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NomadSync
Open
source
Linux/Windows synchronization software for Creative Nomad
Jukebox audio players
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This utility allows
you to keep the MP3 collection on your Jukebox synchronised with the
MP3s on your PC. The user can control the synchronisation process
completely. A list is generated of the differences between the MP3
collection on the Jukebox and PC showing the action to be performed.
The action can be Leave, Upload to
PC,
Download to Jukebox, Delete, Upload label, or Download label.
The user can change each action individually, or change all actions in
one go. Then pressing "Do Actions"
starts the actual transfer.
WMA files are not supported (sorry).
Devices supported
All Nomad Jukebox models are supported: Nomad Jukebox 1, 2, 3, Zen, etc.
Also, the Linux driver supports the Dell Digital Jukebox ("Dell DJ").
User guide
First
you must specify the root directory where
you
keep your MP3s, by pressing the Configure...
button.
Then, when you press the Tracks
button it compares the tracks on your PC with the tracks
on the Jukebox
and shows a list of differences.
Note: indicates the track is on the PC ,
indicates the track is on the
Jukebox. Length shows the
track length in seconds, the other fields
are self explanatory.
- First are listed tracks on the PC not found on the Jukebox,
these have the following possible actions:
"Delete" - moves the track to the
wastebasket
"Download to Jukebox" - downloads the track
"Leave" - does nothing
- Next listed are tracks on the Jukebox not found on the PC,
these have
the following possible actions:
"Delete" - Physically deletes the
track from the Jukebox.
"Upload to PC" - uploads the track to the PC
"Leave" - does nothing
- Lastly the program tries to match tracks of the same size
with similar labels, in this case the first row shows the track on the
PC
and on the row below is shown the track on the Jukebox.
"Upload label" - uploads the
label to the PC (i.e. ID3 tag is updated)
"Download label" - Downloads the label to the Jukebox
"Delete" - Physically deletes the
track from the Jukebox.
"Download to Jukebox" - downloads the track to the Jukebox
"Leave" - does nothing
If you select "Delete", or "Download to Jukebox", the second row
becomes editable, allowing you to select a separate action for the
second
item.
You can change the default actions for each type of item from the
configuration dialog:
When you close the dialog box, all items for the current search will
then be changed. Also, all subsequent searchs will set the default
action as you specified.
- Compare extra fields when matching tracks
It will include these extra
criteria when searching for differences.
- Automatically add downloaded tracks to playlist
You can also automatically add
all downloaded tracks to a playlist of
of your choice. If the playlist entered does not exit then it will be
created. If you leave the entry blank then no tracks will be added.
(Note: it only shows existing playlists after you have done a search)
Notes:
You can also specify NomadSync to upload to a separate directory in the
"Upload directory" field.
(If this is left blank, tracks will be uploaded to the first
"Directory to search")
In the Linux version, you should specify the Trash folder in the
configuration dialog. If it can't find the Trash folder then it will
not delete any tracks.
Synchronising Playlists
When you press
the Playlists
button it searches for all winamp playlist files (i.e.
files with extension .m3u) on the PC and compares them with the
playlists on the Jukebox. It works similarly as for synchronising
tracks. All
differences are displayed in the grid and you have the option to
download, upload, delete or leave each playlist.
Sometimes you will see a status message "Tracks missing on PC". This
can happen if the playlist contains tracks that are not within the
directory hierarchy. Also, if some tracks on the playlist have not yet
been transfered to the Nomad then you will get the message "Tracks
missing on Nomad".
Other features
- Matching Tracks with different sizes
Tracks that
have the same label but different file sizes are paired together. If
you want to transfer one of these tracks, you
will
be forced to delete the "twin" track. For example, if you select
"Download to
Jukebox" for the track on the PC, then the corresponding Jukebox
track will change automatically to "Delete". This is to prevent you
from transferring duplicate tracks.
Clicking on any column header
will sort the column in ascending/descending order.
Right clicking when the cursor is
over a track, or playlist opens a pop-up menu this allows you to:
- copy
the item to the clipboard,
- play the track in your mp3 player (in the Linux
version you need to specify the MP3
player command in the configuration dialog),
- or expand the path column so you can see the entire file
path
- Changing multiple actions at once
Select the tracks that you want
to change by dragging the mouse (or holding CRTL or SHIFT while
selecting the row headers).
Then change the action for one track in the selection.
All other tracks will be changed to the same action.
Download
Download
latest release from Sourceforge summary page.
As many people have used this program without any serious problems the
latest release is designated as a Production/Stable release.
Installation notes
Windows users:
You need to install the Creative drivers to use Nomadsync. These are
available from Creative's Website.
Linux users:
Complete installation instructions here.
Feedback
Technical problems?
Bugs?
Post them here,
I will try to help.
If you see any features that would improve the program you can also
post them in the forum.
Troubleshooting
If you see MP3s in the grid titled "Missing tag n", this indicates that
the track has no ID3 tag data. You must enter the tag data before you
can transfer the track (Nomadsync doesn't do this, but there are many
free ID3 tag applications available.)
NomadSync does not support Unicode, this means if you have tracks in
languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etc. it won't work.
However, all characters from western European languages will work fine.
Also, other langauges such as Turkish and Russian will work, provided
you have the correct locale set on your PC. (e.g. if you have MP3 files
with
Turkish characters, then you need the
Turkish locale set)
Windows
If you get the "Could not initialise jukebox" error when
you start the search, this could be because the drivers
aren't installed, or setup properly. Try testing with Creative
PlayCenter
or MediaSource to see if it's a problem with the connection.
If you notice that the year, or track number field is not being
transfered when you select "Download label", this probably means that
you have an old version of the drivers (the original driver did not
support this feature). Try installing the drivers available from from
Creative's Website.
Linux
Special characters, such as á, ñ, ö, etc. will not
be displayed in the grid, however they *will*
be transfered correctly to the Jukebox. They are not shown because the
GTK version used is very old (1.2).
NomadSync may hang
when it trys to open the Jukebox (You can tell this has happened when
the status message
"Opening jukebox..." remains permenantly). This seems to happen when
you close NomadSync and restart it
immediately. In this case you should unplug the USB cable, replug the
USB cable, wait for a few seconds until the
hot-plugging kicks in, and then press Search
again. (Update: this happens
on my box (FC1 & Nforce2), but other configurations may not have
any problem).
Future Development
This project originally stemed from my long suffered frustration with
Creative's Playcenter software and the huge amount of effort it was
taking me to keep my MP3 collection synchronised.
As of now the current release does nearly everything that I want it to
do, although it does lack some polish and there many, many more nice
features that could be added, but my schedule
does not give me much time at the moment.
Having said that, I will always try to fix any serious bugs that crop
up. Also, I may add new features depending on how important
they
are, and how much interest there is.
If anybody really, really needs a specific feature implemented I can do
it for a fee. Please contact me
directly in this case.
If any developers are interested in improving it further, or adding new
features, please contact me -
I can give you developer access to the
project and provide support - provided of course that your plans for
the project are reasonable. Bear in mind that the code is
object oriented, cross-platform and quite high quality and I would like
to keep it that way.
Credits
NomadSync uses the following open source libraries:
wxWidgets - Cross-platform GUI
toolkit
id3lib - Cross-platform
ID3 tag library
Linux version:
libnjb - Linux Jukebox API
& driver
Some of the code for calculating the MP3 track length was taken from
the EasyTag project,
which in turn was taken from the XMMS
multimedia player and code written by by Michael Hipp.
Window's version:
License
This software is provided free under the GPL.
It is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no
event will the author be held liable for any damages arising from the
use of this software.
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