So hooked up my iphone for the first time (I maybe have 12 GBs of music on it?) and it was taking 10+ minutes to do the voice catalog. And even then when it seemed done, it started up again. Didn't seem like it should take that long, or does it normally?

And does it keep running the updates even if nothing changed on the ipod/phone but you reconnect it?

I just turned it off as I couldn't access any ipod controls or run any voice commands on the unit.

Is it accurate/helpful to do the VR and should I just let it run once all the way through every time I do a major update to my phone, or is it not worth it?

It only needs to run once for every time you add or remove content. If you are having problems, restore your iPhone and re-sync your content.

Yeah I get it only needs to run once and then you can turn it off until you significantly add more content, but how long is that initial run on 12-16 GB of music? Just seemed like an awful long amount of time.

It shouldn't take more then about thirty seconds.

Oh alright. Def. something screwy going on with my unit then as it just hangs forever on the catalog thing.

My 160GB iPod is full and to catalogue that it takes about 12 minutes. So 12GB shouldn't take but a few minutes.

So having the unit a week, this is far & away the biggest problem for me. I've kind of accepted that my unit is going to take 30+ minutes to run a dictionary VR catalog of my iPhone, but after letting it run one night after work and finish, it seems to have forgotten my catalog and I've had to run it again (this time with no success after 30+ minutes of driving.)

Does anyone have any tips/tricks that might help? Is there a certain sequence I might have to hook things up in in order for it to work quicker? I know I have to stay on the iPod Source and not change it, but that hasn't helped any.

Any help is appreciated, as when this is working it's actually a really helpful feature for me, but I fear my unit might just be buggy. Might have to wait it out for a software upgrade ....

Thanks.

Have you done a complete restore of the iPhone and resync of your content yet?

No I didn't do a restore on my phone, but I isolated the problem to my Z110 as I am having the exact same issue with my original iPod.

I dont think it is an issue with the head unit. This is not a problem with people using iPods as opposed to iPhones. This also an issue with the iPhone and the Kenwood units. I believe this is an issue with the phone displaying the wrong image. Too me, it doesn't make sense that the unit would pick the right image with an iPod but not with the phone unless the issue is with the phone.

Could be right, might be an iPhone thing, but I left my iPod on for quite a bit of time and it just kept scanning. Haven't had any issues with the wrong artwork yet. Though the image files that come through are waaaaaaaaaay low res, not sure what is up with that, if it's a Pio or Apple thing. Either way don't care too much, but I mean these are like 2K images.

Where are you getting your artwork?

Like the original source of album artwork? From whatever is already embedded with the music file. I buy mostly from Amazon and Napster. And then from stuff I DL from music blogs, either what is already included with the file, or whatever iTunes matches up with it when I import it over into my library.

Do this. Go to: http://www.discogs.com/ Download a good album image. Pick a song in itunes, select GET INFO and drag the image into the artwork pane, hit OK. Sync that song to your phone and view it on the unit. Let me know what happens.

Cool, I'll give it a try when I get home. Still, the artwork is way down on my list of things. Don't really mind much at all, esp. as I never enlarge the artwork.

Anyway, as far the dictionary, on top of taking forever, it doesn't remember my iPhone catalog when I plug back in later either. So the VR is pretty much useless for me right now. Hopefullt it's sorted out in an update.

Cool, I'll give it a try when I get home. Still, the artwork is way down on my list of things. Don't really mind much at all, esp. as I never enlarge the artwork.

 

Anyway, as far the dictionary, on top of taking forever, it doesn't remember my iPhone catalog when I plug back in later either. So the VR is pretty much useless for me right now. Hopefullt it's sorted out in an update.

You're not hooking up any other IPhone/IPod in between hooking up your IPhone?

Cool, I'll give it a try when I get home. Still, the artwork is way down on my list of things. Don't really mind much at all, esp. as I never enlarge the artwork.

 

Anyway, as far the dictionary, on top of taking forever, it doesn't remember my iPhone catalog when I plug back in later either. So the VR is pretty much useless for me right now. Hopefullt it's sorted out in an update.

 

You're not hooking up any other IPhone/IPod in between hooking up your IPhone?

Nope. I let it run last night after I got home with my car parked for about 30-45 minutes, came down and it was all done. Tested some artist/album VR prompts and it worked fine.

This afternoon, went out to lunch, plugged in my phone, and the VR didn't recognize anything I said, exact same artists that came up last night. Didn't plug in any ipod or any other phone in between.

This pretty much happened after the first time I let it run, too.

Is there maybe a firmware update that is worth running on the Z110?

There are no updates for the 110. How many songs do you have on the phone.

There are no updates for the 110. How many songs do you have on the phone.

~1,500.

So no update, eh? What is the ballpark release date for the new units they touted at CES? I'm assuming they'll have a pay update/upgrade for the Z110s with that software? Hopefully it's fixed in that?

About only other thing I'm thinking might be tripping it up is if I have maybe some song/artists with special characters or something? Could that be screwing it up? Still, not sure how that could cause it to forget the entire catalog after re-connecting ....

Also, I'm on the newest iPhone firmware 3.1.3, has anyone tried synching up with that firmware? Maybe that is an issue?

So is it the indexing that is the problem? Or just VR.... there is a bug for the VR ....

But if it's taking longer than a minute or so to update the IPod VR on startup, then you have something wrong with your IPhone...

Try syncing it with just a single bonified artist downloaded via Itunes... Uncheck the "include video" option in ITunes... and see if you can reproduce it...

That stupid "include video" option has given my grief with our BMW X5 before.... My IPhone worked perfect...But my wife's gave her sheet...

In all honesty, I don't think it's the unit's problem....

Well, did some experimenting tonight ...

First, to determine if the problem was some weird track/artist name, I stripped off almost everything on my iPhone except a couple pretty basic playlists.

That still didn't catalog my iPhone quickly.

Next, I took my older 5th gen video iPod, and dropped everything off that. I put on a few basic albums (different from what was on my iPhone). This worked fine, took about 30 seconds.

Then, I added to my iPod the same songs that didn't work on my iPhone. Worked fine on my iPod. Didn't read everything super quickly, took about 30 seconds, but it worked.

On top of that, I turned off my car, unplugged the iPod, turned off VR Catalog, and then started it up again and plugged in my iPod.

I was still able to do VR song/artist commands. (Unlike what I experience with my iPhone).

So the problem is clearly with the iPhone (FYI I have a 3G with 1.3.3).

When my girlfriend gets back in town I'm going to try to VR Catalog her phone, as I believe she still had 1.3.2. If that truly is the culprit I might have to figure out a way to dropdown to 1.3.2 again.

Alternately, I might just get a new 160 GB iPod and dump everything onto that and run my music off of that instead.

UPDATE: My neighbor actually has a 3G with 1.3.2 on it and I tried connecting it. No dice. Still didn't read the catalog. So I guess it's the combo the HU & iPhone.

Just so there is no confusion, he is referring to firmware 3.13 and 3.12 instead of 1.33 and 1.32. Anyway, certainly is strange this is not a common problem with a lot of iPhone folks. One more thing to try. Make sure your unit is booting to the map screen and you hit the OK button on the map screen before going to the iPod screen to do your catalog. There is a slim chance this could be related to the known VR bug previously discovered.

Yes, sorry I mean 3.1.3. Long day.

Anyway, last night I also dropped about 5K songs onto my iPod and this morning tried to connect it to see if it scanned the VR catalog in a reasonable amount of time; however, I let it sit for 5+ minutes and it didn't finish.

So at this point, I'm not sure what is at fault. I have to assume though it's more the unit.

Interesting side note, the iPod album art is not pixelated much at all and looks fine as a thumbnail.

Chalk the whole thing up to imperfect technology. Hopefully they get it right in an update ...

Uncheck the "include video" option in ITunes... and see if you can reproduce it...

 

That stupid "include video" option has given my grief with our BMW X5 before.... My IPhone worked perfect...But my wife's gave her sheet...

 

In all honesty, I don't think it's the unit's problem....

Interesting, I'm not familiar at all with the "include video" option? Is that a default in iTunes? Something weird I noticed when I synced my entire library to my Ipod and it didn't work (after working with a limited number of files) is that the Z110 had a live section for "video" and pretty much listed my entire music library as available "video". Even though it was just audio files.

So maybe that setting is messing something up. I'll try unticking it when I get home.

I wasn't at a machine that ITunes installed, to get the exact name of the option.... I try to keep ITunes off my computers as it likes to be the first thing to load up on boot, and is a horrible resource hog... My Mac doesn't seem to mind it though... as odd as that may be

Anyhoo... My wife downloaded an album that had included video content... Her X5 would not catalog her music either... I plugged my Iphone up and it would instantly update and worked perfect... It ended up being some fruity OneRepublic album that she downloaded, that had a bonus video within....I have no idea how I figured this out... But I first omitted it in the sync...it worked.... then I resynced and unchecked the video option, and viola....