Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => Audio Playback, Database and Playlists => Topic started by: CobreDev on August 19, 2021, 05:16:20 PM

Title: ALACs converted through iTunes to 256AAC won't play on an iPod 3rd Gen
Post by: CobreDev on August 19, 2021, 05:16:20 PM

I have an iPod 6th Gen with rockbox, it has a 3,000mAh battery and an iFlash Quad. I have ALACs on it because why not, I have a huge battery so that doesn't really matter to me. I sync music through iTunes (So that stock OS is still usable), and just select /iPod_Control/Music for the rockbox database.

I have an iPod 3rd gen that I've flashmodded with a green board and DigiGear CF adapter, but since battery life is already bad enough on the 3rd gen I chose to convert the ALACs to 256kbps AAC when I was syncing through iTunes. I just installed rockbox on it, and the database won't show anything except the couple MP3 files I have in my library. If I go to the File Browser I can see them and play them, but they're named random strings from iTunes (DKSO, etc).

Is there any way to have the converted AAC m4a tracks to show in the rockbox database?

Title: Re: ALACs converted through iTunes to 256AAC won't play on an iPod 3rd Gen
Post by: Frankenpod on August 19, 2021, 06:08:21 PM

Well if you sync with iTunes you won't be able to use the file-browser because of how iTunes obfuscates all the file and directory names (apparently, and it might have been someone on this very forum who pointed this out to me, it does that in order to minimise the memory the ipod OF needs to use for its own database, and, not, as was my first guess, for some sort of misguided DRM copy-protection nonsense).  Hence those 'random strings'.

Personally I'd just give up on using iTunes, but if you insist on being able to use the OF on the iPod, then you have to make sure all the tags are filled in correctly so the database can handle them.  I can only guess that when you down-convert them using iTunes during sync, it doesn't retain the tags from the original ALAC files (assuming they have them) for the downsampled versions.  Ipod OF presumably doesn't use those tags, it uses it's own database instead, so I'm guessing iTunes doesn't bother to retain them during the conversion process.

Either convert all the files beforehand on your computer, then use some utility to fill in all the tags again, or maybe use some other utility to do the conversion that retains the tags?


Edit - might be worth looking at the converted files on the ipod with something like mp3tag, just to see if the problem is indeed that the tags are not being copied during the conversion/sync process.

Title: Re: ALACs converted through iTunes to 256AAC won't play on an iPod 3rd Gen
Post by: cereal_killer on August 20, 2021, 09:27:05 AM

Is the directory of these files maybe excluded from scanning?

Title: Re: ALACs converted through iTunes to 256AAC won't play on an iPod 3rd Gen
Post by: CobreDev on August 22, 2021, 06:50:08 PM

Quote from: cereal_killer on August 20, 2021, 09:27:05 AM

Is the directory of these files maybe excluded from scanning?

Nope, they're all in the same directory


I've been told that rockbox on a 3rd gen is a pain to use and pretty buggy, so I'll just stick to OF for now