iPod Photo Prefs

[blybug]

THANKS FEDEX!!

My iPod Photo had a delivery date of Nov 3rd but it's in my hot little hands right now!!



For those wondering exactly how iTunes syncs up the photos, the iPod panel in the iTunes preferences gains another tab ("Photos") that looks like this:

You can choose you iPhoto Library and albums, with the option to choose only certain albums (just like Music syncing) or you can choose any other folder of pictures on your computer.

Looks as if (as expected) the iPod does change the pictures to some super-secret iPod format for iPod & TV viewing, since the option of saving the full resolution pictures is a separate checkbox below, and clearly states that the full-res photos will be accessed from disk mode. So I'm betting that's where the Belkin Photo Reader pics still land...until Belkin and/or Apple update the software to allow instant download and viewing of pics from a camera.

I'm syncing right now...7800 songs and 6800 pics...more on how this works later!!

 

[Inkmonkey]

Sweet! Can hardly wait to read more. Really interested in how sharp the screen looks and how quickly the scrolling through the photos works.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Out of interest, does that preference menu still appear if you have just a normal iPod (without the Photo pane)? My regular iPod should be arriving soon. I was hoping it was going to arrive today, but now it looks like it'll be tomorrow or Monday.

 

[blybug]

Still syncing...

A couple initial thoughts and comments as I sit and sync for the first time

1. The iPod Photo 60GB fits into the dock of my 3rd Gen 40GB. The 3rd gen is 0.73" thick (the fattest one ever) and the new 4th Gen 60GB is 0.75" thick. It's snug but the connector lines right up and it's working fine. Relief, since I have a couple other docks around the house, a mount for my car, and I'm planning to buy the iBoom.
2. iTunes is really working hard. Even as all my music is copying over, the status bar at the top of itunes toggles back and forth between the "Updating Songs" message and progress bar and a new message - "Optimizing photos for iPod"
3. It is nice to have the Photo syncing within iTunes, as much as it really belongs in iPhoto. But I just relaized that address book and calendar syncing are still trapped in iSync. Wouldn't it have made more sense to move that stuff over into iTunes as well, or for an even more consistent sync interface, put the Music and Photo syncing into iSync? Maybe that's the plan for Mac users in Tiger with iSync being built into the OS...each app will have sync prefs and it will all just happen automatically (still would be nice to have a centralized System Pref pane for all syncing)
4. The red 3D aquaish "Do Not Disconnect" symbol and green baattery indicators sure are purty

Still syncing...

 

[blybug]

Out of interest, does that preference menu still appear if you have just a normal iPod (without the Photo pane)? My regular iPod should be arriving soon. I was hoping it was going to arrive today, but now it looks like it'll be tomorrow or Monday.

No it does not. I looked for it right away when i DL'ed iTunes 4.7 earlier this week and it was not there with my regular 3rd gen 40GB iPod. Maybe Apple should make it appear but "dimmed" and with a message "Photo syncing requires iPod Photo. Click here to purchase."

 

[Inkmonkey]

Still syncing...

How long has it been going?

 

[blybug]

How long has it been going?

Still syncing...

Based on the times of my forum posts, I guess it's been going for about an hour now. Somewhere in the middle I guess I accidentally hit Apple-Q when I didn't thought some other app besides iTunes was in the foreground and so had to relaunch iTunes with about 3000 songs (out of 7800) to go and ???who knows how many of the ~6800 photos had been "optimized" or if that whole process had to start again.

Overall I can tell the music copying is slower than usual. I've had to rebuild my 40GB iPod a few times in the past and usually the 20+ GBs of music just flies right by, tick tick tick right down the list. I'm sure this is because of the simultaneous photo optimizing that is going on in the background. I expect that future minor update syncs will go much faster than this initial one.

I'm interested to see how much disk space the iPod Photo Library takes up. I have about 20GB of photos but my iPhoto Library Folder (a sort of "best of" collection) is about 7GB. Curious to see how many GB that ends up taking on the iPod after it is "optimized." I see now that the optional separation of the full-res photos is actually a good idea...I already have a backup drive for all my pics, so have no reason to keep the full res on the iPod too.

 

[jackieonasses]

Still syncing...

Based on the times of my forum posts, I guess it's been going for about an hour now. Somewhere in the middle I guess I accidentally hit Apple-Q when I didn't thought some other app besides iTunes was in the foreground and so had to relaunch iTunes with about 3000 songs (out of 7800) to go and ???who knows how many of the ~6800 photos had been "optimized" or if that whole process had to start again.

Overall I can tell the music copying is slower than usual. I've had to rebuild my 40GB iPod a few times in the past and usually the 20+ GBs of music just flies right by, tick tick tick right down the list. I'm sure this is because of the simultaneous photo optimizing that is going on in the background. I expect that future minor update syncs will go much faster than this initial one.

I'm interested to see how much disk space the iPod Photo Library takes up. I have about 20GB of photos but my iPhoto Library Folder (a sort of "best of" collection) is about 7GB. Curious to see how many GB that ends up taking on the iPod after it is "optimized." I see now that the optional separation of the full-res photos is actually a good idea...I already have a backup drive for all my pics, so have no reason to keep the full res on the iPod too.

To people who don't know, the reason it takes so long to put pics in, is because it compresses them down really low. The screen is only like 2 inches and a tv's resolution does not go over 800 x 600 (usually) so it has to compress every one.

 

[blybug]

Music is finished, now its chugging along with the optimizing Photos.

Hopefully an iPhoto rev will come along with the option to automatically create these iPod thumbnails as you work in iPhoto, so they'll be "ready to go" when it's time to sync. I thought once the music wass done copying that the photo optimization would fly right along but the progress bar is barely halfway across and moving imperceptibly...

But hey, that's for the first 6800+ pics...incremental updates will surely go quicker...

 

[Littleodie914]

Hey, that's really cool that you got it so soon. Could you be so cool as to post more pics of it? Possibly in different modes? Like playing a song, menu, photo browse, etc.? I know there are pictures on Apple's website and what-not, but I'd like a real-life image as opposed to a "fake" one.

 

[jackieonasses]

Music is finished, now its chugging along with the optimizing Photos.

Hopefully an iPhoto rev will come along with the option to automatically create these iPod thumbnails as you work in iPhoto, so they'll be "ready to go" when it's time to sync. I thought once the music wass done copying that the photo optimization would fly right along but the progress bar is barely halfway across and moving imperceptibly...

But hey, that's for the first 6800+ pics...incremental updates will surely go quicker...

how fast is your computer? if you had dual 2.5's that work would be halved...

 

[blybug]

how fast is your computer? if you had dual 2.5's that work would be halved...

G4/867 Quicksilver (seemed really fast when I bought it )

I'll post more pictures as soon as it changes from the picture I already posted...for now it's still in good old "Do Not Disconnect" mode even though I'm dying to stop this photo optimization nonsense and play with it!!

patience...patience...

 

[blybug]

hmmmmmm....hmmmmmmm....still syncing....

Lots of time to contemplate life, iPods, philosophy, etc...

I was just thinking about another bonus little "PR" feature for Apple and this new iPod. I can totally imagine bringing this to work (as I have often done with my other iPod) and having people passing it around to look at pictures. They are always interested in the music iPod, and even though holding it in your hand is rather magical for people who haven't seen it, they really don't get a good feel for the whole experience and interface with just music.

I can really sense that people are going to go nuts for the photo viewing thing since they'll really get a chance to use the click-wheel to it's full advantage, flipping around quickly picture to picture, jumping from album to album...something you just don't really "get" with music when you are just holding it for a minute or two since most people spin the wheel, find a song, listen for a few seconds, then say "That's cool" and hand it back.

With the pictures they could sit there for a long time and really get a "Gee I'd really like to have one of these" kind of feeling. I'm a little afraid I'm going to have to be really forceful after the iPod Photo makes its way around the room "Give me back my iPod!!!!"

 

[Koodauw]

PLease Please

do send us more photos.

That Thing Looks absolutely wicked.

 

[blybug]

FINISHED.

Sum total for 7807 songs (25GB) and 6829 pictures to sync about 2 hours.

After the long photo optimization step, there was a "Copying Photos" step which took only about 10 minutes. My ~7GB iPhoto Library folder has been optimized for the iPod to ~5GB for the iPod (31.1GB total - 25.67GB music). And actually I didn't sync all my iPhoto albums so it may be a pretty close to 1:1 "optimization."

Inside the iPhoto Lobrary folder on my Mac is now a folder called "iPod Photo Cache" which contains a few dozen folders called F00 F01 F02 etc. Inside these folders are a few hundred files each cryptically called T4280.ithmb which are unopenable by any application. Obviously these are the iPod thumbnail files which I guess contain the optimized photos. This folder takes up ~5GB itself so it is almost an exact duplicate of my iPhoto Library in "iPod" format within my iPhoto Library. Eeech. I guess this will make future sync faster but egad, isn't there a better way to create these iPod-optimized pics than duplicating your whole iPhoto Library? As if the iPhoto Library isn't cluttered and bulgy enough??

A folder called "Photos" appears on the disk side of the iPod which also contains a bunch of cryptically titled .ithmb files, but not really arranged in the same way as the cache folder on the computer.

Give me a few minutes to take some pictures and I'll post a gallery of how the iPod Photo looks in action.

 

[blybug]

Here's a few photos of the iPod Photo in action:

http://homepage.mac.com/keithbly/PhotoAlbum8.html

A few observations:

• The thumbnail previews on the little itty-bitty 25 pic per screen browse page have a slight delay before they pop up, initially just blank squares. Probably about a second. But then scrolling through that screen is lightning fast. Even in albums with a few hundred pictures I could whiz from the first to last picture in a matter of seconds and the thumbnails keep right up
• Also takes just a second for the full screen picture to appear after clicking on it in browse mode. I was expecting it to be instantaneous. But clicking using the "next" button through an album is instant. And using the wheel is absolutely HYPERSPEED!!
• Album art also takes just a brief delay to load into the blank square when a new song starts.
• Clicking the select button toggles to a full screen display of the album art but then falls back to the default screen after a few seconds. I'll hunt for an option that allows the album art to remain on the screen, which I'd rather like.

Anything else anyone would like to know or see? I've got to go to work in a little bit so won't be able to post any more photos but I'll have the new toy with me so I can still answer questions about features.

WOOHOO

 

[Mechcozmo]

Lucky bastard.

The iPod Photos just look like they have a much nicer interface in general than the normal iPods. Maybe, because I have been a good little Jewish boy, Santa will get me one?

Can you show us how you connect it to a T.V. and do all that nice fun stuff? That would be a very cool picture- iPod to TV...

 

[blybug]

Lucky bastard.

Can you show us how you connect it to a T.V. and do all that nice fun stuff? That would be a very cool picture- iPod to TV...

I did a quick little TV experiment right before I had to leave for work...man was it tempting to call in sick

"Uh, Boss, you know that flu shot shortage thing? I'm ::cough:: feeling a little under the weather. Think I need to just stay home and, uh, you know, ::cough:: listen to some music and enjoy looking at pictures of my family before I die..."

Anyhow, I hooked up the AV cable from the iPod dock to the AV inputs of my EyeTV because:

1. I didn't have time to go downstairs away from the computer and dig around behind the TV
2. It seemed more consistent with the geek factor of a guy who is posting photos of his new iPod on a Mac message board
3. If I got it to work I could record a QT movie of the slide show and post it here (furthering the geek factor)

In my brief fiddling around with this setup, the slide show did come across the "TV" (EyeTV) but the display both on the iPod and the "TV" seemed to have a hard time advancing for some reason. The picture would show on the iPod and sometimes advance only after a delay (noticeably longer than the 2 seconds I had chosen) and sometimes seemingly not at all unless I manually advanced it. And on the "TV" display the photo never advanced from the first photo. This is probably a (mal)function of the EyeTV, which does have a bit of a video display delay in all its functions, and often does seem to "freeze" if the video signal is not sufficiently fluid...maybe the still shots being sent out to the EyeTV are not enough to make it recognize there is a "continuous" video signal.

So that was a bust. I'll try it out on the real TV tomorrow.

One thing for sure, in case anyone was wondering...the only thing that can be displayed on the TV is a photo slideshow. Somehow, even though it was not described on the Apple page, I was hoping in my heart of hearts that the whole iPod interface, menus, album art, etc would show up on TV when connected. Alas, it is not to be (but maybe a future software update??)

 

[Cybernanga]

hmmm!

Also takes just a second for the full screen picture to appear after clicking on it in browse mode. I was expecting it to be instantaneous. But clicking using the "next" button through an album is instant. And using the wheel is absolutely HYPERSPEED!!

Just out of curiosity, if you had a series of pics, and you wheel through them, is "HYPERSPEED" fast enough to be movie like? I do stick-men animations, and was just wondering if it will switch through them fast enough to be "movie" like?

 

[blybug]

Just out of curiosity, if you had a series of pics, and you wheel through them, is "HYPERSPEED" fast enough to be movie like? I do stick-men animations, and was just wondering if it will switch through them fast enough to be "movie" like?

Oh yeah, quite sure you could make an iPod "flip book" this way. I don't really have a series of photos that are animated in that sense...could easily enough take a little quicktime movie and export it to a series of stills and give it a whirl.

I'd be willing to bet that soon a website/community will crop up where people post little packages of pictures like this to download and use as flip books.

 

[Cybernanga]

Great, hmm, an idea

Oh yeah, quite sure you could make an iPod "flip book" this way. I don't really have a series of photos that are animated in that sense...could easily enough take a little quicktime movie and export it to a series of stills and give it a whirl.

I'd be willing to bet that soon a website/community will crop up where people post little packages of pictures like this to download and use as flip books.

Thank you for the info, and the pics.

I was kinda thinking of creating such a website, which is why I asked.

If I set-up such a site, would there be any other users willing to contribute in terms of content & ideas, I'm thinking one or two keen users to collaborate with in terms of ideas, and content contributions from everyone who's interested.

Let me know

 

[blybug]

Can you show us how you connect it to a T.V. and do all that nice fun stuff? That would be a very cool picture- iPod to TV...

I've added some new photos of the iPod hooked up to a TV

http://homepage.mac.com/keithbly/PhotoAlbum8.html

Initially had the same problem of the photos not advancing as when I hooked up to the EyeTV, but a reset of the iPod (which I hadn't done after the initial sync) fixed that. Hopefully it won't need reset every time new photos are added in order to TV slideshow them.

After the reset I was able to also run the slideshow on my EyeTV and successfully record it. Here's a small clip of it with the iPod slideshow "transition" setting turned ON. Same transition happens on the iPod too, so this gives you a pretty good idea what it looks like both on the iPod and on TV:

iPod Photo Slideshow

The fuzzy cross-screen wipe is apparently the only transition. Sorry, no fancy OpenGL cube spinning effects. You can see something kind of neat in this movie though...when the play/pause button is pressed on the iPod a nice little translucent indicator bezel shows up at the bottom of the screen. You can see this a couple times in the clip linked above.

Once I had hooked up the iPod to the TV it was more disappointing than ever that the only TV out is for photo slideshows. I can live without the whole iPod menu driven interface on the TV, but why on earth didn't Apple incorporate a video out during music playback to display the track information and album art?

opens new tab in Safari, goes to http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html, leaves this suggestion/plea for Apple

 

[Hoef]

Thanks for sharing ... Cool stuff!

 

[Cybernanga]

msg 4 blybug

Heya, just wanted to find out if I can contact Blybug out of forum. Wanted to ask something about the iPod Photo, but not in public yet. Let me know, if it's possible, but if not, that's cool too. :->

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Heya, just wanted to find out if I can contact Blybug out of forum. Wanted to ask something about the iPod Photo, but not in public yet. Let me know, if it's possible, but if not, that's cool too. :->

Oh yeah?

Normally you can private message them, by clicking on their username in one of their posts and selecting the "Send a private message" option. However, blybug doesn't seem to have private messaging activated, nor any iChat/MSN, etc address. You could just ask him/her to private message you though, or turn it on.

Oh, and welcome to MacRumors, fellow Essex person