ipod 5G(30): no runtime data, and an id3 issue

[aboe]

2 questions if I may.

I have enabled gathering runtime data, and yet, for example, the "most played" folder in the database remains empty.  I note however that when open the ipod in both Floola/Win and Rhythmbox/ubuntu, these applications are able to gather the correct information.

Another issue is that I have edited id3 tags both before and after installing Rockbox within Rythmbox, gtkpod, floola, Songbird, and easytag, in many cases editing the same files in more than one app because one or the other would not recognize the changes made in another program.  Now when I open my ipod in three main programs (rhythmbox, gtkpod, and floola) the tags are finally consistent.  And yet it seems that ROCKbox is the least likely to appreciate my tag-changing efforts.  Typical is the case of Bohren & the Club of Gore/Bohren und der Club of Gore.  I had two albums by this band which came with the respective artist labels.  I changed them to both "und der Club of Gore", and this is how it appears in all music applications I use except ROCKbox, where the band still has 2 different names.

Thank you very much.

[Llorean]

Floola and Rhythmbox shouldn't be able to recover playback information from Rockbox unless they've added features recently that explicitly parse the Rockbox format because Rockbox doesn't add it into tags in the file or anything like that.

As to your other thing, have you re-initialized the database? Rockbox doesn't scan for changed tags, just addition and removal of files, so if you change the tags and you want the new tags to show up in the database you need to perform a new complete scan by re-initializing.

[aboe]

I guess floola & rhythmbox have changed because they are gathering this information.  I was rather surprised because there was no evidence that the info was being created withing Rockbox.  All the folders within "History" are empty except for "Never been played", which I think contains the entire database.

Now, when I'm talking about id3 tags, I'm talking almost exclusively about tags that were edited prior to installing Rockbox and the first initialization of the database.  With a handful of files I experimented with re-editing the tags and re-initializing the database.  I re-edited within easytag because the other apps correctly displayed my previous changes to the tags, while easytag showed some of the old tags like Rockbox (and this is not the first time I've had this problem with easytag, but that's beside the point, because I never use it anymore).  Even after more than one re-initialization -- the same old tags.

[Llorean]

For the first case: Are you referring to Rhythmbox etc keeping up to date of runtime data prior to using the songs in Rockbox? Rockbox won't read tags to find played information. Its database will only keep track of times you played the song in Rockbox.

For the second case: If the tags really are only the new tags, how exactly do you think Rockbox is picking up the old tags? If they're not there, Rockbox couldn't know about them. Somewhere on the files are tags that are tripping up Rockbox. Are you sure there's only one type of ID3 tag (not v2 and v1 at the same time) and are you sure there's not multiple similar tags (the normal artist tag and the sort artist tag and possibly other tags that are similar that Rhythmbox or whatever may give priority to that we simply don't look at at all?)

[aboe]

Thanks for getting back to me.  For the first case:  No matter how many songs I played or how many times I played them -- using rockbox, not connected to usb -- all the folders within "History" remained empty.  And yet when I opened rhythmbox it showed, for example, that a certain song had been played 9 times, and many other songs that had been played; and I know these songs were never accessed before from within rhythmbox.  (The fact that Rhythmbox somehow gathers the information about which and how many times I play songs -- in rockbox, not connected to usb -- doesn't really bother me.)  When I turned the thing on this morning, though, and played a few songs, the runtime data began to appear for the first time in the history menus -- but only for the six or seven songs that I played then, and not for the many dozens of songs I had played previously -- within rockbox, and not connected to usb.

2nd case: The tags aren't all new tags.  Some are, some aren't.  Rockbox seems to be having most of the trouble with the tags I changed within rhythmbox, floola, and gtkpod.  However it can read some of these too.  (I only ever change Artist, Title, Album, and Genre.)  I don't know how rockbox picks up the old tags, but it seems to prioritize tags in a similar way that easytag does.  And after a few more tries, I see that rockbox is more likely to recognize tags changed by easytag.  But if several relatively popular programs (rhythmbox, gtkpod, floola, songbird) all read the tags one way, and rockbox the other, it would seem that the lack is with rockbox (which is still infinitely preferable to ipod/itunes or any MS crap).

Regards.

[Llorean]

I can't say whether or not the lack is with Rockbox until you actually answer the questions I've asked: What tag formats are on the files (Rhythmbox, for example, may tag them with ApeV2 which is ignore by Rockbox entirely as it's not supported)?


As to runtime information, if Rockbox hasn't stored runtime information, it's physically impossible for Rhythmbox to pick it up. So whatever you're experiencing, you should investigate it a bit more, and try to provide some more precise reporting. For example, WHERE does Rhythmbox get its information from, since according to your results it's not in the Rockbox database. You're basically describing a physical impossibility unless, for example, you have the LastFM logging enabled and haven't mentioned it, and possibly Rhythmbox is using that.

[aboe]

OK, I was wrong about rockbox reading runtime data from rockbox.  It turns out it was gathering the information from the ipod/itunes.  Also, the runtime data from this morning that I mentioned in my last message is gone now, and in the 'Most Played" menu, the only song that appears is the song I played just now.

It looks like none of the programs I used use ApeV2.  They all use id3v2.  Some files may have both id3v2 & id3v1 tags on them.  I've tried easytag a few more times now and it seems to be getting along pretty well with rockbox.