I currently use this process: ======================= 1. When ripping my music I use EAC and rip to FLAC only
2. Every night Robin's flac2mp3.pl script is run on the FLAC library and converts any files not already converted to MP3 files in a separate directory. 3. SlimServer points to the FLAC directory and iTunes points to the MP3 directory. 4. For syncronization between iTunes and FLAC i use the export/import in the TrackStat plugin in SlimServer. 5. For the iPod synchronization I use iTunes. ======================= However, I have felt that it would be a good idea to get rid of iTunes in the process, the major reason is that I like to avoid to use Windows since my laptop normally runs Linux. The only reason I need Windows in this process is because of the iPod synchronization. The problem is that I haven't found any other Linux based applications that support iPod synchronization and support smart playlists or some other way to limit the things synchronized with the iPod to the 6GB of space on my iPod mini. There are several applications that can synchronize the iPod with a directory, but this doesn't work for me since I need to be able to select which 6GB of music to include. My feeling is that I'm going to get a satisfying solution to all this very soon since I found GNUpod. GNUpod itself won't solve the problem, since it is command line based and a bit user unfriendly by it self. But it's perl based I thought it would be possible to make a SlimServer plugin that used it. So I soon hope to announce a iPod plugin for SlimServer. If anyone have suggestion what the minimum functionality in such a plugin would be, please give post your thoughts. Currently the plan is the following: - It should be possible to define a library with a number of criterias from your SlimServer library. For example exclude/include ratings/artists, limit to number of songs or MB. Similar to the Multi Library plugin if anyone have used that. - The defined library can also contain a mapping to convert the FLAC paths in SlimServer to the MP3 files that shall be used in the iPod syncrhonization. The result is that it can select music from the FLAC library in SlimServer, but synchronize the iPod with the flac2mp3.pl converted MP3 directory. - Possibility to define which static saved playlists from SlimServer you like to include in your iPod - Possibility to define smart playlists that shall be included in your iPod. The smart playlists shall be calculated from the playcounts and ratings in SlimServer. My current plan is not to include transcoding, but this shouldn't be a problem to include later if people want's it. The reason I feel that transcoding might not be the most important functionality in the first step is that it will probably result in long synchronization times. The new process with this iPod plugin would be: ========================= 1. When ripping my music I use EAC and rip to FLAC only 2. Every night Robin's flac2mp3.pl script is run on the FLAC library and converts any files not already converted to MP3 files in a separate directory. 3. Synchronize the iPod using the SlimServer iPod plugin. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and RandomPlayList plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36189 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
