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Simon · Jun 29, 2008, 04:40 AM

I have a lot of Apple Lossless music files in iTunes. Now I'd like to convert them to AAC. However, I don't want to keep the AL versions. I would like iTunes to have the old entries point to the new files including entries in all my playlists. Since we are talking about roughly 5000 files in various folders doing it manually is out of the question.

Now iTunes has a menu entry to convert AL->AAC, but when you do that it creates a new file with a new name and makes a new entry in the Library. If I now delete the old song I'm left with just the new AAC version, but I will have lost all the song's entries in my playlists.

So, any suggestions on how to get this done? I was thinking about an app that would not only allow me to convert, but would also replace the original file with the new one. If I then launch iTunes after this conversion, it would find the new file with the same name and the same path and hopefully play it as if nothing had happened.

turtle777 · Jun 29, 2008, 07:31 AM

I don't know about any app that would do that, but have you looked at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes ♫ Welcome ?

-t

Simon · Jun 29, 2008, 01:27 PM

Thanks for the link.

Unfortunately, from what I can see they don't have a script that does what I want. There are scripts to get AAC copies, but nothing for a "stealth conversion".

Thinine · Jun 30, 2008, 05:50 PM

Yeah, I wish something like this was in iTunes. Especially for syncing to an iPhone or something. I'd love to autoconvert my lossless files to AAC when I put them on an iPod/iPhone.

Simon · Jul 1, 2008, 01:48 AM

I hear you. Actually my interest in this was sparked by the iPhone's 16 GB max capacity.

mduell · Jul 1, 2008, 01:30 PM

The annoying part is iTunes can do this, Apple just disables it for non-Shuffle devices.

Simon · 04:04 PM

Not at all. What iTunes does is fine, but it's quite different from what I was looking for.

mduell · Jul 1, 2008, 05:14 PM

I was replying to Thinine.

For your issue, I think it's time to switch to Smart Playlists.

Simon · Jul 2, 2008, 02:50 AM

Quick Convert (on one Doug's Scripts mentioned above) does almost all of what I'm looking for. I've been in contact with the author to get the remaining functionality in there.