newbie iTunes problems

[thevoid]

In general iTunes seems like a nice app for music organization/rip/burn/play. however, lately it's caused some serious bitching in our household that we're hoping you can help with Most of this is from not being used to its workflow, and others are from a lack of RTFM.

My wife & I are far more used to the Winamp method of mp3 playing & selection (wherein there's no built-in Library database that we're used to using). All our music is already organized into folders by artist with subfolders for album. 99% of it wasn't ripped with iTunes.

iTunes has caused any number of headaches for us when we add music to the Mac that wasn't ripped through iTunes. What is the best method for updating the Library to reflect what's actually in our music folder? I've used other apps before that have a Library, but all of those work by mapping to a folder on the hard drive & then a simple "refresh" command causes it to synch its library with what's actually on the HD. I would assume iTunes can do this but the only method we've found is to delete the entire Library (taking care not to delete from HD in doing so...again) and then drag our Music folder back in to iTunes so that it rescans the entire directory.

Also, what exactly is going on when iTunes "Organizes" stuff for us? We accidentally let it do it & it renamed & added a gazillion folders we didn't want (especially annoying was its moving of individual tracks from various artists (e.g. soundtracks) CD's into a separate folder for every track). It seems like it's using the ID3 tags to rebuild the music folder heirarchy on the HD... if that's true then it's definitely soemthing we'll know to avoid.

Thanks!

 

[kenny]

What I've done is make sure that iTunes is set to NOT organize, and NOT copy the files that I add (via drag 'n' drop) to it. That way, the files stay in whatever location I want. The only downside is if I rip more outside of a given installation of iTunes, I have to manually add them.

The really cool thing about this is that iTunes will follow the files if they're moved from one folder to another on the same volume. So, I have an 'incoming' folder that I rip to with external apps. I add them to iTunes from the incoming folder, then move them to the music library. iTunes automagically figures out where they are, and the music never stops..

 

[Arden]

You are right, iTunes does use the ID3 tags in each MP3 to organize your music. If a tune doesn't have a specific album, it goes into "Unknown Album" within an artist folder. If it doesn't have an artist, it goes into "Unknown Artist". I was somewhat annoyed that it did this the first time I opened iTunes 3 (not knowing what it would do), but I have learned since to live with it.

Tell iTunes not to organize your music folder or copy files to it—that way, you won't have the headaches. Fortunately, you can copy the iTunes Playlist documents to another computer and it will have your entire playlist available (unfortunately, you have to tell it where every single song is or they won't play).

 

[thevoid]

Thanks for the tips - avoiding those options is great advice & should prevent me from having to delete all my music & begin recopying from my MP3 server computer here at home.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good workflow with which to copy music from a different computer on my network to the iBook & have iTunes have an accurate Library that reflects everything in my ~/music folder?

Is there a "refresh Library based on mapped music directory" function somewhere? Or am I stuck deleting my library & rebuilding it everytime I grab or delete a bunch of folders of music it? Or should I drag files over the network directly into iTunes & let it copy them into the folder it's been mapped to and only delete files through the iTunes interface? It almost seems like iTunes is trying to force me to not use the Finder to add/remove files if I want my Library to stay up to date.

thanks again in advance.

 

[Arden]

Does this help: You can drag MP3 files (or any audio, really) from a Finder window into an iTunes playlist window (Library playlist, perhaps) and it will add them all automatically. If the ID3 tags are as you want them, they will all show up correctly. You should be able to do this over a network too.

Is there a "refresh Library based on mapped music directory" function somewhere?

You said you didn't want it to do this! If you tell iTunes to manage your music, anything you put in your iTunes library and add to its playlist will automatically be managed. If you want to copy songs over, however, tell it to copy them when you add them to your playlist.

 

[thevoid]

aha so the old copy from network volume to iTunes window trick (making sure iTunes is set to copy files to its directory). That seems to be the one I'll have to use.

As for the "refresh" vs. "organize" feature, iTunes' organize is far different from what I'm trying to do. What I want to do is more reminiscent of other apps such as WenSoft Music Library or WinAmp 3 . In those apps, the music software maintains a library which can be sorted by artist/genre/etc. just like iTunes; however there's a button that basically tells it to compare the library to what's in your music directory & then update the Library (NOT the mp3's or their directories) to reflect what's actually on your hard drive. iTunes seems more keen on knowing the second music on your machine changes, ideally ripping everything itself, and is not very well cut out to retrospectively analyze what it is that's on your drive. The closest function I could find to that in iTunes was deleting everything in the Library (with its control over files turned OFF) & then rebuilding it by draggin my music folder into it. it's not that one way is necessarily better than the other, just that it's a whole different workflow (which had disastrous results when i tried applying the windows methods to iTunes).

thanks again for all your help!