Re: [Bug-gnupod] Questions about play counts

[Frank Blendinger]

Hi henrik,

thanks for the detailed information!

On Fri 2009-04-10 23:04, H. Langos <address@hidden> proclaimed:
> There used to be last-fm support builtin in gnupod. I don't know why it was 
> removed. Happend before I started using gnupod and since I don't like the
> idea of telling the whole world which music I listen to, I didn't care when
> I found out.

While I for myself like the services that last.fm offers and have no
problem submitting my music data, I can fully understand your privacy
concerns.

Anyway, that is interesting to know that there used to be last.fm
submission support in GNUpod - I have googled quite a lot about this and
have never found something describing this. Maybe it was removed to
follow the KISS principle - one tool for one job.


> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 04:39:52PM +0200, Frank Blendinger wrote:
> > I have tried to use qtscrob[1], which tries to the ``iTunesDB'' and
> > ``Play Count'' files in iPod_Control/iTunes. However, it fails, as I
> > don't have such a file on my iPod. 
> 
> I have the "Play Count" file in iPod_Control/iTunes but as soon as you 
> start a gnupod_search or any other gnupod command, gnupod detects that
> the iPod has done something that is not yet included in the GNUtunesDB.xml
> 
> You will see:
> > On-The-Go data sync needed...
> > On-The-Go data synced
> 
> This means that gnupod reads the files, incorporated that information 
> in GNUtunesDB.xml, and deletes those files.

This was just the information I needed. The ``Play Count'' file indeed
exists when I mount the iPod, and gets removed by GNUpod. Now I just
have to use scrobble-cli every time before I do something with GNUpod. I
think I will write a little wrapper script for that.


> I guess you can try both ways. Use qtscrob _before_ running gnupod, or parse
> GNUtunesDB.xml afterwards. BTW: the CVS version of gnupod contains
> gnupod_find.pl with that tool you can access any attribute that you see in
> GNUtunesDB.xml
> 
> E.g.
> gnupod_find.pl --sort "lastplay" --view "lastplay,default"

gnupod_find is not (yet?) in the Debian package of GNUpod. Maybe I'll
try the CVS version, but I don't think I'll really need it.


> I just tried that and currently lastplay is reported back in MACTIME (
> seconds since 1.1.1900) I'll change that to human readable output tonight.

For automated processing, a Unix timestamp would be nice to have, too.


> > How would I reset the play counts after I have submitted them?
> 
> why should you? why not keep the old value and only transmit a delta?

Since the ``Play Count'' file gets removed by GNUpod and created by the
iPod on plays, this is not even necessary.


Currently I have only tried with some single songs, but everything seem
to go like it should. I suspect there might be problems when a song is
played multiple times - each play would need its own timestamp to be
correctly submitted, and I don't think this information is there. But
it would not be that bad. I'll try that later and report how it behaves.


Greetings,
Frank

-- 
Frank Blendinger | fb(at)intoxicatedmind.net | GPG: 0x0BF2FE7A
Fingerprint: BB64 F2B8 DFD8 BF90 0F2E 892B 72CF 7A41 0BF2 FE7A

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