The iTunes thread: iTunes version <insert number> is out: Tell us how much you hate it

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The iTunes thread: iTunes version <insert number> is out: Tell us how much you hate it

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IUG: Jul 14, 2007

Super Dude posted:

I just installed iTunes and added my music library, but I'm having a weird issue. Why have I suddenly lost 2.5 GB of music?

I don't know anything really about Windows, but wouldn't having your music folder marked as read-only cause some problems? If it tried to write to a file that was in your library and it's locked, then maybe iTunes sees the file as corrupt, and it removes it. Just a guess on this point.

As from my corner of Windows-Ignorant-Theater, it looks like you're missing 4,000 files? Does windows count the folders as a "file"?

# ? Dec 13, 2008 14:39

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 15:05

flesy: May 6, 2007; y=mx+b

Are there any free programs that can get album art for me? The tags are already tagged great so it doesn't really matter if it can't do any of the tag stuff

# ? Dec 13, 2008 15:26

thiazi: Sep 27, 2002

Super Dude posted:

I just installed iTunes and added my music library, but I'm having a weird issue. Why have I suddenly lost 2.5 GB of music?

I had this issue, and after some Googling found that the problem was that many of my MP3s were corrupted. I fixed the problems with the files using this: http://mp3val.sourceforge.net/ and following this guide: http://trevinchow.com/blog/2008/09/17/fix-for-mp3-songs-not-playing-in-itunes/

It fixed something like 3000+ of my 10000 songs, and afterwards they all showed up in iTunes.

Hope that helps.

thiazi fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Dec 13, 2008

# ? Dec 13, 2008 15:31

Super Dude: Jan 23, 2005; Do the Jew

chimz posted:

Positive you don't have exact duplicates? I've seen iTunes ignore duplicate files sometimes and add them other times, so you might want to check that. Also, it's possible you have non-mp3 files in your music directory like movies or something. Or iTunes just crapped out and forgot about some of your songs.

I think I have some duplicates, but not 2.5 GB worth.

^^^thanks!

edit: So that thing is going through and scanning my files, but it's finding "Problems" with files that show up in iTunes correctly. I'll see what happens once I repair all of them.

Super Dude fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Dec 13, 2008

# ? Dec 13, 2008 18:40

Koppite: Apr 10, 2007; The Land of Pleasant Living

Does anyone know how to copy album art from an ipod back to itunes?

# ? Dec 14, 2008 19:08

Pigpen: Jun 2, 2004; C=

Awesome smart playlist tips in here, thanks all who've posted them so far. I've just made myself one (or a combination of 4 to be exact) that selects songs as per:-

Uses the 'Top Rated' playlist as a base (I've rated quite a lot of my library, I've been using the Top Rated playlist mainly for ages)
Filters out the ones recenly played in the last week
Filters out the ones skipped more than 5 times

Or:-

Appears in the 'Recently Added' playlist (set to added in the last month), as I probably haven't had the chance to rate these songs just yet.

So 2 playlists to gather the songs, one to do some more filtering, and another to OR them together. Seems to work well after a little bit of playing with the parameters

I could've done it in less moves perhaps but it works for me anyway.

# ? Dec 14, 2008 22:52

Grayham: Jun 13, 2005; I just blue myself

Here's an excellent guide for smart playlists in iTunes.

There's also some very useful information about the way iTunes operates.

quote:

A couple things to note:

For my star rating system I use 1 stars to tag songs that I want to delete from my library. I find this very useful and suggest you do the same. You will see this referenced throughout different playlists.

For a song to receive a "skip count" you must press the "Next" button on a song while its playing between the 2nd and 20th second of the song. If you hit next before or after this it will not count as being skipped. This means that sometimes if you want a song to receive a skip count you will have to start it over and wait for it to pass two seconds to skip it.

For a song to receive a "play count" the end of the song must be played. This means even if you "scrub" a song all the way to the end it will get a play count, but if you play a song, but hit the "Next" button before its over it wont get one.

# ? Dec 14, 2008 22:54

IUG: Jul 14, 2007

quote:

For a song to receive a "play count" the end of the song must be played. This means even if you "scrub" a song all the way to the end it will get a play count, but if you play a song, but hit the "Next" button before its over it wont get one.

This is why I turned off the crossfade between songs. Sometimes the song that came up next would be one I didn't want to hear, so I would skip it. However, if you wanted the song you were listening to before the new one to count in play count and play time, you would have to sit through just over 5 seconds (or however long) while the crossfade completed.

# ? Dec 14, 2008 23:15

VERTICAL WIPE!: Jul 18, 2003; I'm weird...so forgive me

Grayham posted:

Here's an excellent guide for smart playlists in iTunes.

There's also some very useful information about the way iTunes operates.

Cool. This guys seems to have some good smart-playlist ideas.

# ? Dec 15, 2008 16:51

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

Okay, here's a doozy of a question:

How can I synchronize my iTunes Library between my home and work computer over the internet?

This is similar to something someone asked earlier, but this time both are macs running Mac OS X, and they're not on the same network. But basically, I would love it if I could get any music added to my home mac to be somehow automatically be copied to or available to my work mac, and any statistics, like play count or last skipped, to be shared between the two computers, because obviously given my last posts in this thread I use that all the time for smart playlists.

Here are the ideas I have, but I don't know exactly how well they would work:

1. Set it up so that both macs have their iTunes Library set to the same location, share that folder somehow on my home mac, and then mount that over the internet on my work mac so that the home library appears in the same path on my work mac. Obvious problems with this are that my Comcast internet connection at home (with limited upstream bandwidth) will probably choke occasionally while trying to listen to music, or whenever iTunes decides it needs to load a huge amount of data.

2. Set it up so that both macs have their iTunes Library set to the same location, then set up rsync or something to run automatically and sync the two folders at various points throughout the day.

3. Some other better idea?

I'm thinking I might try the second one since that would be the least amount of work, but I still feel like it could be trouble.

# ? Dec 15, 2008 21:28

TenementFunster: Feb 20, 2003; Can't post for 6 days!

Is there a way to mirror the sound front two channels to the rear and/or surround channels in iTunes? I googled for something obvious/easy and searched the first page and saw nothing, but I'm sure the answer is somewhere

# ? Dec 15, 2008 22:23

SmirkingJack: Nov 27, 2002

GuyGizmo posted:

Okay, here's a doozy of a question:

How can I synchronize my iTunes Library between my home and work computer over the internet?

This is similar to something someone asked earlier, but this time both are macs running Mac OS X, and they're not on the same network. But basically, I would love it if I could get any music added to my home mac to be somehow automatically be copied to or available to my work mac, and any statistics, like play count or last skipped, to be shared between the two computers, because obviously given my last posts in this thread I use that all the time for smart playlists.

Here are the ideas I have, but I don't know exactly how well they would work:

1. Set it up so that both macs have their iTunes Library set to the same location, share that folder somehow on my home mac, and then mount that over the internet on my work mac so that the home library appears in the same path on my work mac. Obvious problems with this are that my Comcast internet connection at home (with limited upstream bandwidth) will probably choke occasionally while trying to listen to music, or whenever iTunes decides it needs to load a huge amount of data.

2. Set it up so that both macs have their iTunes Library set to the same location, then set up rsync or something to run automatically and sync the two folders at various points throughout the day.

3. Some other better idea?

I'm thinking I might try the second one since that would be the least amount of work, but I still feel like it could be trouble.

Lucky for you, SuperSync just released a new version that will do just that. I know nothing about it, other than it is something that I want to check out. So you should purchase it and let us all know how it works out.

# ? Dec 15, 2008 22:33

Grayham: Jun 13, 2005; I just blue myself

I really don't understand why Apple limited iTunes from adding a skip count to only when you skip during the first 2-20 seconds of the song. :byodood:

e: It's usually not till a minute into the song that I want to skip it. :argh:

Grayham fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Dec 15, 2008

# ? Dec 15, 2008 22:41

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

SmirkingJack posted:

Lucky for you, SuperSync just released a new version that will do just that. I know nothing about it, other than it is something that I want to check out. So you should purchase it and let us all know how it works out.

Hot diggity. I'll give it a try and see if it works.

edit: Actually according the program's faq it doesn't sync the libraries once a song is copied. So if I rate a song 5 stars and listen to it 20 times in library A, it won't have its rating or play count updated in library B.

GuyGizmo fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Dec 15, 2008

# ? Dec 15, 2008 22:45

Rabid Koala: Aug 18, 2003

Casao posted:

For proper tagging and music cleaning, just look at TuneUp. It's an addon for iTunes that can clean/auto tag poo poo and add album art. It's $20 for a lifetime license, I dropped it after about 5 minutes of using it. Just makes life simpler, if you're lazy.

This is some of the best advice in the thread. I dropped $20 on this, and it found artwork for all my albums, save for two really obscure metal CDs. It's also great for fixing the tabs on a large number of mp3s. It can process up to 500 songs at a time. Well worth the pittance they're asking for it.

Also, I've started experimenting with playlists. Constantly shuffling through the artists on my 80GB iPod was getting wearisome. I created a "New poo poo" Smart Playlist that catches anything added after yesterday's date, which has helped a lot. I've tried to get into Songbird, but iTunes is pretty good if you just work with its flaws.

# ? Dec 16, 2008 02:22

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

GuyGizmo posted:

Hot diggity. I'll give it a try and see if it works.

edit: Actually according the program's faq it doesn't sync the libraries once a song is copied. So if I rate a song 5 stars and listen to it 20 times in library A, it won't have its rating or play count updated in library B.

Will you ever be using both libraries at the same time?

If your answer is "no", then there's a pretty low tech way to do it. Make sure the folder structure in both libraries is identical within the iTunes Music folder (or wherever you keep the actual flies). Then you just have to get the iTunes Library file from one place to another, copy over the old one when you arrive, then fire up iTunes. You'd have to transfer the music files themselves manually whenever you add some, but otherwise you're set.

You could make it as easy and silly as emailing the library file to yourself/work email when you're leaving from home, and vice versa on the way back. When you arrive, grab the attachment and replace the (old) file on the destination's computer. I'd probably aim for automating it somewhat; I'd have a script to upload the file to an FTP server at a given time (say, right before my usual departure for work time) and download the file at some other time (right before your usual arrival time), then run the same script with the times reversed at the other location.

# ? Dec 16, 2008 05:33

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

Koppite posted:

Does anyone know how to copy album art from an ipod back to itunes?

I saw you asking in the other thread too. If the art's not embedded in the music files, you're sunk as far as I know.

# ? Dec 16, 2008 05:33

Grayham: Jun 13, 2005; I just blue myself

Grayham posted:

I really don't understand why Apple limited iTunes from adding a skip count to only when you skip during the first 2-20 seconds of the song.

e: It's usually not till a minute into the song that I want to skip it.

I figured out how to overcome this limitation with an Applescript, which means it only works with OS X only, sorry Windows users.

code:

property differential : 2 -- seconds

tell application "iTunes"
	if player state is not stopped then
		set player position to (differential)
		next track
	end if
end tell

# ? Dec 17, 2008 21:07

Dr. Poz: Sep 8, 2003; Dr. Poz just diagnosed you with a serious case of being a pussy. Now get back out there and hit them till you can't remember your kid's name.; Pillbug

When my iPod syncs with my music library, does it sync both ways? I'm curious if the Play Count and Last Played fields reflect only whats happened from the music library and if my listening from work on my iPod has any bearing on them.

# ? Dec 18, 2008 16:45

-Dethstryk-: Oct 20, 2000

Girl With Huge Tits posted:

When my iPod syncs with my music library, does it sync both ways? I'm curious if the Play Count and Last Played fields reflect only whats happened from the music library and if my listening from work on my iPod has any bearing on them.

Yeah, if you listen to something on your iPod, it updates the last played and play count fields when you sync it back.

# ? Dec 18, 2008 16:55

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

pokeyman posted:

Will you ever be using both libraries at the same time?

If your answer is "no", then there's a pretty low tech way to do it. Make sure the folder structure in both libraries is identical within the iTunes Music folder (or wherever you keep the actual flies). Then you just have to get the iTunes Library file from one place to another, copy over the old one when you arrive, then fire up iTunes. You'd have to transfer the music files themselves manually whenever you add some, but otherwise you're set.

I got it to work! Here's what I ended up doing:

I copied the iTunes library folder from my home computer to my work computer, set up some symlinks so that all the paths therein would still go to the right place, and then used MacFuse + sshfs to mount my home mac's music library to the same path on my work mac. Presto magico! Same music library on both computers, and the music seems to stream fine. In a bit I'll write two scripts on both computers to grab the latest version of the iTunes library from the other computer.

One question: is there any way to increase the buffer size iTunes uses for playing (what it thinks is) local music?

I see there's a preference for streaming music, but it doesn't seem to have any effect when I play my music on the sshfs mount. I don't know if this is true, mind you - all I did was I changed the streaming buffer from large to small and timed if the music started playing any faster, assuming that a large buffer would take longer to fill and therefore take longer for the music to start playing. I ask because my home internet connection seems to have an upstream bandwidth of about 100k a sec, which is more than fast enough to stream my music, but it's Comcast so I don't trust it, and would be happier if I could increase the buffer just to be safe.

# ? Dec 19, 2008 00:31

Mithra6: Jan 24, 2006; Elvis is dead, Sinatra is dead, and me I feel also not so good.

Does anyone know a way to link two songs together even when a playlist is shuffled? For example, let's say I have a large playlist, but I want "With a Little Help From My Friends" to always play after "Sgt. Pepper". C'mon those songs go together!

# ? Dec 19, 2008 00:59

chimz: Jul 27, 2005; Science isn't about why, it's about why not.

GuyGizmo posted:

One question: is there any way to increase the buffer size iTunes uses for playing (what it thinks is) local music?

I doubt it. iTunes isn't really designed to have the music library be anywhere other than a fast local HD. If you want it to deal well with the network, you should run iTunes at home, use SSH to forward the library-sharing port to your local computer, then use something like Rendezvous Proxy to tell iTunes about it. Then the streaming buffer size preference controls that, along with actual internet streaming like podcasts from the iTunes Store.

I've tried streaming my iTunes library over a non-local network connection and it sort of worked. This was over campus wi-fi to my dorm, so it was way faster and more reliable than Comcast would be, but it still had hitches and slowness, especially switching songs.

If you could set up sshfs to have a bigger lookahead buffer for files then maybe you could get the buffering that way.

# ? Dec 19, 2008 01:18

IUG: Jul 14, 2007

Mithra6 posted:

Does anyone know a way to link two songs together even when a playlist is shuffled? For example, let's say I have a large playlist, but I want "With a Little Help From My Friends" to always play after "Sgt. Pepper". C'mon those songs go together!

No, but if you wanted to reimport the songs from the CD, you can tell iTunes to merge the songs before they're even imported into the library. After this, I don't think so (and I've been trying to find out since I put The Who's "Tommy" on my computer).

# ? Dec 19, 2008 03:24

ArgaWarga: Apr 8, 2005; dare to fail gloriously

thiazi posted:

I had this issue, and after some Googling found that the problem was that many of my MP3s were corrupted. I fixed the problems with the files using this: http://mp3val.sourceforge.net/ and following this guide: http://trevinchow.com/blog/2008/09/17/fix-for-mp3-songs-not-playing-in-itunes/

It fixed something like 3000+ of my 10000 songs, and afterwards they all showed up in iTunes.

Hope that helps.

Anything similar to this for OS X that doesn't cost $50? Thanks in advance!

# ? Dec 19, 2008 04:38

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

chimz posted:

If you could set up sshfs to have a bigger lookahead buffer for files then maybe you could get the buffering that way.

I think that's possible, actually. I'll look into it.

I want to keep iTunes working the crazy sshfs way because if I set up a tunnel so I can use it's library sharing feature it wouldn't update any statistics on the song files. Also I couldn't make new playlists or anything.

# ? Dec 19, 2008 07:25

INTJ Mastermind: Dec 30, 2004; It's a radial!

How would I setup the following using smart playlists?

I have a 8 GB Nano.

I want all the music that I've added recently (past 2 weeks) to be on it for sure.
The rest of the space is filled randomly from my music library until the ipod is full.

# ? Dec 20, 2008 00:33

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

INTJ Mastermind posted:

How would I setup the following using smart playlists?

I have a 8 GB Nano.

I want all the music that I've added recently (past 2 weeks) to be on it for sure.
The rest of the space is filled randomly from my music library until the ipod is full.

Maybe this would work:
1. Create a smart playlist of the recently added music and add that to your iPod 2. Create another smart playlist of music not added recently
3. Sort it by playlist order by clicking the column to the left of the track names
4. Turn on shuffle so that the track order is completely random
5. Gradually fill your iPod with it. It might work that if you drag the entire playlist to your iPod it'll start adding the tracks in a random order until it runs out of space, but if not you can drag them over in chunks until its full

# ? Dec 20, 2008 00:49

Eight Is Legend: Jan 2, 2008

Grayham posted:

I figured out how to overcome this limitation with an Applescript, which means it only works with OS X only, sorry Windows users.
code:
property differential : 2 -- seconds

tell application "iTunes"
	if player state is not stopped then
		set player position to (differential)
		next track
	end if
end tell

I've saved a script with this code - where do I put the file?

# ? Dec 20, 2008 02:12

Grayham: Jun 13, 2005; I just blue myself

Eight Is Legend posted:

I've saved a script with this code - where do I put the file?

I believe the script menu is enabled by default. Click on the first script, the Open Scripts Folder script, and save my script in there.

I use a Quicksilver trigger (ctrl + alt + command + right arrow) to invoke it.

I actually refined this a lot once I started understanding Applescript a little more.

code:

tell application "iTunes"
	if (current track exists) and (player state is not stopped) then
		set a to 2 -- seconds
		set b to 20 -- seconds
		set c to player position
	end if
	if c is greater than b then
		set player position to a
		next track
	else if c is less than a then
		set player position to a
		next track
	else
		next track
	end if
end tell

Grayham fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Dec 20, 2008

# ? Dec 20, 2008 02:20

thiazi: Sep 27, 2002

ArgaWarga posted:

Anything similar to this for OS X that doesn't cost $50? Thanks in advance!

I believe that the third link down on this page http://mp3val.sourceforge.net/download.shtml can be used on the Mac - its the source code so you'll have to compile, and apparently it is command-line only. But there is also a Python GUI front-end file linked on that page so you could potentially also have a GUI for it. Don't know that I can help other than that.

# ? Dec 20, 2008 14:22

darnzen: Jun 25, 2005; I crap dark matter.

Does anyone know if there's anything nefarious about the new Genius feature? I panicked when it said it was going to send my library info to apple and hit cancel. See, while I legally purchase most of my music off of iTunes, I used to strip the DRM off the files because I hate the idea of buying, but not really owning the music.

Anyway, what kind of info does it send?

On an off topic rant, I have no idea why iTunes won't let me download music I've purchased more than one time. EVERY other distribution service I use allows this: Audible, Direct2Drive, Steam, etc. Aren't they in touch with the whole "cloud computing" concept? Why do I need to back up files when they keep a copy!

# ? Dec 21, 2008 05:08

Neco: Mar 13, 2005; listen

It has been touched on on the last page, but I want to stress it: give the Party Shuffle a try, it's like always having a party!

But really, it has the following advantages:

If I don't know what to play, I just use the standard shuffle. By selecting different playlists I can control what kinds of songs are played. Easy enough.
You can still listen to complete albums by just selecting a whole album in the library, then using "Play Next in Party Shuffle". It will retain the order of the tracks. Hitting "Refresh" will not remove the manually added songs.
This is what I like most and is a missing feature from iTunes: If you hold Command (I guess on windows it's ctrl?) and click on one of the checkboxes in the Party Shuffle, all of them get deselected. So when the current song is over, iTunes stops playing. This is a little hacky but works, unlike some Applescripts I have tried.

# ? Dec 21, 2008 10:34

mongoibur: Jun 10, 2005; take my breath away

flesy posted:

Are there any free programs that can get album art for me? The tags are already tagged great so it doesn't really matter if it can't do any of the tag stuff

I use Gimmesometune, and it works fine most of the time.
http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune/

# ? Dec 21, 2008 12:20

elf help book: Aug 5, 2004; Though the battle might be endless, I will never give up

darnzen posted:

Does anyone know if there's anything nefarious about the new Genius feature? I panicked when it said it was going to send my library info to apple and hit cancel. See, while I legally purchase most of my music off of iTunes, I used to strip the DRM off the files because I hate the idea of buying, but not really owning the music.

Anyway, what kind of info does it send?

As far as people know, it sends Apple info on what your collection is so they can look at what you like as a whole and compare it to others. So if 90% of people like two bands together, and you look up info on one of them, it'll suggest the other. Apple states that they tie no personal data to this info whatsoever.

It should just be sending tag info.

# ? Dec 21, 2008 12:40

The Dissonant: Jul 24, 2008; Just another disposable hero.

What is a program other than ITunes that can sync your Ipod with your library? For some reason, the GUI on Itunes 8 displays completely black on Vista, I can't see a drat thing. Any alternative program will do, as long as it supports syncing.

# ? Dec 21, 2008 13:38

hot carling academy: Jul 20, 2008

flesy posted:

Are there any free programs that can get album art for me? The tags are already tagged great so it doesn't really matter if it can't do any of the tag stuff

Not exactly integrated into iTunes, but Album Art Downloader is a useful Windows program I use.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art/

# ? Dec 21, 2008 14:23

-Dethstryk-: Oct 20, 2000

The Dissonant posted:

What is a program other than ITunes that can sync your Ipod with your library? For some reason, the GUI on Itunes 8 displays completely black on Vista, I can't see a drat thing. Any alternative program will do, as long as it supports syncing.

You might want to try updating drivers or figuring out what is causing the display to be wonky. It's not a Vista issue.

# ? Dec 21, 2008 17:31

Grayham: Jun 13, 2005; I just blue myself

flesy posted:

Are there any free programs that can get album art for me? The tags are already tagged great so it doesn't really matter if it can't do any of the tag stuff

If you're not completely against it, sign up for an iTunes account. Sign into it in iTunes, select all songs in your library, right click and select "Get Album Artwork".

# ? Dec 21, 2008 17:51

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 15:05

GuyGizmo: Feb 26, 2003; stupid babies need the most attention

So after I felt very clever setting up my work and home mac to have the same iTunes library, I've run into a snag. For some reason, it takes Party Shuffle anywhere from 20 seconds to over a minute to choose a song when nothing else is queued, making it pretty unusable. Here's what else I know:
- It doesn't take nearly as long if the playlist it's picking music from is short
- It takes that long per song, meaning if I tell it to refresh the playlist and it's set to display 10 upcoming songs, it takes ten times as long.
- Actually progressing from one song to the next in a playlist (including Party Shuffle with the music already queued) takes very little time, so it's not that.

Anyone have an idea why? Obviously this means iTunes is doing something under the hood when it's picking music for Party Shuffle - something that requires accessing the music files themselves rather than just the data in the library. (I know this because my iTunes music library is always stored locally. Only the music itself is streamed over the internet.) If that's the case, is there anyway I can get iTunes not to freeze? I love using Party Shuffle so this could spell the end for my would-be-clever solution for having two computers share the same library.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 23:40

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The iTunes thread: iTunes version <insert number> is out: Tell us how much you hate it

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