After a couple years in the closet following a move, I've finally got my BeoLink PC2 up and running again.  Whoo-Hoo!!! 

I've noticed that the >> and << keys do not always work.  Most of the time, they skip ahead/back to the next group as designed.  However, for some areas within the iTunes library, the command is either ignored or triggers a "fast forward".  For example, if I'm skipping around by artist, certain artists will not skip forward/back.  Once I navigate via single song forward/back (up/down arrow) out of the artist, it works again.  I tried deleting the bad artist from the library, but that just moved problem up.  I also tried deleting the following artist (maybe it having a problem "getting next artist" - so it's actually the "next artist" that is bad), but the problem persisted.  Re-adding the "bad" music returned the problem to the same artist.

My assumption is that I have some corruption in my iTunes meta-data... since the weird behavior seems dependent on what song iTunes is playing.  I haven't yet found any rhyme or reason behind the artists that work vs. those that work, but I vaguely remember running into an issue some time ago where iTunes-Lame was not working correctly with certain versions of iTunes, and my theory is that this has in some way corrupted my library.

I've done a little reasearch and found that iTunes has both binary and xml metadata.  Does anybody know if BM-Link uses the xml or binary metadata?  Digging further, does anybody know the applescript call that (I assume) BM-Link uses to navigate to the next group (let's say, for example, artist)... my thought is may be expedient to write some kind of test script to help diagnose this...

I'm using iTunes 4.6.2 and BM-Link 1.50.1. 

Thanks,

Stan

Guess I should be able to answer some of those questions  :)

BM-Link reads the XML file. As far as I know iTunes uses the binary file for it's own operations, but keeps the XML file available for other applications to use.

The communication with iTunes is done via a compiled AppleScript included in the application bundle, and that one is not accessible to you :(  unless you manage to decompile it.  Basically, it works such that BM-Link reads the XML file and stores all the artists in an internal data structure, when you request next artist, it requests the current artist from iTunes, looks that one up in the list and then takes the next artist in the list and tells iTunes to play the first track by that artist.

Does the artist in questions have any "strange" letters in in the name?  is the Artist name exactly the same on all the tracks by the artist?

/Anders 

Anders,

Thanks for the reply (thank for the software, too .  This is useful information. 

So... I suppose the XML could be messed up or iTunes could be returning something weird when you ask it for the current artist...  I think I may be able to cobble together an applescript to retrieve the name of the current artist and see if shows anything... otherwise, I guess I will get digging into the XML.  At least I have some direction to follow...

No strange letters in the artist names, and all the artist names are exactly the same as far as I can see. 

I regenerated all of the metadata (exported metadata to XML, deleted the binary file, imported the XML export) and the problem is still there at the same artists (e.g. "A nickname for Richard that starts with D that is filtered by the forum software" Dale, Gomez and a few others).

Stan

A quick update...  my applescript successfully retrieves the artist, album, genre and playlist for the unruly artists...  must be something in the XML.. any hints?

Stan

I also appreciate BM Link.  I installed the new Leopard version on a machine today.  It worked well, except that >> skips a large number of albums, instead of just one.  Could this be due to the owner having a large external hard drive with about 1500 albums on it, or is this an error?  I also found that the BS9000/Beo4 would not start iTunes from a "dead" state, though it runs fine once enabled.

Thanks

Ray