new Firmware iPod Problem
 

I have a 60gb 5th Gen iPod and I recently upgraded to the latest firmwire. There is a new feature in this firmware that is pretty cool. Basically, when you scroll fast through Artists, Albums, genres, ect....a box comes up that allows you to jump through the list by letter.

This feature was working perfectly fine when I was using iTunes with it and everything. Than, just yesterday, I started to use Winamp to interface my iPod. I've been using winamp itself for years so I understand how to work it and stuff but I just recently started using the iPod interface.

After my first hook-up with Winamp, my iPod has had real problems with this new feature. In artists view...the box will just not show up at all. In all the other views...the box will show up but it is really buggy.

Everything else with my iPod transition went very smoothly (minus of course the album artwork stuff)

If anyone likes to donate a 5G iPod, I'll be happy to fix this issue... :) ;) :)

Honestly, I don't have such a nice thingy, so I'll have no chance to fix it. Maybe somebody likes to step in, any programmers out there?

I have 5G 60GB iPod. Firmware version is 1.2.
I think this version is same as your ipod version.
But I have no problem with new feature...

I will check over this problem.

Honestly....this problem is so weird. The black box for fast scrolling by first letter appears in each view now. As you scroll each letter is now interrupted by a letter "T". I don't know why it does that.

This is an example of what is shown in the black box as you are scrolling fast through artist view and the black box appears:

"123" "T" "A" "T" "B" "T" "C"...and so on

So, I accidentally opened iTunes (which has an Empty Media Library database) while my iPod was plugged in and the thing started to sync or whatever it does. I canceled the sync and Disconnected my iPod. When I did the fast scrolling, the black box appeared and everything worked the way it should with no T's interrupting each letter through scrolling.

But once I get back into Winamp and Re-sync with Winamp, the problem comes out again.

I also have this problem. My guess is iTunes ignores "The" in the artist name when writing the database and ml_ipod does not, so I think maybe ml_ipod is sorting the artists correctly, but for some reason it does not ignore those artists whose name begins with "The". That's why you see the "T" between letters.

abu, I think the new nano firmware has this same feature, so maybe you don't need a 5G iPod to test this.

That's a pretty good thought, AtmaWeapon!
I have got version 1.3 of the nano firmware, that does not have this feature. Is there anything newer than that?

Sorry about that abu, I think I was wrong, this feature is available but in the 2G iPod nano (the new nano with the anodized aluminum enclosure). Current firmware version for this one is 1.1.1, it looks like 1G nano doesn't have this feature.

Yea I think thats some pretty good logic there AtmaWeapon. I don't know what the newest firmware version of the nano is since its kinda difficult these days to find it on the Apple site. Its just very very annoying and I don't want to change my tags just for this kinda thing (I'm anal about my tags).

Until this can be investigated further, I am just syncing with Winamp and than opening iTunes and doing a half-assed sync with it. Basically, I just cancel the sync about 2-3 seconds into it (and make sure your iTunes database is empty and settings set to manual file transfer). This is temporary work-a-round to the issue that doesn't seem to affect much on the ipod. It is interesting to notice some of the sorting differences between ml_ipod and iTunes though.

Actually I don't use this feature a lot myself, since I listen most of my music through smart playlists, but sometimes it's useful when you're building a long On-The-Go playlist.

I will try the iTunes workaround at my friend's PC, since I uninstalled iTunes. :)

Stupifier, the original problem happened to me unrelated to ml_ipod. Unfortunately the only solution that worked for me was restoring the iPod.

Stupifier, try to set the "writeSortedIndex" setting to 0 in the iPod inifile. Does that change anything? See Hidden_settings

And I'll get a 2G Nano for Christmas...

abu, I gave it a try, but it doesn't work.

Congrats on your new 2G nano, I hope you get the silver one, it's way cool!

hrm i have the same firmware, no problem here... i'll try it later tonight.

I wanted to have the 8GB, so it must be the black one. I don't understand why Apple does this strange color coding....

Your advice worked Abu. THANKYOU!

I double checked it too by changing the setting back. That was definately the problem for me. Truly speaking, my .ini file didn't even have a "writeSortedIndex" entry in it. So I added it and set it to 0. After doing that and syncing, the issue was resolved.

That's normal, it is one of the hidden "hacks" that are usually not in the file.

But weird, why does this help for you, but not for AtmaWeapon??? :igor: ???

I don't know. Is it enough to change the ini file and eject/reconnect the iPod? Is it neccesary to transfer some songs (so database can be rewritten) for this option to take effect?

Apparently, yes. I transfered some songs and it worked. Did you need to do that, Stupifier?

I think the best way would be this:

• Close Winamp
• Connect the iPod
• Edit the ini-file
• Start Winamp
• Eject button in Winamp

This way, no transfer should be necessary.

This is fixed now with 2.00p26. No need for the "writeSortedIndex" hack any more.

THANKYOU SO MUCH! I'll have to change that too.

Quick question about this Abu.....is it possible to have the whole sorting thing ignore articles (such as 'The' and 'a') as the first word.

Basically, plenty of artists' names begin with 'the' or 'a' and it isn't exactly ideal to scroll through craploads of 'the' artist in the the 'T' section. iTunes fixes this and I was just curious if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Actually what I just did is taking this "The" handling out of the code, because it caused the wrong "T" in the black box.
So iTunes sorts "The gap" under "G", but still when scrolling no wrong "T" appears in the black box?

That's correct. As Stupifier says, this is true for "The" and "A" (I don't know if there's another word iTunes ignores).

I digged a bit deeper. It's not very easy to do. iTunes puts a secondary artist info into the database, just for that. And it is in a weird format.

So I guess for the moment we have to live with that. maybe if I get a bigger iPod some day, it annoys me so much that I'll spend the hours to fix that...

Yea....from your point of view this fix would be kind of trivial. No problem. Its not that big of a deal

Not trivial at all. As far as I can see, this only works for the artists list (with iTunes), not the songs or albums. Can you confirm that?

Yes....that is confirmed. When I used iTunes I remember that for sure.

Try 2.01p07...