iPod and generic music player support (was: Re: [mythtv] Fwd: New MythMusic Theme - 4 bins)

[Derek Atkins]

"Joseph A. Caputo" <jcaputo1 at comcast.net> writes:

> How are you planning on doing iPod support?  Does the iPod act like a 
> regular sbp2/usb-storage device, or does it require special libraries?  
> I've been thinking about this recently, because I know a lot of music 
> players just present themselves as a simple mass-storage device, so to 
> add support to mythmusic for these would be just a matter of adding a 
> UI option in the playlist editor to "copy active playlist to <device>", 
> with maybe some logic for checking available space on the target.  
> However, I have an iRiver IFP player, which uses a special library to 
> manage its contents (I could flash it with a usb-storage firmware 
> update, but then I'd lose the ability to play OGG on it, which is why I 
> bought it in the first place).  So, I was thinking maybe the most 
> device-agnostic way to implement external music player support would be 
> to just use external scripts that you could customize for your device.  
> I suppose mass storage support could be built right in to mythmusic 
> itself, with a checkbox to override and specify scripts to run instead.  
> Shouldn't really be too difficult.  Thoughts?

The iPod can go either way.  When you connect it you get a usb storage
device, but you need some special libraries if you want to read the
iTunes Database off the device.  You could just read the songs and
parse the id3 info off the drive if you didn't want to use the
iPod library.

Your approach certainly sounds reasonable, having some plugin (be
it a script or shared-object) to interface directly with the
device database instead of the device as a usb storage system.

> -JAC

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available