MTP support

[obetz]

Hello Scooter Software,

what about supporting MTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol), useful for portable devices?

Oliver

[Aaron]

Hello,

Adding MTP support is on our Customer Wishlist; I'll add your notes to our entry. Were there specific devices you wished to compare against?

[obetz]

Hello,

consider Android smartphones. Synchronisation is not a strength of Android (compared to Palmos).

Oliver

[mgillespie]

+1

BC is already the tool of titans and does everything you could wish for and more.

However MTP support would be nice...

[chrisjj]

I too would dealrly like this but since it has been on the BC wishlist for four years now, I'll ask: does anyone have a stopgap solution? Just a CLI .exe that did transfers would tide me over. Thanks.

[snidely.too]

Hello,

consider Android smartphones. Synchronisation is not a strength of Android (compared to Palmos).

Oliver

FWIW, I use BC3 on a G2 just fine, in tethered mode. This is my default backup procedure, and photo-transfer method.

I'm not sure I've made any attempt to use BC3 over a WiFi connection. I am not sure I've used BC3 against a DropBox directory, either.


/dps

[obetz]

FWIW, I use BC3 on a G2 just fine, in tethered mode.

What do you mean by "tethered mode" (regarding this topic)?

I know two USB modes to access the phone's storage:

1. MTP (this thread's topic), the default mode of my Galaxy S2 when connected to an USB host (PC). MTP claims to be transaction safe, so you don't need to "eject" the device. In this mode, I can use the phone.

Also other media players also support MTP.

2. MSC aka UMS (mass storage device). To start this mode, I need a bunch of taps, quite annoying. Besides this, no other application can run as long the phone is in this mode.

Oliver

[snidely.too]

What do you mean by "tethered mode" (regarding this topic)?

I know two USB modes to access the phone's storage:

1. MTP (this thread's topic), the default mode of my Galaxy S2 when connected to an USB host (PC). MTP claims to be transaction safe, so you don't need to "eject" the device. In this mode, I can use the phone.

Also other media players also support MTP.

2. MSC aka UMS (mass storage device). To start this mode, I need a bunch of taps, quite annoying. Besides this, no other application can run as long the phone is in this mode.

Oliver

I guess MSC/UMS, because I get a prompt from the phone with a button "to turn on USB storage", and when I do, it notes that the SD card is unavailable to on-phone applications, and that affected apps will be stopped.

So that takes me 3 extra taps (well, one swipe and 2 taps).


FWIW, I have just tried running FTPServer on the phone to allow BC3 to connect by WiFi; it seems to work just fine, although it takes a bunch of taps for the first setup (I hadn't connected the phone to the current WiFi before, so I had to enter the password there, as well as checking the config of FTPServer). For a few simple tests, it seems to work just fine.

/dps

[moymike]

MTP mode

Just giving a bump to MTP mode. I am also using an android phone, and sync'ing my pictures/music/books with BC would be nice.

[chrisjj]

Just giving a bump to MTP mode. I am also using an android phone

Meanwhile BC does MSC mode. Does that work on your Android?

[obetz]

Meanwhile BC does MSC mode.

What does BC specific to MSC - that's just filesystem stuff (managed by the OS), isn't it?

Does that work on your Android?

read the whole thread, especially my posting 2012-01-28:

"To start this mode, I need a bunch of taps, quite annoying. Besides this, no other application can run as long the phone is in this mode"

Oliver

[chrisjj]

What does BC specific to MSC

Nothing specific.

- that's just filesystem stuff (managed by the OS), isn't it?

Correct.

"To start this mode, I need a bunch of taps, quite annoying. Besides this, no other application can run as long the phone is in this mode"

So that's a Yes

[dr_barnowl]

Linux MTP

On Linux, MTP can be just another file system ; integration with GVFS means that (with a patched version of GVFS / Nautilus) an Android MTP device just shows up as a folder.

I don't think BC understands the URI scheme though, so you can't use the context menus.

mtp://[usb:002,006]/Internal%20storage/Music

But as with other GVFS mounted file systems, you can just feed it the actual mount point

~/.gvfs/mtp/Internal storage/Music

(this location has been changed in newer versions (after 12.04) of Ubuntu - presumably to stop automatic backup programs from trying to backup GVFS mounted drives - it's now under /run )

I find the MTP support a bit flaky at the moment (and as I said, you have to install a patched version of GVFS from a PPA), but that's hardly BCompare's fault.

[Mickets]

Hello,

Adding MTP support is on our Customer Wishlist; I'll add your notes to our entry. Were there specific devices you wished to compare against?

Hello,

Any news on MTP support? The new Android phones don't have MSC anymore, only MTP. Which means I can't use BC to sync files between the Android and my PC.

Thanks for any feedback.

[Zoë]

I've done work towards getting MTP support done, but there's still a bunch of work to do before it's ready for release, and I can't promise it for the initial 4.0 release. On Android there are some unexpected limitations, like setting last modified times doesn't work, and copying files within the device requires copying the data off of it and then back on.

There are FTP and SMB servers available for Android on the Google Play store which you should be able to use in the meantime.

The initial support will be Windows only, unfortunately. We aren't using Gnome or KDE's VFS layer right now, so we can't just rely on their support. I have looked into using libmtp, but it will require a completely separate implementation from the Windows version, and it appears to have some quirks because vendors only test against Windows' MTP.