My first experience with I-Pod was, well, at best, a disaster.
I tried to set up my I-pod, mostly to carry my RD collection always with me, and to play at my leisure, but the way those songs ended up in my I-pod, is simply horrible.
Luckily, I didn't mess up my master song collection in HDD itself with I-Tune, (as many 'more unfortunates' do in first-try ).
I keep my RD songs film-wise. And those songs have been collected from many sources, so there is no question of systematic tagging in those.
I-Pod rearranged many songs under artists.. hundreds of orphan songs together, as it went clueless with their tags.
In plain english.. I had no way to find and play songs of 'Shaan' or 'Aznabee'.. as those songs were buried under.. hmm.. god knows where:)
I googled, and checked with regular I-Pod users.. and their reaction was chiefly along these three routes:
- Please no complaints about I-Pod.. if you have any problem, it is your fault, not I-Pod's.
- Tag your files properly, there are so many tagging software. That is the trend and future.
- You are not techy enough to use I-Pod, forget it.
I chuckled. Is there someone to tag my 72,000+ songs.. and what's the charge.
So I picked up the most reasonable advice, the last one, and kept my I-pod in a storage box and simply forgot the whole episode, at least for the time.
After a few months, I was casually discussing about it over lunch, when one of the Italian guys commented with a smile.. you Indian guys have so many dance music, we don't have those..
Voila.. I came home, picked my I-Pod and stuffed it with english numbers.. Oh it's a dream..
My 27 Roger whittaker folders fell into slot perfectly.. Christian gayle.. click.. Celin Dion.. clack.. John Denver.. perfect..
So that is the catch.. I-Pod was conceived by westerners.. and most of their musics are released as singer-album-title format.. and I-Pod structure is exactly suitable for that. And surprisingly, I found that most of my english titles are already properly tagged, though I paid no extra attention in that regard. Probably it happened as most of those mp3s are originally CD-rips, and english CDDB is near perfect (whereas even official hindi releases are mostly ignored in CDDB).
That solved the I-Pod mystery, but not my problem with RD film-musics to put into.
The solution came one day.. and what a solution..
ROCKBOX.
Rockbox is a free software I found when googling about I-Pod. It allows you to dual-boot your I-Pod both as 'I-Pod player' (that I never used again) or as 'Rockbox player'. It supports most of I-Pod versions, including my 20Gb 4th gen (sorry folks.. if your model is not yet supported).
In rockbox player mode you can copy your HDD folders 'AS IT IS' retaining the structure unchanged. Now I have RD folder with subfolders like HFilm, BngFilm,Puja,Other_Misl.. and under HFilm alphabetically all his films.
I'll sing about a few key features only.. as you can google and go to Rockbox homepage for details.
-Rockbox actually turns your I-Pod into an external USB HDD, which also plays music. And its' multi-page settings for playing music is a dream.. with every frequency controllable through parametric equalizer to get the most out of a player like I-Pod (whose tonal quality is admittedly not-so-good in comparison to other players in market)
-Rockbox is an open project.. people adding new features/plug-ins to make it more interesting. You are no more confined in I-Pod fixed menus. Imagine having a analog view meter showing channel output levels.. it is also there. There is a plethora of add-ins/plug-ins.
-And now you are free to keep all your music.. Ravishankar.. RD.. Lata.. the way you like and play in I-Pod.
Tips from First Hand User :
-For new I-Pod users, one can happily go for a 20gb 4gen Ipod (it has become much cheaper nowadays) and if you want bigger capacity, just change the I-Pod HDD to 60Gb.. that will make a much cheaper solution.
-You can play music in Rockbox in traditional I-Pod way also, but if you don't want that don't touch that option, it will gobble up precious I-Pod memory.. (and only full re-install will free up that memory).
-I-Pods, in some computers, don't show up as external drive. Load I-tune and I-Pod will show up. You don't have to use I-tune though.
Happy I-Pod'ing..