I do! Two months ago I freaked out that my data wasn't backed up and bought an external and backed everything up. In addition to that, I burned all of my pictures of my son onto DVDs and put them in our fire proof safe just in case something ever happened to the external! I feel much more safe now.

Anyone else hearing clicks and pops during playback that were not there since the latest iTunes update?

Nope.

I've been hearing more random clicks when sounds start playing/end, but they're not limited to iTunes, so it may be a memory issue.

My iPod is full... so as I add new music to my iTunes, I have to uncheck songs that I don't want put onto my iPod. Is there a way to uncheck a group of songs all at once? I tried highlighting a bunch of songs and unchecking, but it doesn't seem to wrok.

That is how you did it.

Select a number of songs, right click any one (be sure you don't loose focus) and select "Uncheck Selection" from the contextual menu.

Or "Check Selection" if checking a number of previously unchecked songs.

Its iTunes not rocket science.

This may be a dumb question. Sorry.

If I make a bunch of playlists using artists from my library, does that add to the amount of space the data is taking up? For example, if I make a playlist of my entire library, will that double the amount of space the data is taking up on my hard drive? How about on my iPod?

Thanks.

Nope, playlists are only playlists - not additional copies of songs. No additional space required.

Nope, think of playlists as simply a way to reorganize your existing library.

Thanks guys. That's what I was thinking, but was just checking.

Not sure this is a question so much as a complaint:

So I had my PC laptop, and just bought my Mac laptop. I transferred the entirety of the iTunes folder from the PC to an external drive, then from the drive to my Mac. After some configuring, iTunes goes through the motions of getting all the album artwork, but in many cases now downloads completely incorrect artwork (not even by the same artist), or not at all, and some artwork that I went to the trouble of finding before is gone now--but not all. WTF?

I'm going to maybe retry the iTunes dump again, but if anyone has any insight regarding this, I'm all ears.

And really, why couldn't the album artwork be selectable from a jpg database? In certain Facebook applications, you can select from a number of potential matches. For all Apple does to streamline processes, you would think this would be easy to do. I swear, the artwork function in iTunes is one of my bigger pet peeves at the moment.

Have you transferred the XML file? When I moved my library from one computer to another, I uploaded the XML using the original one, and downloaded and imported it onto the new one. That largely solved things.*

* Apart from WAVs. They were an arse.

I tried that last night, but only over-wrote the "new" XML one with the "old" one, after the library had already been transferred. That's why I want to just start from the begninning again and do it all in one swoop, which I may do tonight.

Oddly enough, some of the artwork I wasn't happy with in my old library found new, better artwork this time around--for example, Johnny Cash's Love God Murder set. That's why it would be nice to let iTunes do its thing automatically, but select from an official artwork database if you want something besides what iTunes picks. What can I say, I'm picky about my album art.

I know what you mean. I've been known to take snaps of certain CDs when iTunes has proven insufficient.

Sorry, when you say it 'over-wrote' the new one, did it not sort out all the playlists and stuff? I did the XML after doing a straight upload from the hard drive, and it worked out fine. I had to right-click and 'get artwork' for a few albums again, but that wasn't a problem as I had already uploaded the awkward artwork.

So, a couple of weeks ago I moved my iTunes library to an external drive to free up space on my Mac Pro. But now iTunes doesn't recognize my iPod or shuffle. Or let me play any iTunes I bought/downloaded from the iTunes store.

Trouble is, I also reinstalled OS 10.4 that weekend so I don't know if that or the move is at fault. I updated all Apple software including iTunes but every time I plug in the iPod I'm told that it isn't recognized and I should restore factory settings (which will of course erase all the media). I don't get any message at all when I plug in the shuffle, but it doesn't show up in iTunes & isn't recharging.

Haven't had a chance to go to the genius bar yet so I'll stand by for any big ideas. Thanks.

It actually did sort out the playlists I'd saved and such, but I saw no change in the artwork before/after the XML update. The number of albums missing art or with completely wrong images is kind of laughable. And not obscure artists, either--Peter Gabriel, Johnny Cash, Genesis, etc.

Wrong images? That sucks. Are we talking hundreds of adversely affected albums here?

And Velocity: I presume you have redirected your music folder location on preferences? I dunno why it wouldn't recognise your iPod though.

I have redirected it, but I didn't put the new library inside 'Users\velocity\' folders--just inside 'library.' Maybe I should try that, I'm thinkin (there's no 'users' on the external drive, i.e.).

I think it was about 100 or so that had no images (most of which had them before), plus a few handfuls (20? more?)of them that have wrong ones now. Certainly enough to make correcting/finding all of them again a somewhat daunting task--not to mention, finding specifically hi-rez images. Copyright issues aside, I would LOVE to see a catalogued database of high-rez cover art for just this purpose.

You should've stuck with another PC.

Go back to work.

Well, for anyone who's interested, fixing the artwork wasn't too bad. Just went through iTunes, and for any missing/wrong artwork, I grabbed it from iTunes on my PC, and over to the Mac. Didn't take too long. More perplexing was a bunch of missing albums that iTunes insists on cataloging as "compilations". Those I had to manually copy over and import. (Whereupon iTunes put them back into the "compilation" folder.) I've just been obsessing over artwork now, and am happily nearly done finding obscure jpg's online for all the singles/bootlegs iTunes doesn't recognize.

Why don't you just have iTunes get the artwork automatically again?

Yeah, I usually just go to Allmusic.com to get the artwork. I don't know how easy it is to get off iTunes but it's probably the same thing.

Itunes just does it automatically.

Yes, but apparently what iTunes automatically selects for your artwork changes over time, or something. For example:

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway selected some Genesis cover album.
Johnny Cash's American Recordings selected Johnny Cuomo's American Idle
David Bowie's Heroes selected something else entirely.

These all had the right covers before, which iTunes had automatically selected. So I simply dragged them over on a flash drive. Along with a BUNCH of others. It was goofy. But fixed!

iTunes won't find half the metal covers I need.

Interesting. Never had that problem. Everything is a-ok for 90% of whatever iTunes finds in covers. But I don't really use iTunes for music. mainly podcasts. W/e.

Yeah, the iTunes finding art is pretty crappy. For me, its really hit or miss. I've downloaded a freeware program called Fetch Art that works for 98% of my music.

It's surprising what DOES work, versus what doesn't. I have a slew of Bob Dylan bootlegs I downloaded from this very site, and they all have "proper" (bootleg) covers. But during this transfer, nearly all of his proper albums were completely screwed, with some weird "Dylan Collection" cover that didn't apply to a single one. Had to drag the real artwork over from my PC. Odd.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but:

I am running my iTunes from an external drive, but any time I import a CD it stores it on my computer's hard drive. And when I download music files, I can't figure out how to make them play and be stored on the external.

I had the same issue w/my Dylan albums. It's not like he's an obscure artist.

I understand why itunes doesn't have say the Beatles, AC/DC, or bootlegs art work, but I've got a bunch of albums where it downloaded completely the wrong album art. It's a pain in the arse fining time to fix their mistake.

How can I get that thing on the bottom of the player that graphaically (as a bar) shows avaiable megabytes and how much memory your music currently takes up? The new version that automatically downloaded (8.2.1(6)) seems to just have the total number of albums and megabytes or gigabytes, but not what's still available

I think you can just click on the bar and it will change.

I moved my library to an external drive as well. Seems like if that drive is powered, new music will be imported to that directory automatically but if the drive is turned off it'll save to a library on the cpu. I just manually move the folders from there to the external drive's library when I'm feeling anal. I also notice that there has to be a library (even empty) on my cpu or else I can't access the iTunes store or update my iPods, for some reason. Not a problem.

OK guys, I need your help. I have all my iTunes music files stored on my external drive. I just got a new computer and would like to play the music from that drive.

Currently when I open iTunes there is no music in there. So I went into preferences > advanced > and changed the iTunes Media folder location to where its stored on my iTunes. I have no clue what do to from there.

By the way, I am using a Mac.

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

So, my HD died the other day and I lost all my music files. To begin the rebuilding, I need to transfer what is on my IPOD back to my PC. I know you can find the files on the IPOD but when they all have goofy names that will make sorting them out too big a task (talking about 80 gb of music here). Anyone know of any good programs that can do this for me? I'm messing with something called Tipard iPod to PC Transfer right now, but its just a bit too sketchy and seems to love freezing my computer.

I used this when my laptop shit the bed...

http://www.copytrans.net/

I paid for it and it worked great. I'm sure there are free ways to do it, but this worked for me.

Did you get this to work? The Genius bar should be able to help.

No, I couldn't get it to work, which has pissed me off royally. I haven't really had time to play with it until now, and I've been without my iTunes for 5 days now, which is killing me.

Here's what I'm doing right now: I took my iTunes library from my external and dropped it into my music folder. I then opened iTunes and its not adding and organizing all my files (taking forever!). Then I plan to move it all back to running from my external... but I've forgot how to do that.


Does that sound right? Any suggestion or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.


EDIT: I couldn't add my iTunes to my hard drive because there isn't enough space. So now I have tons of much on my external that I can't figure out how to play. Grrrr.

So, I should add that I found a great program called SharePod that is free, easy to use, and gets the job done right. I recommend it.

Bump. Anybody? Somebody? Please help.

Do you still have your files on the external? If not, move them all back there, then go into itunes preferences. Click 'Advanced,' then in the 'itunes media folder location' area, hit 'Change.' Then go to where your music library is on the external. Select the folder, then hit 'ok.' You'll probably have to delete all the files in itunes, and then 'Add To Library.'

I was going to suggest you recreate a library on your mac, but you've done that. What about any of this?

Thank for the suggestions everyone. I googled that exact thing Velocity. Nothing seemed to help.

Here's what I've had to do: I changed the location of iTunes folder to my external. Then I've had to go through and open each album individually to make iTunes recognize the files. Grrrr. Its taking forever, I spent 2 hours on it so far and have only made it through the Fs. But, its forced me to organize my files better and whatnot.

Buy a backup drive and make copies of your music files once a month. Target has a 1 TB WD external drive for $60 this weekend.

Maybe this will help.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/...new-hard-drive/

Does anyone know how to sync the play counts between iTunes and any (preferably all) iPods authorized for a single computer? Without autosynch that is, I can't fit all my music onto my iPods, and now I can't get iPod plays to transfer back to the iTunes play count. My inner obsessive nitpicky music nerd desires this feature.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/...-to-computer/P2

This might help.

I have Senuti, and I figured I could use that to manually do it, but I guess there is no way to have the play counts update each other automatically unless the ipod and itunes are synced.