MM says I'm synced, but Ipod Classic says no music loaded

[matabb]

I am trying to initially sync a new Ipod classic 6th gen (120 gb) with MM. I successfully loaded about 35 gig of music files through MM and according to MM i am properly synced. Itunes (and the Ipod) report that there are 35 gig of audio files on the Ipod. And, through MM or windows explorer I can see the individual files and even play them on the computer if I am connected.

However, the Ipod says I have no music loaded on the device and I can't play anything on the device. I really would rather not sync through Itunes. Am I doing something wrong?

I'm using MM 3.0.4.1185 through Windows Vista.

Thanks for any help.

MIke

[nohitter151]

Do you have "Force iTunes style folders" checked in the sync options?

[matabb]

Do you have "Force iTunes style folders" checked in the sync options?

Yes. I have double checked all of the settings in the Guide to ipod sync wiki, and they are all set according to the guide.

[nohitter151]

Try upgrading to the latest Monkey, 3.06.1190

[matabb]

Well, I tried that, and I've had some mixed, very mixed, success. Indeed the journey to sync this ipod just gets longer and stranger. What follows is a (very long) tragicomedy in three acts. I'm describing what I've done in detail so someone smarter than me can figure out what the hell is wrong. Hopefully, someone know how I can have a happy ending.

ACT ONE

Let's start with my library. About 7,000 songs, about 6,000 in mp3 and 1,000 in flac. That's why I wanted to sync with MM. I wanted to use MM instead of Itunes. I needed a convenient way to get the flac songs onto the mp3 player. I've had non-ipods and used them with MM before with no problems.

Okay, so set up Itunes as set out in the sync guide and set up MM to sync the appropriate tracks. Push the little ipod icon at the top of the main screen and it looks like its working. According the status bar at the bottom of MM the mp3s are copied, and the program is on the fly converting the flac files to mp3. I give the software 6 or 7 hours to do its magic.

Come back after midnight, disconnect the ipod from the machine, and the ipod says there's no music loaded, although the status monitor on Itunes says there are 35 gig of audio files loaded. Itunes shows no songs in the database. Windows explorer shows there are lots of files loaded in 50 folders in the Ipod control folder of the ipod, named in the inimitable and virtually useless manner the ipod orgainizes files. If you click on the files, windows explorer will tell you who the artist is, the genre, time of cut, etc. If you double click, they will play. They just don't show up on any interface. If I open MM with the ipod connected, I can view the files in their location, but their are no entries from the device database. It's at this point I post the first message that opened this thread

Waiting for response at 3 a.m., with the ipod attached and MM open and viewing the details of a Wynton Marsalis album. I click on the ipod icon again. I might have had all the songs on the Marsalis album highlighted, I can't recall. MM clicks and whirls and after 15 seconds says sync complete. I disconnect the ipod and low and behold, the ipod says I now have 12 songs, all the songs on the Marsalis album. It also says I've filled up another 35 gig of space but according to the ipod that isn't music.

Trying to figure out what I did differently, I realize that when I sync the first time, I had Itunes open, and now I had Itune closed. Maybe that made a difference? And I had MM listing just one album. So I click on the Artist and Album listing on MM and list every track of the library. I think click the ipod icon. Maybe I click it twice. Because MM says its going to erase the tracks on the ipod that aren't clicked and then says its going to copy 13,900 tracks, about double the size of my library. And away it goes.

ACT TWO

MM syncs for about 10 hours. I come back every now and then and it does look like the it is copying my library to the device twice. It goes through my folders in same hierarchy that their listed on my computer. And then it does it again. Mp3s are copied, flacs are converted. After 15 hours, about 60 gigs of the ipod are now filled. And when I disconnect the ipod, it says that I only have 12 songs on the Ipod, the same 12 Wynton Marsalis cuts.

At this point, I triple check all my settings in Itunes and MM. I update my version of Itunes. I download and install the most recent version of MM. And I make one seemingly important discovery. Instead of clicking auto-sync on MM, I had been clicking "Sync select". Now the tracks I had previously selected were the entire library, 6900+ files, but perhaps that's was the problem. So I changed the setting to auto synchronize and try again.

MM tells me its going to erase about 250 files on the ipod that aren't on the sync list, then goes into gear. And this time it tells me it's going to copies 5200 files to the device, about 3/4 of the library. About 5000 mp3 files are copies and about 200 flacs are converted, according to the status bar. It takes about an hour and half.

And lo and behold it works. This time when I disconnect the ipod, I've got 5,192 songs! And when I click the device in MM I a device database, and that database has 5,192 entries. However, I can't figure out why some parts of the library copied to the ipod and not othesr. Most of the mp3s copied, but some didn't. Most of the flacs did not convert. Of the files that did convert, some albums converted in full, some converted a couple of songs and many flac albums did not convert at all. Disk management seems right. The ipod says I've got 70 gigs free, which is a little more than I expected, but pretty close to the size of full library.

Well, I figure, while something isn't entirely right, but at least I'm making progress. Maybe if I auto sync again the rest of the library will load. I give it a try. After telling me that there are 162 songs on the device that aren't on the sync list (which I click to delete), MM tells me that it's going to load 254 songs. About 3 dozen mp3s copy, and then about 200 flacs start converting. After glancing at the files that are converting, they look like they're files that weren't previously loaded. I figure I'll have to auto sync every night for a week of so to load the remainder of the library and decide to call it a night. MM seems to be happily converting flacs while I leave my computer running.

ACT THREE

Woke up this morning, dragged a comb across my head. Then went to look at the result of the sync. Disconnected the Ipod, and viola, I'm back to only 12 songs, the 12 Wynton Marsalis cuts. (Maybe I should have woke up this morning and got myself a gun). Decided to open up Itunes to see if Itunes saw any more cuts. Itunes would not open. Something must have corrupted it, and it had to be reinstalled (A clue?) When Itunes finally opened, its view was identical to the Ipod and MM, just 12 songs on the Ipod, but 45 gigs filled with files.

Reattached the Ipod, opened MM and clicked the Ipod icon. It told me that there were 162 songs on the device that weren't on the sync list, and after I told it to erase them it told me it was going to load 254 songs. Deja vu? Yes. Appeared to be the same numbers of non listed songs and to be added songs as last night. And when the songs start to load, it seems like the same songs as were copied the prior night were loading, mostly flac conversions.

When the sync was done and I disconnected, I had about 270 songs on the ipod. And they were listed on the device database in both MM and Itunes. I clicked auto sync again. After MM wanted to erase about 250 songs that weren't on the sync list, it loaded another 300 or so songs, mostly mp3 files and a few flac conversions. At the end of the sync, the device said I have 579 songs. I clicked the ipod icon again. MM wanted to erase 2 songs that weren't on the sync list, and now only wanted to load 30 files. The songs loaded, or appeared to, but my song count at the end of the sync only increased 5 songs. A notice that a few flac conversions were on the device at the end of the sync, but I have no idea which of the 30 songs were added or not added or whether most of those songs were already on the device. At that point I had wasted too much time and had to go to work. I did note however, that according to I tunes I have about 2 gigs of audio files loaded and 35 gigs of "other" files. I

ACT FOUR?

So that's where I am. If I keep telling to MM to auto sync, I do get some files added, but I may be reaching the point of diminishing returns.

So what do I do? I see a few options, but maybe someone has got a better idea.

1. Keep "auto syncing" and someday my library will fully load. However, what if it goes backward again and I'm left with my 12 Marsalis cuts.

2. Use I Tunes to load the mp3 files in my library. Then figure out someway for MM to convert my flac files to mp3 and load those. Of course, that makes future auto syncs incredibly cumbersome, especially since I record all new music to flac.

3. Use ITunes to restore the ipod to factory defaults and start all over from scratch.

4. Figure out how to get the Ipod to read those 35 gigs of other files and incorporate them into the data base. (I'll need some kind of software tool to do that. Do they exist? I have no programming skills and could not create one).

5. Manually delete the 35 gigs of "other" files through windows explorer and see what kind of havoc that causes.

6. Reconcile myself to the fact that some higher diety has decided that I really only need to listen to 12 Wynton Marsalis cuts for the rest of my life.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[nohitter151]

Here's what I would recommend:

1). Open iTunes, ensure that you have manage music and video manually checked, as well as the other settings described in the guide. After you close iTunes, try your best not not open it when the iPod is attached to the computer.

2). plug in the iPod and view it with MediaMonkey. Click on the iPod node and clear everything that shows up, just select all tracks and delete.

3). You never mentioned what you have set up to sync in the auto-sync list. Do you have "All music" checked to sync?

4). Do an auto sync with a clean slate.

5). If you have problems after this, I'd suggest you open a support ticket. http://mediamonkey.com/support/index.ph ... &_a=submit

[matabb]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Would you also restore the ipod to factory settings, i.e. erase all data?

I have 35 gig of files that are just sitting on the ipod but aren't being seen by the interface or the database and I don't know of any other way of getting back the space.

As for the files I am trying to sync, I am trying to get all of my MM library on the ipod, but in mp3 files (about 20% of the library is currently flac and that part of the library is growing). Is there a short way of telling the program to sync the files that are in the library. As I understand it, you can only choose what to sync by selecting the folder locations where the library resides. I have other audio files on the computer that I don't want on the ipod, but I try to not have those files in the MM library.

Michael

[nohitter151]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Would you also restore the ipod to factory settings, i.e. erase all data?

I have 35 gig of files that are just sitting on the ipod but aren't being seen by the interface or the database and I don't know of any other way of getting back the space.

Yeah, probably best to restore it before you do anything else.

As for the files I am trying to sync, I am trying to get all of my MM library on the ipod, but in mp3 files (about 20% of the library is currently flac and that part of the library is growing). Is there a short way of telling the program to sync the files that are in the library. As I understand it, you can only choose what to sync by selecting the folder locations where the library resides. I have other audio files on the computer that I don't want on the ipod, but I try to not have those files in the MM library.

Michael

Yeah, look at this: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... file_Setup

Just check the "All music" box, and if you want playlists on the device, go to the Playlist tab and check which playlists you want. Then make sure when you sync that you do an auto sync.

[matabb]

I restored the ipod last night and then followed your suggestions. Everything synced like it should. All files are downloaded and appear on the ipod. The inaccessible 35 gig of files is gone.

Thanks for your help.

Michael

[nohitter151]