iPod Nano 5G support

[mkmkmkmkmk]

I have a debug file w/the hang. Let me know how to get it to you.

My system info is as follows:
vista home premium sp1 64 bit
intel core duo T6500 @2.1Ghz
4gb RAM

Also, for simplicity I removed all device plugins except for the latest (10/1) d_iPod.dll from the plugins dir during my test.

[Sobriquet]

Hi, thx Jiri for quick response.

Just downloaded (am at work so cant try till get home tonight..).

@mkmkmk... - my ipod was behaving like yours - after a lot of experimentation and abortive tries synching with MM etc it got a little screwed.
I used itunes to restore to factory settings - and for me it cured all those problems. After that synchd no probs. Soo - there is one remainnig reason to keep a copy of iTunes fatware on your system (albeit without library . worth a try.

Be aware though that at least for 1st restore iTunes did need to download another bloatload of stuff (firmware for nano etc?) - enough that for me on a 512kb/s link it took around 45mins (!!!).

Cheers
Eric.

[mkmkmkmkmk]

I guess I had the same idea as you, Eric, with restoring back to factory settings. I did that each time in between my tests to be sure something wasn' t messed up from a previous bad sync. Unfortunately, even immediately after I do a factory restore I get the hang. It doesn't always happen... I have had small successes where I can sync small playlist here and there. The problem is that once a hang occurs (which is about 50% of the time after a fresh restore), I'm toast from there on out. 100% of syncs then fail. They either run really quick and clearly do nothing, or they hang in the beginning at "Reading tracks" or at the end after copying all the files at "Synchronzing IPOD". After a hang, on the nano itself there are no music or playlists present.

The inconsistent results are confusing to me. I tried for a while to figure out if it was a certain file, maybe bad characters or something, but I didn't have much luck narrowing it down. If I get more time today I'll work on that some more.

[riw]

It seems to work with one caveat--I have to remove a playlist from the synch list, synch the ipod, then put the playlist back in, and synch again, for it to see any changes. I don't know why this would be. At least it seems to be working now, as long as I pull and push a playlist every time I synch.

Russ

[riw]

Well, I thought it was working.... It's very flaky. Sometimes I can synch, sometimes I can't. Most of the time, it says its synching, and it shows up in the playlist shown in MM, but it doesn't show up on the iPod itself. I've even gone so far as to remove all the files, and resynch them, to no avail--the old set of files remains on the iPod playlist (on the device itself).

Any ideas on what the problem is?

Russ

[riw]

Another set of symptoms, now.... I went back and downloaded the d_ipod.dll dll for 5g support again. I cleaned the iPod off in iTunes, killed all the devices in MM, and then plugged it in. It started synchronizing, and synchronizing, and synchronizing.... Now MM says it's still synchronizing ten minutes later, and the iPod says it's done synchronizing. This is the second time I've tried to synchronize with the same symptoms.... It looks completely broken to me, now. If I just disconnect the iPod, it doesn't show any files at all, like it's brand new, although there's a lot of space used.

Ideas?

==
I just disconnected the iPod, and MM sat there for a while longer. The iPod has no songs on it at all, and MM died. I collected a dump from MM, if it's useful.
==

Russ

[Guest]

If I just disconnect the iPod, it doesn't show any files at all, like it's brand new, although there's a lot of space used.

Try a restore on the iPod, mine got into such a state after messing with it through different beta plugins it was the only way to get it back.
I have mine syncing now but the last played dates are very erratic. Some of them show up as 1970, 1932 or even 2029. Any date in the future automatically syncs back to the library updating MM.DB with a future last played date.

Opening in iTunes confirms that the dates are actually wrong in the iPod DB. MM reports the correct last play dates when it first syncs though, only after a disconnect and reconnect do the wrong dates showed up.

[Sobriquet]

hi - sorry couldnt report back - was rather busy last few days.

Got latest ipod dll, did a restore back to factory settings immediately prior to syncing. The sync seemed to take absolutely ages - at least 30 mins.

At end of the sync the ipod froze - had to reset - similar to mkmk....

However, in my case the playlists appear to be there, and the ipod appears to work ok, although I havent tried another sync yet - the 8GB of music on there will do me for a while..

When plugged into ipod dock on my car stereo, composers are now in alphabetical order, but album names and artists are not. (nor playlists I seem to remember - not sure on that).
Also in ipod dock - the ipod often freezes now - sometimes it comes up "searching" on the display on the stereo - and then it just stays there till I reset it. Other times it freezes when I turn off the car while it is playing.

[mkmkmkmkmk]

I've done some testing with the latest build, 3.1.2.1272, and I'm still experiencing very unpredictable behavior w/the 5th gen nano.

I've tried a couple rounds of tests starting w/a freshly restored nano.

1st round of tests (between each step I closed MM and safely removed the device, then reopened MM, reconnected the nano):
1) started w/freshly restored nano, auto-sync hung at end of sync w/3 playlists selected (said it sync'd 147 of 147 songs); nano had no playlists or music
2) auto-sync completed and did not hang, but completed instantly and seemed to do nothing. Still no music or playlists were present on nano.
3) anto-sync completed and did not hang, same results as previous step
4) after this, I played around with selecting, unselecting various playlists to sync which caused either a hang during sync (either at the start when "Preparing list of tracks", or at the end when "synchronizing IPOD:") or the sync completed instantly and did nothing. after i tried many different scenarios the nano never appeared to have music or playlists
5) for kicks I tried choosing rebuild device database which hung at 403 of 330 (that's not a typo, it really said 403 of 330... so the numbers were kinda off). The nano appeared to have no music on it. I decided to see what iTunes showed... it showed the music was there, but no playlists. After ejecting the nano via iTunes the music now appeared on the nano, but still no playlists.

In my 2nd round of tests, again with a freshly restored nano i got very different behavior than the test above:
(again, between each step I closed MM and safely removed the device, then reopened MM, reconnected the nano)
1) started w/freshly restored nano, sync hung at end of auto-sync w/3 playlists selected (said it sync'd 147 of 147 songs); nano had no playlists or music
2) auto-sync completed and did not hang, (said it sync'd 20 of 20 songs... which was odd because i did not change the contents of the playlists or which playlists were selected for sync); the nano had 2 of 3 playlists on it but with missing songs; the 1st playlist had 18 songs (should have had 143), the 2nd playlist had 2 (which was correct).
3) auto-sync completed and did not hang, (said it sync'd 24 of 24 songs... again, no changes to playlists had been made so this was curious), nano had 2 of 3 playlists still with missing songs, but the 1st playlist now had 22 instead of 18 songs. the 2nd playlist still had 2.
4) auto-sync completed and did not hang, (said it sync'd 20 of 20 songs...again, no changes to playlists had been made); state of nano had not changed since step 3
5) auto-sync completed and did not hang, (said it sync'd 1 of 1 song...again, no changes to playlists had been made); state of nano had not changed since step 3

Very perplexing behavior.

I've also had MM hang just by connecting the nano and r-clicking it. I don't even have to choose an option from the menu for the hang to occur and MM cpu to go to 50 - 60%.

[leebel]

I had no problems with lock-ups with my new 5G nano using 1272 with d_iPod.dll dated 8th October 2009. The test sync went fine except the 5G doesn't see any files at all. All the files on the 5G are however exposed and playable from MM. I can clean files off the 5G with no problems. (I did an earlier sync attempt on the latest non-beta and got the same outcome).

[rusty]

Hi,

All known iPod Nano 5G issues are fixed in build 1273. Please let us know if you still observe any of the problems described above.

Thanks.

-Rusty

[leebel]

Hi Rusty

Installed 1273 and MM crashed each time I tried clicked to sync the new 5G nano. Tried it 5 times with consistent response.

Was there any manual steps required on install with dlls? Is there a step procedure that I should have followed? I did figure out how to capture a log and filtered it to leave the significant bits. I'm new to this so what is he best way of uploading the log in the correct way to the beta audience?

I think MM is the best bit of software around and am greatly appreciative of the effort that many have put into it. I'm more than happy to do what little I can to help debug the betas, so excuse my ignorance of procedures.

[jiri]

Please e-mail any relevant log of other information directly to me (jh at mediamonkey dot com).

Thanks,
Jiri

[mkmkmkmkmk]

using 3.1.2.1273 so far so good. i've synced many times w/o issue. nano is updated properly and has functioned properly w/o incident. thanks!

[leebel]

I'm now wondering what the differences can be between our environment? My 5G 16GB nano crashes MM 3.1.2.1273 every time I try and sync. With 3.1.21272, the sync happens fine but the nano doesn't see any of the sync'd files. Is there a right and wrong way to install 1273?