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Rison
Apr 17, 2001
Just another retarded strawberry pancake
drat, iTunes needs to finally integrate folder watching. I don't want to have my folders renamed and restructured, just add new files to the library. How hard would that be?

I'm currently using iTunes Library Updater (iTLU), which is doing a fine job, I guess, but first, it hasn't been updated in ages, and second, why do I have to use two apps?

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Yossarko
Jan 22, 2004

I finally set up iTunes to properly display (read: do not display) artists in a compilation, and to sort correctly with the sort tags. It's great, but I'd like to have the same thing for my iPhone 3G.

I don't have all that much music on it (8GB) but I have three compilation albums / soundtracks that fills my "Artist" page on the iPhone with garbage (many, many one song artists). I can barely use the Artist page anymore.

Any way to get around this ? Tried googling, but seems it's not a feature ?

IUG
Jul 14, 2007


Rison posted:

drat, iTunes needs to finally integrate folder watching. I don't want to have my folders renamed and restructured, just add new files to the library. How hard would that be?

I'm currently using iTunes Library Updater (iTLU), which is doing a fine job, I guess, but first, it hasn't been updated in ages, and second, why do I have to use two apps?

If you're on a Mac:



You could either use Automator to add them, or maybe even a Folder Action (I'm not super sure on what those do).

SnatchRabbit
Feb 23, 2006

by sebmojo
A friend of mine and I want to start recording a podcast and submit to the iTunes store. Under the submission guidelines it says that we would need an RSS feed for the episodes. Does anyone know which if any (preferably free) blog hosting sites will also provide an RSS feed for media files (audio)? I'd really like to avoid futzing with code if at all possible.

Yossarko
Jan 22, 2004

Any way to get all my playlists looking the same in terms of columns, col size, etc ?

I'd like to have one "look" for my library and another for my playlists.

I'm very anal with my music library and the fact they are all different (even if slightly) bothers me.

Rison
Apr 17, 2001
Just another retarded strawberry pancake

IUG posted:

If you're on a Mac:

You could either use Automator to add them, or maybe even a Folder Action (I'm not super sure on what those do).

Sorry for not specifying--I'm running Windows XP.

Neco
Mar 13, 2005

listen

Neco posted:

But what's annyoing to me is that there are no checkboxes in the DJ any more; I would uncheck all the songs in the list to emulate "stop after current track". (See my other posts in this thread.) And scripts didn't work for me that well. I guess I will have to give them a try again.

Quoting myself because that's what the cool kids here do. :cool:

Just creating an empty playlist and selecting it as source will do the trick. The downside here is that you have to remove tracks that you had added manually for this to work.

astr0man
Feb 21, 2007

hollyeo deuroga
So right now I have one song on each album that actually has the artwork saved with the mp3 file. This way iTunes shows the right album artwork in coverflow, but I just noticed that I don't have all the files that have the artwork on my iphone, so not all the albums show up right in coverflow on the iphone. Is there a way to make itunes copy the artwork among the rest of the songs for each album? Using "get album artwork" or whatever the option is doesn't always download the right covers and I don't want to end up messing anything up. It took me forever to get the images for every album in my library and if I have to go and do it again it's going to suck.

drewmoney
Mar 11, 2004
I hate the way iTunes syncs my Podcasts. Sure, I want you to copy all new podcasts to my iPhone, and remove ones I've listened to as well. But why delete it when I'm half-way through? That's crazy.

Is there a smart play list or something I can do so iTunes will:
* Copy new podcasts to my iPhone
* Remove ones that I've listen to 99% of
* Leave alone anything I'm halfway through

wolffenstein
Aug 2, 2002
 
Pork Pro

deathmerc posted:

I hate the way iTunes syncs my Podcasts. Sure, I want you to copy all new podcasts to my iPhone, and remove ones I've listened to as well. But why delete it when I'm half-way through? That's crazy.

Is there a smart play list or something I can do so iTunes will:
* Copy new podcasts to my iPhone
* Remove ones that I've listen to 99% of
* Leave alone anything I'm halfway through

Jiblet
Jan 5, 2004

Limey Bastard
Are there any good visializers for iTunes on Windows (or to a lesser extent OSX) that aren't the built in magnetosphere thing?

A Wheezy Steampunk
Jul 16, 2006

High School Grads Eligible!

Jiblet posted:

Are there any good visializers for iTunes on Windows (or to a lesser extent OSX) that aren't the built in magnetosphere thing?

iConcertCal :v:

It's a "visualizer" that displays local concerts based on bands in your library.

http://www.iconcertcal.com/

Or, iSpazz

"iSpazz is a plugin for iTunes on OS X, controlling the MacBook Pro/PowerBook backlight keyboard and optionally the display backlight."

http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/Web/Sites/iWeb/Site/iSpazz.html

ProjectM is basically Milkdrop for OS X (I think.)

http://projectm.sourceforge.net/

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord
Crossposting this between here and the iPod thread...

So, I didn't like how most of my music had no album artwork on my iPod, so thanks to a combination of Foobar, MusicBrainz, Mp3tag, and MediaMonkey, I got all my 4000+ songs retagged and art'd. I usually use MediaMonkey to sync my iPod, but I decided to try out Foobar. Restored my iPod to factory settings just to make sure that all my mp3s got transferred over fresh with the new tags (probably unnecessary, but oh well). After syncing, I got an error that a few songs (~20) couldn't be parsed. Weird, they play fine in Foobar and WMP, and play fine in MediaMonkey. But, when I go to play them on my iPod, the album art shows up, but they just skip past.

What brings this into iTunes realm, is that they also won't add into my iTunes library, even though they play fine in Foobar/WMP/whatever. I'm thinking that's why they won't play on my iPod either (maybe they use the same decoding architecture or whatever). Any idea why iTunes wouldn't play my mp3s? It's only for 4-5 albums I think, but still it's annoying.

edit-- By the way, all these songs worked fine before the tagging process.

Count Thrashula fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 28, 2009

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



I've got a project for work. I need to make an iTunes library for a record label and automatically keep it up to date (daily deletes/new additions). The catalog is about 400k songs. I've run a test by generating a fake library.xml pointing to 100k 1 second mp3s, took about an hour to import (no consolidation) on my old intel macbook.

What would be the best way to do the updates? I'm thinking either just regenerate the xml each night and let it import in the AM, or possibly do adds/deletes via applescript (grepping out the <location>s from the xml and comparing to a file-listing?).

The files (library + mp3s) will be stored on a NAS, likely mounted via AFP.

widunder
May 2, 2002
I suppose this has been posted, so please point me in the right direction if this is a repeat:

My iTunes library (as in, the actual files), have a shitload of duplicates, making the library twice as large as it actually is. Is there a way to solve this? I have a 80gb iPod and an external harddrive to help. Is there a way to export all the music to my iPod (should fit), erase everything iTunes, and then import it back? Or does anyone have any other idea how to fix it?

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



nemoulette posted:

I suppose this has been posted, so please point me in the right direction if this is a repeat:

My iTunes library (as in, the actual files), have a shitload of duplicates, making the library twice as large as it actually is. Is there a way to solve this? I have a 80gb iPod and an external harddrive to help. Is there a way to export all the music to my iPod (should fit), erase everything iTunes, and then import it back? Or does anyone have any other idea how to fix it?

Create an empty playlist, then go to the library and select everything, drag & drop it to the empty playlist. Then make a smart playlist where playlist is not the one you just created. The songs in that new playlist will be all the broken links. You can then delete them or fix them or whatever.

IUG
Jul 14, 2007


Under the file menu, there's an option labeled "Show Duplicates". Then you just weed out which ones you don't want to keep, delete them, and have it move the files to the trash.

chimz
Jul 27, 2005

Science isn't about why, it's about why not.

nemoulette posted:

I suppose this has been posted, so please point me in the right direction if this is a repeat:

My iTunes library (as in, the actual files), have a shitload of duplicates, making the library twice as large as it actually is. Is there a way to solve this? I have a 80gb iPod and an external harddrive to help. Is there a way to export all the music to my iPod (should fit), erase everything iTunes, and then import it back? Or does anyone have any other idea how to fix it?

If you mean there's files in the iTunes Music folder that aren't in iTunes, and you're sure they're all duplicates, you should consolidate your library to a new location, delete the files in iTunes Music, then re-consolidate back to where you want the songs to go.

You can also rebuild your library with one of those extract music from your ipod programs, I'm not sure what's the best one for that.

ottonomy
Jun 10, 2003

keep your junk low
For those of you using "Needs Rating" playlists who were having songs stop playing when you rated them because they got bumped out of the playlist: you can use the itunes DJ to play songs from that playlist; then rating them won't make them stop.

Grayham
Jun 13, 2005

I just blue myself

ottonomy posted:

For those of you using "Needs Rating" playlists who were having songs stop playing when you rated them because they got bumped out of the playlist: you can use the itunes DJ to play songs from that playlist; then rating them won't make them stop.

This is fantastic. Thanks.

IUG
Jul 14, 2007


I have a weird thing in my iTunes now. I was rating some music, and during this, my power went out. When it came back, I went right back to rating, but I noticed that the album I was listening to was taken out of my "Needs to be Rated" playlist. Curious, I looked for the album in iTunes' Library:



I was just starting "The King Of Pain" when I lost power. I guess it rated the songs based off of the average of the album. Never seen the hollow stars anywhere besides below the album artwork.

psilocyber
Feb 26, 2005

by Fistgrrl
I use iTunes on my laptop which is a Macbook but I can't stand the Windows version. My PC is older, so iTunes runs like poo poo. I could never get Foobar config'd to my liking so I stick with Winamp on the PC.

Also for some reason when I add music to iTunes, sometimes it will add the track to the library twice. For instance, even when I was importing several albums at a time into iTunes, some of them would contain duplicates and others would copy over fine. (I have iTunes set to copy imported music to my iTunes music folder on the HDD).

This is the most frustrating thing to me. I guess I am looking for two things...

1) suggestions on making iTunes run better on PC (WinXP) or a suggestion for a viable replacement that isn't Winamp.

2) how to fix the problem of duplicate song imports?

sweek0
May 22, 2006

Let me fall out the window
With confetti in my hair
Deal out jacks or better
On a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets
But I lie about my past

psilocyber posted:

2) how to fix the problem of duplicate song imports?
Most likely problem is that you're importing all the files individually, and then importing them again by importing the playlist. Do a search for .m3u files and the like and delete them before importing.

syphon
Jan 1, 2001
Yeah, if you try to add a directory to your library that contains individual songs AND a playlist, it'll add everything twice.

ottonomy
Jun 10, 2003

keep your junk low

IUG posted:

I have a weird thing in my iTunes now. I was rating some music, and during this, my power went out. When it came back, I went right back to rating, but I noticed that the album I was listening to was taken out of my "Needs to be Rated" playlist. Curious, I looked for the album in iTunes' Library:



I was just starting "The King Of Pain" when I lost power. I guess it rated the songs based off of the average of the album. Never seen the hollow stars anywhere besides below the album artwork.
A hollow star just means you've rated the album, but not the track (show album artwork to see). iTunes infers that you would rate it the same as the album and filters it as if you had. You can still go give it a track rating. I haven't figured out how to get tracks like this to keep showing up in my Needs Rating playlist despite the album rating, so I just have been waiting to rate albums until I've done all the tracks...

(it will also guess the other way, inferring an album rating from the average track rating)

widunder
May 2, 2002

chimz posted:

If you mean there's files in the iTunes Music folder that aren't in iTunes, and you're sure they're all duplicates, you should consolidate your library to a new location, delete the files in iTunes Music, then re-consolidate back to where you want the songs to go.

You can also rebuild your library with one of those extract music from your ipod programs, I'm not sure what's the best one for that.
Sounds like this is what I will be doing. Thanks.

Kire
Aug 25, 2006
Is there a way to delete podcast episodes I've listened to without iTunes totally removing them from that podcast's list of episodes, making me unable to ever, ever download it again? I just want to "un-download" it, not forever delete it and block my system from recognizing its existence on the podcast server.

IUG
Jul 14, 2007


Kire posted:

Is there a way to delete podcast episodes I've listened to without iTunes totally removing them from that podcast's list of episodes, making me unable to ever, ever download it again? I just want to "un-download" it, not forever delete it and block my system from recognizing its existence on the podcast server.

I think when you un-subscribe, then re-subscribe, the episodes will show up again as undownloaded. There my be an easier way, but I remember this one.

Identity Thief
Oct 6, 2004

by Ozma
Sorry if this was covered already - I'll admit I didn't read every post on all 15 pages....

I'm putting language audio CD on my iPod - I have the disks and already imported them into iTunes.

Is there a way to get iTunes to categorize these as Audio Books so I can find them in that category instead of Books & Spoken Words? I don't really want them listed in my music, but instead just to show up with the rest of my audio books.

Thanks

wolffenstein
Aug 2, 2002
 
Pork Pro

Identity Thief posted:

Sorry if this was covered already - I'll admit I didn't read every post on all 15 pages....

I'm putting language audio CD on my iPod - I have the disks and already imported them into iTunes.

Is there a way to get iTunes to categorize these as Audio Books so I can find them in that category instead of Books & Spoken Words? I don't really want them listed in my music, but instead just to show up with the rest of my audio books.

Thanks
Select all files you want converted to Audiobook. Right-click and choose Get Info. Click the Options tab. Choose Audiobook under Media Kind.

Identity Thief
Oct 6, 2004

by Ozma

wolffenstein posted:

Select all files you want converted to Audiobook. Right-click and choose Get Info. Click the Options tab. Choose Audiobook under Media Kind.

Thank you. So frigging simple - but so well hidden.

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

I have a question about accessing my iTunes music library through my wireless network.

The library lives on my desktop PC and I have set it to be shared through the network.

I use laptops, also with iTunes, to listen to the music in my library by streaming it through the network.

A category called "JoeBlow's Music" (JoeBlow = computer user on my desktop PC) appears in iTunes on the laptops and if I click on it, the entire music library shows up and I can play the music.

So far so good. But I can only play from within the whole library, I can organize it by song name or artist or album or genre, but I can't seem to generate playlists out of this music on the remote machines, or access preexisting playlists living on the master PC.

Is there anyway I can use this streaming/sharing feature in conjunction with playlists?

chimz
Jul 27, 2005

Science isn't about why, it's about why not.

Zwabu posted:

Is there anyway I can use this streaming/sharing feature in conjunction with playlists?

You can't edit playlists unless you're on the computer which owns the library. You also can't put songs that are on a remote library into your own playlists. This is because the music companies got very angry at Apple when they introduced music sharing, for some moronic reason.

You should be able to see the other computer's playlists, though, you just hit the little arrow next to the computer's name...

You can also access them and edit them from the iPhone if you've got the Remote application, which is pretty awesome. You can't stream the music, unfortunately.

Kilted Yaksman
Sep 25, 2003

Zwabu, create the playlists on the computer that serves the music. You should then be able to see those playlists on the clients by expanding the triangle next to that library name (it probably wont appear if the server has no playlists). I found this screenshot on GIS that might help...

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Rison
Apr 17, 2001
Just another retarded strawberry pancake
I'm trying to set up iTunes to use the same library and files on two computers. I already have one library on my desktop PC, which I want to continue using. Now, I want to be able to play and edit files from that library on my laptop and also any changes I make to the libary (editing tags) to carry over. Running Widows XP, by the way.

Here's how I want to do it:
1. Map existing music folder (C:\Music) to drive via subst (subst M: C:\Music)
2. Share new drive M: in the network
3. Share iTunes library file
4. Open library file in laptop's iTunes
5. Edit/play/whatever on laptop
6. Changes carry over

Now, some questions:
1. Will this work?
2. How do I not lose playcounts etc. in my existing desktop library and still make the library point to the newly mapped M: drive instead of the C:\Music folder?


EDIT: I think this is not working. Step 2 is already giving me troubles because I get an error when trying to share the drive.

Rison fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Apr 1, 2009

Kire
Aug 25, 2006

IUG posted:

I think when you un-subscribe, then re-subscribe, the episodes will show up again as undownloaded. There my be an easier way, but I remember this one.

This is retarded, I don't understand why iTunes can't manage podcasts better since podcasts are so fundamental to ipods and itunes.

IUG
Jul 14, 2007


Kire posted:

This is retarded, I don't understand why iTunes can't manage podcasts better since podcasts are so fundamental to ipods and itunes.

There's another way, I just don't remember it.

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

Kilted Yaksman posted:

Zwabu, create the playlists on the computer that serves the music. You should then be able to see those playlists on the clients by expanding the triangle next to that library name (it probably wont appear if the server has no playlists). I found this screenshot on GIS that might help...

I already had playlists. I discovered what the problem was: The "satellite" iTunes ALSO has to make its library available for sharing on the network. If you don't do this, then the "satellite" only sees the whole music library of the "parent" music library for some reason. As soon as you make the "satellite" iTunes library shared on the network, you see playlists from the parent.

BigBadBrewsta
Mar 11, 2002

"The State of Iowa: let us exceed your already low expectations."

-Raygun T-Shirt
I am absolutely at my wits end with iTunes Genius. No matter what I do, I can not avoid this error message:

quote:

"Genius results can't be updated right now. The network connection timed out.

Make sure your network settings are correct and your network connection active, then try again."

Here's all my particulars:

* Mac mini: early 2009 model. 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB HD.
* Running Mac OS X 10.5.6 and iTunes 8.1.
* iTunes Library contains 76,720 items or 433.75 GB -- all content is located on an external 1 TB USB 2.0 hard drive. However, the actual iTunes Library files (XML, ITDB, etc.) are all on Mini's internal HD in ~/Music/External iTunes Library/
* Stable and reliable Cable Internet through Mediacom -- 8 megabits per second download, 768 kilobit per second upload.
* Mini is connected via gigabit ethernet to a 500 GB Time Capsule. Not using wireless at all.

So, to recap: I have a very recent-model Mac with plenty of RAM and free hard drive space. The iTunes library files are on the mini's internal HD, while the content that is played is on an external 1 TB hard drive. I have a fast, stable, and reliable Internet connection. Let's get to it!

I successfully updated Genius a long time ago, like way back in September when it was first announced. My library was closer to 400 GB at the time. I've added some content since then, which I assumed must be causing my problems with updating Genius.

Here are the troubleshooting steps I've tried:

1) Make sure I'm on a reliable Internet connection.
I had a technician come out and check the lines. Everything looks great and speed tests and pings back that up. The connection can't be the issue. 8 mbps down and 768 kbps up is probably well into the top half of broadband connections in the US. Besides, I originally updated Genius on a much crappier connection than this!

2) Try off-peak times.
When I delete the iTunes Genius.itdb and iTunes Extra.itdb files, it takes between 10-12 hours to re-scan my library. Genius usually finishes in the middle of the night, between 12 AM and 4 AM Central time. Still didn't work.

3) Try wiping the Genius data and starting over.
I've tried this both ways -- both by specifically "Turning Off Genius" in the iTunes menus, as well as deleting the iTunes Genius.itdb file and the iTunes Extra.itdb file. It takes around 10-12 hours to rescan my library, but this certainly did not help.

4) Scan for, and delete, any files that iTunes can't find (orphan files).
I used both the Smart Playlists trick and an AppleScript to find all these. They're gone. Didn't help.

5) Scan for, and delete, any files that are "continuous" tracks -- like webcasts, radio streams, etc.
Did this too, didn't help.

6) Run iTunes Library.xml through an XML validator and fix any problems by updating the tags of the offending files.
Ran it through Validator and it didn't find any problems at all.

7) Run iTunes Library.xml through TextWrangler and "Zap Gremlins". Update tags in iTunes of any offending files.
Blog post here: http://deanmichael.blogspot.com/2008/10/apple-itunes-genius-network-timeout.html

He suggests that you can have some "Gremlins" in your XML file (and thus your tags) that will screw up Genius. I ran my Library XML file through TextWrangler and found 210+ gremlins. I went through all my tags and fixed them, one by one. My XML file (and thus my tags) are now gremlin free.

Even without ANY gremlins, I still am unable to update Genius.

8) Rebuild my iTunes Library according to Apple's directions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451
Still no luck, even after doing this.

So I am now completely at my wit's end. Stable connection, perfectly clean library, nothing seems to help. I have no idea what else to do at this point. Any suggestions or advice on other things to check or look at? I'm willing to try anything at this point.

Thanks to all in advance for any and all help.

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Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



BigBadBrewsta posted:

I am absolutely at my wits end with iTunes Genius. No matter what I do, I can not avoid this error message:

How big is the Genius file that is generated? Maybe there's a size limit that makes it time out. Seems you've tried everything, at least I can't think of anything you haven't tried.

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