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Zoom · Sep 10, 2005, 09:34 PM

I'm looking to tidy up and then backup my iTunes. I have a few questions, some of which have vexed me for a LONG time...

1) My original music library was a folder of MP3 files. When iTunes came out, I told it to leave the location alone. Now I'm kinda thinking I'd like it all together in a single folder, for easy backup. How dangerous is this operation? I never deal with these files directly, I just work through iTunes, so I don't really care what it does in terms of organizing them into folders - as long as none of the files get lost, the names don't get mangled beyond recognition, and so on.

2) Most of my MP3's are in pretty good shape in terms of artist and title, but some probably don't have an album name. How dangerous is the "Convert ID3 Tag" tool?

3) Also, if I backup my library from within iTunes (burn the library as "Data DVD's"), is this equivalent to burning the iTunes Library folder to DVDs using Toast or Disk Burner (assuming all your files are in the library)? For instance, I don't want to create a DVD of some custom Apple binary format, I'm looking for a set of files and folders. Of course, I'd like to backup the playlists, too.

4) One more off the wall question... sometime iTunes tells me a file's album art is "not modifyable". Why would this be? Is it read-only? I can't find one now, or I'd check that. I run across one every once in a while.

5) I think I have a few odd MP3 files that are "lost" due to a bad file extension. Without knowing precisely what that extension is (I forget... ".mp" or ".mp2" or something goofy, probably a typo), how can I find these files? Any bright ideas? I was hoping there might be some way to scan my library and show unplayable files or something.

6) Some of my MP3's are shown with a QuickTime icon, not iTunes. If I double-click them, they open in QT. Why?

7) Is there any way to find out what songs in my library are not in ANY playlists? This is a feature I've been asking Apple for - orphaned tunes. There's no smart playlist criteria I can find to cover this.

8) What's the best/easiest way to find album art for my songs that do not currently have any? I know there were some tools floating around, but I haven't looked at them recently.

Thanks!

P.S. I'm using iTunes 5.0.

mchladek · Sep 11, 2005, 09:13 AM

I can take a stab at some of your questions. Can't answer them all though.

1) Let iTunes organize your music folder. It's much simpler. iTunes will probably change the names of the mp3, but not to an extent that you can't tell what they are. This is how iTunes organizes the files: each mp3 gets named by its track number and song title. Each of these files is then placed in a folder of its respective album title. Each album folder is placed inside an artist folder, and all these artist folders are placed in the iTunes Music folder. So, yes, it would be much easier to backup.

2) What are you converting the tags to and why?

3) Burning from iTunes should be equivalent. It's definitely not like burning from iPhoto (which I despise). It should just burn all your songs as mp3s.

4) I don't have a clue

5) Don't know about this either. If you know any portion of the file name try searching for it through Spotlight. I don't know if Spotlight is able to search for files by type. If so, maybe you could search for files that have no type. (I don't have Tiger.)

6) You can change these files by selecting one, getting info on it, choose iTunes under the "Open with:" section, and click "Change all..."

7) Hmm ... what you could do is create a smart playlist with the criteria of not being in any other playlist. I.e., in the rules of the smart playlist, make a rule of "Playlist" "is not" "___________" for each of your existing playlists. You'll just have to make sure if you make a new playlist to add that one to this smart playlist.

8) There's a few 3rd party apps that will do this, but I'm not familiar with any of them.

Good luck!

CaptainHaddock · Sep 11, 2005, 09:29 AM

#8 I just look up the album names one at a time in Google Images and drag the album images that come up to iTunes. If the song is highlighted, you can drag right into the album picture window.

JazzCatDRP · Sep 11, 2005, 09:37 AM

Are you running Tiger? If so, check out the Album Art widget from liquidx.net. It'll automatically find album art for any song that's playing, and then you can choose to append that artwork to the individual track, or the whole album.

Zoom · Sep 12, 2005, 07:37 AM

Originally Posted by mchladek

2) What are you converting the tags to and why?

Some of the old MP3 files have older ID3 tags - some so old that they don't support long track names. I just figured it would be good to get them all up to date to the latest spec.

Originally Posted by mchladek

6) You can change these files by selecting one, getting info on it, choose iTunes under the "Open with:" section, and click "Change all..."

Ah, forgot about the "change all". That might do it.

Originally Posted by mchladek

7) Hmm ... what you could do is create a smart playlist with the criteria of not being in any other playlist. I.e., in the rules of the smart playlist, make a rule of "Playlist" "is not" "___________" for each of your existing playlists. You'll just have to make sure if you make a new playlist to add that one to this smart playlist.

I have dozens of playlists, so this would be a major pain. But as a last resort, I can try it.

Zoom · Sep 12, 2005, 07:38 AM

Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock

#8 I just look up the album names one at a time in Google Images and drag the album images that come up to iTunes. If the song is highlighted, you can drag right into the album picture window.

I've done that, too, but it's very time consuming. I'll try the widget suggested below. I know there are other apps for this, too.

Zoom · Sep 12, 2005, 07:51 AM

Just found iTunes Catalog. I'm not sure it's worth $15 to me, though.

The widget looks cool, but this requires playing all the songs and invoking Dashboard for songs that somehow remember don't already have art. I want something that will loop over my collection and find all songs without art. I'd love for it to fill out the rest of the ID3 tag info, too.

Why hasn't Gracenote CDDB or some other place added lyrics and album art?? I mean, I'm sure it's due to copyright concerns, but that just seems silly to me. I don't get the point of enforcing copyright on album art (at least low res versions for player apps like iTunes) and lyrics especially. The artist presumably wrote the song so that people would hear it, and I would think they'd want people to know what they were saying.... so why on earth would you (a) not always publish your lyrics and (b) restrict anyone from freely dispersing them?? But I suppose that's a different topic.

mchladek · Sep 12, 2005, 01:31 PM

Originally Posted by Zoom

I have dozens of playlists, so this would be a major pain. But as a last resort, I can try it.

It probably wouldn't take as long as you think. You don't have to type in the playlist names; it's a drop down menu. Even with a few dozen playlists it shouldn't take more than a few minutes. The only question would be if you have enough screen space for all the rules you'll have to create

jasong · Sep 12, 2005, 09:42 PM

I'm pretty sure I saw an Applescript to look for files not in a playlist. Have you tried googling it?

phantomdragonz · Sep 13, 2005, 03:02 AM

8. "Fetch Art" it's a little more manual then I think you are looking for, but it does a great job...

Zach

PurpleGiant · Sep 13, 2005, 03:16 AM

1) To make sure iTunes gets all your files, set it to organise your music automatically. Then go to the Advanced menu and select 'Consolidate Library' to ensure it has a copy of all your music.

Then you're all set.

Zoom · Sep 14, 2005, 07:47 PM

Thanks, everyone!

jay3ld · Sep 14, 2005, 08:36 PM

Originally Posted by mchladek

It probably wouldn't take as long as you think. You don't have to type in the playlist names; it's a drop down menu. Even with a few dozen playlists it shouldn't take more than a few minutes. The only question would be if you have enough screen space for all the rules you'll have to create

if you got itunes 5 and you use its folders feature you can just select the folder and it will select all the playlists in that folder.
i used that method above to find all my playlistless songs and since i got all my folders and playlists in 1 folder called Playlists i only added that one to the smart playlist and it found them all.

. you cant put the smart playlist in the same folder as the one you getting the information from.