Comments on: Live chat Sunday (today!) at 3:00 Mountain Time

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:38:48 +0000

@Phil:
Dang, on-the-fly translating from German to English didn’t go quite as well as I expected. Switched the account to English to see what iTunes actually displays…

The iTunes setting I meant was:
iTunes Preferences -> Advanced (Cogwheel) -> Tab “General” -> first checkbox from top, “Keep iTunes Music folder organized”. If it’s on, iTunes will rename the files/folders etc. as you change the info in the iTunes window.

For the first run, it’s better to also uncheck “Copy files to iTunes.”

If you turn both back on later (once the files’ ID3 tags are OK), you’ll get a nice, ordered list of songs. There’s also a menu item under “Advanced” (menu bar! not preferences!) which says “Consolidate Library…” so you can instruct iTunes to copy all the MP3s into a nice, clean folder structure.

If you select multiple tracks, you can edit (Apple-I) their common information in one pass, e.g. album title or artist. I’d recommend against editing the song title using this method

By: Jewel

Jewel — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:15:49 +0000

Sadly, I missed today’s chat. I’m sure it was the best one ever, too. Hopefully I’ll make it next week

By: Phil Plait

Phil Plait — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:06:10 +0000

Mark, thanks, but I don’t see how to turn off itunes managing the library. It’s not in the preferences that I saw (I’m using the most recent iTunes version, too).

By: amphiox

amphiox — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:03:06 +0000

WALL-E is really, really, REALLY good. Though I noticed at least one scientific non sequitor involving the properties of cold, hard vacuum. But I’m pretty lenient when it comes to cartoons. I wonder what Phil will think?

By: Evil German

Evil German — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:52:08 +0000

Thank you Phil for this funny and informative chat.

(… and don’t forget to come to Germany )

By: quasidog

quasidog — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:36:26 +0000

Meh .. 8 30 am .. Australian time .. just woke up on holidays .. just casught the end of your video blog … I need to wake up earlier ;p

By: Protesilaus

Protesilaus — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:30:00 +0000

Phil can you VodCast these? Might be an easy way for you to get back on Podcasting without doing much work.

By: madge

madge — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:01:34 +0000

Another cool chat! Thanks.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:29:33 +0000

Regarding your iTunes/iPod trouble:

1) Go to iTunes preferences
2) turn off “iTunes manages my library”
3) drag the MP3′s you want to import into the iTunes window.

4) Install free script http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=filenamestosongnames

5) Select the tracks and run the script. This at least will get the titles tags filled…

Depending on the amount of CD’s you’d need to re-import, it might be easier to set iTunes to “auto-import then eject”, leave it at “iTunes manages my library” and act as a DJ for a few days on the side – that way, all the ID3 tags are in the right format. Don’t forget to switch to “MP3″ instead of AAC first

By: madge

madge — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:33:39 +0000

I hear WALL-E is really good. Looking forward to the chat and getting your opinion of it

By: Togan

Togan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:43:32 +0000

Wow, I might actually make it to this one

By: Evil German

Evil German — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:15:54 +0000

come on…