Rockbox Technical Forums

Rockbox General => Rockbox General Discussion => Topic started by: Ikaroff on September 07, 2007, 02:46:32 PM

Title: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: Ikaroff on September 07, 2007, 02:46:32 PM
I downloaded and installed rockbox on my 1st generation ipod nano today, it's working fine except for one thing: I can't figure out how to put music files on it. Or well I can put the files on all right, but they won't play. they say they "arent found" or something when I try to play.

What I've done is just to take a folder of music (mp4s i believe (could this be the problem?)) and copy it onto my ipod. Is this not correct?

Thanks in advance

ikaroff
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: LambdaCalculus on September 07, 2007, 02:50:23 PM
Did you just drag and drop music onto your nano, or did you use a program like iTunes to copy them over? And for the record, AAC files are supported, provided the extenstion is .m4a.

Perchance, these weren't songs purchased from iTunes, were they?
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: Ikaroff on September 07, 2007, 03:09:47 PM
Well, I dragged them "manually", but I originally imported them to my computer using itunes. about that AAC thing, could you explain it to me? i'm not at all into these terms


and thanks for the fast reply!
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: LambdaCalculus on September 07, 2007, 03:17:06 PM
AAC is the default music codec Apple uses in iTunes when ripping CDs. While not theirs per se, it's still their preferred codec. Here's Wikipedia's article on AAC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

As for your music: if you dragged them in manually, check the extension of the files, which would look a . followed by some characters; for example:   (filename)--->FredFoo.bar <---(extension). Make sure you see .m4a at the end of the files if they are indeed AAC. If they are MP3s, they should have the extension .mp3 at the end.

Again, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename_extension
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: Ikaroff on September 07, 2007, 03:21:45 PM
Having checked again, I believe they are mpeg4's if that makes sense..

but I don't get it, has my music not working got anything to do with the file format or what?
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: pixelma on September 07, 2007, 03:49:38 PM
they won't play. they say they "arent found" or something when I try to play.
Can you try to post the exact error message here?
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: mikelx215 on September 07, 2007, 05:46:29 PM
Did you add the songs to database? If you didn't they won't show up. Hold select over 'Database' for 2-3 seconds and select 'Initialize Now'.  :) If you just added the songs from itunes normally, it should detect them.
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: Chronon on September 07, 2007, 06:47:32 PM
Actually the following extensions are all just mp4 containers: .m4a, .m4b, .mp4, .m4p, .m4v


So, Rockbox should handle .m4a, .m4b, or .mp4 files provided they contain an AAC stream.  

* Does Rockbox properly handle mp3 streams inside of mp4 containers?  I've never tried this.
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: yegods on September 07, 2007, 07:01:17 PM
maybe it might be good to mention that Rockbox won't play songs that were bought from itunes...

please correct me if i'm wrong.
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: Chronon on September 07, 2007, 07:03:26 PM
It won't play .m4p files (as is the extension for DRMed music bought from iTunes) that's true.  However, you can purchase higher quality non-DRMed music from iTunes as well now and these files will play fine in Rockbox -- but again they will have a .m4a extension.
Title: Re: Problems with transferring music to my Ipod
Post by: Ikaroff on September 08, 2007, 06:01:40 AM
YAY I GOT IT TO WORK!!! I'm so happy, ROCKBOX ROCKS!