CopyTrans Manager http://www.copytrans.net/copytransmanager.php
CopyTrans Manager is a standalone (= no installation required) iPod + iPhone / iTouch manager provided by WindSolutions LLC, a software company of "people who are passionate about music".
CopyTrans Manager is provided for free.
Installation and size:
CopyTrans Manager comes into two flavors: a company's global installer that lets you read a short description of every program before installing what you want, or a zip version "for advanced users". I opted for the later and if you do so, make sure to extract both the exe and ris files from the zip http://www.copytrans.net/download.php
Setup file 2.78 Mb; Size on disk 2.86 Mb
First impression and interface:
the iTunes-like brushed metal skin is pleasant and gives a professional feeling. The strictly graphic buttons are not obvious at first, but help keep the interface simple once you are used to them.
iTunes-like "Genre", "Artist" and "Album" lists allow to comfortably navigate through massive libraries.
Tracks can also be filtered by file type with elegant aqua-like icons (Music, Video, TV Shows, podcasts, etc.).
CopyTrans Manager's interface is extremely flexible and customizable: columns can be freely rearranged with drag & drops and all iTunes sorting parameters (columns) can be added or removed with right-click on any column's header.
Some pretty strange behaviors though: mouse scroll is based on the last active list and not on the mouse position.
Adding songs:
dragging music from a folder to the program's interface works flawlessly.
At first, it seems possible to drop songs directly from a folder to a playlist, but this only adds the songs to the iPod. Just like with all other managers in this test except iTunes, you'll have to add songs to the iPod / iPhone first and, then only, drag them to the iPod playlists.
Unlike SharePod, CopyTrans Manager remains perfectly functional while adding hundreds of songs to iPod / iPhone and switching to other open applications.
Ongoing operations are figured by two built-in progress bars, which are much more convenient and elegant than SharePod's annoying popup.
Songs are properly added to any iPhone and iPod Touch up to firmware 2.xx. without any database corruption.
On program close, CopyTrans Manager asks whether you wish to apply changes to iPod or not, which is an interesting alternative to other iPod managers that simply apply changes on the fly or on program close.
If you don't like this behavior, you can check the "Immediately apply changes to iPod" option in the "Settings" tab.
Another interesting particularity of this program is that it creates a backup of your iPod / iPhone / iTouch database before applying any changes to it, which allows for iPod restoration in case anything goes wrong.
Playlists:
here again, iTunes seems to have been the source of inspiration: "+" and "-" buttons allow to create or remove playlists.
Playlist can be renamed simply by clicking on their name.
Dragging songs from the library to the playlists is possible, but with a very unpleasant behavior: most of the time, you drop tracks between playlists, which does not have any effect, but lets you unsure about what happened.
Song reordering in playlists is not supported.
Artworks:
album covers show up in the upper right corner of the program and are correctly transferred to iPod and iPhone with songs.
Album arts cannot be edited.
Tags:
song info can be edited directly from the library, just like in iTunes, or from a very clean tag edition window.
A very pleasant detail: buttons to jump to the next or previous song from within the tag editing window.
We'll regret the absence of batch renaming capabilities that would allow to edit multiple songs at a time.
Video:
a thumbnail of the video shows up in the artwork area (REALLY COOL!).
Videos are added to iPod or iPhone as easily as Music, with drag & drop (like with all other iPod managers, including iTunes, videos need to be converted before adding them to iPod / iPhone. To convert videos for iPod, try Videora).
Photos:
CopyTrans Manager does not support photos, but the same company provides a very complete iPod photo manager called CopyTrans Photo.
TV Shows:
CopyTrans Manager identifies TV Shows correctly and displays them in a dedicated section.
Podcasts and audiobooks:
CopyTrans Manager recognizes podcasts and audiobooks and even sorts them into two different sections. That's the only manager other than iTunes that allows this.
Portability:
CopyTrans Manager can be installed directly on all iPod models. Just download the zip version of CopyTrans Manager and drag both the exe and ris files to your iPod. To make CopyTrans Manager portable on an iPhone / iPod Touch, use iPhone Browser, as these iPod models do not natively support disk use.
Built-in player:
CopyTrans Manager features a though elegant and well integrated music player with Repeat option.
It won't play .aac or .m4a files, unless you install the appropriate codecs, but, unlike SharePod, it tells you at least where the problem comes from.
Podcasts and audiobooks can be played too.
Computer library management and music suggestions:
CopyTrans Manager is a strict iPod / iPhone / iPod Touch manager. You won't manage your computer music with this tool nor will you need to synchronize your iPod / iPhone contents with your computer contents.
CopyTrans Manager does not provide music suggestions.
General appreciation:
CopyTrans Manager definitely turns out to be the best candidate of this test: super light and fast, it does not require any additional software and only takes a couple of seconds to download, extract and be ready to take control of your iPod.
I particularly appreciated the accent put on security, which seems to have been a top priority along its development: database backup and cancellable changes make it paranoid's favorite.
The similarity with iTunes is great too, no need to re-learn everything, playlists on the left, lists at the top (Genres, Artists, Albums) and a fully customizable interface make it an excellent bet for those who need to juggle with giant libraries. Some details could be improved to become more intuitive, but, apart from these, it's really an "iTunes alternative".
iPhone 2.xx support is brilliant and the program did not fail anywhere along the tests.
12/10 (can't give only 10 to such a gem)
