About PodCheat and the PodCheat Project

PodCheat allows you to easily find the music on your iPod and copy it out to wherever you'd like under whatever name you'd like.

Why is this so difficult?

If you've ever opened your iPod as a hard drive, you probably wondered where all the music goes.
This is where:
On the iPod is a hidden folder iPod_Control (you can see it if you have hidden files and folders visible).

And, easily enough, your music is all in the Music folder. But, of course it's not going to be so easy... The folder names are jumbled, as are the file names inside the folders. On top of that, two songs of the same album would rarely be in the same folder together.

Jumbled folder names

Jumbled file names in the folder

You can search through the files with the "Search for text inside the file" version of Windows Search, or you can copy the entire content of your iPod to the hard disk and let a file renamer rename them based on their id3 tag. The first approach takes a fairly long time, and the second one is a little drastic if all you're after is a song or an album.

How easy is this to do with PodCheat?

Very. PodCheat doesn't rely on searching through the files and looking at the file tag information like Windows Search and the renamer would. Instead, it goes about it the same way iTunes and other iPod music managers do: it goes straight for the iTunesDB.

The iTunesDB is a file saved in the iPod's control directory for the iPod's operating system to use. This is how the iPod knows that if you asked for Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, you actually mean iPod_Control\Music\F05\DFCN.mp3

PodCheat uses this to allow you to search on any of the same parameters that you could search and sort by in your iPod music manager: Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Year, or all of the above. Any of this can be used in naming your files when you copy them out.

Can I compile PodCheat myself?

Sure. The sourcecode is available for download, including the lib's dependencies.

PodCheat compiles using Borland C++ Builder 6 with TNT unicode controls. It also uses a port to Windows of libitunesdb, a linux library that parses the iTunesDB.