Iphone sync play counts and ratings

[robodan]

OK I factory restored my iPod Touch...........Some 3 + hours later it had finished.

OK Connected iPod, iTunes automatically loaded, left iTunes alone i.e clicked nothing on the iTunes screen so no user settings were put back on at this stage. (iTunes recognised the ipod as mine and wanted to restore the backup)

Launched MM went to device config and select my premade mp3 single CD playlist to sync. Synced ipod and music was placed on device. Disconnected, left ipod playing 3 songs of the album. stopped playback, went back to home screen, re-connected, re-synced. Playcount had changed and last played time was correct.

So thinking I was getting somewhere i repeated the above but placed my flac single cd playlist on, and played 3 songs. re-connected and hey preston the playcount again had changed and last played time was also correct.

Now will have to again place all my music on the device and see what happens. Surely if it works twice with a small selection of music there is nothing stopping it to work correctly with a large amount of music....

Will not be able to carry out further tests untill tonight probably, but will report back when I do.

[CraigMcI]

I can confirm that mp3s copied straight to the iphone without re-encoding do not sync playcounts or ratings.

In the case I outlined previously, with fresh factory restored iPod touch, and a single album autosynced via playlist, mp3's worked for me.
How is your case different? Did you sync more than one album? etc.

So thinking I was getting somewhere i repeated the above but placed my flac single cd playlist on, and played 3 songs. re-connected and hey preston the playcount again had changed and last played time was also correct.

Shoot. This is definitely not what I get. Even in my simple case of a freshly restored ipod, and autosyncing a flac album via plalist, I didn't see them update.
I sounds like you followed my test case pretty closely/the same, do we have different versions of software?
I'm using:
iTunes: 8.1.1.10
iPod Touch firmware: 2.2.1
MM Gold: 3.0.6.1190

Now will have to again place all my music on the device and see what happens. Surely if it works twice with a small selection of music there is nothing stopping it to work correctly with a large amount of music....

ghead suggested something the opposite earlier on this thread:

The only success I have had with MediaMonkey is when using small test AutoPLaylists that limit the number of synced songs to less tahn about 300. When using my normal AutoPlaylist which contains around 3000 songs, I have never had a successful sync of ratings, play count or last played date.

If you have the time I wonder could you pinpoint where it stops correctly syncing by gradually putting an album on at a time, and testing each time.
I'll try the same, but my FLAC syncing is already not working in the simple case - so I'm not sure any tests I do re: numbers would be relevant.

[robodan]

Tried again with single MP3 album, and now no play count is going back to media Monkey!!! very frustrating....

I am going to try this with just iTunes and see what happens. I am at this stage in some doubt as to the culprit, itunes or MM

[robodan]

Looks like it works perfectly with itunes. I will test further but so far repeating my above tests (Without factory restore & Without flac) playcount & skip count work perfectly.

Am about to put 5GB on the ipod and leave it playing, will check back later.

[CraigMcI]

Tried again with single MP3 album, and now no play count is going back to media Monkey!!! very frustrating....

Yeah. :/
Unfortunately unless we can come up with a simple repeatable test case, the MM devs have nothing to go on.

[robodan]

I am no software developer/tester, how can I come up with a simple repeatable test case? I want this fixed and would like to help the best I can but I do not haver the greatest amount of time in the world.

[CraigMcI]

> how can I come up with a simple repeatable test case?
The million dollar question! So far the sync problem seems kinda random, and happens for different people under different circumstances.

If we could come up with some steps like so:

Code: Select all

Freshly restored ipod.
Add an *MP3* album to a specific playlist in MM.
In sync options for the ipod touch, sync only that playlist.
Do autosync on ipod.
Music is transferred.

Disconnect, listen to music on ipod, rate etc.

Reconnect to pc.
Check ipod contents using MM, applied ratings & playcount & playdates are shown correctly as last listened to/edited on ipod.
Resync with MM, applied ratings & playcount & playdates are correctly synced and added to my library.

Except the steps actually demonstrate the sync problem, and the sync problem happens every time, then I think we can provide the devs with what they need. See: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =12&t=7245

I'm new around here though, so someone reading this who knows better, feel free to correct me.

Make sense?

[robodan]

I put ~5GB of music onto my touch through itunes, played music all afternoon and re-synced when I got home.

Playcount transferred perfectly. it has to be an issue with MM I am sure of it. Question is why does it seem to work at first??

I am using itunes V8.1.1.10

MM V3.1.0.1240

Ipod Touch OS V2.2.1

I will Empty my Ipod and upload music via MM and repeat test.

[robodan]

Clean ipod touch, 1 mp3 album, no play count syncing!!!

Getting peeved now!!

I am going to have to just bite the bullet and pray everytime I sync some play count info gets copied over to MM.

I am sure it is a MM issue, please could the devs look into this again? I feel it is integral to my enjoyment of listening to music on the move.

[CraigMcI]

So I last restored/reset my ipod on Thu Apr 30.
I've been auto-syncing a single playlist to the ipod, and slowly adding albums to it to see if I could catch the point where it stopped syncing.
There are currently 46 albums, and 4 podcasts.

I noticed it stopped syncing the PlayCount/LastPlayed and column data this morning for half a specific album.
It's a FLAC album in my library. MM autoConverts when moved to Ipod.
In MM the majority of the album is marked as LastPlayed in April, some tracks are even Dec last year.
On the Ipod (viewing ipod tree through MM) most of the album is last played 5/5/09, with 2 tracks from yesterday, and two from today.

I autosynced this morning (for the first time in a week),
and MM is only syncing back the playcounts of the tracks which are from yesterday and today on the ipod.

It's ignoring the 5/5/09 tracks, so they're still marked as being last played in april sometime.

I wonder if it's something to do with the frequency of autosyncing,
or perhaps MM or the ipod only sync lastplayed/playcount of recently played tracks?

Anyone got any suggestions as to how to proceed?

In the mean time I'm going to try and verify "MM or the ipod only sync lastplayed/playcount of recently played tracks?" by not playing the yesterday/today played on that album fo a few days, and then autosyncing.

[hingus20001]

Has anyone figured the problem out?

I really want all my ratings and playcounts to sync back to MM - as otherwise it is just like having two different libraries (with regard to the tunes I am enjoying at the moment).

I have a 2G 16GB Touch. It has synced ratings and playcounts in the past, but now it doesn't at all. In fact, when I click and browse the iPod node, the ratings and playcounts are not even up to date there.

By changing a rating within the iPod node on MM, it does sync that back to the iPod.

Surely an amazing program such as MM can't have such a blatent error that the developers are unconcerned with fixing?

[DeepSpaceSeven]

Same problem with Ipod Nano.

[Guest]

I have a 16 gig Iphone 3g. With a little testing, I found out that as long as I keep the track count under a thousand the ratings and playcount will sync back. But if you go above a 1000 songs they won't sync back. Anyone else notice this?