Thread: iTunes ****ting me

Time out fellas

Originally Posted by Petetheprinta

My first post answered your question. My other posts answered thoughts put by other people along a similar vein. I don't see any iTunes v whatever. If you don't bother to take advice given, or even acknowledge if it worked for you or not, why whinge about further posts developed along the lines of your original question?

The advice given it what I did. I hadn't yet posted it due to not being
On my computer 24/7.

One suggestion I would have if you want to use iTunes - manually manage your music collection. Otherwise, some TWIT at Apple will decide in the next release, that music compilations belong in the "Various Artists" folder. The following release, another TWIT at Apple decides that it really belongs in "Various" folder. Then the next release, another TWIT moves them to "Compilations" folder.

Yeah chillax homies!

My dilemma:
Mrs has an ipod
I have a Samsung s4 phone

We both want to put music on our devices

As I mentioned I have never had much luck with itunes



but I dont think it can be done any other way for an ipod.

What would people recommend add the best way for us to go.

Open to all solutions as long as it doesn't involve new hardware!

Originally Posted by ade

That's what I have done. Just wanted to know if there was a easier method. I didn't want to here about people's arguments over android v iTunes v whatever.

If you have multiple copies in the library and only one on your hard drive the duplicates will most likely be missing files. You'll get "missing file" on all but the version that actually exists. If that is the case there is a solution that works with the current version of iTunes on OSX, possibly on Windows too.

The method is pinched from a old blog post here:
How to Remove Broken or Dead Tracks from iTunes « Paul Mayne

1. Make a smart playlist called “All Files” with this rule: “Artist” is not “123456789″ (or any nonsense name that won’t be in your library).

2. Make a static playlist called “All Live Files”.

3. Make a smart playlist called “Missing Files” with these rules: Match all of the following rules, Playlist is “All Files”, Playlist is not “All Live Files”

4. Select all the files from “All Files” and drag them into “All Live Files”. The dead files marked (!) will not copy over.

5. “Missing Files” will contain all of your dead files. Select all and delete. Voila, a nice clean iTunes library.

The trap is that you can't just select and delete from smart playlists in recent versions of iTunes. You need to hold down the Option key on a Mac while pressing Delete, or use Shift + Delete on Windows.

I'd used this method 4-5 years ago to clean up 1000's of dead files, and tried again just before posting to remove 280 dead files from my laptop iTunes library.

My main music library has just over 10,000 tracks ( 530gb of mainly lossless rips) which I leave iTunes to manage.
I've found the secret is to make sure that the tracks are correctly tagged.
iTunes arranges on the basis of tags applied to each track, so the state of the iTunes library reflects on how well tagged the tracks are.

Compliations need to be tagged as compilations with a consistent Album Name on all tracks.

If you tag things properly it all just works.

This is a multi disc compilation from my main library:


And corresponding iTunes managed folder, filed neatly under Compilations:


and track tagging to achieve this:


I'd much rather invest the time tagging the tracks so iTunes can manage the library rather than spend time trying to maintain it manually and fighting against software at every turn as a consequence.

cheers
Paul

Originally Posted by VladTepes

Yeah chillax homies!

My dilemma:
Mrs has an ipod
I have a Samsung s4 phone

We both want to put music on our devices

As I mentioned I have never had much luck with itunes


but I dont think it can be done any other way for an ipod.

What would people recommend add the best way for us to go.

Open to all solutions as long as it doesn't involve new hardware!

Winamp will put songs on an iPod... Don't know about the phone though...

offtrack - thanks for the detail info (useful to the OP no doubt) but it does highlight that itunes is not as user friendly as it claims to be. NONE of that is anything a casual . new user would even think of doing. Nope apple - not good enough. must try harder.

Originally Posted by VladTepes

offtrack - thanks for the detail info (useful to the OP no doubt) but it does highlight that itunes is not as user friendly as it claims to be. NONE of that is anything a casual . new user would even think of doing. Nope apple - not good enough. must try harder.

The problem that requires that kind of clean up only occurs when you start moving around tracks on the hard drive manually.



iTunes adds the track to it's library database when you add it to your collection and assumes that the track will remain in the same location until it is removed.



Once you start shuffling tracks around manually and doing reorganisation the information in the Library database is no longer correct and you end up with broken links and duplicates.



You can't blame Apple for users thinking that ticking "don't automatically organise the Media folder" really means "I can move tracks around manually to my hearts content without creating problems." It doesn't. It never has, and I dare say, it never will.



In fact I'd argue that if you want simple you leave iTunes to manage the library as the per default settings, and add and delete media using the iTunes interface. You are unlikely to have major issues. Even my 79 year old father who is a bit of a technophobe can manage it so I don't think the bar for competence is set particularly high.



The loudest complaints, and biggest problems come from those who think they are power users and choose to fight against the way the program is designed. I've been there and done that and it's a recipe for an unmanageable collection.

Add: iTunes has a "show duplicates" function that works well if you are trying to clean out a small number of duplicate tracks. But that wasn't what the OP asked. For a number of reasons this doesn't work well for me - I have a significant number of CDs that are a single track broken up into parts with the same name and part 1-15 added to the end. This is the way most operating systems handle duplicate files so these albums are identified as entirely made up of duplicates. Its not a particularly common issue.

Besides I would have though a moderator should know better than to hijack threads. It's not setting a very good example.