“Sync” in the MP3 world is different from “sync” in the PDA world.
MP3 sync is one way, the Library rules.
PDA sync is two way, the last action wins, whether it was on the PC or the player.
PDA sync would be nice for podcasts. Add to your PC library, it gets added to your device. Delete off your device, and it gets deleted off your PC too. (PDA sync also offers the non-destructive option of “deleting” it to a PC archive.)
Anyone know of a general purpose (i.e., could be used on various types of players, like the Fuze, Rockboxed e200, etc.) MP3 sync app that does a PDA-type sync?
You’re right, a proper sync application would follow the lead of the personal digital assistant (PDA).
WiMP 11 could have been so much better if the option were available to decide which side of the equation controls sync. As it is, there’s another issue, it’s enthusiasm to dump everything onto the device (until you tell it to stop) multiplied by its bigger bug: it ignores the capacity limit of the device, despite “knowing” that limitation first.
At least Rhapsody has the right idea, as music is added to the library, commanded from the device.
Anyone know of a general purpose (i.e., could be used on various types of players, like the Fuze, Rockboxed e200, etc.) MP3 sync app that does a PDA-type sync?
If you use MSC mode, you can just use any generic file sync application. I’ve used SyncBack SE to sync my music files between different disk drives at home. You can set it up to sync files in both directions, with all sorts of criteria.
Of course, it wouldn’t know what podcasts you’ve listened to and which ones you haven’t, so you’d have to delete the file on the Fuze (which causes it to go brain-dead for a couple of minutes) or perhaps set it to auto-delete the oldest files. If the Fuze changed the archive bit on the file when a podcast has been opened, that would simplify matters (maybe it does, I don’t know).
If you use MSC mode, you can just use any generic file sync application. I’ve used SyncBack SE to sync my music files between different disk drives at home. You can set it up to sync files in both directions, with all sorts of criteria.
Of course, it wouldn’t know what podcasts you’ve listened to and which ones you haven’t, so you’d have to delete the file on the Fuze (which causes it to go brain-dead for a couple of minutes) or perhaps set it to auto-delete the oldest files. If the Fuze changed the archive bit on the file when a podcast has been opened, that would simplify matters (maybe it does, I don’t know).
This “how do we know a podcast was already downloaded, listened to, and deleted” issue is what has bothered me about Podcast syncs. Since you can’t really modify the way the Fuze works, I was thinking about the opposite approach: set either the archive flag or the read-only flag on the PC after a podcast file is downloaded to the player. Then, at any future sync, if the file doesn’t exist on the player but the flag is set, don’t download it again. Another approach may be to modify one of the ID3 tags (“comment” field, maybe?) on the PC once a file is downloaded. (I don’t know off-hand if podcasts exist and work properly if they are encoded as FLAC, OGG, WMA, etc.). However this flag is implemented, there should be a way to clear it in the event someone wants to re-download to the player (I know I’ve accidentally erased the wrong podcast from my Fuze several times).
