This I knew actually; I just didn’t know there was a “no shuffle” option.
Yay! You guys are going to save me trouble on our next trip downstate; I can keep my shuffle on and still listen to some things in order!
That only works in one direction, I believe.
I know I can do that, but I’m not used to doing that. If I’m browsing a window in explorer and want to select multiple files that are all together, I click and drag, I don’t “shift-click.” So in iTunes I always try to click and drag at first, then remember I can’t, and resort to shift-click.
When I try to sync my iPod, I’m told I don’t have access privileges to do it. Um, say what? This is my iPod, I bought it brand new at the Apple store; this is the only computer it’s ever been hooked to, and this is only my computer, nobody else uses it. If I don’t have access privileges, who does?!
I don’t download music; I buy (CD) albums and rip them. Some of my CDs came with DVDs, and I’d like to be able to rip those too, and put them on my iPod.
It can - that’s what the “Sort Artist” field is for.
So you set “Sort Artist” to “Spears Britney”, say, but leave “Artist” as “Britney Spears”, and hey presto - your music is properly alphabetised (though still, of course, dreadful).
Likewise I set the Sort Artist tag for R.E.M. to “REM” so that it sorts between “Red Hot Chili Peppers” and “Republica”, rather than right at the top of the R section.
Missed the edit window. I see ascenray already mentioned that. And also came up with “Sort Album” = Artist + Date wheeze which I hadn’t thought of!
The question was asking about iTunes.
It’s tough for them because oftentimes it’s not their fault. For instance, some bands just don’t want their catalog to be on itunes - Tool being a good example of this. It’s not Apple’s fault, they’d be more than happy to sell Tool stuff if they could. The band/label have just said no.
That’s not what I said, though. I am not complaining about their lack of availability. I am complaining that everything that is not American or Western or whatever they lump into a huge pool called “World”. That’s shit, and I don’t like it - I want to be able to search by any or all of the following parameters:
language
country of origin
genre…and I want more genres than the Western genres. I mean, if a Hindi song is “Bhangra”, why can it not be labelled bhangra? But I understand this last is more difficult.
I agree with both of these. I deal with second by using the “comments” field (which I have no other use for - except Moody, a great little app, but I can do both) as a “country of origin” field so I can always find songs by Australian artists (or whoever) when I want whilst maintaining the usefulness of the ‘genre’ field to find “Rock from the U.S.A” or “Classical from Germany”. I usually use the nationality of the artist/composer or the dominant nationality of members in band.
This has 2 drawbacks however - firstly, you have to enter all the info yourself which can be a pain for a 40g+ collection like mine and secondly, though this is a good solution within iTunes, you can’t sort by the comments field on an iPod.
To solve the second I just keep a folder full of smart playlists organised by comment field that I can dump on my iPod if I want to. I imagine that wouldn’t be convenient for everyone though. To solve the first I basically whine and complain.
ETA: Sorry Anaamika, clearly I should read harder. I didn’t realise you were mostly annoyed it the store’s lumping together of non-western music. Nothing I can do about that. Ignore my suggestions.
Look at the free application in the app store called Air Sharing. This allows you to use your iPhone as a portable hard drive wirelessly.
Google handbrake
I’d be happy to. I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack. I was motivated to play with this last night and I changed it from a schedule mode to instant gratification mode, so this isn’t exactly tested for production but it does work.
First, I created a folder in my iTunes library called ‘New Music’ and inside that folder I created a new folder called ‘Empty’. I have the preference in iTunes set to ‘keep iTunes library organized’ and creating Empty keeps iTunes from deleting New Music when it’s processed all the files in this folder. I also created an alias of New Music and placed this in a convenient spot. This allows me to manually drop music on the alias and it also is automatically added to iTunes and filed correctly.
Second, I built a folder action on New Music so that any file that’s added to New Music is automatically added to the iTunes library. Click the automator icon to launch the automator application. You will be presented with a wizard to select a starting point, choose ‘Files & Folders’ then ‘search for files and folders when my workflow runs’. You will be presented with the automator main window. The left side is a library of actions you can choose. The right side is your workflow. The workflow runs from top to bottom and is very similar to a smart playlist. At the top of the workflow, the first step is ‘Find Finder Items’. Adjust the drop downs in the first step so Where is New Music and Whose ‘Name’ ‘is not equal’ to ‘Empty’. Then add a second step to the workflow by choosing and dragging from the left pane Library, Music, Import Files into iTunes into the workflow. The options for the second step are ‘Existing Playlist’ and ‘Library’. I think here you could set the option to create a new playlist and put the media there, but I use a smart playlist called ‘recently added’ to find new media so I didn’t mess with this. At this point you can test by putting a file in New Music and running the workflow with the Play (run) button.
Next, save the automator workflow. File, Save As Plug In. Give it a name ‘Watchfolder New Music’ and ‘Plug-In for’ set as ‘Folder Action’. When you try to save it you’ll get an option ‘Attached to Folder’ choose the ‘New Music’ folder.
Next in the finder go to New Music and anywhere in the folder right click, choose ‘configure folder actions’. In this pane click ‘Enable folder actions’ in the left pane you can add the New Music folder and make sure it’s checked. In the right pane you can specify 'Watchfolder New Music" also make sure it’s checked. At this point the any files dropped into New Music should automatically be imported into iTunes and whisked away into their proper place in your iTunes library.
The last step is to create a second workflow. This one will move items from your Downloads folder to your New Music folder. The process is similar so I won’t go into as much detail. The first step of the workflow is “Find Finder Items” set to look at Downloads whose “Kind” is “Audio” (you don’t want to process other downloaded files)
The second step in the workflow is “Files and Folders”, “Move Finder Items” and choose your New Music folder as the destination. Again save the workflow as a Plug-In, folder action. This time attached to Downloads. Don’t forget to go to your downloads folder repeat the configure folder actions step like we did above.
At any point you can turn this off by right clicking in the folder and un-checking the ‘enable folder actions’ option. You also may like to set up a third workflow to move video files from download to New Music so they will also be added to iTunes.
I wanted to tell those that helped me that I did indeed find the “skip on shuffle” and “remember order” things on the “info” screen last night, so I put a whole audiobook in the proper order, and organized some of my stand-up, too. THANK YOU!
You mean it’s named “Cicero’s Friend’s iPod” in splash screen that shows your iPod in iTunes? Click that name in the left nav once and it will turn editable.
Plenty of free media on the net, free HD video podcasts in the music store, they eat up space. Also this site, Archive.org is chocked full of free legal downloads.
The iPod manages to remember how your playlists were sorted (I keep some alphabetical, some by track, and so on), but I agree with Anaamika that the iPod should also remember the shuffle and repeat settings for each one.
Heck yeah! I frequently want to do that.
This is why I change the genre on just about everything I load into iTunes. It drives me nuts that the iTunes store considers Caribbean steel drum, Afro-pop, Russian balalaika, Scottish bagpipe, and chants all to be the same “world” genre.
I wish they had sub-genres. I use “multi-level” genres like “rock: acid” and “Celtic: Scottish: folk” so that they sort nicely, but then if I play by genre on the iPod it won’t play everything that starts with “rock,” for example.
There’s also no way to deal with crossover music. Should my Scottish punk music go in “rock: punk: Scottish” or in “Celtic: Scottish: punk”?
Cool idea! I don’t know how you’d do that with actual beat-per-minute counts, but I do use the comment field for things like “fast”, “slow”, “loud”, and “peppy” to help build mood-based lists.
Not just non-Western. Pretty much anything with an “ethnic” flavor gets tagged as “world.”
Cool link! I think I’ll be spending a bunch of time there.
Thanks for taking the time to explain that! I am at work now but will be attempting this tonight. I’m actually sort of ashamed that I haven’t spent more time learning the scripting side of OSX yet. Seems very versatile once you get it. I just finished hacking the AppleTV with Boxee, so I’m taking baby steps in that direction!
Thanks again!
Since this seems to be a gathering of iTunes wisdom, I’ll pose this here too…
I currently maintain a large selection of high quality (and consequently large file-size) movies/TV shows on iTunes for streaming to the AppleTV (all from movies/shows I legally own). When I travel, I sometimes use VisualHub and create a smaller version for use on the iPhone/iPod. My question for anyone else who does something similar: How do you organize the files on iTunes? Do you just keep multiple versions of the same movie/show and sync what you need, or do you have some other way of keeping things organized?
I don’t want multiple copies of the same title, because that just creates duplication and disorder on the AppleTV onscreen display, which I can’t stand. My solution so far has been to just create a TV Series title on iTunes called “iPod” and throw everything coded for the iPod/iPhone into that…out of sight, out of mind. But of course that leads to no organization into categories/seasons/titles once on the Ipod…again, chaos and disorder! So I’m looking to the folks here for any creative solutions…thanks!
Someone suggested using handbrake’s “universal” or “ipod high-rez” setting instead of the AppleTV one to make files playable on the ipod as well, so I’m doing a test encode to see if the quality is adequate for the appleTV on my 42" 1080i Plasma (by adequate, I mean “indistinguishable from DVD”)…anyone have any experience with this?
Sorry if this was too much of a hijack…
I want to be able to merge tracks together. I know this can be done when originally importing the CD, but AFAIK once the songs are on there they can’t be joined. I’ve even tried deleting tracks and reimporting them, but iTunes remembers that they were on there before and won’t join them.
I wish it would play the songs I bought using my old AOL account, which when I cancelled it I was no longer able to log in to iTunes store using that username.
Also deleting duplicates automatically would be useful.
I wish it was possible to mark “music” tracks as being audio books and put them in a separate folder (so they wouldn’t appear under “music”).
It’s a surprising amount of clutter. While Itunes has an “audiobooks” folder, I’ve never figured out how to put something into it.
Do a Get Info on the relevant track then click on Options. Under “Media Type,” you can choose “Audio Book.”