Thanks Cara,
My audiobooks are sourcedfrom emusic. They are cd rips, but I buy
them as mp3's after the cd ripping process has already taken place. I
listen, usually once, then I back the books up to dvd and remove from
hard drive. So while there might be some minor benefit to having my
albums in a library on my hard drive, there's not really any benefit
at all to having my books in there.
VLc does exactly what I want. IE, see the folder, play the folder.
It's options are all nicely laid out. It's been flaking out on one of
my flac files, but that may be an isolated insident and ITunes doesn't
play them at all.
I just don't need the information and configuration overload of ITunes
if vlc continues to perform the way it has today.
Best,
erik burggraaf
Certified Technician
Assistive Computing LTD Support and training
Sales department: 888-828-2445
Support and Training: 888-255-5194
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website coming soon
On 18-May-08, at 9:30 AM, Cara Quinn wrote:
Hey Erik, I think you might not be seeing a couple of options
here. First off, if you'd like to play files without importing them
into ITunes, you can simply press space on them in Finder, and
they'll open with QuicLook.
There is also an option in ITunes not to import them into your
ITunes library.
Secondly, have you thought about simply importing the original CDs
of your book into ITunes originally so that there is only one copy
in your ITunes library? If you're worried about it being in with
your albums, you needn't. ITunes actually creates folders for
albums and books etc that it imports. As well, it also makes
searching your library much much easier than going through the
trouble of locating the files you want to play, directly in Finder.
If you were to save your book in your ITunes library, you could
simply open that, and go to the search field in the ITunes main
window and type the title or author of your book and all of its
tracks (and only its tracks) would show up in their own premade
playlist in your songs list. So there's no messing about at all.
All of the files you want are right there, and you can either make
your own playlist from that or play them immediately from the songs
list. It actually makes arranging / maintaining your music library
much less hassle than doing it yourself.
HTH and I'm sure others may have some other techniques as well.
Thanks for your note / perspective (was curious) and have a great
day!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
On May 18, 2008, at 8:34 AM, erik burggraaf wrote:
Hi Cara,
I'm a pretty new mac user, and so maybe some of this is just that
it doesn't work like my old stuff did, but I loved the method of
winamp and it's over all interface and functionality. Where-as
ITunes seems more like going back to windows media player or even
musicmatch.
Take a week or two ago when I had to ask where the fast forward and
rewind controls were. They don't appear anywhere in the menues, so
I was stumped. What other features might I be missing in that
regard?
Now, when I opened a file Winamp would play it. When I opened a
selection of files or a folder winamp would playlist it. It would
save those things if I wanted it to, but only if I told it to.
ITunes works backwards. You have to load your ITunes library. It
will play a file or selection if I open it in finder, but not
without placing it in the library and adding it to the main play
list. I find that rediculously clumsy. It keeps track of a lot of
information I don't care about, such as my own personal ratings for
things.
Here's a case where this got really in my way. I bought "A Civil
Campaign" by Lois M Bujold some weeks ago from Emusic. It was a 15
disc audiobook and it came in over 360 track by track files.
ITunes imported the entire 360 files into my music playlist and
dumped them right in with my albums. I tried to seperate the book
out by making a new play list from the files, but all that did was
make an extra layer of pointers to the files in my music playlist
in my library. So, to listen to my book I have,
*1 copy in my emusic download folder,
*one copy in my ITunes library,
*one set of pointers in the main music play list,
*one set of pointers in the new play list for the book files.
Mercy! God save me if I had an IPod, or I'd have a copy on there
too most likely. Using winamp I could just open the book from my
downloads folder and it would go until I opened something else. I
have to clean up the ITunes library to get rid of the extra copy
after every book, and at 360 files per book that's rather
inconvenient. At least when I moved to Toronto very quickly at the
beginning of april I had a few albums here because I'd played them
in ITunes and it added them to library on the fly, but I really
don't want it to do this with my audiobooks.
Now we have this issue where iTunes doesn't support flac, and it
doesn't support ogg, and so now I'm looking at VLC player, or at
least, I will shortly. But I don't really have a desire to have
two media players. Even under windows I refused to install real,
quicktime, and all the other junk they want you to have. It
doesn't appeal to my minimalist nature.
So maybe it's just me, but I'm really not sold on ITunes. I
haven't found any of it particularly inaccessible. I just don't
like the way it goes about it's business.
Best,
erik burggraaf
Certified Technician
Assistive Computing LTD Support and training
Sales department: 888-828-2445
Support and Training: 888-255-5194
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website coming soon
On 17-May-08, at 4:07 PM, Cara Quinn wrote:
Strange / clumsy? -Am curious here, what you mean?
Would ya mind elaborating?… Thanks so much and perhaps we might
help make it better.
Smiles,
Cara :)
On May 17, 2008, at 11:25 AM, erik burggraaf wrote:
Hi friends,
What's the preferred method of playing flac files on the mac?
The flac website has sugestions, but I'd rather get something
tried and accessible. Apparently iTunes doesn't support the
format and won't any time soon.
Actually, I've been thinking an alternative player might be nice
all around. ITunes has been doing more or less what I want, but
in what seems to me an awefully strange and clumsy way.
Best,
Erik
erik burggraaf
Certified Technician
Assistive Computing LTD Support and training
Sales department: 888-828-2445
Support and Training: 888-255-5194
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website coming soon
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