I have been thinking about upgrading my Archos Gmini, as I found that I was always fiddling about to cram all my stuff onto the 20 GByte hard drive. I am generally happy with Archos devices - we have two 404′s in the family. The 404 is great for watching video and supports a wide range of video codecs, but only has a 30 GByte hard drive, which isn’t a great step up from my current device. I don’t watch much video on my Archos, but do like to carry around some of my photos. So I was looking for something with a bigger hard drive and screen than my current Gmini, but not as large as the Archos 504.
The other day I went into PC World to buy a new hard drive for our MythTV machine and noticed that they were selling 80 GByte video iPods for £159. I have never been a great fan of Apple. Their products are innovative, but not particularly good value for money. When I got home I checked on the specs of the 80 GByte iPod and compared it to the various other multimedia players available and it seemed to have all the features I required and be good value for money. The reason it was such a good price was that it was being end of lined in preparation for Apple’s new generation of iPods. I went back to PC World, who had sold out. However, Currys who are part of the same company and were only just down the road had seven in stock. I could have any colour I liked as long as it was white. I carefully checked the box as they were selling the 30 GByte version for exactly the same price as the 30 GByte version. They even had them side by side on the display - I would be interested to find out exactly how many people bought the 30 GByte version!
When I unpacked the iPod at home, I was immediately impressed. The device is very light and slim and the screen looks good even outside (always a good test for screens). Apple expects you to use iTunes to manage your iPod and doesn’t support any other software. Although the iPod appears as a mass storage device under Linux simply copying media files over doesn’t work as it update the iPod’s internal database of files. One up to the Archos, which automatically scans uploaded files and adds them to its database. However, there are various solutions for managing iPod’s under Linux. Since I use Kubuntu I’ll concentrate on KDE apps. Gnome users may want to look at Banshee.
Problems with New iPod Nano and Classics.
Apple have encrypted the database on the new 3rd generation Nanos and Classics. When you copy files to the iPod using Amarok, or GtkPod the files appear to transfer OK. You can see them using GtkPod or Amarok, but they are invisible on your iPod.
The encryption has been reverse engineered and fixes are available. However, these haven’t yet found their way into the Ubuntu repositories. If you are affected by this problem click here for a workaround.
Amarok.
This is the default media player for Kubuntu and has pretty good integration with the iPod. It’s easy to transfer music, but as far as I can tell you can’t transfer videos or photos. When you plug in your iPod Kubuntu asks if you want to open the drive, you should select OK. Now open Amarok and go into Settings/Configure Amarok/Media Devices. You should see that Amarok has automatically detected your iPod.
If you now click on the Devices tab, you should be able to see the music that is loaded on your iPod:
To transfer your music to the iPod go to the Files tab in Amarok and select the tracks you want to transfer, right click on them and choose Transfer to Media Device from the popup menu.
Next you need to go back to the Devices tab and Amarok and then click on the Transfer button in the menu bar. The progress of the transfer is shown in the status bar under the pane listing the tracks on the iPod. Finally when you have finished loading music on your iPod click the Disconnect button in Amarok to safely remove your iPod.
GtkPod.
GtkPod is a platform independent application to manage your iPod. It’s in the repositiories so you can just apt-get it. However, make sure that you:
apt-get install gtkpod-aac
The aac version contains all the stuff you need to manage videos on your iPod. Personally I find the interface to GtkPod rather confusing. However, you can use it to transfer video files to your iPod. This deosn’t seem to be documented anywhere, but its very simple. Just create a Playlist called Videos in GtkPod, click on the +Files button and add your video file - note this must be in a format recognised by the iPod. Click on the Save Changes button to transfer any files to your iPod.
Note in Gutsy there is a problem transferring video files using GtkPod. When yo try to transfer video to the device there is an error about mp4v2. See the following launchpad entry for full details. You can get an updated version of GtkPod which fixes the problem from here.
Managing Photos on Your iPod.
Digikam has a Kipi plugin that lets you export photos to your iPod. However, this only seems to let you select JPG files either singly, or as a group by shift clicking, from a single album. There doesn’t appear to be a method of adding a whole album with a single click.
PythoPhotopod is a GTK application written in Python.
Rockbox.
Rockbox is an alternative open source operating system for the iPod and many other media players. It’s pretty easy to install and you can dual boot between Rockbox and the existing iPod software. On the audio side Rockbox supports many formats (including ogg) which are not supported by the default iPod software. There are also a vast number of themes and plugins available.
On the downside photo support isn’t as good as the iPod - the jpg decoder is software based and consequently quite slow on iPods. Support for mpg video files is included via a plugin,
