Introduction to EphPod Features and the Song View

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Introduction to EphPod Features and the Song View

This help file uses pictures to explain EphPod's features. Every screen that you can get to in EphPod is included in this help file. In order to get to a particular screen, just start here at the Introduction, and click on the picture of the main EphPod screen to get to the feature you want to see. You can click on menus (i.e. File, iPod Tools, etc), iPod View items (Playlists, Artists, Contacts, etc), and on larger areas, like the song list. In addition, if you can make a menu pop-up by clicking the right mouse button over an area, you will see that menu in the pictures in this help file. Below the picture you can read a description of what you can do in the pop-up menu.

This is the main EphPod screen. It consists of three parts: the Menus, the iPod View, and the Song View.

Menus
Every major feature of EphPod is accessible from the menus, and some features are accessible only from them. You can find out more about the menus by clicking on them.

iPod View
The iPod View is an attempt to duplicate what you see on your iPod. Playlists, Artists, Contacts, and Songs are all identical to their corresponding menu items on the iPod (click on the first three to read more about their specifics). If you click on Songs, it will bring up all of the songs on your iPod in the Song View. Finally, Recent is a list of the songs you have just added to your iPod. This list is cleared every time you quit EphPod, and also every time you choose to Save Changes.

Song View
The Song View is a list of the songs on your iPod. When Songs is selected in the iPod View, the Song View will contain every song on the iPod. When Artists is selected in the iPod View, the Song View will contain songs by that artist. If you have selected an album as well, the Song View will only contain songs by that artist in that album. You can also choose "All" for artist, and then pick an album to view all of the songs by any artist in that album.

You can resize the columns in the Song View, and EphPod will remember how you had them set for future sessions. The Song View is also equipped with a very powerful Sorting mechanism.

In order to use a lot of EphPod's features, you'll need to know how to select songs in the Song View. To select one song, just click on it. To select a bunch of songs in a row, click on the first one, then hold down the Shift key, and click on the last one. To select several songs that are not in a row, click on the first, then hold down the Control key, and click each of the others that you want selected. If you want to deselect all of your selected songs, you can hit Control-D, or right-click and choose Deselect from the pop-up menu.

Editing song information en masse is also quite simple. If you look at the top row of the Song View, you'll see headings like Title (F2), and Artist (F4). The (F4) means that if you hit the F4 key, a box will pop up, and allow you to quickly edit the Artist (or Title or Album or Genre) for every
selected song. So, if you want to edit the Genre for all of your songs, just select all of the songs, hit F5, and then put in the new Genre.

Adding Songs with the Song View is easy, as is Adding Songs to Playlists.

If you right-click on the Song View, you'll see the pop-up menu shown above. Here are brief explanations of its features:

Edit Tag (Ctrl+I) - This allows you to change information (Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Comment, Track #) about the selected song on the iPod, and also allows you to save this information to the file's ID3 Tag.

Play Song - Plays the current song with its associated program (i.e., whatever program normally plays MP3s will be launched).

Select All Songs (Ctrl+Alt+A) - Selects all of the songs in the Song View. Useful for editing song information en masse.

Deselect (Ctrl+D) - Deselect all selected songs in the Song View.

Add Song - Identical to the Add Songs button.

Delete Selected (Del) - Deletes the currently selected songs

Add Selected Songs to Playlist (Ins) - If you have selected Playlists in the iPod View, and you have a currently selected playlist (i.e., its contents are visible in the third box in the iPod View), then selecting this option will add the selected songs in the Song View to the end of the selected playlist.

Make Playlist from Selected - After prompting you for a name, this option will create a new playlist that consists of the currently selected songs.

Copy Songs to Directory - This option will copy the selected songs from your iPod to any directory of your choosing (on your PC or on a network, or elsewhere), and can use the song information (like Artist, Album, etc) to name the files you copy over.

Make Playlist from Album - This will make a playlist out of all of the songs that are in the same album as the song currently selected.

Make Playlist from Genre - This will make a playlist out of all of the songs that are in the same genre as the song currently selected.