Linux: Portable MP3-Player syncing on commandline

I'm searching a console-application which helps me managing my portable mp3-player. The player is a simple mountpoint so nothing special here.

My Wish-Application would work as following:

I provide a folder where I symlink all media-files I want on my device.
I run the application, it does the following:
- Convert the mediafiles into a playable format if my player cant handle the format (flac->mp3). Also apply the tags of the source-file to the converted file. Cache the converted file so on the next sync the conversion hasn't have to be done again.
- Check if the files fit onto the device, otherwise throw an error
- Copy the files onto my device (mounted to a mountpoint)

I know there will be no application which does exactly this but is there something similar? I also know I could construct something like this by myself (using rsync, sox, du) but I want to save the work if there is something usuable.

Thanks for help!

theomega

Posted 2009-10-05T15:49:31.977

Reputation: 934

2Unfortunately I don't know of such a tool, but! You could use make to manage it all. You can construct a rule for each format (e.g. for mp3s, symlink from cache to file; for flac, convert), supply a list of all media files in the folder, and have your 'all' rule depend on the cache of all files. Your 'install' rule would depend on 'all' and 'check-space', and call rsync... you get the idea. – Cascabel – 2009-10-05T20:29:57.853

Thanks for the comment, I haven't thought about implementation details, but make seems a possibility. I hoped there would be something similar already premade. – theomega – 2009-10-05T22:22:38.407

convert-to-playable-format sounds like a job for a FUSE mp3fs... can't recall a particular project name offhand but i know there's a couple out there that will convert media files on-the-fly – quack quixote – 2010-01-05T21:41:29.430

Answers

Assuming you have an iPod, Gnupod (please Google, I can only post one hyperlink) is capable of doing what you propose with a little scripting magic.

It also converts FLAC and ogg files to AAC on-the-fly, and of course will transfer WAV, AAC and mp3:

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnupod/gnupod.html#SEC11

With a little hacking you could probably add support for other formats. I've been using it for years now (I'm on my third iPod) and it really beats the pants off of the other more bloated options (amarok, banshee, etc). It's a simple tool meant to be combined with others.

g33kz0r

Posted 2009-10-05T15:49:31.977

Reputation: 284

Have a look at Automatic backup when inserting a drive. It's a udev-based solution which takes care of automatically copying and filing the backups of your external drives.

Robert Munteanu

Posted 2009-10-05T15:49:31.977

Reputation: 4 240

The focus of the question is not how to automatically trigger this synchronization, but if there is a preexisting tool which does the media-player-specific tasks (especially the conversion). – Cascabel – 2009-10-05T20:25:54.553