iRiver plays files in order they were saved

Here's a weird problem. I have an iRiver IFP-700 (mp3 & ogg player).
iRiver released an alternate firmware for these players that allows them
to be used as a standard USB device. You can browse and transfer files
in nautilus, just as if it were a USB thumb drive or something like
that. This is a *lot* more convenient than having to use special
software.

But the problem is that with this firmware the iRiver seems to play
files in a random order. There's no obvious way to send iRiver a support
request via their website. But in browsing their FAQ I discovered that
the iRiver devices play files "in the order that they were saved."

If I drag mp3's to the player one by one then, sure enough, it plays
them in the order that I transferred them. But if I drag an entire
folder, it will not play the files in that folder in any sensible order.
Nautilus actually appears to transfer the files in alphanumeric order of
filename, you can see the order it transfers them from the status text
in the 'Copying' window. But apparently something happens along the way
that messes up the transfer times of the files, making the order seem
random.

There appear to be no way to tell the device to play the files in order
of filename, or mp3 tag, it can only play them in the order they were
saved.

Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.



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[Thomas Zander-4]

On 28/01/2008, chombee <chombee@...> wrote:
> Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
> mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
> Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.

No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.

Riggs

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[Steve Grace]

On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 10:14 +0900, Thomas Zander wrote:

> On 28/01/2008, chombee <chombee@...> wrote:
> > Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
> > mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
> > Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.
>
> No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
> player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
> transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
> Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
> and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.

I have a player that does that same thing. The solution I'm using is
based on a tip that was posted a few months ago for an iRiver T60. You
can use the "rsync" command to sync the player to a disk image of the
music files. It mostly keeps things in alphanumeric sequence.

I can provide details if you like.



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[Craig Puchta]

On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 17:47 -0800, Steve Grace wrote:

On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 10:14 +0900, Thomas Zander wrote:

> On 28/01/2008, chombee <chombee@...> wrote:
> > Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
> > mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
> > Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.
> 
> No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
> player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
> transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
> Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
> and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.

I have a player that does that same thing. The solution I'm using is
based on a tip that was posted a few months ago for an iRiver T60. You
can use the "rsync" command to sync the player to a disk image of the
music files. It mostly keeps things in alphanumeric sequence.

I can provide details if you like.

I would like the details. I have the T60 and several audio books that I stopped listening to because the chapters are played out of order, how annoying.
Feel free to email me direct if you don't want to post to list. Either way works for me. :)


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On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 10:14 +0900, Thomas Zander wrote:
> No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
> player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
> transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
> Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
> and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.

Yeah I think the iriver is to blame rather than nautilus. It is a bit
dumb that it can only play files in order of their modification time and
not in filename order or something sensible.

On the other hand perhaps nautilus could set the modification times to
match the filename order of the files when a folder is transferred,
since that appears to be the order in which the files are transferred
anyway. Hardly a crucial feature for a file manager but it would help
with this problem. Apparently Finder does not do this either. But from
Steve's post it seems rsync does.

Oh well. I'd consider feature-requesting this to the nautilus people but
I suspect they have better things to work on.



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On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 17:47 -0800, Steve Grace wrote:
> I have a player that does that same thing. The solution I'm using is
> based on a tip that was posted a few months ago for an iRiver T60. You
> can use the "rsync" command to sync the player to a disk image of the
> music files. It mostly keeps things in alphanumeric sequence.

Thanks for that. I'll give it a try. It's a shame to have to use rsync
instead of being able to use your default graphical file browser. But
it'll be more convenient than using the manager firmware and libifp.



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[Kjetil Thuen]

søn, 27.01.2008 kl. 22.03 +0000, skrev chombee:

> There appear to be no way to tell the device to play the files in order
> of filename, or mp3 tag, it can only play them in the order they were
> saved.
>
> Is there some way around this?

I've successfully used this small bash script to alphabetize the
directory:

-- snip --
#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -lt 1 ] ;then
  echo "Usage: `basename $0` directory"
  exit 1
fi

if [ ! -d "$1" ] ;then
  echo "Usage: `basename $0` directory"
  exit 1
fi


DIR=`mktemp -d -p .`
mv "`pwd`/$1"/* "`pwd`/$DIR/"

for file in "$DIR"/* ; do
  mv "$file" "`pwd`/$1"/ ;
done

if [ -e "$DIR" ]; then
  rmdir "$DIR";
fi
-- snap --

It works like this:

~/m/Albums> find "Will Oldham - Western Music" -type f
Will Oldham - Western Music/03 - Will Oldham - Three Photographs.ogg
Will Oldham - Western Music/01 - Will Oldham - Always Bathing in the
Evening.ogg
Will Oldham - Western Music/02 - Will Oldham - Western Song for
J.L.L..ogg
Will Oldham - Western Music/04 - Will Oldham - Jump in Jump in_ Come in
Come in.ogg
~/m/Albums> alphabetizedir "Will Oldham - Western Music"
~/m/Albums> find "Will Oldham - Western Music" -type f
Will Oldham - Western Music/01 - Will Oldham - Always Bathing in the
Evening.ogg
Will Oldham - Western Music/02 - Will Oldham - Western Song for
J.L.L..ogg
Will Oldham - Western Music/03 - Will Oldham - Three Photographs.ogg
Will Oldham - Western Music/04 - Will Oldham - Jump in Jump in_ Come in
Come in.ogg

You can run this script after you have copied the files to your mp3
player, or even run it recursively on your music collection to fix the
problem once and for all. Note that this does not seem to work on lvm
partitions.

--
Kjetil Thuen


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[Steve Grace]

On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 05:33 -0500, Craig Puchta wrote:

>
> On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 17:47 -0800, Steve Grace wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 10:14 +0900, Thomas Zander wrote:
> >
> > > On 28/01/2008, chombee <chombee@...> wrote:
> > > > Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
> > > > mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
> > > > Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.
> > >
> > > No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
> > > player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
> > > transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
> > > Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
> > > and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.
> >
> > I have a player that does that same thing. The solution I'm using is
> > based on a tip that was posted a few months ago for an iRiver T60. You
> > can use the "rsync" command to sync the player to a disk image of the
> > music files. It mostly keeps things in alphanumeric sequence.
> >
> > I can provide details if you like.
> >
> >
> >
> I would like the details. I have the T60 and several audio books that
> I stopped listening to because the chapters are played out of order,
> how annoying.
> Feel free to email me direct if you don't want to post to list. Either
> way works for me. :)

Here's what I do to keep things in sequence on my player. This method
is based on a post by David Fletcher on the kubuntu-users list last
November.

I created a shell script with the following contents:

rsync --verbose --recursive --times --whole-file \
--delay-updates --modify-window=1 --delete-before \
/extra/MUSIC/ /media/usbdisk/MUSIC/

NOTE: I have a directory on my hard disk named /extra/MUSIC/ that
contains the contents of the music directory on my player. The directory
on my player is also named MUSIC and is at the top level. My player
mounts as /media/usbdisk/. These paths are hard-coded into the script,
so change them to be appropriate for your system.

I then set the permissions to make the script executable.

I can now do the following:

* If I delete files/directories from the hard disk image and run the
script, the associated files/directories will be deleted from the
player.

* If I add files/directories to the hard disk image and run the script,
the associated files/directories will be added to the player. Everything
that's copied in a given batch will be processed in alphanumeric
sequence.

This is not a perfect solution. Let's say I have an album directory on
the player and in the disk image that contains tracks 1, 2 and 4. If I
now add track 3 to the disk image and run the script, the track order on
the player will be 1, 2, 4, 3. The workaround is to first delete the
enclosing directory from the player and to then run the script. The
entire directory will then be re-copied to the player, with the tracks
in sequence. The same concept can also be used at higher directory
levels, if desired. Hopefully you won't have to reload the entire player
each time, though. :-)

Steve



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[Loïc Martin-3]

Thomas Zander a écrit :

> On 28/01/2008, chombee <chombee@...> wrote:
>> Is this a nautilus 'issue'? (nautilus is doing something random to the
>> mtimes when it finalises the transfer). Is there some way around this?
>> Perhaps other file browsers would behave differently.
>
> No, it's not nautlius. I used to have almost the same crap iriver
> player you do and it always suffered from that issue, no matter if I
> transferred files from linux/BSD/Mac with/without nautilus/finder.
> Imho the only way to get around this is using the "manager" firmware
> and their "Manager" software on Windaz or using ifp-line on unix.
>
> Riggs
>

It _is_ a nautilus (or a linux issue, even though I think it could work
ok with the command line - if anyone has tried with Konqueror, it's
possible it does thing in a sane way). I tried on a windows machine and
the Explorer does respect the file order when you transfer a whole
directory, or a group of files. Only quirk is that if you select a group
of files, it transfers first the file your mouse is on before the others
- which my brother, who uses windows, calls a "feature", even though
it's an annoying one. So for audiobooks, you have to either do it one by
one with nautilus (useless), use the command line or a script (which is
a hassle too) or find a computer with windows on it (which can be a pain
too).

iRiver devices are only one of the cases where this behaviour appears.
If you transfer multiples files to a directory, and this directory gets
unmounted during the process, or filed by another process (temp files
from an application, audacity for example ;) ), you would expect the
directory to have at least the first few files, so you can start your
work. No, you have do delete the transferred files, then retransfer only
the first part of the group of files you wanted.

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Thanks for the tips everyone, I'll probably start using one of them.

I got this honest reply from iriver about whether the ifp can play
in any other order:

"to be honest our players do the same thing and it seems thats how it does it."





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[smblott]

Folks,

I'd been having this problem too.

I put a script here:

http://www.blott-online.com/script

and some commentary here:

http://www.blott-online.com/ (see under June 2008).

This works for me.  Hope it works for you.

Steve
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