iPod shuffle - loading without iTunes

[Timothy J. Trace]

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.
I am not experiencing the blinking orange green LED symptom of an
improperly loaded shuffle. This is on a Windows XP system.

Most of the explanation can be found here:
http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net

Let me summarize for you...

First I formatted my shuffle as a FAT32 drive. I left it completely
blank.

I created a folder (the name is of no consequence) on the root of the
shuffle, and copied 600MB of MP3s into the folder.

Then I unzipped this file to the root of the iPod:
http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/ipod_root.zip

I installed Python: http://www.python.org

I extracted the rebuild_db.py file from this archive to the root of
the shuffle:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=136446

I ran rebuild_db.py from the root of the shuffle. I had only to
double-clicked it because I had already installed Python.

I disconnected the shuffle and rocked out to 106 songs

Best regards,

Tim ==
(substitute 'tcsys.com' for 'nospam.co.uk')
_________________

Visit the Surrender Dorothy web !! (http://dorothyrocks.com)
Visit the Crunch Monkey web !! (http://crunchmonkey.com)

 

[Margolotta]

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.
I am not experiencing the blinking orange green LED symptom of an
improperly loaded shuffle. This is on a Windows XP system.

Most of the explanation can be found here:
http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net

Let me summarize for you...

First I formatted my shuffle as a FAT32 drive. I left it completely
blank.

I created a folder (the name is of no consequence) on the root of the
shuffle, and copied 600MB of MP3s into the folder.

Then I unzipped this file to the root of the iPod:
http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/ipod_root.zip

I installed Python: http://www.python.org

I extracted the rebuild_db.py file from this archive to the root of
the shuffle:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=136446

I ran rebuild_db.py from the root of the shuffle. I had only to
double-clicked it because I had already installed Python.

I disconnected the shuffle and rocked out to 106 songs

Best regards,

Tim ==
(substitute 'tcsys.com' for 'nospam.co.uk')
_________________

Visit the Surrender Dorothy web !! (http://dorothyrocks.com)
Visit the Crunch Monkey web !! (http://crunchmonkey.com)

Tim,

The name of this group is 'uk.COMP.sys.MAC' - it is a group for the
discussion of Apple Macintosh computers, not Apple products in general
(though, obviously, we do discuss other Apple products we do so in the
context of them being attached to Macs). Whilst you might find someone here
who has experience of hooking a Shuffle (IMO the most pointless iPod) to a
PeeCee, you'd probably do better posting to a Windows group.

There's nothing to stop you posting here (though, strictly, your post is
off-topic and should have been marked as such) but bear in mind you're
talking to a group of Mac heads who use Macs for a damned good reason - we
don't much care for PeeCees and M$haft.

I'm not sure what you know about Usenet hierarchy, but 'sys' is short for
'system' and, usually, means the discussion of whole computers, rather than
accessories and peripherals.

comp.sys.mac.portables is, as the name suggests, for the discussion of
iBooks and PowerBooks and your post is off-topic there also.

I am, therefore, removing the irrelevant groups from your post so this thread
isn't propagated to groups where it's off topic.

The only two groups were your post is really relevant are
'alt.music.mp3.hardware' and ''microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware' - I
reckon it's probably OT in 'alt.music.mp3' too as that's (probably) for the
discussion of actual MP3 files, rather than the players.

You don't seem to realise that a Mac is a specific type of computer, not a
generic term for anything Apple.

Cheers

Sarah

 

[PeterD]

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.

[snip great big convoluted time-consuming procedure]

Awesome, Tim!

I managed to open a tin of baked beans without a tin opener.
Here's the summary:

I flew to Australia, on Air New Zealand flight 203.

I hired a Tojo, filled up with petrol and drove to Broken Hill.

I prospected for several weeks until I found the right lump of ore.

I smelted the ore, until I had enough molten metal to make a good spike.

I stabbed the baked bean tin with the spike to make a hole big enough to
allow a bean through.

I heated the can to produce enough internal pressure to force some of
the beans and sauce through the hole.

I quickly smelted some more metal to make a plate and spoon.

I rocked out to baked beans!

 

[Margolotta]

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.

[snip great big convoluted time-consuming procedure]

Awesome, Tim!

I managed to open a tin of baked beans without a tin opener.
Here's the summary:

I flew to Australia, on Air New Zealand flight 203.

I hired a Tojo, filled up with petrol and drove to Broken Hill.

I prospected for several weeks until I found the right lump of ore.

I smelted the ore, until I had enough molten metal to make a good spike.

I stabbed the baked bean tin with the spike to make a hole big enough to
allow a bean through.

I heated the can to produce enough internal pressure to force some of
the beans and sauce through the hole.

I quickly smelted some more metal to make a plate and spoon.

I rocked out to baked beans!

Wish I'd gone for the sarcasm now! ;o)

Sarah

 

[Woody]

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.
I am not experiencing the blinking orange green LED symptom of an
improperly loaded shuffle. This is on a Windows XP system.

<snip>

why? You had a week with nothing to do?

 

[Timothy J. Trace]

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.

[snip great big convoluted time-consuming procedure]

Awesome, Tim!

I managed to open a tin of baked beans without a tin opener.
Here's the summary:

[snip the humor]

Thanks for the laugh, it was worth it :>

 

[Timothy J. Trace]

<snip>

why? You had a week with nothing to do?

Ever count the number of steps and the time involved in dumping your
load, then successfully wiping your arse with the goal of avoiding the
"brown sweats?"

Why do you presume that a simple 6-step procedure, 2 steps of which
are downloading open-source programs, would take a week to complete?

Oh, I get it. Sarcasm. Humor. Arr, arr.

It took no more than 6 minutes to complete the described process,
including the 3 downloads and the 600MB data transfer to the shuffle.

 

[Davoud]

Timothy J. Trace:

Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.

This is on a Windows XP system.

AKA the Typhoid Mary of OS's.

Let me summarize for you...

This is only a summary!? My sincerest sympathy if old age took your
dearly beloved wife while she was waiting to listen to her music. About
20 years ago Apple introduced a thing called "Drag and Drop" to
personal computers. Using that clever little innovation, it takes my
wife less than 60 seconds to load her 1GB Shuffle -- all by herself, no
less -- from iTunes!

First I formatted my shuffle as a FAT32 drive. I left it completely
blank.

I created a folder on the root of the shuffle, and copied 600MB of MP3s into the folder.

Then I unzipped this file to the root of the iPod:

I installed Python: http://www.python.org

I extracted the rebuild_db.py file from this archive to the root of
the shuffle: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=136446

I ran rebuild_db.py from the root of the shuffle. I had only to
double-clicked it because I had already installed Python.

I disconnected the shuffle and rocked out to 106 songs

You Windows guys are a real trip -- always reliable for a laugh! You
might have better spent your time working on this
<http://tinyurl.com/8hcl9>! January is going to be a great month for my
little consulting business!

Davoud

Expert consulting: Mac, Windows. Friend? Get a Mac. Paying me by the
hour? I *highly* recommend Windows.

 

[Timothy J. Trace]

The name of this group is 'uk.COMP.sys.MAC' - it is a group for the

<<snip>>

Because I couldn't find a quickly digestible version of this procedure
on the web or the Usenet, I typed up a summary procedure and spammed
it out where Google will hold it in perpetuity for the next guy who
needs a leg up when trying to escape the iTunes box.

I am, therefore, removing the irrelevant groups from your post so this thread
isn't propagated to groups where it's off topic.

ZOMFG you can *do* that? And I thought that only Al Gore had that
kind of control over the Internet.

You don't seem to realise that a Mac is a specific type of computer, not a
generic term for anything Apple.

And you seem to be a presumptive, self-anointed maven of uncertified
distance psychology. Good luck with that as a career path.

 

[Woody]

Ever count the number of steps and the time involved in dumping your
load, then successfully wiping your arse with the goal of avoiding the
"brown sweats?"

No idea what you are talking about there, sorry.

Why do you presume that a simple 6-step procedure, 2 steps of which
are downloading open-source programs, would take a week to complete?

Oh, I get it. Sarcasm. Humor. Arr, arr.

No, I dont assume it would take 6 weeks, I just failed to understand why
you would need to do it. Is there are problem with iTunes, and if iTunes
has got such a problem, couldn't you have got something like an iRiver?

It took no more than 6 minutes to complete the described process,
including the 3 downloads and the 600MB data transfer to the shuffle.

So you got an iPod shuffle at 9:30, thought 'for some reason I want to
use this iPod shuffle without iTunes' and by 9:36 you had all your songs
on it?

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

That's certainly easier than using iTunes.

 

[G.T.]

Timothy J. Trace:



AKA the Typhoid Mary of OS's.




This is only a summary!? My sincerest sympathy if old age took your
dearly beloved wife while she was waiting to listen to her music. About
20 years ago Apple introduced a thing called "Drag and Drop" to
personal computers. Using that clever little innovation, it takes my
wife less than 60 seconds to load her 1GB Shuffle -- all by herself, no
less -- from iTunes!

<devil's advocate>
What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
</devil's advocate>

Greg

 

[Woody]

<devil's advocate>
What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
</devil's advocate>

But he did - he was using windows XP.

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

<devil's advocate>
What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
</devil's advocate>

Or...the guy could simply be a retard.

 

[G.T.]

But he did - he was using windows XP.

Yes, I know, but his instructions would apply just as well to this
laptop running OpenBSD so I'm glad he went to the trouble of posting his
summary.

Greg

 

[Timothy J. Trace]

So you got an iPod shuffle at 9:30, thought 'for some reason I want to
use this iPod shuffle without iTunes' and by 9:36 you had all your songs
on it?

Thanks for not being mean :>

In your example, I would say that the time from 9:00 to 9:30 was spent
opening boxes and trying to figure out the shuffle paradigm. Once I
had all the ducks in a row, I performed and repeated the procedure
twice to be certain that it was working before I trained my wife. No
more than 6 minutes in either instance.

I'm a previous iPod owner. I've had a 4G 20GB and 1 1G Mini 4GB for
nearly a year. I've never used iTunes. From the very start I've only
synced my players using Ephpod, and I wanted the wife's new shuffle to
sync with Ephpod, also. Unfortunately, as I discovered last night,
Ephpod does not support the iPod shuffle, and there are no plans to
add that compatibility.

One reason I sync with Ephpod is that I prefer to keep all of my media
in a single server-side directory where my LinkSys WMA11B can see all
of it. Another reason is that keeping everything on the server allows
me to access my music from whichever of my workstations or notebooks
that I happen to be logged into at any given moment.

Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong, songs
that you download to the player are not backed up on the host PC. Lose
the player, lose the music. Or, to stretch the analogy, no WMA11B
connected to the player, no iTunes songs on the home entertainment
system. And, no, I don't believe you can connect a WMA11B to an iPod,
anyway.

Admittedly this leaves me out of the loop with regards to cutting edge
music, and stuff that is not represented in my collection. I
currently don't buy downloadable music. I'm making a statement of
some kind. Well, perhaps: I've ripped almost 500 discs from my
collection using Exact Audio Copy and LAME, and I populate my players
from those rips.

The last thing I need is an outlet where I can toss away $1 per song
on new stuff and rarities...I'll be broke within a week :>

As for missing out on the functionality of iTunes, that's not a huge
concern, but I'll grant that I don't know much about iTunes. What I
have now with Ephpod, etc, works well and is not all that much more
complicated than what I imagine iTunes to be.

 

[G.T.]

Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong, songs
that you download to the player are not backed up on the host PC.

I have no idea what you're asking. iTunes plays songs that are stored
in the iTunes library on the computer's harddrive or on a network
attached drive. What host PC are you talking about?

Lose
the player, lose the music.

Lose the harddrive, lose the music.

Or, to stretch the analogy, no WMA11B
connected to the player, no iTunes songs on the home entertainment
system. And, no, I don't believe you can connect a WMA11B to an iPod,
anyway.

Well, you can't install iTunes on a WMA11B.

Greg

 

[Woody]

Thanks for not being mean :>

In your example, I would say that the time from 9:00 to 9:30 was spent
opening boxes and trying to figure out the shuffle paradigm. Once I
had all the ducks in a row, I performed and repeated the procedure
twice to be certain that it was working before I trained my wife. No
more than 6 minutes in either instance.

I'm a previous iPod owner. I've had a 4G 20GB and 1 1G Mini 4GB for
nearly a year. I've never used iTunes. From the very start I've only
synced my players using Ephpod, and I wanted the wife's new shuffle to
sync with Ephpod, also. Unfortunately, as I discovered last night,
Ephpod does not support the iPod shuffle, and there are no plans to
add that compatibility.

I would imagine that as the shuffle is a very different device, it would
probably complicate ephpod (which I have used) to add it.

One reason I sync with Ephpod is that I prefer to keep all of my media
in a single server-side directory where my LinkSys WMA11B can see all
of it.

I keep all my media on my server, although I keep subsets of it on other
computers as well for convenience.

Another reason is that keeping everything on the server allows
me to access my music from whichever of my workstations or notebooks
that I happen to be logged into at any given moment.

Same here.

Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong, songs
that you download to the player are not backed up on the host PC. Lose
the player, lose the music.

Are you refering to music bought from the iTunes music store? They are
wherever you put them. Lose the player and the songs stay wherever they
were to start with, although if they are itunes files, you might lose
one count of them (I don't know - I don't have any downloaded files
apart from the free ones).

Or, to stretch the analogy, no WMA11B
connected to the player, no iTunes songs on the home entertainment
system. And, no, I don't believe you can connect a WMA11B to an iPod,
anyway.

I am not entirely with you here. iTunes and the music are separate
entities. There are files downloaded from the iTunes music store which
are protected, and there are files ripped from your CDs that are mp3s or
aacs or whatever. They are all independant of itunes or your iPod.

Admittedly this leaves me out of the loop with regards to cutting edge
music, and stuff that is not represented in my collection. I
currently don't buy downloadable music. I'm making a statement of
some kind. Well, perhaps: I've ripped almost 500 discs from my
collection using Exact Audio Copy and LAME, and I populate my players
from those rips.

I don't buy downloadable music with drm on it. I have bought some music
from artists websites as mp3s ( i recently bought a sarah mclachlan
album on mp3 from her website) but if the only choice is drm it is
easier to buy it from play.com and rip it - If I am going to buy music I
don't want to be told where I am going to play it.

The last thing I need is an outlet where I can toss away $1 per song
on new stuff and rarities...I'll be broke within a week :>

Same here.

As for missing out on the functionality of iTunes, that's not a huge
concern, but I'll grant that I don't know much about iTunes. What I
have now with Ephpod, etc, works well and is not all that much more
complicated than what I imagine iTunes to be.

I think you are mistaking what iTunes is - it is just a music player,
that can connect to the iTunes store, but it doesn't have to.
You stick a CD in, press the import button, it rips it and puts it in
your library (where you have told it to put them). You can get it to
sync with your iPod if you want or you can just pick up tracks and dump
them on the iPod (which appears in the list when connected). It also can
sync contacts/photos/videos etc.

I have 4 computers with iTunes and 3 iPods - none of them sync with each
other, I just copy tracks around (and cross convert to make mp3 cds for
my car stereo). iTunes works well and is not a problem on either the Mac
or the PC.
It also completes the whole iPod experience - yes, you can download
whatever and write scripts to copy things and set things up if you want,
but with iTunes, you just rip files and dump them on the iPod, job done.

 

[Eric Kay]

I've ripped almost 500 discs from my collection using Exact Audio Copy
and LAME, and I populate my players from those rips.

The last thing I need is an outlet where I can toss away $1 per song on
new stuff and rarities...I'll be broke within a week :>

Yet you were able to afford 500 CDs?! There's something not right there.
I buy a lot from iTunes because in many cases it is *less* expensive than
CDs. For example, last week I downloaded "Hayley Westenra - Pure" album
- 20 tracks for £7.90. I have seen the CD version for sale at £11.99 and it
only has 13 tracks on it!

As for missing out on the functionality of iTunes, that's not a huge
concern, but I'll grant that I don't know much about iTunes. What I
have now with Ephpod, etc, works well and is not all that much more
complicated than what I imagine iTunes to be.

You're waging war on iTunes but don't know your enemy? Why don't
you try it and see what you're missing...

 

[Paul Russell]

Yes, I know, but his instructions would apply just as well to this
laptop running OpenBSD so I'm glad he went to the trouble of posting his
summary.

Classic Usenet thread - guy posts harmless, well-meaning and potentially
useful nugget of information and then all hell breaks loose as the
fanboys, netcops, pedants and nit-pickers rip him to shreds. What's not
to love ?

Paul