Saturday, May 06, 2006
Apple broke iTunes
I figured out why the converted files weren't being accepted as valid by iTunes. NO files were being accepted as valid by iTunes.
It turns out that somewhere around iTunes 6.0.3, a bug snuck in that changed the maximum audio bitrate allowable in a video (to sync to an iPod) from 160kbit to 80kbit.
And so, any video file with an audio bitrate above 80 are rejected as unfit for the iPod. Interestingly, even when I copied a video file FROM my iPod and tried to send it back, it was rejected. So nothing has changed in the iPod, this can only be a bug.
My "fix" for iPodDrop v1.4 will simply be to encode audio at 80kbit instead of 160kbit. Yeah, the lower quality is a bitch, but it is the only possible solution until Apple updates iTunes.
Some time tommorow I'll fix up a build of 1.4 (which is essentially done with this last tweak), and try to figure out how to get a bug report to Apple. I'm not optimistic that a giant corporation will pay any attention to a regular user, but damnit, they broke something that worked before! Not BetterThanLastTime!
It turns out that somewhere around iTunes 6.0.3, a bug snuck in that changed the maximum audio bitrate allowable in a video (to sync to an iPod) from 160kbit to 80kbit.
And so, any video file with an audio bitrate above 80 are rejected as unfit for the iPod. Interestingly, even when I copied a video file FROM my iPod and tried to send it back, it was rejected. So nothing has changed in the iPod, this can only be a bug.
My "fix" for iPodDrop v1.4 will simply be to encode audio at 80kbit instead of 160kbit. Yeah, the lower quality is a bitch, but it is the only possible solution until Apple updates iTunes.
Some time tommorow I'll fix up a build of 1.4 (which is essentially done with this last tweak), and try to figure out how to get a bug report to Apple. I'm not optimistic that a giant corporation will pay any attention to a regular user, but damnit, they broke something that worked before! Not BetterThanLastTime!
