need some ipod/itunes help

Factual Questions
1

I have had a Creative Zen Micro for a couple years now, but it’s too small (6gb). I’ve been thinking about buying a bigger music player so I can put all my music on it (over 4,000 mp3’s). Although I loved my Creative Zen, I decided to check out ipods mainly because they have a much bigger range of accessories and work with more devices (stereos, etc). Got an 80gb classic last week and am pretty happy with it so far. I love how itunes downloads album art automatically, but it’s kinda weird how it finds album art for some of the most obscure stuff in my collection (September Plateau) but can’t find Black Sabbath Paranoid album cover!

So if anyone here is experienced with itunes I have some questions.

I want the cover flow to show albums in the same order as the “albums” list. For example I have a “Colonel Jeffery Pumpernickel - A Concept album” with songs by various artists. If I go to the “albums” list on my ipod, this album is only listed once, and the artist is the first one that appears on the album. However, if I go to the “cover flow” list, it lists the same album once for every artist, which is not what I want it to do. Is there any way to change this?

Second (and possibly related to the first question), there is an option for “compilations” on my ipod. I had at least 10 compilation albums with songs from various artists that came up in itunes. They seem to be listed correctly in itunes, but when I select compilations on my ipod, nothing is there. How do I tag something as a compilation?

  1. Most of my double discs are divided into disc 1 and disc 2, but some of them are just listed as a single album, and the songs are all out of order (because they merged both cd’s together). How do I have it remember the correct order of the songs? Also, how do I have it play disc 1 and disc 2 consecutively?
2

I don’t know the answer to question 1 but you can find the compilation check-box by right-clicking on a song, or highlighting a group of songs, and selecting Get Info. At the bottom of the screen there will be a pull down box to select yes or no for compilations (the screen is different depending on whether you’ve highlighted a song or group of songs). This is also where you tell itunes what the song order is including an option for disk _ of _ (disk 1 of 2).

3

Thanks HKF!

I have another question, can I add windows media video files to my itunes/ipod and if so how? Can I add youtube videos?

4

You need software like this http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/software/windows_entry/free-ipod-video-converter1/ to convert wmv or YouTube videos to the correct format for the ipod. There is also an on-line converter here: http://vixy.net/ that I’ve used many times.

5

It’s not a matter of finding the album art, they provide album art for albums they sell and do not for albums they do not sell. iTunes just doesn’t bother to distinguish between purchased and ripped music for this purpose. You can easily add album art. I usually just go to Amazon.com and find the album there. Either Amazon’s picture or a customer submitted picture will work perfectly. Ideally, you want a 500x500 pixel JPEG, but iTunes will convert as needed. Also, you can always scan it yourself if you have the CD (and a scanner, of course).

6

Yes. Just drag the photo off Amazon’s web page to the empty cover art window in lower left corner of itunes. Make sure the songs you want the album applied to are selected.

Also, when you look up the cover in amazon, click on the cover to bring up the enlarged picture. That’s the better one to use.