Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
A Newbie's Review of Rockbox: First Reactions
Chronon:
You can submit patches to the manual without knowing any code. If you find areas of the manual deficient then this is a good way to contribute (once you have a handle on the ins-and-outs of Rockbox).
Regarding extracting .zip archives to your player, this is straightforward in Windows as well as in the Linux distribution that I use and can be done via a graphical interface if you choose.
Rockbox uses standard .m3u playlists. Any program that generates such playlists can be used. Point it to the files on your player (or those in a matching file tree on your PC since Rockbox supports relative paths) and populate a playlist. This playlist can then be saved to any location on your player and Rockbox will play it by selecting it in the file browser. Pretty much any music player application that wishes to interact in a standard way supports .m3u playlists (Winamp, Foobar 2000, Amarok, even Windows Media Player, etc.). Itunes seems rare as a prominent music application that doesn't support this standard format.
Rockbox is a firmware for digital audio players. It's designed so that you don't need a specialized application to take control of where your files go and how to organize them. I would certainly not like being shackled to an application like iTunes in order to perform simple tasks like transferring music or creating a playlist. However, I will point out that Amarok (1.4.10, for example) allows you to manage the music on a Rockbox player and create playlists. No PC application will allow you to modify the menus. As has been mentioned, plugins can be removed by deleting them either within Rockbox or from your PC as they are just files on your player's disk.
AlexP:
In addition to making playlists on your PC, Rockbox allows you to create custom playlists whilst on the go, without the need for a PC. A long long way from
--- Quote from: Nymm on March 04, 2009, 04:02:34 PM ---#1. NO. CUSTOMIZABLE. PLAYLISTS. Big fail. Big. Playlists are how I listen to my music. I'm not gonna hen peck, song by song, from 13G of music just to get a que going.
--- End quote ---
So, you can create playlists on your PC in any way you want, and then edit them from within Rockbox if you do suddenly want to add a song to your playlist. Find the song you want to add, open the context menu on it (see the manual), select playlist, then whichever option you want. Insert last adds it at the end, Insert next adds it next and Insert adds it after the previous one that was added. Queue does the same thing, except when the song has been played, it removes it from the playlist again. Pretty damn customisable, certainly compared to itunes and the standard ipod, no?
Anyway, I'm glad you have softened your tone. Apart from being wrong, your initial post hardly made me feel like I wanted to spend my precious free time trying to help you.
I would also encourage (or even insist) that you read the manual. Many people have spent a lot of time writing it for a reason. I'm sure you can imagine how annoying it is when someone turns up and bashes Rockbox for not doing things that it can in fact do, just because they haven't bothered to read the manual. The manual isn't perfect, but is pretty reasonable, and we always welcome changes, additions, clarifications etc. As has already been mentioned, Rockbox allows you to do so much more than the original firmware on any of the players (and probably especially ipod) that it is bound to be somewhat more complex. If you have any suggestions for making the interface more intuitive without losing any of the power we would love to hear them.
Nymm:
I made some m3u playlists. How do I put them on Rockbox? Is it as simple as placing the files onto my iPod? I tried adding them to the root menu, but it won't take. When ever I try to drag the playlist to the root menu, my iTunes pop up. Then iTunes says its "processing".
AlexP:
Make sure disk mode is selected in itunes and that then itunes is completely shut, so that your ipod appears just as a hard drive, then just copy them over. Itunes will try to take over and cock thing up.
spike66:
--- Quote from: BigBambi on March 05, 2009, 04:09:24 PM ---Make sure disk mode is selected in itunes and that then itunes is completely shut, so that your ipod appears just as a hard drive, then just copy them over. Itunes will try to take over and cock thing up.
--- End quote ---
Also, you can check the "Manually Manage Music" in iTunes (iPod Tab when connected), to avoid automatic sync.
--- Quote from: Nymm on March 05, 2009, 03:26:41 PM ---I made some m3u playlists. How do I put them on Rockbox? Is it as simple as placing the files onto my iPod?
--- End quote ---
Yes, as simple as that.
Also, in case you are interested, there are even ways for converting your iTunes playlists for using them on Rockbox, you may check http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/UsefulTools#Playlist_Tools. (*it usually depends on how your files are stored in your PC, though)
--- Quote from: Nymm on March 05, 2009, 03:26:41 PM ---I tried adding them to the root menu, but it won't take. When ever I try to drag the playlist to the root menu, my iTunes pop up. Then iTunes says its "processing".
--- End quote ---
Looks as if you were double-clicking the m3u files (assuming iTunes is your default program for m3u files) instead of just drag'n'dropping.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version