Current version: 0.4.1 (2009-02-25) . See what's new or get it at SourceForge.

rePear 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 rePear, 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 rePear is experimental software and may or may not work for you. You should always create a backup of the /iPod_Control/iTunes directory before trying rePear. Moreover, I won't take any responsibility or liability for any damage caused by the use of rePear.

How it works

rePear 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. rePear 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).

How to use it

For detailed instructions, please refer to the detailed step-by-step manual on the usage page.

Supported Models

iPod 1G Very likely works, but has not been confirmed yet. iPod 2G iPod 3G iPod 4G iPod photo 4G Supported. iPod video 5G iPod classic 6G iPod mini 1G Very likely works, but has not been confirmed yet. iPod mini 2G iPod nano 1G Supported. iPod nano 2G iPod nano 3G iPod nano 4G iPod nano 5G Not supported due to incompatible database structure.

There are currently no plans to support these models. iPod nano 6G iPod shuffle 1G Supported, but you should use rebuild_db instead, because it's better suited for these models and easier to use. iPod shuffle 2G iPod shuffle 3G Not supported due to incompatible database structure.

There are currently no plans to support these models. iPod shuffle 4G iPod touch Not supported and will never be. The iOS devices are fundamentally different from normal iPods in that they don't allow direct file system access over USB, which is a basic requirement for rePear. iPhone iPad

Features

The following things are already possible (or not possible) with rePear:

Currently implemented

multiplatform (written in Python)

graphical user interface on Windows

support for MP3 sound files

support for M4A sound files (AAC)

support for Ogg Vorbis files (will be automatically transcoded into MP3 using OggDec and LAME)

experimental support for MP4 video files (MPEG-4 ASP and AVC/H.264)

reads metadata (title, artist, album, ...) from ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis and iTunes comment tags

explicit playlist support: automatically recognizes all .m3u playlists

implicit playlist support: playlists can be generated from folders, with custom sort order and (optional) shuffle

cover artwork support: put a cover.jpg file into a album directory and you're set

last.fm scrobbling support

Not implemented

support for sound files other than MP3, Ogg and AAC

photo support

podcast and audiobook support (I don't care about this hype, sorry ...)

Impossible to implement