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Sunday 10 June 2007

Nokia Media Transfer for E-Series

Nokia seems to have a thing about E vs N.
They are not the only ones - some carriers fall foul of it too.
N-Series unfairly get some fun stuff that us E-Series users don't get offered, officially.

Oftentimes though something can be hacked to make it work. Nokia Media Transfer (at least 1.0 beta) is one of those times.

Update #1: More profiles added from commenters - thanks everyone!
Update #2: Nokia has unofficially pushed out an E70 profile! To get the update simply choose Add Device... from Nokia Media Transfer and click Next (the update lives in /Library/Application Support/Nokia Media Transfer/Profiles).
Update #3: More official support (originally noted here) for E-Series phones -- my Mac has downloaded profiles making some, but not all of the profiles here redundant. The tool downloads E50, E61i, E65, E70 and E90 profiles.

If you go to Nokia's official download page for Nokia Media Transfer, as of this writing almost every N-series phone is supported but no other phones at all. Yet they all share the same OS (on the phone) and roughly the same media components, so this shouldn't be the case.

Not being one to want to miss out a free tool (and knowing that Mac software tends to be more flexible) I mucked around a bit.

If you simply download and run Nokia Media Transfer with, for example an E61 connected via Bluetooth or USB, the Setup Assistant will simply say 'Not supported'. However you'll notice that there is a spinner that says 'Downloading profile updates...', so our phones might become supported. For now though they are not, however that means the profiles are stored somewhere.

The profiles are actually stored in Nokia Media Transfer.app/Contents/Resources/Profiles. However if you want to make a profile, don't put it there. When you've run Nokia Media Transfer at least once, a corresponding folder in Library/Application Support/Nokia Media Transfer/Profiles in your home folder is created. We'll store our profile here.

Now you don't need to follow along with this if you have an E61. I'm going to put my file here for download, but you will have to follow along for other phones. It is downloadable as an installer from here. Simply extract and mount the image, then run the installer, and you're done.

For those of you still following along, first you need a profile to copy from. Use Nokia's device specifications site (if you are unsure) to pick an N-series equivalent to your phone (for the E61 I chose the N73). Go into the application (right-click and choose Show Package Contents) and copy this profile into your Library/Application Support/Nokia Media Transfer/Profiles folder.

Now for the next part you'll need to have installed Apple's Developer Tools (aka Xcode) if you haven't already. The tool we need is Property List Editor. Rename your copied profile (ie, from n73.profile to e61.profile) then select it and select Open With... and navigate to Developer/Applications/Utilities/Property List Editor.

Now in Property List Editor you can change the settings to further match your phone. Here's mostly what I've changed so far:

  • profiles/0/conformanceGuaranteedFileExtensions - added m4a to the array (I'll explain why further down)

  • profiles/0/profileName - change this so it doesn't clash with the other profiles

  • profiles/0/supportedModels/0/modelNames/0 - change this to the correct model name

  • profiles/0/supportedModels/0/modelNumber - change this to Nokia's model number (this is written on the label underneath the battery in the phone - RM-89 for E61)


I also searched through the video entries and changed the 352x288 resolution to the native 320x240 screen resolution of the E61 so videos work too.

The first setting changes Media Transfer's iTunes Plus behaviour - if you've already gone through and used my method of fixing your iTunes Plus songs, they appear in iTunes (and thus to Media Transfer) as .m4a files. We know these files will work with the phone so we tell Media Transfer to simply copy them. Note that if you download new iTunes Plus tracks these will appear to Media Transfer as Purchased tracks, and it will continue to transcode them (otherwise they won't play!), which is the best behaviour. I'd set up a Smart Playlist for iTunes Plus (Kind contains "Purchased AAC") so you know which files you haven't fixed yet.

The remaining settings tell Media Transfer about the model of your phone so that it recognises it.

Now I had a problem where Media Transfer wouldn't recognise my phone after I added the profile, so after saving the file follow these steps:

  1. Quit Property List Editor.

  2. Quit Nokia Media Transfer (and its Setup Assistant) - click Cancel on the Assistant and choose Quit Nokia Media Transfer from the little button in the menu bar.

  3. Go to Library/Application Support/Nokia Media Transfer from your home folder in Finder and delete Devices.plist.

  4. Restart Nokia Media Transfer by double-clicking it, then click it in the menu bar, choose Tools and Settings and then Add Device...

  5. Click Next on the Assistant, then turn Bluetooth on or connect the phone via USB and you should now be able to select your phone.



From this point all of Nokia's instructions should apply to your phone. Note that I unticked the option to make the phone appear as a digital camera -- since the E61 doesn't have a camera this doesn't apply -- though I didn't see anything in the profile to prevent this yet.

I've successfully synced fixed and converted iTunes Plus songs and videos directly from iTunes to the phone via both Bluetooth and USB (with USB being preferred). Note that you choose "PC Suite" for USB mode, which is good because it doesn't quit applications unlike Disk drive mode.

Update 12/08/2010: Changed link to GeoCities mirror.

38 comments:

  1. Thanks for the E61 profile. Work like a charm. Great job.

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  2. Wow~! I am very impressed.
    Thanks for the tutorial.
    Cheers
    Ed

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  3. Thanks a lot! With your instructions I got my e65 working - woohoo! :)

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  4. I tried and created a profile for my E70. So far, it works perfectly! Thank you!!

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  5. Thanks for comments everyone.

    If you want to send me your working profiles, I can bundle them all together, might help others...

    Joshua

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  6. Thanks for this Joshua, I'll fiddle about to get my e61i working and send you the profile (won't be this week as wife's birthday preparations take precedence)

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  7. I tried your installer for my e61i, but didn´t work. I guess it had to be the e61, without the "i". i will try manually. Txs

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  8. Yeah the E61i won't work with the standard E61 profile. But another reader has posted me an E61i profile, so you'll be able to used that.

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  9. Got the e61i working. Brilliant! Because I did click the 'treat the E61i as a camera' button NMT wants to take my movies and download them into iPhoto but that's not your fault.
    One suggestion though is that your E61 template automatically goes into the adminstrator library rather than that of the individual user. I may not want all users to have sync capability.

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  10. Re: the Administrator library, yeah that's my fault - couldn't figure out how to add it to the user's folder in PackageMaker. I'll work on that...

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  11. Had a bit of a hard time at first since I ran the installer after running the patch. Turns out I needed to remove the equivalent Nokia directory from my Library folder in my home dir. This caused it to be recreated from the global dir and everything worked ;-)
    Thanks!

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  12. Does anyone have a profile for E90? I will get mine today so I could try Media Transfer right away. Otherwise I have to make it myself...

    =)juha

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  13. Sorry Juha, I haven't received an E90 profile yet, but when you make one... :-P

    Thanks for following along.

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  14. Holy cow!! XCode is around 1GB download!

    I would really appreciate if someone would try to make E90-profile using for example N95's profile as they are both S30 3rd Ed FP1 -devices. The product id for Nokia E90 is RA-6. Internal screen is 800x352 and external the standard portrait QVGA.

    =)juha

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  15. 'Fraid so. Any old (Tiger or so) version of XCode will have Property List Editor -- so have a look for a Developer Tools CD or package (you might have one on your hard drive somewhere like /Applications/Installers, or there would have been an XCode CD if you have a retail Tiger box).

    Otherwise hold on and I'll send you a direct convert of the N95 one for you to test with...

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  16. Does anybody knows how the internal MP3 Player of the E60 (!) recognizes the music I put on the device? The profile is almost ready to upload but I am not able to play the music directly in the internal MP3 Player. Only the way to select the playlist file in the file manager works.

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  17. Profile modification also works for the Nokia 6620 - iTunes, iPhoto transfers work. Model #'s can be found here: http://www.gammu.org/support/phones/phonedb.php>. Thanks Josh!

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  18. Nice, thanks a lot! I might add that I had to delete the Media Transfer .plist file efter adding the e61 profile (before restarting). After this it worked!

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  19. Daniel, try this:

    In Music Player on the phone, choose Options, Music Library, then Options again, Update Music Library.

    That should get the phone to detect all of the music.

    Otherwise Nokia suggests using Gallery's tracks section to use the music. You shouldn't have to revert to File Manager.

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  20. I have an N95 so at first I didn't read you post, but eventually I did and I noticed the part where you add .m4a as a useable file extension for iTunes files - I have the problem that the program insists on converting my iTunes files (.m4a) even though my N95 can play them just fine, but it seems this trick could maybe fix that?? - I'm going to try this when I get home tonight :-)

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  21. Thanks Joshua, that method works.

    Another thing that bothers me is that I am not able to have the iPhoto albums directly accessible. I get the same folder structure as in iPhoto (2007-05-01-test.jpg). Everytime I want to search for a photo I have to scroll through all my photos.

    Do you have an idea to solve this problem as well?

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  22. Sorry Daniel, I don't use the photo syncing so I haven't tried that. No solution from me, anyone else?

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  23. anyone know if it's possible hack n.m.transfer's 6680.profile too. Eg.like Joshua King tutorial?

    thanks

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  24. No reason why not. I'd say just about any Series 60 3rd Edition phone that has a PC Suite USB mode and/or Bluetooth should work. And there's no harm in trying it out.

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  25. Brilliant - thank you for this. However... can anyone offer any help with the E65 profile? I've followed the (excellent) instructions to a T but i just can;t get any Tunes to work. I'm not able to drop any tunes into the folder that has been created for my phone in the iTune playlist menu.

    Can anyone help? thanks in advance

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  26. Thank you very much for the e61i profile... it works! Thanks again for finally having worked out a software that truely works with mac.
    Thanks, greetings

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  27. the problem whit 6680 is taht it is a 2rd edition not 3rd. it's the same??

    tahnks

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  28. Good point. If it's not 3rd edition there are lots of differences, so I expect it would not be as simple (if it would work at all). Can't help you with non-3rd edition, I don't have one.

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  29. shit!!i wait so many time for a nokia/mac software..someone would help me?


    thanks king..

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  30. IT WORKS!!IT WORKS!! GREAT!!
    THANKS!!
    I AMAZING.I HAD WAIT 2 YEARS FOR SEE MY PHONE IN THE DESKTOP,
    WORKS WITH 2nd series TOO.IT is like AN N70.

    SUPER!!

    I LOVE KING.U R GREAT!

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  31. works on 6680 also!! thanks for you guide!

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  32. Does anyone have Nokia 6110 Navigator profile?

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  33. thanks for posting this joshua, great job and very helpful indeed!

    does anybody have a problem on the e61 where album/artist tags on m4u files are not recognized? Is there a fix to that?

    Thanks!

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  34. Jay that is known. Here is the workaround I'm using:

    Make playlists for each of your albums -- I haven't gotten any album tagging to work on the phone -- and for the Artist, Title and Genre, use AtomicParsley with my patch to hack the file (again) to add Nokia-compatible tags.

    The metadata stuff was detailed here. Give that a try.

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  35. Cooooooooool!!!!
    I can also work with my 6680!!!

    Great!!!!
    Thank a lot

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  36. Hi!

    This is some wonderful stuff you are all pulling of here! Good job :). Do you guy's have any idea when the real version (not beta) will be published?

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  37. I've got no relationship at all with Nokia, so no idea when the full release will happen. Having said that I have had no problems with the beta at all so I can recommend using it.

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  38. I was just thinking that the real version probably will officially support a lot more nokia's than only the n-series.
    It would be great if Media Transfer Manager will be compatible with every Nokia with a camera and a mp3-player.
    Btw. You guy's seen the nokia 6500 (slide)? I like :).

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