[moonmonkey]

Stop pissing around Steve, you have the best software about, improve it.


Now:
Scan the entire iTunes Music Store Library with clever BPM software, work out the the BPM's of tracks (if possible) and record it in the track data. This will take a long time, start it now.

iTunes 5.0:
Ad Vog import/convert (to AAC only) the Assistant should auto offer a higher bitrate for music freaks.

All new extra track/metadata updated to all purchased music.

Boost the ripping/encoding speed to the levels offered by PC software

Spend some money on the iTunes visualizer, add some masked clips of the iPods ads dancers... shadow people dancing, 40 small clips - 640/480 res, cued to the music types and BMP, and fading in and out subtly would be amazing, and not take much space.

iTunes 5.5
With the added BMP data, use the iTunes Party shuffle mode to auto-sort tracks based on the speed and mix them in time automatically, and smartly if you want.

iTunes 6.0
........ Thinking about it..... live human mixing would be cool......

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by moonmonkey:

Now:
Scan the entire iTunes Music Store Library with clever BPM software, work out the the BPM's of tracks (if possible) and record it in the track data. This will take a long time, start it now.

iTunes 5.0:
Ad Vog import/convert (to AAC only) the Assistant should auto offer a higher bitrate for music freaks.

Pardon my ignorance What's BPM?
Does the average iTunes/iPod user has even heard of Vog never mind incorporate it.

[petrol]

Originally posted by Maflynn:
Pardon my ignorance What's BPM?

Beats per minute?

Originally posted by Maflynn:
Does the average iTunes/iPod user has even heard of Vog never mind incorporate it.

I doubt the average user would, but for those users who would, it would be a nice feature. I've never used the Lossless encoder, but I do appreciate the option.

These are some pretty interesting ideas for iTunes. The innovation has seemed to level off a little on the iTunes front, unless I guess you use the Airtunes functionality.

Off the top of my head, here are a few things I would like to see in future versions...

1. A "Get Cover Art" feature. I know there are AppleScripts to do this, but the last time I tried it, it didn't work for all albums, and it was slooooow.

2. A "Get Lyrics" feature.

3. A way to identify and assign ID3 information for a set of music files based on CDDB entries. That is, if I have a folder with 10 songs in it, "Track 1.m4a, Track 2.m4a, etc.," iTunes will search CDDB for 10-track albums with similar (+/- 2 or 3 seconds, I guess) track times, and present a list for the user to select one.

[lavar78]

If I were on the iTunes team, nested playlists would be a higher priority than all of that stuff.

[OAW]

Originally posted by lavar78:
If I were on the iTunes team, nested playlists would be a higher priority than all of that stuff.

Indeed.

OAW

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by lavar78:
If I were on the iTunes team, nested playlists would be a higher priority than all of that stuff.

Bingo... my playlists are almost unusable at this point. Anything more then a 30+ and the GUI of iTunes playlists falls apart. God forbid I have ten playlists for most holidays. It would be nice if I could just tuck them away. I don't see the big issue!

Auto album art would be nice...

[lavar78]

We'll get them soon. I have feeling we'll end up with slightly less-functional folders (like iPhoto) instead of truly nested playlists, but that will be a big improvement.

[yukon]

Vorbis and FLAC would be properly supported. Ratings would be added to an unused ID3 tag automatically (so I don't have to do it). Album art in the album folder would be recognised, files like album.jpg would show up. Randomizer would be improved, I often see the same songs play sequentially. iTunes would aid in normalizing metadata format and point out probable errors (for example, year tags that say the song was created in "123").

Also a couple more features that they're unlikely to add, things like artwork searching, freedb for missing metadata, etc. I'm sure they don't want MP3 being much more attractive now.

[lavar78]

Originally posted by yukon:
Randomizer would be improved, I often see the same songs play sequentially.

That doesn't mean it isn't random.

[yukon]

Nope, randomizers aren't random. We want variety, not entropy ;-). For example, with a random setup, iTunes might just play the same song over and over, people generally don't want a song to repeat. But I've been often seeing the pattern, play a certain song, a certain list of songs will be "randomized" to play in the same order. It's not terribly annoying, and it is in many other players, but if I can notice it then it can be improved.

[wilsonng]

There is an AppleScript that provides better random play but takes longer to process....

--------------------
Create Random Playlists

written by Alan Somers
posted: Jan 26, 2002
downloads: 945

Helps you create "super" playlists consisting of one or more segment playlists of different sizes. Helpful for creating correctly sized playlists for export to expansion cards. This later version is "more random", can create multiple playlists, and has several other creation-parameter fixes.

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/s...s06.php?page=2

--------------------

I think the randomizer rarely moves songs up or down the playlist but not by much. If it was more random, it would probably take longer to randomize.

I personally create a smart playlist that says something like this:

[Last played] [is not in the last] [14] [days]

Then I click on the shuffle button.

At least this guarantees that I won't hear the same song for at least 2 weeks. Adjust it to smaller or larger number of days depending on the size of your library.

I also sometimes put in the following option:

[Playlist] [is] "My slow jams"

or whatever playlist I want to use.

Or alternatively I can use:
[Play count] [is] [0]

or sometimes

[Play count] [is less than] [3]

I can always select this smart playlist when I don't want to play the songs that tend to get more airplay.

Originally posted by yukon:
Nope, randomizers aren't random. We want variety, not entropy ;-). For example, with a random setup, iTunes might just play the same song over and over, people generally don't want a song to repeat. But I've been often seeing the pattern, play a certain song, a certain list of songs will be "randomized" to play in the same order. It's not terribly annoying, and it is in many other players, but if I can notice it then it can be improved.

[Gankdawg]

Originally posted by moonmonkey:
Boost the ripping/encoding speed to the levels offered by PC software

Even though I ripped my CDs along time ago, this would be welcome feature for switchers who are used to the higher speeds.

[ReggieX]

First of all, it's not Vog, it's OGG Vorbis. If you're going to complain about missing features, get the name right so we know what you mean.

Ripping/Encoding speed: What are you talking about? iTunes MP3 is already the fastest encoder available on the Mac, and does the rip & encode in one step, rather than ripping to the hard drive as AIFF and then encoding it. "Boost the ripping/encoding speed to the levels offered by PC software" means nothing here, what PC software? Ripping to HD is completely dependent on the speed of your reader.

[lavar78]

Originally posted by yukon:
Nope, randomizers aren't random. We want variety, not entropy ;-). For example, with a random setup, iTunes might just play the same song over and over, people generally don't want a song to repeat. But I've been often seeing the pattern, play a certain song, a certain list of songs will be "randomized" to play in the same order. It's not terribly annoying, and it is in many other players, but if I can notice it then it can be improved.

Well, of course they aren't completely random. Anyway, seeing a pattern "often" may not be such a big deal. After all, humans naturally see (or think they see) patterns. Make a playlist, sort by the first column, select two consecutive songs, then shuffle. Now keep option-clicking the shuffle button. The songs should rarely be next to each other.

You glossed over the main point -- you don't want it to be truly random or even shuffled the way iTunes does it; you want it to be varied. By definition, that means putting eliminating some of the possible choices for track order.

[cambro]

If you haven't already:

SEND APPLE FEEDBACK:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html

They really do listen...

[Boondoggle]

I tried creating a BPM smartlist for treadmill music, but since the data is not there it didn't work... I think BPM auto-calc. is a good idea.

bd

[eggman]

I'd love an option on Smart Playlists as follows:

"Song Name" : "is unique"

All this option would do is make sure that when it's adding tracks to your playlist, a track of that name doesn't already exist in your list.

For a lot of my tracks, I've got live versions, cover versions, demo versions, and I don't want them ending up together in my playlists. I've got 20 version of Hendrix's song "Little Wing", for example.

I imagine that doing a simple "exact match" comparison would take a programmer at Apple about, oh, 15 minutes to code, including the UI... if they type really slowly.

[mhuie]

Why complicate things more than they already are with adding unnecessary codecs? AAC at 192 sounds perfectly fine to me on, and they added lossless support for everyone who complained.

Same with the artwork, most 3rd party addons/apps use online retailers to get their artwork which isn't the most reliable. Plus most people's downloaded files are not tagged correctly in the first place. I'm glad that only songs bought of iTMS have artwork.

I like the way iTunes is now, its free and works perfectly for 99% of peoples needs.

[yukon]

lol, an applescript, option clicking the shuffle button a bunch of times, I just want it to not play the songs in the same order ;-). It's an "If I was on the iTunes team" thread, not a big deal but I'd change it.

Also, one big one I forgot, decoding speed. iTunes uses a lot of CPU on my G4 (10-25%), and since music is playing always, it's a constant thing. I'm concidering moving to iTunes on a faster windows machine for this reason in fact. It's unfortunate that nothing was really done with mpg123 after a certain point, 6% usage on my machine, and the altivec verison brought it down to 3% usage...anyone else remember Mu?

[TETENAL]

Nobody would port it to Cocoa?

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Nobody would port it to Cocoa?

No, because that would be fairly pointless.

[lavar78]

Originally posted by yukon:
lol, an applescript, option clicking the shuffle button a bunch of times, I just want it to not play the songs in the same order ;-). It's an "If I were on the iTunes team" thread, not a big deal but I'd change it.

My point was that there's nothing to change. iTunes shuffles songs in a (reasonably close to) random way. Any patterns you hear are figments of your imagination.

[Rickster]

I'd have it not punt at the slightest bit of radio interference (or is it just at random?) when streaming to an AirPort Express... or at least not try to deal with such problems by sitting at the beginning of a track for several seconds not playing any audio and then incrementing the play count and skipping to the next track and doing the same thing again.

Also, I'd have it support CD-TEXT when burning Audio CDs so that track titles would show up on the display in my Prius. (Or better, I'd have the iPod team and Toyota get together and make it so I could hook up my iPod, control it from the steering wheel, and see track titles on the car's display.)

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by Rickster:
I'd have it not punt at the slightest bit of radio interference (or is it just at random?) when streaming to an AirPort Express... or at least not try to deal with such problems by sitting at the beginning of a track for several seconds not playing any audio and then incrementing the play count and skipping to the next track and doing the same thing again.

is your wireless network g only? That sounds like the problem I get on mixed b and g nets.

bd

[CaptainHaddock]

"randomizer would be improved, I often see the same songs play sequentially"

That can happen, of course, if it's actually random. What you really want is a psuedo-random play that is less likely to play songs you've recently heard.

Myself, I have about 2000 songs in my library, and I hate listening to the same song too often, so I made a smart playlist that excludes songs listened to within the previous week. It also only plays songs rated 3 or higher and songs I haven't rated yet. I use this playlist in my party shuffle, and I tell it to play highly rated songs more often. I couldn't ask for a better way of listening to music!

[IceEnclosure]

Are all of you already able to burn completely gapless audio CDs? As in a live DJ mix, where track one and track two should have no audible pause between the two tracks. Maybe I missed that being fixed lately, I've been using Toast for such things.

THAT is what I'd get hammerin' on back at the shop.

[- - e r i k - -]

How about a partymix that included the iPod? I do not want to store all my songs on my tiny laptop harddrive

[Randman]

Originally posted by eggman:
I'd love an option on Smart Playlists as follows:

"Song Name" : "is unique"

All this option would do is make sure that when it's adding tracks to your playlist, a track of that name doesn't already exist in your list.

For a lot of my tracks, I've got live versions, cover versions, demo versions, and I don't want them ending up together in my playlists. I've got 20 version of Hendrix's song "Little Wing", for example.

I imagine that doing a simple "exact match" comparison would take a programmer at Apple about, oh, 15 minutes to code, including the UI... if they type really slowly.

The latest version of iTunes has an option to "Show Duplicate Tracks". Can do it for a playlist or the entire library. You could use that then edit the info yourself.

[eggman]

I know about "show duplicate tracks". That's why it would be so easy for them to implement the feature I'm requesting.

The idea of "Smart Playlists" is to allow you to set up criteria so you don't have to edit the results by hand!

[radii_22]

- A feature, in Party Shuffle, to mix / overlap songs...
- A better user interface for the album art
- Folders of playlists

--->>>

[CaptainHaddock]

"How about a partymix that included the iPod?"

Easy to do already. Make a smart playlist that grabs a fixed number of random songs from your library or another playlist. Exclude the most recently used songs. Set the smart playlist to synchronize with your iPod. Bob's your uncle, you have a party list for your iPod!

[lavar78]

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
"How about a partymix that included the iPod?"

Easy to do already. Make a smart playlist that grabs a fixed number of random songs from your library or another playlist. Exclude the most recently used songs. Set the smart playlist to synchronize with your iPod. Bob's your uncle, you have a party list for your iPod!

I think he meant the ability to use an iPod as the source playlist for Party Shuffle. The songs in his iPod aren't in his iTunes library.

[Big Mac]

I read several /. posts that claimed the iPod does not have the muscle to decode Vorbis real time. If that's true, it's little wonder why the format is not included in iTunes.

[- - e r i k - -]

And for the love of Bob, can someone please tell me what REAL advantages Ogg Vorbis have over AAC and the omnipresent MP3-format? Since I first heard of it in 2000 I have not heard ONE good argument for it.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by radii_22:
- A feature, in Party Shuffle, to mix / overlap songs...
- A better user interface for the album art
- Folders of playlists

The last one seems a given after iPhoto got it, but the first two I'm uncertain of. Party shuffle (actually all of iTunes) has had a mix/overlap feature since version 2.

And how do you propose the album art UI could be done better? It seems self-explanatory to me. The only thing that isn't immediately obvious is how you change the viewer from displaying selected track to currently playing.

[Big Mac]

radii probably means that there should be a way to pull album art from a server at the click of a button. Apple would probably do that if the record companies granted the rights and technical hooks to it. Also, I thought there was a way to add art work to multiple tracks at a time; it's really unfortunate that you cannot do that yet. Ogg Vorbis is the nerd's format. I think the main virtue they extoll is that it is open source.

[joltguy]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
How about a partymix that included the iPod? I do not want to store all my songs on my tiny laptop harddrive

Yes, yes, yes and 1000 times yes!

For that matter the "iTunes integration" that exists in the iLife apps (especially iPhoto) should also recognize the iPod's playlists if one is connected. I don't have '05 though, so maybe it's already doing this?

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
radii probably means that there should be a way to pull album art from a server at the click of a button. Apple would probably do that if the record companies granted the rights and technical hooks to it. Also, I thought there was a way to add art work to multiple tracks at a time; it's really unfortunate that you cannot do that yet. Ogg Vorbis is the nerd's format. I think the main virtue they extoll is that it is open source.

Open Source! Hooray! But what does it do...? Make my music magically sweeter sounding? Preventing me from listening to it on my iPod or any other hardware in existence? I think the latter.

Yes, if there was a legal way for Apple to do this, they probably will. But then again they won't, since that would mean you add it to a track not purchased from the music store

You add artwork to multiple songs by selecting multiple songs then dragging artwork to where it says to. Nothing magical about that I think.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Open Source! Hooray! But what does it do...?

This is my take on it. Open source proponents often use linux, where open source software is basically all they have, and it turns out that MPEG based formats carry a patent-related fee (on the order of 25 cents per decoder or something) that companies like Apple absorb for their customers, but open source developers need to just break the law and cross their fingers. So this community would prefer to say to hell with MPEG, we can create out own format that is actually free, and that's what ogg is.

To you (and my) it means nothing, but just like there is a minority (mac users) that object when products support wma and not mp3 or mp4, there is a minority (linux users) that object when products support MPEG standards but not open source ones.

[mitchell_pgh]

I'm not sure Apple would support ogg because it's an open source codec. Basically it would be very similar to Microsoft saying that OpenOffice is a great application.

Apple makes a considerable amount of money supporting and developing proprietary codecs. While we all feel MP3 is an open format, it's not. Somewhere along the lines, someone is paying... the same with AAC and every other format.

I would love to see it supported simply because it's one more format that iTunes can handle and the propeller heads can all cheer in unison in the basements of their parents houses. -jab-

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
No, because that would be fairly pointless.

Exactly. iTunes is an example of a well-written Carbon app, to the point where I'd wager that at least half of the posters here don't even know it's Carbon at all.

Cocoa itself would give iTunes no benefits whatsoever.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Apple makes a considerable amount of money supporting and developing proprietary codecs. While we all feel MP3 is an open format, it's not. Somewhere along the lines, someone is paying... the same with AAC and every other format.

Apple makes no money whatsoever from supporting proprietary codecs in iTunes. It can't, considering that it gives away the software for free. While it makes a small profit on the iTunes Music Store -selling music in a proprietary format- nobody is asking them to switch their music format to Ogg, only to play it.

In any case, there have been rumors of Ogg support in QT7; if this is true than iTunes support -at least for playback, if not encoding- would be a logical extension of that support.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Apple makes a considerable amount of money supporting and developing proprietary codecs. While we all feel MP3 is an open format, it's not. Somewhere along the lines, someone is paying... the same with AAC and every other format.

But they would lose less money supporting an open format like Ogg than they do paying fees for MPEG, so that doesn't make sense as an argument against supporting Ogg.

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I would love to see it supported simply because it's one more format that iTunes can handle and the propeller heads can all cheer in unison in the basements of their parents houses.

On the other hand, I don't think it's such a big darn if Apple doesn't support it. There is already a third-party QuickTime codec for Ogg, and most people who would be interested in playing Ogg Vorbis files (read: LINUX NERDS) are probably savvy enough to figure out installing codecs.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
But they would lose less money supporting an open format like Ogg than they do paying fees for MPEG, so that doesn't make sense as an argument against supporting Ogg.

Except that Vorbis hasn't really caught on and they'd be left supporting the industry and de facto standard (MP3) anyway. And implementing Vorbis requires an expenditure on development, support, etc. Apple seems to think that the return on this is not worth the effort, so they haven't done it. I think they're probably right.

[Superchicken]

Of all the features I'd like to have added would be folders of play lists.

Though I really do like the idea of BPM figuring out. I'd like to have higher BPM songs on my iPod for at the gym on the elliptical. That said, there are some things iTunes could gain from Cocoa. I enjoy editing the look of the graphics in my cocoa apps. I don't do it all that often but I do now and again. As well as features like spell check... or even multiple fonts for displaying info on the iTunes window could be fun.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
Though I really do like the idea of BPM figuring out. I'd like to have higher BPM songs on my iPod for at the gym on the elliptical. That said, there are some things iTunes could gain from Cocoa. I enjoy editing the look of the graphics in my cocoa apps. I don't do it all that often but I do now and again. As well as features like spell check... or even multiple fonts for displaying info on the iTunes window could be fun.

Which of these things isn't possible using Carbon?

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Apple makes no money whatsoever from supporting proprietary codecs in iTunes. It can't, considering that it gives away the software for free. While it makes a small profit on the iTunes Music Store -selling music in a proprietary format- nobody is asking them to switch their music format to Ogg, only to play it.

In any case, there have been rumors of Ogg support in QT7; if this is true than iTunes support -at least for playback, if not encoding- would be a logical extension of that support.

I guess I see ogg as adding competition to AAC which apple supports and has a much larger stake in. but you have a good point.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
Which of these things isn't possible using Carbon?

The question isn't "what could be done with carbon" it's "what's done automatcially with cocoa." You're not going to convince Apple to support changing the interface of one of their apps, but if that app happens to be cocoa you can do it anyway. That's why I can use Safari without having to stare at brushed metal all day.

[goMac]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
The question isn't "what could be done with carbon" it's "what's done automatcially with cocoa." You're not going to convince Apple to support changing the interface of one of their apps, but if that app happens to be cocoa you can do it anyway. That's why I can use Safari without having to stare at brushed metal all day.

You can changed the brushed look and feel of Carbon apps. The problem is iTunes isn't even using the standard Carbon brushed appearance. The application was coded on Mac OS 9 far before the brushed look and feel existed. Because of this, the brushed look and feel was hardcoded into iTunes with images. It's not using the standard OS X appearance manager. Quicktime Player is currently in the same boat. It also has a hardcoded interface.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
The question isn't "what could be done with carbon" it's "what's done automatcially with cocoa."

If you think porting iTunes to Cocoa would automatically allow you to have multiple fonts in the table, you're smoking something. They could make this possible with either framework, but I doubt they would with either framework.