iPod Power User Guide

source : http://www.beingmanan.com

A lot of people have often asked me how to efficiently use the iPods, I for one got my iPod at a whopping 14,900/- INR and using it for playing music only with all default looks seemed a dumb proposition, being the g33k I am it was quite obvious that I will be snooping around for tools to make the best of my iPod.

Part 1 of the guide will tell you:

1. How to manage Audio & Video.
2. How to back up your iPod library.
3. Transfer songs from the iPod to the PC in way that the file names are the same as the song title or artist/album.
4. How to add you tube videos in a few clicks without having to convert manually.

I own a 30 GB 5G iPod. 5G are the ones that are video enabled and don’t have the search feature and most noticeably Cover Flow. 30 GB is a lot of space even for the hardcore audiophiles, however Apple decided to up the ante and increase the base capacity to 60 GB & add features like Cover Flow.

But that certainly does not mean that our 5G iPods are obsolete or no good rather they have more potential in them as Apple claims. Here is a list of tips, tricks & softwares that will help you.

1. Audio Management:

I am not an Apple fan & this is a fact well known but when it comes to the iPod I would strongly recommend you to use iTunes for managing your iPod library.

• By default iTunes has a setting by which it will make a duplicate copy of the songs you add to it’s media library in a predefined folder in it’s settings. This can and should be unchecked as I assume you are smart enough not to use C:\ drive as the location to store your media.

• I will advise you to un-sync your iPod, that is, manually manage your songs, iTunes has an option by which it will automatically – add/erase songs from your iPod depending on the contents of the iTunes Music Folder as shown in the above screen shot. Now, this is more a hassle than a boon for most of us. When you plug in your iPod start iTunes and then click on your iPod in the left navigation bar:

Under devices you will see your iPod.

• Click on it and then press F2 to rename your iPod. When you click your device the right screen shows you the details about your iPod, the firmware version etc. below you will see the options, I would suggest you to have the same as mine.

The options are self explanatory. For more information on them click here.

• Playlists: iTunes has a feature called ‘Smart Playlists’ which automatically makes playlists based on parameters set by you, Apple has a tutorial written to help you make Smart Playlists. Follow this link.
• Tag Editing & Album Art: Tag-Editing is a must for iPods. If you have messed up tags you will have a horrible time browsing through the songs on the iPod. I use a combination of methods to ensure that my tags are well maintained. Album Art is cool, it looks amazing on the iPod and even on your PC’s media player.

Winamp 5.53 + mp3Tag + iTunes + Google = Proper Tags & beautiful Album Art.

Winamp’s latest version have an auto-tag feature and it works like a charm, it will search for the tag info based on filename & incomplete tag information. It also has a search for Album Art.

mp3Tag is a great tool for embedding Album Art, which means that even if you change the location of the song, the Album Art is not lost.

iTunes‘ multi file tag editor feature is something that I find really helpful, you can choose the songs together, let’s say a group of songs belonging to the same album or by the same artist and you can edit the artist/album info of all the files together at 1 go. Also if you can get yourself an iTunes account, you can download Album Art for your songs – for free. Pretty cool

Google – well use it to search Album Art which you can’t find.

2. Video Management:

Music Videos & Movies are something that a lot of us add to our iPods despite of the pathetic battery life. iTunes as I said before makes it very easy to manage and add videos to the iPod.

Please note that iPods only recognize .mp4 format of videos, so before you add your videos you will have to convert them, iTunes has an inbuilt media convertor which I am not very fond of and would suggest the same.

There are quite a few tools that allow you to convert videos to .mp4 for free. I would recommend you to use:

• Yamb | Features of Yamb

  download: Yamb (1.47MB) added: 27/04/2008 clicks: 3 description: A simple video convertor

• There is another option from Jodix: Free iPod Video Convertor | Download.

Now that you have converted your videos and are ready to transfer them on your iPods, iTunes has a little gift for you.

• You can tag your videos as TV Shows; Music Videos; Movies. If you choose Music Videos you can add Artist/Album etc., for TV Shows, you have the options of Episode No. etc.

• Remember Smart Playlists? You can make Smart Playlists of Videos too so whenever you add and tag a new music video it will be automatically added to you Music Videos playlist.

3. You Tube Videos:

You Tube, the famous online video site, a lot of people have often asked as to how to download and transfer songs from You Tube to the iPod and have got tedious methods, now let me tell you a single click auto-conversion and transport tool.

Ares Tube: Formerly known as iTube and now Ares Tube, is an application where you simply have to configure it and enter the URL of the You Tube video, it will take care of the rest. Have a look at the following screen shot, you get the idea how easy this software makes downloading and importing videos to the iPod:

You can choose the format of conversion and even choose to automatically open iTunes and import it to the iTunes library. Pretty neat

download: Ares Tube (2.51MB) added: 27/04/2008 clicks: 3 description: Download & convert You Tube videos to play on the iPods.

4. Transfer Songs from iPod to PC:

One of the biggest problems faced while using an iPod is that 1 cannot transfer songs from the iPod to the PC easily, the method used and recommended by many is that go into the system folders of the iPod and then copy songs, that’s stupid when you have something like Share Pod.

This little app is the best thing that happened to my iPod. It is a portable application, which means you put in your iPod and run it on any computer, result, you can give any song to your friend and even take any song from your friend. You can backup your entire collection of songs & videos in a few clicks.

It has a real time search engine like iTunes. a media player, options on how you want to transfer the songs to the PC – whether you want the songs to have only song title as the file name or artist or both and a lot of other options. Trust me guys this is the best application out there for this purpose.

Share Pod | Share Pod Screen Shots

download: Share Pod (545.09KB) added: 27/04/2008 clicks: 4 description: Share Pod is a portable application that allows users to transfer songs from the iPod to the computer and vice versa.

Part 2 features:

1. Explorer Icon
2. Lyrics Integration
3. Contacts, Calendar & Photo Synchronization
4. Backgrounds
5. Themes
6. Portable Applications
7. Maximizing iPod Portability

1. Explorer Icon:

When you plugin your iPod and open My Computer, this icon will appear for your iPod. Something like this:

How to get it?

• Open Notepad and enter the following:

[autorun]

icon=icon.ico

• Now save this file as autorun.inf, note that the extension is *.inf
• Once you have made the file, choose any icon you want and rename it to icon (default extension of icon files is *.ico)
• Place both these files in the root directory of your iPod.

I always like to add a personal professional touch to things, this is no different, what I have done in my iPod is that both the files ie. autorun.inf & icon are set as system files which means they will not be shown in Explorer unless the ‘Show System Files’ option is unchecked under Folder Options, which generally is not. To do this:

Start -> Run -> cmd -> Enter

Browse to your iPod directory & then type the following:

attrib autorun.inf +s +h

attrib icon.ico +s +h

The above command will set the file with System & Hidden attributes, in order to make the files visible again:

attrib autorun.inf -s -h

attrib icon.ico -s -h

I am attaching a pack of icons that I have in my computer, please note that I have not made these icons and have found them on the Internet.

A screen shot of the icons in the package:

download: iPod Explorer icons (21.42KB) added: 29/04/2008 clicks: 5 description: Explorer iCons for the iPods

2. Lyrics Integration:

This is a really cool & hip thing to have in your iPod, lyrics of your iPod along with proper id tags and Album Art are the things any music listener craves for. id tags & Album Art has been spoken about in the iPod Power User Guide – Part 1. In that article I advocated the use of iTunes for song management, here is another reason why you should use iTunes – Sound Crank.

Sound Crank is an iTunes plugin to search for Album Art, Lyrics & even ID tags. All you have to do is, install it, start iTunes, play the songs and Sound Crank will show the lyrics and other info in a small windows within iTunes, all you have to do is play the track, it will search it’s database for the missing info and add.

Sometimes you might have to press Sync.

NOTE: It is not accurate, it will sometimes change the track details to what it feels, which means even the tack title. So double check.

Sign Up to Sound Crank

More details on Sound Crank – Click Here

download: Sound Crank (18.74KB) added: 29/04/2008 clicks: 6 description: iTunes plugin to add lyrics, Tag Info & Album Art

3. Contacts, Calendar & Photo Synchronization:

Syncing contacts is one of the most useful & handy features of the iPods, you can sync your iPod with your Windows Address Book. Same goes for Photos, here you can choose as to which folders you want to sync and iTunes will add/remove images from the iPod with respect to the contents of the specified folders.

• To Sync Contacts*:

1. Open iTunes.
2. Connect your iPod and wait for it to appear in the iTunes Source pane.
3. In the Source pane under Devices select your iPod. This displays the iPods Preferences.
4. Click the Contacts tab.
5. Click the Contacts tab under the iPod tab.
6. Select the “Synchronize contacts from” checkbox.
7. From the menu, choose the program that contains the contacts you want to sync with your iPod.
8. Click Apply.

• To Sync Calendars with iPod*:

1. Open iTunes.
2. Connect your iPod and wait for it to appear in the iTunes Source pane.
3. In the Source pane under Devices select your iPod. This displays the iPods Preferences.
4. Click the Contacts tab.
5. Select the “Synchronize calendars from Microsoft Outlook” checkbox.
6. Click Apply.
7. A dialog appears, telling you that a program is trying to access data from Outlook.
8. Select the “Allow access for” checkbox.
9. Choose a time limit from the menu:
10. 
11. Click Yes to close the dialog.
12. Click OK to close iTunes preferences.

* Source

• Sync Photos with iPod

4. Backgrounds¹: (for 5G only)

Bored of the white background and wished you could change it? Your wish has been granted by some geniuses and they have for you – The Background Hack. I have edited the background hack resources to have all default images and only change the background with some really slick icons.

Screen shot:

You can change the background to whatever you want. I am attaching a few along with the firmware. The steps to change the background are:

1. Download iPod Wizard
2. Connect iPod to computer.
3. Start iPW.
4. In Edit Mode drop down at the top choose ‘iPod’.
5. Press Load iPod Firmware on the side.
6. Now you should see a bluish image in the window below the ‘pictures’ tab.
7. In the drop-down go to location 282.
8. From right choose Load Bitmap.
9. Browse to the bitmap you want. (Should be 320 x 240 and *.bmp file)
10. Press ‘Write to iPod’ at the top.
11. Done.

Here is a screen shot to help you:

Here are the ones that I am attaching in the Background Hack Firmware:

download: Background Hack (21.46KB) added: 29/04/2008 clicks: 3 description: Background Hack Firmware only for 5G iPods

5. Themes: (for 5G only)

Like the Background there are several themes for the iPods too, I had some time back made a theme which was a hybrid of the iPod Touch & iPod Classic. You can find the theme, more details & a How To – Here

Here is what the firmware will make your iPod look like:

The left image is of the Music Sub-Menu; the center image is of the Main Menu & the right image is of the Now Playing Screen.

6. Portable Applications:

This is the killer, your favorite applications, your Chat Client, Browser with bookmarks & plugins, FTP Client and what not, all go along with your iPod, no more feeling sad that you don’t have access to your PC.

I have the following Portable Applications on my iPod:

1. Foxit Reader – PDF Reader
2. PDF Builder- PDF Maker
3. Photoshop 7 -The great Photo Editor
4. Winamp – Music Player
5. Text 2 Speech
6. Irfan View – Image Viewer
7. Limewire – P2P
8. Firefox – The baap of all Browsers (all plugins, Bookmarks & Passwords)
9. VLC Player
10. Thunderbird- eMail Client
11. Sudoku – Game
12. OOo – Open Office
13. Gimp
14. FileZilla
15. Clam Win – Anti-Virus
16. Audacity
17. AbiWord
18. 7-Zip- File Compressor

download: Portable Apps (15.27KB) added: 29/04/2008 clicks: 5 description: Portable Apps for the iPod & other portable drives.

A list of many more Portable Apps

7. Maximizing Portability:

• Wall Charger:

iPod is a great PMP but lacks battery power and often it runs out of battery and we are left in lurch when we don’t have a PC around, the Apple Wall-Charger comes at a whopping 3,000/- INR. If you feel that it is too costly (I do) and do not wish to spend that sort of amount on a charger you can get yourself the cheaper yet as effective ones. I bought myself a YES charger for a mere 280/- INR.

Image of the Wall Charger I have:

• Ear-Phones:

The biggest problem with the bundled ear-phones is that they are very uncomfortable, I would recommend you to purchase the Creative EP 630, They cost somewhere around 800/- INR and have a really good Bass output besides are very comfortable.

• iPod Dock:

An iPod dock is kind of portable speaker system for your iPod, I have purchased the Logic 3 iStation-9. I have written a review on the same – Here

Hope you enjoyed, please do leave a comment or two for my motivation