iPod & generic mp3 player support (was: Re: [mythtv] mythmusic tree construction - can it be changed ?)

Joseph A. Caputo jcaputo1 at comcast.net
Tue Oct 18 17:04:16 UTC 2005


On Tuesday 18 October 2005 12:50, Eskil Heyn Olsen wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 10:04 -0400, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> 
> > Are you planning on making the iPod support generic?  That is, 
basically 
> > make a generic 'external music device' framework, and have the 
> > iPod-specific interface either inherit from or plug into it?
> 
> Yes, it'll probably be a fairly simple object where you can inherit 
and
> implement a stack of methods such as
> - get info (size, free space, has db or filesystem layout)
> - traverse player's database/or filesystem
> - copy file to/from
> - delete file
> - "eject"...
> if any other players need extra methods, we can add them. I think it
> would be generic enough that other mp3 players could easily be added.
> 
> As for mounting, I would look at reusing the media handler (of course,
> first I need to rehack the tree so I can even show the ipod).

I realize your intent is to integrate the contents of the iPod into the 
music tree (presumably so you can play directly from the iPod, or 
manage/delete individual track on the iPod).  However, why not make a 
first pass that just supports simple "copy to player" functionality, 
perhaps with an option to overwrite/erase contents first?  That would 
side-step the whole issue of the tree, and get basic mp3 player support 
going.  For anyone with a flash-based mp3 player, this is probably 
sufficient, as they usually don't have a large storage capacity, so 
anything on the player would likely be a duplicate of stuff already on 
your hard drive in your mythmusic library.  Here, I'm viewing mythmusic 
external player support as more of just a "load 'n' go" function.  I 
realize that with larger, hard drive-based devices like the iPod, you 
might want expanded capabilities, but that could be "phase 2".

Thoughts?

-JAC


More information about the mythtv-dev mailing list