[Sortova]

I am giving a keynote at the Southeast Linuxfest in North Carolina (USA) in June on migrating from Apple to Linux. Part of that talk revolves around iTunes replacements, and I have used and researched on Rythmbox, Banshee and Clementine.

I am now playing with Nightingale, and I have a couple of questions concerning external devices. I've searched online and the forums, and while this is probably a general question, I decided to ask it here because it does deal with Nightingale specifically on Linux.

I hope that's okay.

My current media player is Banshee. The reason I like it is that I can get my Android phone to show up pretty much like my iPhone did in iTunes. That does not appear to be the case with Nightingale.

Now, later versions of Android use MTP and Linux support of MTP is spotty at best. It seems improved in Ubuntu 13.04, but my workaround is to simply put all my music on the removeable microSD card along with a properly formatted .is_audio_player file, and when I mount the card under Linux it "just works".

I think I can use the synchronize function of Nightingale to synchronize my playlists, as I have defined a playlist directory in my audio file, but I worry that it may require the same path structure as the desktop filesystem.

Anway, my question (and I do have one - sorry for the long note): is there a preferred way to manage media from Nightingale to external devices like Android phones? Since the iPhone now uses a proprietary database I would guess that would be much harder, but since I don't use an iPhone anymore it is less of a concern.

I am happy to RTFM if someone would be kind enough to supply some URLs.

[freaktechnik]

the synchronizing feature is our official way to sync devices. If you want them to show up, as they do in iTunes, you can "port" the closed source MTP/MSC. You should only need to edit the install.rdf. However I'm not too sure about this.

[Sortova]

(05-16-2013, 11:27 PM)freaktechnik Wrote: the synchronizing feature is our official way to sync devices. If you want them to show up, as they do in iTunes, you can "port" the closed source MTP/MSC. You should only need to edit the install.rdf. However I'm not too sure about this.

Thank you. I'll check it out. I think I have a grasp on the Songbird to Nightingale porting issues.

-T

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

(05-16-2013, 07:06 PM)Sortova Wrote: I think I can use the synchronize function of Nightingale to synchronize my playlists, as I have defined a playlist directory in my audio file, but I worry that it may require the same path structure as the desktop filesystem.

Anway, my question (and I do have one - sorry for the long note): is there a preferred way to manage media from Nightingale to external devices like Android phones? Since the iPhone now uses a proprietary database I would guess that would be much harder, but since I don't use an iPhone anymore it is less of a concern.

I am happy to RTFM if someone would be kind enough to supply some URLs.

As freaktechnik mentioned, the synchronization feature is our official way supporting external devices, such as Android Phones and MP3 Players. The Synchronization feature needs a way to mount the device's filesystem to the host filesystem; if that is possible (e.g. the Android phone supports a MSC mode, or you have some third-party wrappers not sure if there are tools like that) you can use the synchronization feature to sync your songs to the device. It is possible to customize the directory/file-structure freely; even media conversion is possible (not in current builds, you need to install an experimental version of the underlying FolderSync), given you've got all the tools required for this and don't hesitate writing conversion bash scripts (experimental, right?).
For this feature the Manual is available in the bottom right corner of the Synchronization tab ("Online Help"), alternately open a new tab and copy this url into Nightingale's address bar:

Code:

chrome://foldersync/content/manual/start.htm

We cannot provide native device support currently, as the add-ons available for Songbird are closed source - you can, however, try to bump their compatibility as freaktechnik suggested.