flyingarmadillo

One other thing you can do, that doesn't even require Pandora's Jar or Firefox, though you will have to have Flash 8 - just go into your temp folder, and rename plugtmp-1-1 or whatever, to Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused.mp3 (or what have you.) The files are already mp3 files - the only thing Pandora's Jar does is rename them and move them, which might be easier for n00bs to do manually.

It's still unclear exactly how Pandora decides where to cache the files. Probably for you, it's just performing the expected, "normal" behavior all the time - two files at a time, saved as plugtmp-whatever. Be careful, though - if it ever stops doing that, it won't warn you, and you'll end up with a few traitor songs that aren't what they claim to be.

Okay, after further testing, it looks like Pandora only caches one song ahead. However, it waits until the previous song has at least started, and sometimes apparently doesn't cache at all (this looks to be why the first song never seems to copy right). Since it takes time for the cache to build, it looks like it does help to wait for any given song to be halfway through before trying to copy it. That doesn't always work, though, as some people have mentioned, and a close look at the temp directory shows why - When Pandora downloads songs, it usually saves them as plugtmp-#-1, 2, 3, and so on, directly in the temp folder. However, sometimes (after some size limit is reached?) it picks a (seemingly random) plugtmp-# folder and saves the file as a long string of numbers. Pandora's Jar doesn't notice, and keeps grabbing the second-most-recent plugtmp file. That explains why sometimes, it keeps getting the same song over and over again. So, what can we do about this? Glad you asked. The key is to pay very close attention to the temp folder, making sure that the song you want is always the second-most-recent file in the temp directory that begins with the character string "plugtmp". First, make sure Cruise Control is off. In its current incarnation, CC isn't much more than a recipe for frustration. You want to keep your hands on the wheel to make sure you're getting exactly what you want. Pandora usually caches two songs at a time (this is the expected behavior) so watch the temp folder during the first minute or so of the song you want. Once there are two files beginning with plugtmp in that folder, it's time to click the grab button. If Pandora only caches one song, which often happens the first time you load it, or after an unusually large file, you can get around that by creating a text file and labelling it plugtmp.txt. Pandora's Jar will think that's the buffer track and grab the song you want. You can get around the alternate-folder problem similarly: cut-and-paste the track you want (I always make sure to delete old temp files so that the track you want is the only track in the folder) and rename it plugtmp or plugtmp-arewasfa, as long as it begins with plugtmp. Then make sure it's the second-to-most recent plugtmp file in the directory, either by creating a text file, or, if Pandora's cached a second song, repeating the process for that. The procedure I've outlined is time-consuming and requires almost constant attention, but it let me get 100% of the songs I wanted, with no mislabellings. Hope you like it!

In the file Mp3Processor.java, there's the following code snippet, which tells Pandora's Jar what file to use: sortFilesByMostRecent(files); boolean foundBuffer = false; File tmpMp3File1 = null; File tmpMp3File2 = null; for (File file : files) { if (!foundBuffer) { tmpMp3File1 = file; foundBuffer = true; } else { tmpMp3File2 = file; break; } } Everyone see what this does? It looks in your plugtmp folder and chooses the second most recent file. Which would work fine, if Pandora buffered one file at a time. But it doesn't. It seems to download them in clumps: Five files, then play them all, then another five, etc. Which explains why the naming problem is sporadic; when the file it's playing happens to be the second-most recent file in the plugtmp directory, it works great. How to fix it? I haven't coded since high school, and don't have anywhere near the necessary chops, so I'll let smarter people than me figure that one out. What's needed is some way of figuring out exactly which file Pandora is reading from at any given moment. Any ideas? Alternatively, is there something you can do in Firefox to keep Pandora from buffering more than two songs at a time? Adjusted cache size maybe? Just tossing out ideas. Hope this helps and thanks for the great app!