I got an iPod a couple of days ago. I’ve had a bit of problems trying to figure some things out, but after ripping a few CDs I’ve gotten the hang of it. As many of you may know they don’t provide much in the way of help, and the PDFs that were included were more on how to use the iPod.
So my problem is that while entering a CD last night by hand, it was ZZ Top because that’s when the problem started, the letters I pressed on the keyboard were not the same as what was coming up on the screen. I believe it was a normal European style layout, with at least the Y and Z exchanged and the numbers would only come up if you used the Shift key. I know that I did not change the keyboard for the rest of the computers programs because I tried Word and it worked as normal so it only does this for iTunes.
I looked through the help menu and it only gave me tips on how to use the shortcuts for playing songs. I read through the PDFs and didn’t see anything there as well. I can not try the internet help because I have no internet at home, and here at work anything dealing with music is blocked.
So what in the world did I hit to get my keyboard to do this? As I said I was entering a ZZ Top album, if that helps pin down the keys I might have tried. I tried doing a few things with teh Ctrl, and Alt, and Shift keys, but couldn’t figure out what I had done.
Guess I should ask my other questions as well. I use my iPod on my motorcycle, so I put it in my tank bag, and since I don’t want the buttons to be pushed I put it on hold. Well every so often on hold it pauses then shuts off. I can not unpause it while it’s on hold so why is it doing it? Also I noticed that iTunes has an option for playing all songs at one level. Will this option transfer to the iPod as well, or is there an option on the iPod to do so.
What computer are you using? If you’re using a Mac and have international languages turned on, pressing Command/Apple-SpaceBar will toggle your keyboard mapping to the next language you’ve enabled.
Aside from that, I’ve never heard about iTunes doing anything odd with the keyboard; it should just use whatever your computer’s configured for.
Low power? End of a playlist?
I believe that’s for iTunes only. If you’ve got MP3s, there are various free programs out there that will normalize them to all play at the same volume level.
For the record, I have this problem sometimes too, and I have no idea what causes it – the iPod will just spontaneously shut down in the middle of a song. It happens at varying points in my battery charge cycle, and doesn’t seem to correspond to any obvious jostling or jolting. No idea what causes it, though.
Yup. Go to the Settings menu and enable “Sound Check”.
Damnit I’m always forgetting to say I’m on Windows XP.
Anyway, I don’t know what caused the keyboard to do that, but I restarted and it started working again. iTunes actually started acting all funky last night, when a CD was put in it would start ripping before I could put the song names in. After I restarted it all went back to normal, though I would still like to know why it did that to my keyboard.
As for the pausing, I have only used it once so far on the bike, for a test run. I waited until I got gas and then started it, put it on hold then it would pause. It would not unpause when I pushed play, then I would have to unhold it and play it. The iPod was not shutting down, just pausing.
I was able to get through to the apple forums, but they haven’t said anything yet. I have seen a couple of people with the hold problem, but no answers.
When my ipod pauses while on hold, it’s because the earbud connecter isn’t plugged into the player as snuggly as it should be. Not sure if this is your problem though.
I’ve had this from time to time. I think it might be a minor glitch in the MP3 file. It seems to me that if iPod encounters a hole or tiny bit of f’ed up data in the file it thinks the song has stopped and just ends. … I think.
It happens so infrequently to me that I haven’t had the chance to play the same song back and see if I can replecate it.
Also, on a similar topic, I had a problem once that nearly drove me to take my iPod back screaming and yelling at the poor Best Buy sales staff. I’d be happily listening to a song, when iPod seemed to decide it wanted to hear The Tea Party and switched to my “Tea Party - Discography” playlist. WTF??
It took me about a week to figure out I had the ALARM set to wake me up at 10:00 am with that playlist (from a recent trip I took the weekend previous). I totally forgot I had done that, and couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was going on.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: check your settings.
iTunes does have a “import songs on CD insert” option, which might have been inadvertently enabled. Look in your preferences; on the Mac, there’s a drop-down menu labeled “On CD Insert:” in the General preferences. Not sure where it’d be on a Windows machine, though.