View Full Version : iPod Touch - What do I need to know?
Davey_Pitch
16-04-2008, 17:09
Hopefully getting a 32GB iPod Touch next week with a new phone contract, and with the exception of a quick look at Pete's a while ago I don't know a whole lot about them. Is there anything special I need to know about them? How about apps, are there any I need to get to make everything easier/better? It's my first new MP3 player in about 4-5 years so I'm a little out of touch :o
LeperousDust
16-04-2008, 17:14
Out of touch :D *Ba Dum Dum Tsch*
Not much to know, they work really great, you should pick it up pretty easy! The 32Gb version is a much more pallattable size for an mp3 player too, enjoy :D. Still i'd rather have more space for music myself over the GUI, i've already ran out of room on my age old 30gb iPoodle, looking at getting a classic now...
Cool :D I don't really know of any apps per say. I keep my music in iTunes because the iPod is essentially iTunes on the go. So I keep all my ratings, playlists, play counts and such sync'd between the two. I also sync my calendar via iCal, my photos via iPhoto and such. Bookmarks are sync'd to Safari, but I use Firefox and haven't bothered looking up a way around that. I know Facebook has a custom iPhone site which works nicely on the device, as do Google. I could recommend a good video conversion program but its Mac only called VisualHub.
Davey_Pitch
16-04-2008, 17:32
Still i'd rather have more space for music myself over the GUI, i've already ran out of room on my age old 30gb iPoodle, looking at getting a classic now...
My "Albums" folder only runs at around 24GB and I wouldn't want all of the music on the Touch at once, considering I'll have it connected to the PC every night charging, I can quickly change my music when I want to :) Lynnie is also getting a new phone soon and she'll be getting an 80GB Classic as her free gift, which will be great if we go anywhere anywhere and need lots of music :)
I could recommend a good video conversion program but its Mac only called VisualHub.
I've found an interesting looking app which will monitor my downloads folder and then convert any videos it finds to the correct iPod friendly format. It's called iPodifier (http://ipodifier.com/index.html) and will hopefully save me a fair bit of time :)
You'll be wanting iTunes (because the iTouch won't work with anything other than iTunes, because Apple are nice like that) which means by default, if you're on Windows you'll be having Quicktime and Safari whether you like it or not.
Past that, nothing really, iTunes does everything you'll need.
Davey_Pitch
16-04-2008, 21:26
There's alternatives to iTunes from what I can see, but I already have it installed and I don't mind it so much, so I may just stick with it :)
There's alternatives to iTunes from what I can see, but I already have it installed and I don't mind it so much, so I may just stick with it :)
No alternatives for the iPod Touch as far as I know, they run a different OS to the regular iPods (which for the most part will sync with most things, including WinAmp etc.) so only sync with iTunes. They can't be put into disk mode either, as a measure to prevent people easy access to the filesystem of the iPhone to aid jailbreaking and such.
Davey_Pitch
16-04-2008, 22:18
Ah, fair enough, iTunes it is then. I'm sure I'll cope :)
I manage ok, I just hate iTunes as my meda player so it just means I have to maintain two databases of my music, one for listening to, one for my iPod :p
As for the Touch itself. It's the best thing in the entire world ever and you'll wonder why you didn't buy one sooner :p
LeperousDust
16-04-2008, 22:40
No alternatives for the iPod Touch as far as I know, they run a different OS to the regular iPods (which for the most part will sync with most things, including WinAmp etc.) so only sync with iTunes. They can't be put into disk mode either, as a measure to prevent people easy access to the filesystem of the iPhone to aid jailbreaking and such.
Mediamonkey has support for the iPhone in its latest beta release i'm assuming iPhone is basically an touch though?
MediaMonkey is also far far better at syncing than iTunes ever will be for a whole host of reasons i'll go in to if you care :) I used to be a big iTunes iPod user, because it was decent at what it did, but MediaMonkey does everything iTunes does, and more and a whole lot better :D
Its the only major reason i don't need a bigger iPod right now thanks to its awesome syncing feature list, and and big catologue of plugins :)
Davey if you get an iPod i beg you to give MediaMonkey a good try :)
Davey_Pitch
16-04-2008, 23:02
Davey if you get an iPod i beg you to give MediaMonkey a good try :)
I've heard of it before. What's so good about it?
a whole host of reasons i'll go in to if you care :)
Get typing! ;)
LeperousDust
17-04-2008, 00:31
Get typing! ;)
Haha, indeedy, i just didn't want to bother ramming it down your throat cause a lot of people are happy with iTunes as was I :)
The beta is better suited at importing music IMO, you set it to monitor a folder and thats what it does, you don't need to inform it ala iTunes everytime theres something new in your music folder.
Its more customisable, whether thats good or bad is moot i suppose, but i have it looking like WMP or iTunes so my friends don't get scared of it (this is good at parties)
It has a freaking Now Playing list! Why oh why doesn't iTunes have this?!?! You can on the fly add what you want to play as you find it, iTunes is ridiculous in this manner.
Auto playlists are like smart playlists in iTunes (so you dont lose them either :))
Syncing is truly something else, first it supports everything (well mostly i think). But you can set it to sync auto playlists (like iTunes) and then set it to sycn a random subset of your remaining music to fill the player, and you can set it to favour higher rated music.
You can (with a plugin) Autorate your music, depending on how often, how much a song is played, how much its skipped, or override it manually.
You can integrate (or scrobble whatever you want to call it) all this into Last.fm, so last.fm will start advising you what music to look out for (invaluable to myself)
Theres an autoDJ which is exactly like iTunes party shuffle, but autoDJ can be set to work intelligently from last.fm, so when MM gets to the end of your Now playing playlist, it checks what was at the end, queries last.fm and checks to see what music you have that is similar to this song, rather than choose at complete random (this is great for hearing all the music you own, if you own lots!).
Theres also a party mode where everything is locked out and you can restric what people can do (ie no deleting music etc..) for those drunken party dukeboxes :)
Thats off the top of my head now, there are countless other things if you need more convincing, but the beta 3.whatever is definitely worth a good look at, and playing with for a bit. Once its all up and running its fab, i've converted two flatmates recently, theyre pretty technophobic and get on great with it!
I am not recieving commision for this post... ;D
1 question, which is something I never managed to get itunes to do...
If I create a custom playlist, and manually add songs to it, can it be set up so that that playlist is synced to the iPod (and so any additions/removals to that playlist are added/removed from the iPod)? So if I happened to need to reset the iPod, i could just sync up that list rather than trawl my library like I do now?
LeperousDust
17-04-2008, 01:50
AFAIK custom playlists "update" themselves with iTunes i think somehow ( i don't have it installed anymore but i think i did do something like what your after). Mediamonkey *definately* does this, you can tell it whether or not to remove files from your MP3 player, if they're not on a playlist anymore, or have been removed from your library etc... I use that all the time :)
I manage ok, I just hate iTunes as my meda player so it just means I have to maintain two databases of my music, one for listening to, one for my iPod :p
As for the Touch itself. It's the best thing in the entire world ever and you'll wonder why you didn't buy one sooner :p
This is precisely what I have just set up dude. I have an XP machine running iTunes, because I had all kinds of trouble getting the Touch and 64 bit Vista to play nice. I also thought iTunes ran like a bit of a dog on Vista tbh, its smoother on XP. I never use iTunes to listen to music anymore, just for syncing the iPod.
For actually listening to some tunes, it's WinAmp for the win. The new version is most excellent. For freeware, you have to say it is a superb application.
LeperousDust
17-04-2008, 16:59
MediaMokey can actually use the winamp engine if you so wish :) And does everything else too, also just found out it tags from amazon if you wish too! Exactly what i was after!
Think I'll have a look at MediaMonkey. If I can get it to do autoDJ via an interface as unobtrusive as Winamp, I'll be away.
Currently ripping my 70th CD to my all-new library (properly tagging everything as best I can as I go). Only another 140 CDs or so in the current stack to go (with probably another 100 or so I haven't found yet), then I need to bash together a little software to organise everything the way I want it.
The itouch is MORE than just music thou.
There are
The internet in Safari - fab
Email - I set it up to Gmail and it sync
Video is great, soooooooooooo cool
Photo, it's more about showing people your photos, as you can't sent them or receive photos
Weather - its quite nifty
Stocks - not really paid attention to it
Youtube, works perfectly
When have you ever been out and about and thought "Crickey, what I wouldn't give to be able to get on YouTube right now.."?
When have you ever been out and about and thought "Crickey, what I wouldn't give to be able to get on YouTube right now.."?
LOL
More when youout and about and realise you can get free wifi in some places and you can use it for all sort of things. check train times, news and whatnot.
Definitely agree that the browser is useful to have and I will use it on a frequent enough basis - it's just the pre-occupation with YouTube that I don't get. There's ALOT of sh*t on there!
Davey_Pitch
17-04-2008, 19:05
Oh no doubt, but there's a lot of cool videos on there as well. It's how I tend to amuse myself in work lately when there's nothing to do :)
LeperousDust
17-04-2008, 21:54
Think I'll have a look at MediaMonkey. If I can get it to do autoDJ via an interface as unobtrusive as Winamp, I'll be away.
Currently ripping my 70th CD to my all-new library (properly tagging everything as best I can as I go). Only another 140 CDs or so in the current stack to go (with probably another 100 or so I haven't found yet), then I need to bash together a little software to organise everything the way I want it.
Since you're re ripping its not really a decent option, but if you've already got decent quality rips on your hard drive but they just need retagging properly, use music brainz, you'll be done in one night, and nearly all automatic! :D
MediaMonkey also seems (since i don't rip CD's ;D) pretty good at ripping too, can use freeDB or amazon and autotag & organise...
Email - I set it up to Gmail and it sync
Weather - its quite nifty
Stocks - not really paid attention to it
Sod off with your updated software version :p
I installed MediaMonkey last night.
One that strikes me is it doesn't handle non tagged files well. I have a few various untagged files and WinAmp seems to manage to extract a sensible artist and track name from the filename 99% of the time.
MediaMonkey is like, well, like a monkey just pointed at some random words.
It's also a huge pain in the arse to use in conjunction with UltraMon
Davey_Pitch
20-04-2008, 15:25
I quite like MediaMonkey. None of my files are untagged so I've not seen that problem with it yet, and I much prefer the Library to the WMP one, as it's easier to browse when I've got so many full albums. Assuming it'll sync with the Touch with no problems then I'll be uninstalling iTunes right away.
LeperousDust
20-04-2008, 16:54
Divine you're right, thats one thing they still need to improve, the actual window coding or whatever. For instance when maximised vista doesn't realise and doesn't turn the glass off so i can see why ultra mon throws a wobbly too.
You can blame it for not making sense of badly tagged files though, thats your fault :p. Go over all your files with MusicBrainz Picard, sort them out once and for all and you'll be fine. If you go into the MM options you you can tell it how to work, i think be default it relies (naturally) more on tags, but you can tell it to infer properties from file names too. its something that i've never had a problem with because i'm very anal about music :) Well i am now i went through a big phase of making sure everything was tagged perfect with album art etc...
Davey, i can't see why it shouldn't work, i'm pretty sure touch support is there, i think there are niggles but then this is the beta, so if it doesnt work perfect keep and eye out as things progress :)
99% of my music is tagged right, just odd songs i've got off Limewire or wherever, that WinAmp gets on fine with, MediaMonkey just can't handle properly at all.
Electric Six - Gay Bar for example, WinAmp works out fine, MM decided the Artist was 'Six' and the song was called '- Gay Bar'
LeperousDust
20-04-2008, 18:21
Check options - library see if any of that solves it, i wouldn't know what to do since i've never had a problem, but i would imagine just tell MM how to manage them should possible sort things out :)
Davey_Pitch
20-04-2008, 19:23
its something that i've never had a problem with because i'm very anal about music :) Well i am now i went through a big phase of making sure everything was tagged perfect with album art etc...
Same here. All of my albums are tagged correctly, except a few are still missing album art which I'll sort out at some point. I got fed up of having tons of crappy music with no tags on them and messing up my nice media library :D
LeperousDust
20-04-2008, 21:39
Mediamonkey makes that quite easy, you can "tag from the web" and it scrapes everything from amazon, but instead of track and album properties, just tick the album cover. The few you have left over just do them as they appear when you play them :)
Go over all your files with MusicBrainz Picard, sort them out once and for all and you'll be fine.
Slightly OT but talk to me about this. I need to tag up quite a lot of my collection as it has grown significantly in the last few months and is getting messy.
LeperousDust
21-04-2008, 21:06
Without wanting to sound blunt, try here (http://www.boat-drinks.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5479&highlight=picard) and here (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17777870), that basically covers everything i do with MusicBrainz Picard :) If you need any more help or instructions, don't hesitate to PM me, or start a thread and i'm sure other will come to help too!
Make sure you have the Disc, and album art plugin installed, and test it first on a small batch of music thats untagged so you can get to grips with what its doing, then literally unleash it on all your music and you'll be done that night probably ;)
Davey_Pitch
22-04-2008, 10:10
I <3 Picard, it's made my music collection so much better just by having everything tagged properly. I even unleashed it on all my random singles and was amazed at how many it found (not everything, though I do have some random stuff). It's definitely the best MP3 tagger I've ever used.
LeperousDust
22-04-2008, 12:48
I swear by in now, *everything* i add goes by MusicBrainz first before it gets anywhere near my library now, its even easy to keep a library nice with it :)
Davey_Pitch
22-04-2008, 13:00
Same here, Picard effectively controls my library as I only add things in there by using Picard first :)
Cheers fellas, those threads look like just the ticket :D
Davey_Pitch
01-05-2008, 13:06
Well, got my Touch today after some faffing about with Royal Mail, and it really is sex in a small device. It looks amazing, and the touch interface is genius. I can see myself listening to a lot more music simply because I have it. After first using iTunes to recognise and set up the Touch, MediaMonkey took over and it was a breeze to transfer music to it. iTunes begone, a proper program is here to take your place :D
LeperousDust
01-05-2008, 14:52
http://www.boat-drinks.co.uk/images/icons/icon14.gif
Cool, have you consider jailbreaking it? There a LOTS of free apps on the installer you can get and you can customise the itouch too to your taste.
Davey_Pitch
01-05-2008, 17:44
Yup, seriously considering it, just need to read up on it to see how easy it is to change should anything go wrong.
*click* jailbroken
*click* restored to normal
It's as simple as that.
Davey_Pitch
01-05-2008, 20:34
Hmmm, first problem encountered. Transferred a whole load of music to the Touch and most of it played fine, but some albums completely refused to play, despite them being basic MP3s. Looking in iTunes the same files aren't listed, so there's obviously something wrong with the music, and I'll have to do some work on them to get them working. I wouldn't mind so much, but out of a music collection of 25GB, 7GB of it isn't registering so it'll be a bit of work getting it all working.
LeperousDust
02-05-2008, 00:32
How was that 7Gb tagged, be more specific than mp3...?
Davey_Pitch
02-05-2008, 01:27
It was all tagged perfectly through Picard, but I've sorted it now anyway. I opened up the offending files in Foobar and rebuilt the MP3 stream, which did the trick :)
LeperousDust
04-05-2008, 19:29
Ironically i'm having troubles with MP3's in a similar fashion to yourself Davey, according to my iPod i've got about 9800 tracks on there, but according to MM i have around 10k, so i'm missing about 200 somewhere (not that i've noticed yet) and i'm wondering how you went about working out what was missing? A little annoying this :p
Davey_Pitch
05-05-2008, 13:27
Unfortunately it was a boring manual process. I split my artists down into alphabetical subfolders (A-C, etc), then cleared the library in both iTunes and MM. I first added a subfolder to MM, and then to iTunes. If the song count was the same, all was fine, but if it differed then there would obviously be a problem somewhere, and it was a case of scanning to see which albums were missing in iTunes. With around 4000 songs in total it probably took me around an hour to get it all sorted out.
LeperousDust
05-05-2008, 13:56
Hmmmm, i think i'm willing to skip that one! If i haven't noticed they're probably not *that* important...
Is there a way excel can show the differences between two tables? Because i've got the libraries from my iPod and from media monkey in an excel table, but i can't see any way of comparing two books sets of data? This would be a fairly quick way...
Davey_Pitch
05-05-2008, 14:14
How do you get the libraries to the excel spreadsheet? If I can take a look myself I can probably figure it out.
http://www.formulasoft.com/xlsc.html
LeperousDust
05-05-2008, 15:43
In MM select all your files then File -> Create report, do the same once you've mounted your iPod in the iPod node :) The statistics are really interesting once you've used it for a while too!
Cheers divine saw that on google but it was interspersed with the usual freeware crap, i will have a play with that :)
LeperousDust
05-05-2008, 16:54
Right first off that comparison thing is a bit weird to use, but i think i got it showing me what i wanted, it didn't help though, there weren't whole albums missing just the odd track here and there, very weird, with no pattern. So i've just deleted everything off my iPod, and i'm autosyncing it again, and now it says its copying x out of 10100, and i have 10102 songs, so its still not 100% but i'll let it off with two songs ;)
This program alone makes jailbreaking your iphone/touch worth while it think.
Basically a streaming program to your computer, videos, pictures, music and even live tv somehow (i haven't tried it as i don't have a tv card). It says you can do it anywhere......not tried that but i will have to soon.
http://orb.com/iphone_how
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