do you use iTunes

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
beats me
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by beats me » Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:08 pm

monstrejumo wrote:
When I bounce a track from Live I just have it save it to the desktop, drag that to iTunes which makes a copy in my iTunes library and then I trash the desktop copy
why do you do that?

I still don't get what's the point of having itunes making its own library?

when I export a wav track from live on the desktop, I drag it in my monstre jumo tracks itunes playlist, then drag the desktop wav into my own music folder (itunes ALLWAYS REMEMBER THE PATH, wherever you could re-place the file!!!)

I organise my own music folder myself (pc times habit), and this avoids to have multiple copies of the same files...?

don't misunderstand me, I don't criticize itunes, just that I don't get the library mentality...

I allways disable the import and library options

cheers
Then let's just agree to not get each other.

It's quite simple. Soon as I drag the track into iTunes I tag it with my arist name and iTunes automatically puts it in my artist name folder in my library. It either defualts to an unknown album folder if I don't tag it with an album name or I can also tag it with an album name and it will create a folder in my artist folder for that or add it to an existing album folder if it's already there. I can also change song names or albums and it will adjust my library accordingly. It's always easy to find the file and why would I want to do all that manually? What's not to get?

SubFunk
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by SubFunk » Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:09 pm

beats me wrote:Another option is to set quicktime to the default application for all your media.
you not even need to do that, you can choose it individually for any given file type, if you like, that is.
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ethios4
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by ethios4 » Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:14 pm

monstrejumo wrote:when I export a wav track from live on the desktop, I drag it in my monstre jumo tracks itunes playlist, then drag the desktop wav into my own music folder (itunes ALLWAYS REMEMBER THE PATH, wherever you could re-place the file!!!)
Now that is sweet.

SubFunk
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by SubFunk » Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:29 pm

ethios4 wrote:
monstrejumo wrote:when I export a wav track from live on the desktop, I drag it in my monstre jumo tracks itunes playlist, then drag the desktop wav into my own music folder (itunes ALLWAYS REMEMBER THE PATH, wherever you could re-place the file!!!)
Now that is sweet.
well yes, as long as iTunes is open, you can move any file anywhere and it will 'follow' that is right and great, another thing i like is, if you have a tune (the physical file) in your iTunes library and you drag this tune from a playlist anywhere in your system it will create a duplicate, i find that very convenient, the 'original' is never touched or moved this way... but you can just grab a bunch for altering or creating a special folder with assorted tunes outside the library, or whatever.

sweet.
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davepermen
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by davepermen » Thu Feb 11, 2010 8:48 pm

monstrejumo wrote:
When I bounce a track from Live I just have it save it to the desktop, drag that to iTunes which makes a copy in my iTunes library and then I trash the desktop copy
why do you do that?

I still don't get what's the point of having itunes making its own library?

when I export a wav track from live on the desktop, I drag it in my monstre jumo tracks itunes playlist, then drag the desktop wav into my own music folder (itunes ALLWAYS REMEMBER THE PATH, wherever you could re-place the file!!!)

I organise my own music folder myself (pc times habit), and this avoids to have multiple copies of the same files...?

don't misunderstand me, I don't criticize itunes, just that I don't get the library mentality...

I allways disable the import and library options

cheers
the trick is, having SOME form of folder structure does not make sense. you want a folder per album OR a folder per artist OR a folder for A, B, C, OR a folder per music style OR by decade? you have to fix yourself to ONE of those, and have to search (or manage playlists) for the others.

that's why a library makes more sense. it's more like groups than folders (how it handles it in the backend is unimportant). it changes my list above from all ORs to all ANDs.

and this is why i have more than you by using the library, and advanced from the pre-dos-days of the one-hierarchy-rules-it-all limitation.

once you understand that, you understand libraries and why they're great. as long as you don't, you still care about folders.


edit: actually you do understand it sort of. but not to the extend i think of it. it's like "put the music into your music box, forget the rest". i'd like an option to tell itunes to move the file to the library instead of copying it, though.. that would be perfect.. so no files lie around anywhere where they wouldn't belong to (desktop, downloads, my received files, etc..), and all in one place, organized and structured by the music library.
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supamonsta
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by supamonsta » Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:51 pm

wow guys, I'm sold!!!!

seems really much more simple indeed

I don't really know why I never used this library, perhap's it is that when I had my first mac and iTunes, I was totally dos-folder-formatted and I didn't get it at all, just thniking "why the hell do I need ITunes to re-create my own folders"?

but I began using the categories, genres, artist name, album titles... without the iTunes library, as a kinda second organisation layer...

well...

now I have

- my folders
- my iTunes organisation

should I just select ALL the iTunes content, and do a massive "import to library"?

then I can delete the source folders?

seems cool?

cheers

adventurepants_
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by adventurepants_ » Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:04 pm

monstrejumo wrote:wow guys, I'm sold!!!!

seems really much more simple indeed

I don't really know why I never used this library, perhap's it is that when I had my first mac and iTunes, I was totally dos-folder-formatted and I didn't get it at all, just thniking "why the hell do I need ITunes to re-create my own folders"?

but I began using the categories, genres, artist name, album titles... without the iTunes library, as a kinda second organisation layer...

well...

now I have

- my folders
- my iTunes organisation

should I just select ALL the iTunes content, and do a massive "import to library"?

then I can delete the source folders?

seems cool?

cheers
I wouldnt. I maintain a separate backup of mp3s, categorised in the file structure that I want in case Apple do something crazy in the future that borks the meta data or filenames, like they do sometimes. Im pretty cautious, but I did spend nearly 5 weeks worth of evenings just sorting out metadata, and Im never doing it again!
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davepermen
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by davepermen » Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:08 pm

what i did (after a lot of other tries) was this:

got all my tracks OUT of itunes.

enabled "manage library" and "copy files to library".

then drag dropped everything into the empty itunes, waited for days (minutes) till it copied all over.

then i got rid of the old files, in my case by moving them to \\server\Temporary (never delete all what you had before, as long as you aren't sure about the new stuff :))

and then i clean up everything that's not fine yet in itunes itself (all the stuff that is from questionable sources f.e. :) in the end, i deleted EVERYTHING not bought from legal sources as i wanted to do a personal cleanup out of the childage, too :))

be sure to check out the settings on a file in itunes to change all sort of tags, artist names and all, and check out how you can edit multiple files at once, etc. great to know to quickly cleanup stuff, too.

what's great about it, at least in windows (no recent mac experience right now) is that windows can take the library of itunes directly and sees all the tags (as long as they're not v2.4, up to 2.3 it's fine), and allows you to manage all stuff just as well f.e. in media center, or media player.. or explorer (which is the cool thing. sort, group, filter there as well :)).


so i use itunes really mostly as library, not to playback (but i do so, too). but the advantage is a fully cleaned up place of my music, which i can thus then access in those cleaned up ways in all other kinds of apps or environments.

this is a big big gain of what ever was before.
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ethios4
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by ethios4 » Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:58 pm

Ahhh, you guys had seriously thinking about going with the library method, but you lost me again with having itunes making copies of my library so it can make its own library, and possibly needing to keep the backup of my library in case of future problems.

Why does itunes have to do anything to the original files at all besides move/copy them? That's what gets me. Or did I misunderstand?

Another question....if an album is missing its tags, does it get put into an 'unknown artist' folder, or is the artist read from the folder name or file name or something? I guess if it went into an 'unknown artist' folder you could just fix the tags in itunes...

steko
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by steko » Fri Feb 12, 2010 12:06 am

Hi monstrejumo!

If you wanna go the library method, at least on Mac & iTunes 9 (read first: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articl ... hard-drive - that's on transferring your iTunes Library, but all info you need is in there).

The first step is to review your storage settings under your iTunes Advanced preferences:

Image

Keep iTunes Media folder organized determines whether tracks in your iTunes Media folder are automatically organized based on the track information found within each file. With this option enabled, iTunes will move and rename files within the iTunes Media folder as necessary into sub-folders by media type, with music organized in an ARTISTALBUM subfolder structure and each file named by its track name from the iTunes library. If this option is disabled, then files within the iTunes Media folder will be left with whatever name and sub-folder they were in when you first imported them, regardless of changes to the tag information within iTunes itself.

Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library determines whether files that you add to your library are automatically copied into the music folder, or left in their original location. When you import new content with this option disabled, iTunes simply “references” the file from wherever you’re importing it, rather than making a copy of it in your iTunes Media folder.

Tracks copied into the iTunes Media Folder become “Managed” files in that iTunes will manage the location and naming of these files, whereas files that are not copied into the iTunes Media folder are “Referenced” files—iTunes stores a full path to the file, but does not actually take any further action with those files in terms of organizing, renaming, moving, or deleting those tracks.

Note that content purchased from the iTunes Store or ripped from CD is always stored in the iTunes Media folder—iTunes is actually creating new files in this case so it has to have somewhere to put them by default. Therefore, this setting only affects existing files from your computer that are added to the iTunes library using the File, Add to Library option or by dragging-and-dropping them into iTunes from another folder.

Then:

Image

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And also "Upgrade to iTunes Media organization"


The originals will not be deleted, so be sure you have enough free space on your drive afterwards (ALWAYS keep a minimum of 10GB, or 10% free).

Be sure you have a BACKUP...
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adventurepants_
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by adventurepants_ » Fri Feb 12, 2010 12:44 am

ethios4 wrote:Ahhh, you guys had seriously thinking about going with the library method, but you lost me again with having itunes making copies of my library so it can make its own library, and possibly needing to keep the backup of my library in case of future problems.

Why does itunes have to do anything to the original files at all besides move/copy them? That's what gets me. Or did I misunderstand?

Another question....if an album is missing its tags, does it get put into an 'unknown artist' folder, or is the artist read from the folder name or file name or something? I guess if it went into an 'unknown artist' folder you could just fix the tags in itunes...
ethios4 you should always have 3 copies of anything important, otherwise its simply a matter of time until you lose some or all of it. doesnt matter if its mp3s or your tax records.

If you let Itunes manage your files, it will rename the filenames and folder structure to suit its own internal system. I like to keep my archived mp3 backup in my own file structure so i can easily use it with other programs in the future.

If you dont let it manage your library, it wont rename or move the files, but it may corrupt them at some point if you have a hard drive or other failure. To me its easier to reimport the whole library from backup than it is to work out which bits were corrupted.
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ethios4
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by ethios4 » Fri Feb 12, 2010 2:02 am

You're right....I've been meaning to backup my music library for awhile now....hmmm....may give this a go!

I fought windows's way of doing things for a long time, and finally decided to justy let it do what it wants with Win7, and it's actually working much better now. Go figure :)

beats me
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by beats me » Fri Feb 12, 2010 3:40 am

Let's play the "alternative to iTunes library management system" game. State how you are doing things and then we'll try to see how that could be managed with iTunes. We might even get some stumpers.

eandersonase
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by eandersonase » Fri Feb 12, 2010 4:38 am

adventurepants_ wrote:
eandersonase wrote:

so the only apple product that i have ever owned is an ipod

its crap
well its better than some phones but..
not an interchangeable battery
cannot change out memory
if you want to transfer pictures to your computer you must sync your whole phone
you can only open one program at a time
i had to hack the software to customize some very basic features
I cant believe im again in the perverse position of defending apple products.

cannot change out memory - not many phones that do that

must sync whole phone to download pictures - no. you can set it to just sync only whatever category you want.

one program at a time - not true. i play songs and browse the web all the time. you cant run some programs together.

had to hack it to customise features - i dont think hacking means what you think it means.

Apple make appliances, not customisable devices like PCs. I dont get why someone would buy an Apple then complain about the lack of customisation, thats their entire strength.
most smartphones take removable sd cards
exactly that, you must sync, not drag and drop to move around any media (you cannot see your phone in mass media storage)
i have loaded on different software and added my own plugins so that i can see my phone in mass media storage, i also have my phone running on tmobile
shit you cannot even change the screensaver on an iphone without loading different software onto it
and i cannot keep my ebay app open search my web then go back into my ebay app. i must close out of my ebay app to enter into my browser(that sucks that you must relogin and reseach what you where looking at)

but this is all my opinion and many people love apples so i guess i dont know anything lol
A MIC and the STAGE

ethios4
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Re: do you use iTunes

Post by ethios4 » Fri Feb 12, 2010 5:02 am

I like to randomly place music files in obscure places on my drives, then it's like a treasure quest to find what I want! iTunes management would totally ruin this essential task!

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