Entertainment For Lively Minds
How does I Tunes work?
Posted by Ralph on 27 March 2011 - 12:30pm.
I don't really understand the technical side of these things (but then I only has a basic grasp of how records actually played).
I just put Dance To The Music by Sly and The Family Stone to copy into I Tunes and was faced with a choice of two versions.I'm quite pleased that the standard 9 track version has now become a 15 track version with extra tracks but I've no idea what goes on to cause this.
There are no clues when I Tunes invites you to pick the correct version except on the occasions when it offers you an entirely different album altogether.
Is this the digital equivalent of mis-pressed vinyl?
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It's an algorithm
There is nothing on most CDs that identifies what's on it. What happens when iTunes tries to identify it is that it takes the number of tracks, total CD time and length of all the individual tracks, puts them into an algorithm and comes up with a number. Hopefully the number will be unique but sometimes it's not. When it's not, there will be two (or more) listings in the database matching the number which is when you have to make the decision yourself.
iTunes
doesn't work
and I say that as an Apple Fanboi (lapsed)
iKnow
Trying to drag and drop podcasts onto my iPhone is a pain in the harris. Some days it works fine, some days it just won't do it.
Harris?
Err, shouldn't that be aris, rather than harris?(as in aris=aristotle=bottle=bottle and glass=arse)
I stand corrected
I'd misunderstood that particular phrase all these years.
Itunes is ruining my life.......
.....my 5 year old ipod died last week. My wife bought me a 64GB Ipod touch last week. I'd lost all my playlists due to my PC dying but slowly getting them back.
Anyway, today, plugged it in to update it and the "you have a software update" came up. I clicked "yes" and after a while the ipod crashed. Had to reset then spend 5 hours reloading. Lost my FIFA11 game that i'd downloaded by wifi.
Itunes is a goddam pain in the ass.
I love ipods, hate itunes ;o(
Is there anyway to control an ipod via other software?? Seriously, i'm interested to know.
Media Monkey, on Windows
will handle just about any portable audio device and is fantastic for managing music libraries, particularly if your collection is large.
It's available in a free version which isn't quite so good for library management and CD ripping or a fairly cheap paid "Gold" version with extra features. A lifetime license (slightly more again) is the way ahead AFAIC, as it gives free upgrades when new major versions are released. Version 4 will be released before long, having pretty much finished beta testing. For some reason I've had trouble burning CDs from it (v3.2), so it's not pefect, but getting back to your original inquiry I've had less trouble loading up my 160GB iPod Classic from MM than I ever used to have from iTunes.
It's a small world
The exact same thing is happening to me now. This minute as I type I am reloading my ipod. 30,000 songs takes a long time to load. My ipod is all of six weeks old.
I still can't work out
How to get all tracks from an album into one folder. EG, the Ce Lo Green album is in three folders as it has tracks with guest artists. Is there something I'm missing here?
All you need to do is to
All you need to do is to edit the info within iTunes - in this case just remove the guest artists names........
Highlight all the tracks
Right-click/Get Info
Confirm "yes" to editing multiple tracks question
Select the "options" tab
Make sure you select "yes" from the "part of a compilation" dropdown menu
That should do it.
Don't delete the guest artist's names!
Highlight all the tracks in the album. Right click, go to "get info." In the "album artist" field type "Ce Lo Green." This will now appear as a "Ce Lo Green" album but the individual tracks will be correctly credited with the guest artists as appropriate.
Thanks to you both
I'll try that tomorrow
Thanks from me too
I didn't know that either. I'm sure there's lots of things that I do the long way round. Once it's on the Pod I'm sorted except for it being full and those 16283 tracks just don't seem to be enough.
Or...
You could put the guest artist in the song title:
And then just change the artist to Cee Lo Green.
Alternatively, you can leave the guest artists as they are but type Cee Lo Green in the Album Artist field.
which of course is utterly fine
unless you're the kind of anally retentive type who'll want the shaggin' track title to be 'just so' so that last.fm scrobbling picks it up properly...#firstworldproblems
*smiley* - not having a go at your 'fix' at all; it's what I do meself!
(btw - as retreads go, isn't Bright Lights Bigger City the BEST Billie Jean one you've heard in an age?)
My god
I thought I was the only one. The moments agonising over whether it's a 'feat.' or a 'with'. :D
And yes, BLBC is crying out for a very obvious mashup.
Is this still a problem with last FM?
I thought they recognise multiple versions of the same song these days
I thought it was an 'omage
to this:
there's a fair bit of that in there too, alright...
It's one of the best basslines ever, isn't it?
'Tis that.
About time there was another kids TV prog that dads could.. erm.. enjoy to the same.. erm.. extent. If you know what I mean.
Word of warning about the
Word of warning about the "part of a compilation" fix.
If you have decided to make the album into a compilation, and you have the compilation choice in your music menu, then the artist will not appear in the 'music > artists' section (unless they appear in another album separate of the compilation). This is to stop lot's of artists that only appear in say one or two songs in compilations from clogging up your 'artist' section.
To get them to appear in this section you can go to Settings > Music Menu and untick 'Compilations'.
I prefer to put the feat. artist info in the song title but it is all a matter of preference.
Geez, it's all so confusing isn't it...
It's actually dead easy:
In the info menu you have a space for "artist" and "album artist". Put all the combinations of artist and guests in the first, and make sure that "album artist" is identical on all tracks. The album will then appear under the "album artist" name, with all tracks in the corrects order.
Indeedy.
In my iTunes, I don't even have the "Artist" column available to view at all - everything is sorted by Album Artist. Which only translates well to the iPod (or in my case, phone) if you view everything by album, rather than by artist.
Thanks chaps!
but let's face it, iToonez is a crap bit of software
I find it strange that it's so despised
Having used quite a few bits of media libarry software over the years, the one I prefer is iTunes. I really don't understand the problem that people have with it. It allows me to easily and clearly organise my library. I don't use the iTunes store very often but having used iTunes since before that existed, I see it as a bolt on anyway. I particularly like the fact that once I get everything looking right in Itunes, it will be fine when I drag it onto an ipod, any ipod. You can also have files dotted around your computer and you can use iTunes to drag them onto and SD card for the car etc. Perhaps the key is to set everything to manual so that it never takes over anything.
Nail/head
I've been using iTunes for years with everything set to manual. Works like a dream for me.
My only criticism would be that recent versions have become bloated with non-music related functionality - phones/iPads etc - so for music purposes I stick with iTunes 4. Old but does the job.
The other essential for me, is a collection of Applescripts to do bulk jobs within iTunes - some written by me but many acquired from the excellent www.dougscripts.com.
Phones/iPads
Those options are music-related if you're using your phone or iPad as a listening device, as millions do.
Well yes but it doesn't apply to me
so I've stuck with a version of iTunes that doesn't have that clutter (nor Genius, nor Ping)
I don't love it...
...but I don't despise it either. It does the job I want it to do.
(I do sometimes get narked with the whole "YOU CAN ONLY SYNC WITH ONE COMPUTER OR ELSE DEATH" commandment, but again, I can see why Apple do it. And it's pretty consistent with their usual MO - Macs, after all, have always used a very limited range of hardware, sourced by Apple themselves, to run their proprietary OS. You can make a non-Apple machine run OSX, if you really want to, but I've never really seen the point. They're just one of those cards-to-the-chest, we-call-the-shots companies when it comes to their own products, and always have been. I don't really blame them for that. It might be faintly annoying, especially for the type of person who thinks open-source is inherently more moral or something, but it hasn't stopped them shifting hodloads of devices and literally billions of songs and apps, has it? So it can't be as unusably bad as some claim.)
Multi computers
I've had ipods now for about 9 years and have never had a problem using them on multiple computers (except in the early days when it was Firewire only so there was a physical limitation because most Windows PCs didn't have firewire in those days). I think there may be a problem with ipods with Apps but I've never investigated that properly. I regularly plug my ipod into a Windows laptop, an XP netbook and an Snow Leopard MacMini and the only limitation I've encountered is the ability to update the firmware which has to be done on whatever platform the ipod was originally linked with. I should say that I don't tend to make up playlists on the PC and then move them to the ipod so that might be a limitation.
Hackintosh
Well, you can get the same performance for about half the price.
A geeks-only solution, though.
Most people can't even begin to be bothered.
True
I've considered doing it but on balance it's probably not worth the bother. Although I just cloned my hard drive with an Ubuntu CD, so that probably puts me in the realms of geekdom.
Yeah, I reckon.
;-)
Half the price?
I guess that assumes you don't put a value on your time?
Indeed... The beauty of the Apple approach
is you get everything from one supplier in the knowledge that it will all work together. For me, it's worth the extra capital outlay for the time and hassle saving.
The fact the kit looks good and is well-engineered is a nice aside.
Oh, but let's not?
I don't think I could bear to have the Apple/not-Apple debate ever again ever. It makes me want to sell all my Apple gear and go and live as a hermit on the Isle of Man or somewhere equally and improbably remote, dark and desperate.
(Joking about the Isle of Man)
But anyway:
Mark Williams should be worshipped.
We need to find him and make him one of The Massive. He'd fit in here.
Yes.
We did look for him but everyone we asked just said
they ain't seen him, right?
Is there a real alternative, though? On a Mac?
Maybe I'm just used to its idiosyncracies, but doesn't it make a reasonably decent fist of marshalling potentially massive song collections? I know it's bloated, has a ton of useless bells and whistles (Genius, Ping et al) and most worryingly is a vital cog in the increasingly evil-ish Apple ecosystem. But for all that - doesn't it do its job OK?
VLC
The library functions are basic but it is an excellent music player. And it plays FLAC files, if you prefer (I hear the howls of anguish and derision already) better quality files.
There's nothing I love better...
...than inaudibly better audio. ;-)
Although
your dog will appreciate the increased frequency range. (Assuming your dog is into Richard Thompson and Stackridge.)
Have an up arrow, Bob.
I think the joy comes from that (frankly rather smug) sense of using a cultish, below-the-radar piece of software that makes you feel just a touch but pleasantly, well, elitist? :->
Is FLAC really that below-the-radar these days?
Pretty much all the downloads I buy are in FLAC and it's certainly the 'industry-standard' in trading circles.
VLC don't got
a graphic equaliser, I play all my stuff on a bass heavy setting
or has VLC just hidden it?
I'd dump iToonez if I could, my main headache with it is missing tracks - I've had to switch back to my old Mirror Door G4 this week as my iMac went in for an optical drive swap (completed in four working days, no quibble BTW) - and 90% of the tracks in its iToonez Music folder have disappeared. It happens from time to time on my Big Fuck Off! iMac too.
so that's why I think iToonez is pish!!!
Mac Version has hidden equaliser
The Windows version has an equaliser button on the main interface so it's obvious. On the OSX version you should be able to get at it via the Window drop down menu or just use Shift|MacKey|E.
As far as your missing tracks are concerned, have the tracks actually disappeared or is iTunes just no longer seeing them?
If it's the latter, if you make sure you do regular (daily?!) backups of the iTunes xml library files, it's a relatively simple job of rebuilding your library if something goes wrong. I recently moved my whole library from one Mac to another and I took the opportunity to merge some folders and just copied the xml file, hand edited it with a few "replace alls" and moved everything to the new mac and it's all worked fine ever since.
I run scared from iTunes.
It's always been ok-ish for me, both on PC and Mac. I don't over-stress it. I don't use iPods much so mine gets a topping-up every six months or so. Mrs L is happy with how it copes with her iPad and iPhone.
But We'll be putting another iPad on soon. And rejigging settings. There may be some swearing ahead.