iPod manager component for foobar2000

foo_dop is an iPod manager for foobar2000 0.9.5 or newer.

• Load your iPod library into foobar2000.
• Send and remove files from / to your iPod
• Automatically convert files which are in a format not supported by the iPod
• Convert ReplayGain data into SoundCheck data
• Gapless playback for LAME MP3, Nero AAC and iTunes AAC on iPods supporting gapless playback
• Artwork support
• …

Compatible models (as of version 0.6.2.9):

iPod touch and iPhone require:

• Apple Mobile Device Support (comes with iTunes)
• Quicktime (also comes with iTunes)

Supported operating systems (as of version 0.5.6):

1. Download foo_dop and use a program such as 7-Zip to extract the archive.
2. Close all running instances of foobar2000.
3. Copy the foo_dop.dll file to the foobar2000 components directory, typically %programfiles%\foobar2000\components\.
4. Restart foobar2000.

Download foo_dop

• For standard iPod models (not iPod touch or iPhone) you need your iPod mounted as a removable hard drive for the component to work. I.e. “Enable disk use” in iTunes should be enabled (or preferably 'Manually manage music […]').
• iPod commands are then found under “File/iPod” in the menu bar and the “iPod” group in shortcut menus.

The documents below explain the options in the respective tab in foo_dop's options page.

• Database
• Conversion
• iPod Features
• Behaviour
• Mobile Devices

• Further usage notes

• Metadata fields that the component uses

Copy the files to the iPod in your desired structure. Then load the files from you iPod into foobar2000 and run the “Send to iPod” command on the files. Notes:

• The path of media files on the iPod must be less than or equal to 57 characters, including a leading backslash (but not the drive letter or colon). To achieve this limit, you need to set the number of extra filename characters allowed to 23 in advanced preferences.
• The path of media files may only contain ASCII characters.
• Some iPod models will only play files contained within the iPod_Control\Music folder.

That is your choice. But keep in mind you will still need iTunes to update firmware and restore your iPod, so it is useful to have to hand.

Note: mainly applies to 5G and older iPods.

This seems to be caused by fragmentation of the artwork .ithmb files. You can defragment your iPod to resolve this, but do not leave the defragmentation process running for an extended period of time as this will put undue stress on your iPod. Note: Apple does not recommend defragmenting your iPod. In the future, using the latest version of foo_dop and sending several files to your iPod in a single pass (i.e. not a single or few files at a time) will help avoid heavy fragmentation of the .ithmb files.

You can use contig [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428.aspx] to selectively defragment a file, a command line application from Microsoft (former Sysinternals).

On recent iPod models, if you select an artist on the artist menu, and there is only a single album by that artist, it will automatically go into that album's menu. This means that you will not be able to select any tracks by that artist that do not have an album field through this menu. A work around is to use a metadata remapping for the album field, such as

$if2(%album%,'('None')')

See the database preferences page for more information.

The most common reason for this is that the file is corrupt and has multiple ID3v2 tags at the beginning of the file. One way to correct this is to use the “Rebuild MP3 stream” command in foobar2000.

No, it is not a good idea. Some, like iTunes, will rewrite the iPod's database in the background, which can cause changes to the database made by foo_dop whilst the other program was running to be lost.

iTunes will do this for files without embedded artwork whilst it is determining gapless playback information. To prevent this in the future, in this component's preferences enable gapless scanning and the option to set dummy gapless data. See the iPod Features preferences page for more information.

Direct your bug reports here.

Please see here.

…

• Support for cue sheets that reference MP3 files. Should split the referenced files using the cue sheet and set appropriate gapless data.
• More playlist management features.
• Automatic synchronisation
• Better support for Shuffle
• Synchronise play statistics and ratings from iPod back to local files
• Ability to select between track gain and album gain for SoundCheck
• Custom sorting
• 'Convert to iPod' - to reduce the bitrate of transferred files
• Add support for track options based on metadata (Equalizer preset and Gapless album)
• Ability to rebuild ipod database from scratch by searching the iPod for supported files
• Better handling for low disk space on iPod scenarios
• Mapping for rating field

• Send autoplaylists to iPod as smart playlists, bring smart playlists to autoplaylists in foobar.

No Autoplaylist API, so can't be done

• Changelog

• Crash reports