.1. IPOD support, and for other portable devices (USB)
My plan will then be to add a frontend plugin, however as a sync may take a long time, especially if we are converting to mp3's the actal sync will run in the background and so the frontend will just be a means of checking the current status and mounting/unmounting the ipod.
It will also need a method of dealing with situations where the iPod doesn't have enough capacity to store all of the music - I've not run into this situation yet, however the most likely solution will be to use a playlist to manage this.
I filed a bug/enhancement for this in bugzilla (but 19 or 20 IIRC) and was going to have a crack at this for my iRiver, but havn't finished the other improvments I'm making yet, so not had time to get round to it.
It would be really nice if anyone starts working on this code if they can make it configurable for different media players. For example, my iRiver uses a different database format to iPod, and it can play Oggs/WMA directly without needing any form of conversion (can't do FLAC tho'). So it would be nice if these parts of the sync process worked in a flexible/configurable manner.
As for playlist, I think it would be nice to be able to register one or more playlists per device for sync'ing. It's not unfeasable that two or three people would all want to sync their media devices to the mythbox, and may want to have different playlists etc, even if they have the same player. Would it be possible to read some from of serial number from the device and somehow associate it with the different playlist (in some cases it may be the same playlists of course).
I'm looking forward to the day when some form of regexp based playlists are integrated into MythMusic and when that happens autosync'ing of playlists may get pretty sweet.
I guess there would be no problem with writing a small "control" file on the device too to track the sync process, to save it scanning the whole disc, although even a full disc scan isn't too crazy so perhaps not needed.
I defo like the idea of a background process, perhaps with some form of loose bandwidth limit to save it hogging all your network bandwidth (if appropriate) to allow you to watch a movie or play more music if that's what you want to do.
Do you see this as a totally separate plugin or just integrated into MythMusic. I had originally thought part of MM but your comments above perhaps suggest you thought otherwise??
Agreed.
At the moment, I'm thinking that this will probably be a two/three stage process, I think that we do need a myth frontend to provide a GUI from which we can control mounting and un-mounting, as well as configuration. This will include data such as supported file formats so that we can perform. I'm not sure if this is better as a specific external player plugin or integrated into mythmusic.
A second stage is the background task that will allow updates to take place in the background. This task will perform any format coversions required and interface to the third stage which will effectivly be a device specific interface.
The ipod is the most complex device as it has a specific iTunes database on the disk that needs to be updated. I think most other devices are relativly simple - looking at some iRiver documentation the mp3's and oggs just need to be copied onto the disk probably in Album folders. The iRiver also has a on board database that seems optional but is needed for flexable navigations. Playlists are stored in .m3u format.
I'll need to figure out how other players work, but I don't expect these to be much different.
Cheers Chris
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