iPhone backup slow after syncing PocketPedia

[ltcarter47]

My iPhone backup (when I plugged in to sync) has been going for about 20 minutes. It's almost done. Usually this takes about a second or two. I'm wondering if it's backing up all the DVDPedia info I just synced to it. Is this to be expected?


UPDATE: Seems to be much faster on subsequent syncs. Must have just been the first time backup.

Overall, very cool little app guys! I know I'll love having my library available while I'm out and about without having to load the iPhone exported site.

[Conor]

It could be a combination of both Apple's first 2.0 backup as well as the first Pocketpedia backup. Like it bigger desktop Pedia brothers the database is small and fast but the covers take up some space. Although they are resized for iPhone, the size is still a few tens of kilobytes per cover as the iPhone has a great screen and we want the covers to look dashing. However they are individual files and would only need to be backup once by iTunes. Thank you for the feedback.

[JRBTempe]

I'm noticing the same thing here... I've done several syncs with my new iPhone 3G so it's not the initial 2.0 backup. I think it's a combination of new applications I've downloaded since and their data. Gonna need a bigger hard drive soon! LOL

JRB

[Paulson]

I'm having the same experience using an iPod touch. Backups are much slower now. This may be an Apple issue, not Pedia's, though.

[billydo]

I can confirm that with my DVDpedia-iPhone setup:

• iPhone sync times become very long (like overnight in my case, for a 4,700-DVD collection)
• Unfortunately, every time the iPhone is put on the cradle the full backup starts all over again. In other words, the slow backup is not a first-time problem, it's an everytime problem.

Deleting the app from my iPhone cures both problems immediately.

[Conor]

Strange that the backup is starting again from the beginning, iTunes should be smart enough to know that the covers files have not changed. We are looking into it, trying to find out if there is a way to disable the backup of the covers that can be synced again in case of a restore or from Amazon for those without the pedias.

[Paulson]

Same experience here as billydo--overnight-length sync times, and it wants to do a complete backup/sync every time I hook my iPod touch to the computer.

I have not deleted the app from the iPod, though.

[JRBTempe]

I decided to delete PocketPedia tonight (oh the pain!) to see if my backup time improves... and sadly, it does, considerably! So there's definitely something going on here that could be PocketPedia-specific (although the backup is still longer than it should be even without PocketPedia, so there could very well be an iTunes/iPhone 2.0 issue). The Apple support boards are full of people with the same long backup times, too.

JRB

[groo]

Boy, did I have a bad introduction to DVDPedia! I got the free iPhone App, didn't like it (it doesn't have search capabilties yet), but then looked at DVDPedia. Downloaded the Mac app, and it pulled my entire library out of Delicious. Now, DVDPedia seems great; I just paid the $18, and I won't have to stare at Delicious Library taking three minutes to launch. Since by that time I'd read about syncing between PocketPedia & DVDPedia, I was prepared and had my iPhone connected to a USB power source. It took a bit of time (maybe a half hour?) to download my library from DVDPedia, which seemed reasonable.

Then I synced my iPhone. It took a long time. Then it took even longer. After about two hours I decided to just reset the iPhone and try again. An hour after that, I went to sleep, my iPhone's ghostly "Syncing" screen still doing its little syncing animation. After waking up, the progress bar (for the backup phase) had moved to about 2/3 complete. So, something was happening. I waited three more hours for it to complete (total time: 8 hours, 15 minutes). That's not good. I know, 2200 DVDs is a lot of info, but it only takes up 200 MB of memory (including covers).

So I was less than impressed. However, every subsequent sync has been way shorter; about nine minutes. Given that that's within range of my Palm sync times, I'm okay with it. But you've got to warn people!

IAC, even though it doesn't have the advanced search and sort functions in my Palm Jfile database, it's good enough to keep me from buying duplicate DVDs, and it pulled me away from Delicious (glad I was holding off on the DL upgrade), and I like the ability to customize the displays, which really irritated me about DL.

Bottom line: Your trick of offering a free app to pull people in and see your shareware app worked on at least one person, and I'm happy with it.

[Conor]

Welcome to DVDpedia and Pocketpedia. We are sorry about the slow sync issue that you experienced. As you mentioned 200 megs is not that much information and the once synced once, it shouldn't need to sync the covers again. From the word in the Apple forums it seems to be an issue with the new iTunes 7.7. For some the sync take too long with our without Pocketpedia. Fortunately for most users the backup sync is normal and does take a few minutes longer after a Pocketpedia sync, but subsequent backups are fast as they should be.

Getting people to buy DVDpedia by giving them Pocketpedia for free was not our intention; our intention was to give our existing Pedia users a great product to carry their collection on their iPhone and iPod Touch free. However that is works backwards and turns Pocketpedia users into Pedia users is an added benefit.

[chanhuff]

If you press the small x button when it is backing up it skips the backup and syncs.

[Vanders]

I have BookPedia and after installing PocketPedia, it takes much longer, but like others have said, my second sync took about 1/4 the time of the first sync. We have about 1200 books in BookPedia. I'm so glad that the second sync was faster, because I like having PocketPedia on my first gen iPhone...no G3 service here and didn't want to pay $20 extra for my wife and I for the same service. I'm really missing the GPS though.

[Ted]

Yes, I am having the same issue with 2200+ entries in DVDPedia. As has been mentioned with a ~264MB size of the DVD data there is no conceivable reason this backup should take overnight.

And obviously PocketPedia is far from the only app with the potential for a lot of data -- just the first one we're using. Thus, I strongly urge you to report this to Apple as a major bug -- they need make the iPhone backup go much, much faster for the amount of data involved. And in the mean time you really need to warn users to expect long backup times, so they don't go crazy trying to figure out what's wrong as I did.

I don't even dare to re-attempt including my 352MB worth of CDPedia data. Speaking of which, PocketPedia needs a way of deleting a single collection (CDPedia's in this example) without having to delete and re-install the whole app.

Ted

[Conor]

We have reported the bug to Apple. Thank you for all the details.

To delete an entire collection slide your finger across it to activate the delete button.

[Paulson]

"If you press the small x button when it is backing up it skips the backup and syncs."

Can't find a small x button. Where is it?