Thanks for that. Apparently the missing key was to hold down “Shift” while clicking “Advanced” to get a hidden option. I don’t know why they make iTunes work like a video game with hidden options.
stpauler, perhaps you need to find the relevant issue of “Nintendo Power” magazine to find out what keystrokes unlock the “don’t make decisions for me” option.
As for burning, I was previously burning just using Windows. Apparently iTunes can’t or won’t use the Windows burning software because it would tell me that I didn’t have any burning SW installed.
When I’m ready to burn a CD I’ll try the other instructions. But now that I have the songs in .mp3 format, I should still be able to just use Windows to burn these songs to a CD.
[ETA:] I will note that the instructions for burning a CD has 16 steps. Just saying…
Actually, I think even the “I don’t have a mobile phone” folks have given up that fight. Now it’s “I don’t have a smartphone”, as in, “Well, my phone only makes phone calls”.
Since we’re talking iTunes questions, I’ve got one.
Why doesn’t it recognize new tunes when I’ve added them to my library? (At least, my install doesn’t seem to. I’m probably doing something wrong.) Here’s the deal: I have a bunch of MP3s, each organized into folders by album and artist, stored in a central folder called \Toonz. I added this folder to my iTunes library after installing iTunes because I received an iTouch as a gift. No worries, we’re off and running.
Except. I use Windows Media Player to rip new CDs that I’ve bought to \Toonz, again organized by artist and album. When I open iTunes after ripping all the new CDs, there’s no new MP3 goodness in there. iTunes doesn’t know that I’ve added new stuff to the library; it doesn’t automatically recognize it. I either have to add the new stuff to the library manually or respecify \Toonz as my library (after which I then get duplicates. Oi.). Why?
I realize that I’m not doing it the way I’m “supposed” to: no, I’m not using iTunes to rip my CDs, I’m using something else. I’m using Media Player because I’m more familiar with it and, I’ll admit, I don’t care for iTunes much. It boggles my mind that it doesn’t automatically update and see the new stuff, but it doesn’t. Is there a setting somewhere or something simple that I’m missing?
Unlike WMP, iTunes doesn’t “watch” arbitrary folders for changes. I think they added this capability in a recent version of iTunes but I think it has to be a specific folder. I don’t have it on this PC (and can’t install it) so I might be talking out me arse.
Snickers I don’t think you are missing anything. That is one of my peeves with itunes as well. windows media player, winamp, squeeze box basically everything I have tried but itunes recognizes if you copy music into your music folder and adds it easily without any hassles. That is sort of par for the course with apple. Things work very well if you do it the apple way but if you think a little different it is sort of a hassle.
I always enjoy* hearing about people who never connect their iPod, iPhone, iPad to a computer because they have some irrational fear or hatred of iTunes…then something happens to the device (lost, stolen, accident, whatever) and they lose everything on it. Then they think that somehow Apple has all this stuff stored for them and can just give it back. News Flash: Apple doesn’t have access to your device and doesn’t store shit for you.
The whole point of connecting these devices to iTunes, other than software updates, is to ensure that you have that content backed up on the computer. If you don’t, then you’re a fool, and it is entirely YOUR FAULT when something happens to it.
You are duplicating all of your files. That’s okay, but you are wasting space.
iTunes keeps all music files somewhere in its folders. When you import, it COPIES the mp3 files into the iTunes folder. If you want to use iTunes as well as some other player, then what you want to do is rip new CDs to a temp folder. Add that temp folder to iTunes (drag and drop is fine). iTunes will make copies of the files.
Then you can drop your temp file into whatever other folder you want. Or delete or whatever.
Note, if you don’t delete it, you now have two copies of each file floating around on your harddrive
What annoys me the most about iTunes is that Apple is giving up an excellent marketing opportunity. You’d think Apple would make the software used by people who aren’t using an Apple an example of a simple, easy-to-use application. Instead, millions of Windows users use iTunes and end up thinking “what a lousy piece of software, why would I want to buy a computer from these guys?”. :smack:
Usually the only people that complain about iTunes in a Windows computer are the people that are trying to make it do something it wasn’t designed to do. Without requiring it to play nice with a host of other media programs you use, iTunes works just fine.
I use it on a Vista computer without any difficulty.
When I want to use the store or do an update on a device, I have to put Nortons in Silent mode, but that’s the AV blocking things, not iTunes.
Otherwise I have 4,936 songs stored in iTunes and use it daily as my stereo - like I’m doing right now while I surf the web. Just play with the shuffle on and I’m good. I’m not asking it to interact with any other software, I’m not doing crazy things with it, or asking it to deal with oddball formats I downloaded from the internet or anything like that. Just purchased and burned music.
Quoted for truth. I’m honestly gobsmacked that iTunes doesn’t automatically detect updates. Every other player/media manager on the planet does without any difficulties. I think what I find most annoying is a program that wants to dictate to me how to do things, instead of just letting me use it to do what I want, even if “what I want” falls outside of their accepted paradigm.
sachertorte, are you sure? I’m at work, and so I can’t check, but the last time I looked at (one of the) \iTunes folders on my home computer, not much was in there. There were a few files, but not the acres of folders I have in my \Toonz folder. It’s likely I was looking in the wrong place, but are you certain that I’m duplicating files?
You are making things a lot harder on yourself then you need to. You are using one program to rip music, another to add that music to your iPod, and you are manually organizing and sorting your music library.
You can let iTunes do all of this for you.
If you want to take manual control of your file system, fine. Deal with the added work and don’t blame Apple.
Keep iTunes Folder Organized (with a little description of what that means).
and the important one for this;
Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.
if you don’t have the second one checked, iTunes merely keeps track of where the music file is located when you add it to iTunes. Which means if it was on a CD, iTunes just goes “Yup, it’s on that disk. Oh wait, I can’t find the disk now that it’s not in the drive!” Pretty much the same when it is on an external or flash drive.
On the same page, it tells you where it is looking for iTunes Media folder. If you want to keep it on an external drive, you would tell it there.
Not really. Windows Media Player has options that automatically name the ripped MP3 files the way I want them named, and automatically place them in the folder structure I prefer. It also automatically downloads and inserts artwork and metatdata. I’m certain that iTunes has similar options, but I’m just using it because I’m forced to use it to put files on my iPod. (OK, I understand I’m not forced to use it; there are other options. But mostly they still required iTunes to be installed anyway for the iPod Touch, back when I was looking around. So I figured they didn’t save me much.)
I’m not really doing much manual management at all. But you’re right, it is my fault to expect a music manager to automatically detect added files, regardless of how they got there. It’s not like every other music manager available already does this.
Chimera, that makes sense. I need to verify at home, but I’m pretty sure I have the check box for that second option you mention cleared. So I don’t think I have duplicate files everywhere.
The easy way to keep iTunes updated, or the harder way. I’ll bet that, again, the complication is partially due to cross-platform issues. Instead of depending on the file system for names, folders, etc. they built iTunes to create a database of all the song information in an XML file. Metadata (like ratings, comments, other optional information) still isn’t handled in a good way across platforms, or even in a uniform way on the same platform, which is probably why they didn’t even try to associate metadata directly with the file, and instead utilized the database approach.
