Bought an iPod for SWMBO - after wasting much time with a pretend version - and have only just discovered the way it munges up mp3 file names and then scrambles the folders for good measure, so once loaded on it is a pain in the b* to get them back.
There seems to be a lot of software out there purporting to be able to retrieve one's files and their names from iPods. Do users here have any tips as to what might be the favourite freeware for managing this?
Cheers, S
-- Halmyre
I haven't found a way to get iTunes to store beyond artist/album/track. Quite how that means 'munges' I'm not sure - what's the OP after?
Rob
Spamlet :
My tool of choice is J River Media Jukebox. But it's a very powerful program and is probably overkill if what you describe is *all* you want to do.
Presumably, if you are fiddling around you don't want to use itunes. There was a version of linux done for the ipod once. If you are just copying files onto the ipod, if will not work properly. It keeps a database that indexes the files it puts on, so the actual filenames could be anything. Do a goole search on "ipod without itunes" - there are loads of options. Simon. Simon.
I recently had a request from a friend who's PC had died to retrieve all their music from their ipod. I don't use one. The 'problem' is that itunes is primarily designed to push to the ipod, so there is a risk that by installing a fresh itunes it would push its empty library to the ipod.
After an evening's reading, I gave up on freeware, bought TouchCopy
09, and that worked perfectly. I can't remember the cost, but it was low enough that I thought it 'cheaper' to just buy it, than risk losing all my neighbours music. Got beer in return, so worked out about even...Michael.
The safest way to get the music off the iPod is to steer well clear of iTunes. Connect it to your PC in disk mode and simply copy the files to your hard disk.
You might also think about whether you really want to put your music on a device where the manufacturer has applied so much effort and ingenuity to make it difficult for you to get it back again. I was once an iPod user, but never again.
I quite like Foobar for the absence of bells and whistles
If you take an mp3 file with a proper name and load it with itunes, then try to find it with windows explorer showing hidden files you will see your file has been cryptically retitled with any of a sequence of 4 capital letters. You will also find files from different original folders randomly distributed among ipod folders. This is deliberate to make it difficult to share music, but in my case I just want to move spoken radio prog recordings back and forth between ipod and blackberry without having to maintain multiple copies in different formats.
S
Presumably, if you are fiddling around you don't want to use itunes. There was a version of linux done for the ipod once. If you are just copying files onto the ipod, if will not work properly. It keeps a database that indexes the files it puts on, so the actual filenames could be anything. Do a goole search on "ipod without itunes" - there are loads of options. Simon. Simon.
Yes Simon, that is the point. Many people seem to be making applications to do this, and several have only been out for a short time, so I was looking for some guidance as to what software those in the know have been using. iTunes is fine for simply adding files to the library and then on to the pod, but not at converting them back, so it means you have to use a lot of storage space to maintain a separate ipod format library, when most of your stuff is already mp3.
Cheers, S
I recently had a request from a friend who's PC had died to retrieve all their music from their ipod. I don't use one. The 'problem' is that itunes is primarily designed to push to the ipod, so there is a risk that by installing a fresh itunes it would push its empty library to the ipod.
After an evening's reading, I gave up on freeware, bought TouchCopy
09, and that worked perfectly. I can't remember the cost, but it was low enough that I thought it 'cheaper' to just buy it, than risk losing all my neighbours music. Got beer in return, so worked out about even...Michael.
From what I've seen of iTunes so far - not that much - it looks to me as though if you set it not to autosynchronise, it should not push anything from the library to the pod. I'm dragging and dropping from the library to the pod. However, I'm vague on the 'authorising' side of things and it may be that a new computer might treat the pod as a blank slate...
S
Ipod won't play stuff you load in disc mode: this is just for using it as an expensive memory stick. As noted above, if you do, show hidden and get to the tunes folder the tracks are all broken up and distributed randomly among four letter renamed folders. So, in my case, a story of 8 episodes will be broken up, cryptically renamed, and spread among several folders all mixed with other files. The only way to unscramble is to listen to every one! I did copy the lot back to my hard drive but soon gave up on trying to sort them and rename!
I did think long and hard before splashing out on the pod, but after a couple of goes at buying things that just proved to be cons, I bit the bullet and played safe. I too do not like the exclusive nature of itunes/ipod, as I like to be in control. It does look like others have cracked the problem though, so I'm just sounding out what they have found to work well,
Cheers, S
snipped-for-privacy@j18g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
That was my big concern. As it wasn't my ipod, I didn't have any direct experience of how itunes would behave, and I didn't fancy spending a week working it out, I figured the cost of a paid solution well worth it.
YMMV, and I wouldn't read too much into a sample size of 1, but I was a very happy (otherwise unassociated) customer...
let us know how you finally get on, M.
Right, now we seem to be getting somewhere. Does one have to download *all* the files on the ipod to do this? I was just downloading the mp3s, but there seems to be no properties info on them so presumably this is on separate files. At the moment, I am in the situation where the ipod has mixed together my spoken mp3s with it's own AACs of uploaded cds. I only want to get the spoken stuff back at the moment. (Don't have a huge amount of space on the laptop I'm playing with at the moment, for copying everything to pc whether I particularly want it or not. Actually, if I had realised what the blackberry could do before buying the ipod, i might have just got more memory for that and saved some cash and fiddling!)
Cheers, S
In article , Spamlet writes
I used Sharepod to set up a very early iPod in the past, it's free, worked well and is portable (runs from the iPod). Might be worth a look.
Halmyre
Right, that's one of quite a few I've seen listed on Wikipedia: is that what you use? Why did you particularly choose that one?
Cheers, S
Thanks Mike, I think this is one of the apps my Blackberry lists as possible add ins. When I looked at the reviews via the BB some seemed to say the app was good and others that it was unusable. I expect there were different versions for pc and mobile though.
Cheers, S
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