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Macintosh and Ipod nano clone “MP4” player incompatibility


Connecting certain players to a Macintosh results in a somewhat crippled, but still functional player,

It’s difficult to find any discussion of this issue on the internet, probably because the few Mac users not using real iPods can still get by with the reduced functionality.


Symtoms:

* Audio files may only be selected by using left-right arrow keys, starting from song #1.

* Pausing a song causes the current song displayed to revert to the first song.

* Local directory navigation in audio or video menus fails to access the selected file name.

* Picture display only shows the first picture


* Another special case error with a slightly different cause is the “format error” message or freeze when the hidden resource fork file (._fileName) is accessed.

(The first file, file #1 refers to the file at the top of the alpha-numeric sorted list of file found by the player)

The Cause:

The mp3 player operating system chokes on certain osX specific files made invisible using unix style leading period file names, a couple of the most common ones are:

.DS_Store
.Trashes
._aFileName

There has been reported success in fixing it on a Mac, Utilities like File Buddy or InVisibles that can reveal/delete invisible Mac files, if your command line savvy, you can use terminal to deal with these files. It’s tricky to remove the offensive files with the mac recreating them. .DS_Store file is created by finder when a folder is opened, so work with the player volume without opening it.

KopyMac is a utlilty thast can transfer files onto the player volume without including invisible files:

DIGITOL DISTURBANCE

I did not succeed in restoring player functionality on the Mac side and ultimately fixed it while connected to a windows system, one must enable invisible file display, since windows honors the leading period hide file convention, it’s done under the tools menu of XP, here’s detailed instructions for all windows versions:

How to see hidden files in Windows

I removed all Mac specific files but still had the player malfunction. I ultimately got things working by copying all the files onto C: drive, then deleting all files from the player, with standard delete command, I did not reformat the flash memory. When I recopied all the files back from c: drive the player operated properly.


The most informative article on Mac and MP4 players was written by John Gilbert at:

JWG Design | Using an MP4 Player with Your Mac