reTune 0.2.1 review
DownloadreTune is a very useful tool for all iPod users who, for some reason, are not happy about iTunes and want to manage their music files
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reTune is a very useful tool for all iPod users who, for some reason, are not happy about iTunes and want to manage their music files for themselves.
With reTune, you can copy music to the iPod with Explorer, Finder, Konqueror, Nautilus or any other file manager you like (yes, cp will work, too ;) and have it played back by the iPod with (almost) no hassles.
The only thing you have to do is start this litte program just after plugging the iPod into your USB port and before unplugging it.
Please note that reTune is in an early development stage and may or may not work for you. You should always create a backup of the /iPod_Control/iTunes directory before trying reTune.
Moreover, I won't take any responsibility or liability for any damage caused by the use of reTune. Until now, I could only test with my own iPod nano.
How it works
reTune scans the whole iPod volume for playable files, retrieving metadata (e.g. ID3 tags) from these files, and moving them to a location where the iPod can find them. The collected metadata and file names are then written to an iTunesDB file, which the iPod requires for proper blayback.
This process is called freezing. reTune keeps track of the original filenames of the files added to the database. Thus, it is possible to unfreeze the song database, i.e. move the music files back to the location where they came from (all inside the iPod's filesystem, of course).
Here are some key features of "reTune":
multiplatform (written in Python)
support for MP3 sound files
support for Ogg Vorbis files (will be automatically transcoded into MP3 using OggDec and LAME)
reads metadata (title, artist, album, ...) from ID3v1, ID3v2 and Vorbis comment tags
iPod shuffle support (although the iPod shuffle Database Builder is better suited for this model)
What's New in This Release:
fixed album sort order
reTune 0.2.1 search tags