Library Management -- database syncing between desktop & Rockbox?

[adamgolding]

I am switching back to rockbox, but am having trouble finding a suitable desktop program to use in conjunction with it.  I'm hoping to find a windows program such that I can do the following with rockbox:

   - synchronize playcounts
   - synchronize track ratings
   - synchronize album ratings
   - synchronize playlists

I have looked long and hard but am generally unable to tell, for a given program, if some combination of plugins and scripts and so on would allow me to do this or not.  Has anyone successfully done the above with Rockbox and a Windows program?  How!?

[LambdaCalculus]

This is not an easy topic to discuss, nor is it really Rockbox-related. Whatever program you want to use to sync music to your player is entirely up to you. Most people have their own opinions as to what works for them and what doesn't, and one man's app is probably not meant for the next guy.

Just experiment with different apps until you find the one that works for you.

[Chronon]

I am not aware of any applications that do these tasks out of the box.  Rockbox can export its database changes to a text file (provided you told it to track these things).  If you can figure out how a given desktop application stores this information then it shouldn't be too great a task to do this synchronization in each direction.

As LambdaCalculus379 pointed out, this is more of a question about 3rd party applications than about Rockbox, so I moved it to the Other Utilities forum.

[adamgolding]

Well, since interoperability depends on the behavior of both programs, and also is a factor in determining the quality of both programs, it's as much a rockbox question as it is a foobar/winamp/songbird/amarok/etc. question.

As came up on the mailing list, this might be much more feasible if rockbox wrote ratings and playcounts to the files--I've been told before that this would wear out the flash, but as the owner of a HDD player I certainly desire the option, if no other solution is available..

That being said, my hope is that at least one windows user has encountered this problem before and has found or created a solution to it--surely there is a rockbox user out there who syncs ratings to a windows machine?  This is also a basic usability issue and is probably a barrier to adoption of rockbox--I'll gladly write a guide for users if there's a way to do this with *any* program on windows..

Anyway, this issue does bear on rockbox behavior, and also on how it is marketed and documented for users.

[Llorean]

Well, since interoperability depends on the behavior of both programs

Depends on the behaviour, but doesn't actually require any action from our side. For example, take the fact that there are many tools that sync to iPods quite comfortably despite no cooperation from Apple.

Our database code is open source, the tools are available entirely for any project to interpret and use our database format for keeping playcounts in line. At this point, the ball is in their court. So it really is a question for third-parties.

It's hardly a "basic" usability issue, since a large number of users don't feel the need to keep two separate libraries in sync. This is an advanced usability issue, and one the requires the actions of third parties to be solved. Pick your favorite open-source library management tool, and write a patch for them or a feature request.

[Hillshum]

There's a tool written to read the database of a Sansa and write that to MediaMonkey called SansaMonkey. It will read the Rockbox database on Sansas and other DAPs with Rockbox on them

[BruceHP]

I also use MediaMonkey.

[rkdowner]

I guess what I'd really like to see is RockBox for Windows :-)

So, should I make a feature request for this, or what?

[GodEater]

There already is Rockbox for Windows - it's called "The Simulator".

Check here for builds for windows (kindly provided by forum member rasher) :

http://www.rasher.dk/rockbox/simulator/

[rkdowner]

Thanks, but that's not quite what I meant...

Which of the many simulators simulates a PC? :-)

[froggyman]

Which of the many simulators simulates a PC? :-)

Those simulators are for simulating a rockbox device on a PC, not the other way around...

[rkdowner]

I was trying to be funny. As in, which one simulates the RockBox device "PC," as opposed to simulating "iPod Mini."

[GodEater]

I was trying to be funny. As in, which one simulates the RockBox device "PC," as opposed to simulating "iPod Mini."

I don't understand the question. The Rockbox simulator on windows plays music located on your PC, and creates a database of that music. What does it not do that you're after ?

[kingsinger]

Being able to sync play lists, play counts, etc. between the simulator data base and the data base on a copy of rockbox running on a portable device would be helpful.

For people who like to just drag and drop static play lists or directories of their music onto the player and manage it from there, rockbox works great. It's super powerful compared to pretty much any other player firmware, because it is was designed to be self-contained and untied to any particular desktop client.

Along the same lines, if I had my entire music library on my player, RB seems great for that scenario too. All I'd really need is to add new music to the player. Then I could just manage everything from there. The RB Database tools are complicated and basically have a command line interface that's not particularly accessible to people who aren't super technically inclined, but they do seem powerful in terms of building smart filters, etc. If that was my situation, I could learn how to use those tools, and get the functionality I need from them.

But for someone with a limited capacity player who likes to have an algorithmically generated, dynamically changing body of content on the player, it's a definite limitation that there doesn't seem to be any straightforward way for average non-techies (or maybe anyone) to sync their player DB info with a DB on their computer that relates to their entire music library, so that things like smart play lists based on things like play count, date added, ratings etc. can be updated, and you can easily put this new stuff on the player.

This, I think, is the crux of the comments above about these needs being basic usability issues. This may not be important to everyone, but it's definitely something that every ipod/itunes user takes for granted. I know I do with my ipod touch, and it's one of the things that makes a smaller capacity player a workable thing for me.

It's very convenient to have a smart play list for content added in say the last 4 weeks and to be able to have that go on the player automatically as it changes on the computer. The same goes for a rather intricate play list I built based on play counts, last played, etc. It gives me a nice balance of new music and old favorites. But it also shifts and changes over time as play counts change, get synced, and a song ascends from the 10-12 plays list to the 13-15 plays list, etc.

I find Rockbox to be so amazingly great in many respects on my Sansa E250. It makes the player so much more useful. But this particular limitation is something I'd love find a solution for.

The folder sync add-in for Songbird provides one piece of the puzzle. If I change songs in a playlist/directory on my computer, it will then make the same changes to that playlist/directory on my player.

What the add-in lacks is the feedback loop from the player, where the songbird library is updated first with run time data from the player, so the play list on the computer can be dynamically updated and then synced back to the player.

I think the developer of this add-on  actually started incorporating the Rockbox meta-data syncing aspect. Unfortunately, he said he didn't have time to work on this any further.

Part of this reluctance seems to be that he doesn't have time to get up to speed on how the RB database side would interrelate with his existing code. He also doesn't have Rboxed player to debug on. So if there is anyone else out there reading this, who has the technical skill/understanding of this stuff, it might make sense to reach out to this guy. Maybe with some collaboration with someone on this side of the fence, these features could be brought over the finish line.

To me, the combination of a ums directory sync (including relevant metadata) that works natively in Rockbox would be a huge win for both Songbird and Rockbox, because it would make Songbird so much more useful for so many people using so many different kinds of players.

It would also completely bypass proprietary stuff like MTP, etc., which seems to be at least a sub-text of both the Mozilla and rockbox projects. It would also be relatively easy to implement across platforms, which would be a big win too.

Anyway, I'm just a humble user of this cool firmware. I don't have the skills to act on any of the ideas above. Just being expansive and hopeful that maybe someone with the skills has an interest in seeing if some of this stuff could be made to work.

Happy thanksgiving.

Best,

KS

[AlexP]

Part of the problem here is that very very few of the developers use the database, and therefore don't feel inclined to work on it adding features they wouldn't use to an existing feature they already don't use, as Rockbox is after all a spare time volunteer project.

It needs someone who both wants these features and is willing to work on implementing them to do the work.