Hello all. I've spent the better part of the past 2 days trying to find the perfect setup for my x51v to be used as a music player. This was motivated by the fact that my 40gig iPod bricked 2 days after I got my shiny x51v. Rather than drop the extra cash for a new iPod, I decided to take the plunge and go pure Axim.
I had the following goals in mind for my ideal setup:
1. Must be able to play purchased music from iTunes.
2. Must be easy to organize and interface w/ music collection (for me, that means Artist/Album organization and 1-handed use).
3. Must have a screen power-down function to conserve battery.
4. Must sound good.
#1 proved to be a doozy. I had blindly downloaded iTunes 6.0 and was locked in to the fact that there was no way to remove the DRM from my purchased music. I was ticked. There is a free workaround to this though. I used a smart playlist in iTunes to grab all my purchased music to burn to audio CDs. Then I would be able to re-rip it as mp3s and have it un-protected. The only problem was that this method also destroyed all the id3 tag info, meaning that I would have to go through and re-enter each track's info. I had around 200 tracks and didn't feel like spending that much time on it. I looked around for other options.
This led me to a slick little program called TuneBite. TuneBite is the modern version of a high-speed dubbing tape deck. It basically listens to the line out of any media player and then re-encodes the output as an un-protected mp3. It is also smart enough to keep the id3 tags for each track and store each track in Artist/Album folders. The interface is really simple... you can just drag a playlist from iTunes into TuneBite and literally press the Go button and it does the rest. Of course, because of the way it works, it does take some time. It dubs iTunes at 2x speed, so I could've listened to my purchased music as sung by the Chipmunks if I'd wanted. Instead, I just went to bed and let it do 6 hours of work overnight. TuneBite is also NOT freeware... however, if you are like me and have $200 dollars (or more) invested in purchased iTunes music, $15 ain't a bad price to free it up again.
This met goal #1.. I now had my entire music collection in mp3s. The search for a media player was on. Here are 5 media players I rejected and why
1. Windows Media Player - organizes music well, but interface is clunky and no power-saving
2. GSPlayer - fantastic player.. almost went with this one but I couldn't get things to organize like I wanted (Artist/Album)
3. TCPMP - interface seemed a little confusing to me and organization again wasn't quite right
4. iPlay - I'm a computer savvy guy.. and I couldn't figure out how to even freakin' install this program. If I can't even install it, how bad must the interface be? Although, lots of people do say nice things about this player.. but it ain't cheap.
5. Pocket Music - interface was a bit busier than I liked and again, organization wasn't quite right.
You noticed that I mentioned that players didn't organize things the way I wanted. From using an iPod, I got used to selecting Artist and then Album to play specific music. The players above couldn't do that.. they all just worked off of playlists... and I really don't use a lot of custom playlists. I finally found one player that let me select music based on Artist and Album and that is what I'm going with: MortPlayer.
At first, I didn't think MortPlayer was going to do it either. However, if you set it up so that it looks at a 'root' folder where you have mp3s saved in Artist and Album sub-folders, mortplayer can navigate through these easily. The others could 'sort of' do that, but it was usually a complicated process that was tough to do w/ one hand. Mortplayer can do it w/ one hand (after you customize the buttons properly).
So now I just had one hurdle to overcome. I purchased one of the 8gig CF cards... but my total music collection is larger than that. So, I was going to have to find a way to select out large portions of my music and then organize it in Artist/Album directory structure to be copied over to the CF. Back to iTunes where the smart playlists are good enough that I can use one playlist to get the majority of the music that I want to carry on my axim into one playlist. iTunes also plays nice enough with windows that if you select all the songs in a playlist and then drag them into an explorer folder, it creates a copy of the song. However, the files are just dumped in there w/o directory structure.
That's where the last piece of new software comes in: TagScanner. TagScanner is a very nifty little (free!) program that will do all the dirty work for you. Just point it to the folder where you copied the big block of mp3 files and it will use their id3 tags to create properly named Artist/Album folders. Then, all you have to do is copy those folders over to your CF card, point mortplayer in the right direction, and presto! The perfect mp3 setup! :love:
If anyone has any questions about any of the finer point in this process, feel free to ask. It has taken me a while to figure all this out, so maybe I can save someone some time.
Thank you for your very detailed description of your setup. I have yet to use anything other than the Microsoft appications yet (other than TCPMP) so I'll definitely look into this. Though I dont need the organzing like you as I have no "albums" and my songs are always named artists first and what not so its not neccessary. Most my songs dont have id3 tags and I'm not sure if I'm really missing out but its too much hassle to start now.
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Dell Axim x51v A00
Intel(R) PXA270 624MHz
64MB Ram
256MB Rom
Rom Version: A06 (12190500)
Windows Mobile 5.0
OS 5.1.70 (Build 14410.1.1.3)
ThinkOutside Bluetooth Stowaway Keyboard + Travel Mouse
A-Data 2 GB SD 150x
I use MS Media Player and I don't think it is missing anything... As long as my MP3s have the correct id3 tag on my computer when they are syncronized to my pocket pc, they are all stored in their individual Artist/Album folder and to navigate by Artis>Album all you have to do is open the library and then from the menu button select open file... You will then be able to navigate to the folder of your choice.
I use MS Media Player and I don't think it is missing anything... As long as my MP3s have the correct id3 tag on my computer when they are syncronized to my pocket pc, they are all stored in their individual Artist/Album folder and to navigate by Artis>Album all you have to do is open the library and then from the menu button select open file... You will then be able to navigate to the folder of your choice.
Anyhow, good luck with your choices!
Yes, the one thing MS MediaPlayer has going for it is that it automaitcally organizes things based on id3 tags. But there were a couple of things that I didn't like about it that made me reject it:
1. No power-saving option to shut off the screen while playing.
2. I have 2 of my hardware buttons mapped to the OS softkeys for easier 1-handed navigation. Using those keys, I can get into the library and navigate via artist or album or whatever. However, once you select one file, the Library dialogue defaults back to that location and the only way to go back up is to tap the small(ish) back button in the upper right corner. That's more than I want to have to do while driving.
Wow, sounds like you spent a lot of time on this. I don't like using playlists either. I have been using GSPlayer and don't like all the work to get songs loaded, so I will definately look at MortPlayer (again, I already have it loaded).
i love mortplayer, but have never been able to set it up exactly how i want it. I like the idea of being able to browse artists and albums without creating playlists? i used a trial version of ceplaylist, which worked well, but i'd prefer to not have to use another program...
i love mortplayer, but have never been able to set it up exactly how i want it. I like the idea of being able to browse artists and albums without creating playlists? i used a trial version of ceplaylist, which worked well, but i'd prefer to not have to use another program...
could you tell me exactly how you set yours up?
thanks,
I'll do my best, but I'm not exactly a mortplayer expert. Here are a few things that I think helped me get it set up the way I wanted:
1. Your music has to be organized in an appropriate directory structure on you PDA (ie - Artist\Album\SongTitle.mp3)
2. Go into MortPlayer and select 'Manage Favorites'. Be sure that it is looking at the folder that contains your mp3 directory structure from step 1. So, if all your Artist\Album structure is in My Music, the path needs to be \My Document\My Music
3. Also on the Manage Favorites screen, be sure that 'Use only contained playlist files' is UNchecked and that 'Include Subdirectories' IS checked.
At this point, you should be able to map a button to the open dialogue and use it to browse through your collection by artist\album. However, it's still not perfect because you can't select an individual file. As it is, when you select an album, MortPlayer loads up every song in that album into the playlist and starts playing the first. My solution to this was to go into the program settings tot he Skin/Display page. There you can change the field "Screen" and set it to 'Playlist'. At this point, if you navigate to an Artist/Album folder, it will start playing the first song and display all the songs in the folder on the base screen (Playlist). If you want to select another song in the folder, you have to tap it (my font is big enough that I can do this w/ my thumb). This still isn't 100% ideal (I'd like to be able to navigate this page with the d-pad and select a song w/ the action button) but it works.
I may be missing something, but you can set it in options to turn off the screen with a hardware button press.
That's true, the option is there. However, it didn't work right on my x51v. I don't know if it is a WM5 problem or what. However, if I tried to map Button 1 (normally Calender), it wouldn't map and would launch the Calendar app from the within the 'map button' dialogue. The only button I could get to actualy map properly was the enter button... anything that already had a WM5 setting simply executed whatever it was previously set to.
have you tried using ceplaylist and mapping it to a button in mortplayer? it might be what you are looking for, but it costs $10.
No, I haven't. I went and checked it out after you mentioned it and it sounds like it might be useful. If my MortPlayer setup doesn't cut the mustard for the long term, I might give that a try.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried PocketMusic's AAC decoder? I have been playing around with it, but I do not have any protected AAC files, just converted AAC files, and now pocketmusic plays really well.
I love pocketmusic, and as long as it plays AAC files (protected would be nice) I can handle it's GUI and playlist editor.
But I would be interested in learning if anyone knows if it will play protected itunes AAC files.
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Just out of curiosity, have you tried PocketMusic's AAC decoder? I have been playing around with it, but I do not have any protected AAC files, just converted AAC files, and now pocketmusic plays really well.
I love pocketmusic, and as long as it plays AAC files (protected would be nice) I can handle it's GUI and playlist editor.
But I would be interested in learning if anyone knows if it will play protected itunes AAC files.
I never explicity tried to play a protected AAC file in PocketMusic. However, I would be very doubtful that it would. Apple requires that you authenticate who you are by sending your account's password to them before you can play protected AACs. I don't see how this would be possible with any 3rd party software because apple is protecting it very agressively to discourage people from doing exactly what I'm doing: replacing an iPod. IMHO, the only way we'll ever get iTMS songs on our PPCs is if apple releases an iTunes for PPC.
Okay.. MortPlayer just got even better. I went to the MortPlayer site and got on the message boards to ask if there was any way to be able to scroll through the playlist and select the song you wanted to play using the Action button. Mort's reply was to post a new beta version of the software with that feature included! With this new functionality, MortPlayer is awfully close to having an iPod on your PPC. Here a link to the thread where he posted the beta version:
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