Hi Scott,
To answer your question, "why don't I want ITunes to organize my
music", let me explain a bit about where I'm coming from.
As a windows user I had a file manager for managing files (windows
explorer), a burning program for making cd's and dvd's (B'S recorder),
a media player for playing media (winamp), and a catalogger for making
sense of it all (mpeg audio collection). All of these programs were
streamlined to a fault and incredibly good at their specific task.
Burning an audio cd was a 3 step process, playing an album or an
audiobook was a two step process, and none of these things conflicted
with eachother. Now I do evrything on laptop computers and space is
an issue. Never-the-less, I still buy, beg and borrow a farely
predigious amount of music albums and audiobooks, and I manage them
thus.
Items come in and get checked for quality and completeness. The ones
that make it past the screening move to a burning area where they are
backed up onto an albums, books, or bootlegs dvd with a catalog
number. The books and bootlegs are then removed and the albums are
transferred to my albums collection to be handy in case I take to
listening to them. The bootlegs I usually play straight off the
backup dvd's. The books I'm listening to stay on disc until I've read
them then they get replaced. No matter what, it all has to be
organized before it gets burned, because the dvd's get fed into the
catalogger, and they need to be laid out properly or the catalogging
system falls over. The ocasional mistake doesn't hurt anything, but
complete chaos would not work. The catalogs are used both for letting
people know what I have for sharing purposes, and for finding
something that is stored offline.
When ITunes came along, I tried to like it, and spent several weeks
attempting to make friends before I finally lost it one day and gave
up. It would do just hellatiously irritating things, like for
example. Before I discovered quicklook, I used to press command O on
my voicemail messages and of course when they opened in ITunes, they
got librafied and thrown in with my music. Then I'd have to go in and
find and delete them out of my library. When I opened a book of
course it would play just fine, only it would throw all the book
files, which could be anywhere from 10 to 500 depending on the size
and configuration of the book straight into my library with my music
and I'd have to get rid of them out of the library when I was done.
Of course it would also want to copy the files into the library and
those would have to go too. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when it
comes time to put a book onto my ipod.
There were a number of really considerate people here who took who
knows how much time to try and get me comfortable with ITunes. When I
had an issue as I did frequently in those days they would send me good
step-by-step instructions. These invariably began with the words,
"This is really easy", or "all you have to do is", and then they would
outline a process that was never shorter than 15 or 20 steps, and
usually involved playlists, or smart play lists, and I forget what
all. Since I used to hit a button on a folder and have it play in
order, or hit two buttons on a folder and have it play on shuffle, I
found it a lot of pomp just to play an album or an audiobook.
I'm not interested in smart playlists. I don't care what's in my top
25. I don't need a party shuffle. I don't want a library, and no one
has yet outlined to me why one is indispensible. And since ITunes is
the only media player I know of that forced one to use a library and
essencially took over complete control of all your files, I simply
abandoned it. I have a really good program for burning on the mac.
Finder is at least as good an organizer as windows explorer, and
better in some respects. I have very nice mac check some and parity
data tools. I've used a fully accessible tagger, although it's a paid
product and I have been hoping to find a donationware one that works
just as well. I have a media player that does exactly what I want,
although it's a bit buggy and needs some more work. I was a bit
razzed about having to use ITunes to sync my music over to my IPod,
but I think that'll be OK. I just set my library folder to the folder
that has my albums collection in it. So, presumably when I update
that folder with new albums they'll zip over to the ipod where they
should be. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about audiobooks yet.
Some experimentation is in order there.
I've got two cd's to rip, and I thought if ITunes would do it
sucsinctly I would tollerate the necessity of moving them to my burn
folder and then putting them back once they had been added to the
backup and catalogged. Unhappily, as with most of my ITunes
experience, it's failed to meet simple expectations. So, I'll spend
the time to do it right and then I'll be good'n prepaired for
christmas holidays, when I usually buy rather a lot of CD's, grins.
Per your suggestion, I'm sifting the contact and support pages, but I
don't see a report a bug option. Do I need to do this in the forums?
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 9-Nov-08, at 8:38 AM, Scott Howell wrote:
You are correct that it seems the settings are not being saved. I
did make a number of adjustments wondering if there was some
conflict based on the settings. You may very well wish to report
this to Apple as well. Is there any particular reason you don't want
iTunes to manage/catalog your music?
On Nov 9, 2008, at 9:06 AM, erik burggraaf wrote:
OK friends, I'm back in to ITunes because I have to have it for my
mp3 player. It is a true test of my love for my macbook. Right
now I'm thinkin bout going out to the fire escape and kicking it so
I can hear it rang! Clang! Bang! down three fleights of stairs to
the pavement.
Here's my current problem. I haven't found anything I really like
for ripping cd's, and I've got a few that I want to convert to
mp3. I figured since ITunes is already here and I have to librafy
my albums collection anyway to sync it with my IPod, I may as well
give it a shot and see if it flies at all.
I have run up against two problems. The first is that I can't
figure out how to tell ITunes not to put my cd rips in with the
rest of my music. This is rather important because before the
albums go into my collection, they need to have .sfv files added.
Then they need to be backed up to DVD and the dvd's need to be
catalogged. The files themselves may also need minor adjustments.
For example, I always remove words like A or The from artist names
to make them sort into the proper order. I think I could do all
this even if the files are placed into my library, but it would
just be faster and easier to have them in their own folder. I've
looked through the import settings, but I don't see a way to do this.
The second is the thing that's really got me. I only like high
bitrate natural stereo mp3's, and I've got the where with all to
indulge my tastes, or at least I did on the windows side. Now you
would think this would be straight forward.
Open Itunes.
Push command comma for the preferences.
VO to the import settings button and press vo space.
VO space on the encode using popup button and change it to mp3.
VO Space on the Setting popup button and change it to custome.
That much of it works just fine.
When I press enter on custome I get lovely options.
I set the stereo bit rate to 192, The sampling rate to 44100 hz,
and the channel seperation to normal.
When I hit the OK button I still have the encoder set to mp3 and
the setting option set to custome, but in the detales box it still
says 160 kbps 44100 hz joint stereo.
I've tried pressing the OK button to save all the settings and when
I press command comma to get back to prefs it still says 160 kbps.
I've tried it with the smart encoding adjustments box checked and
unchecked.
I'd think it was a possible permition error, but the encoder
setting always stays at mp3 and the setting button always stas at
custome. It's only the actual custom settings that revert. The
other strange thing is that the smart encoding check box stays the
way I put it. It was checked when I tried this the first couple of
times. Then I unchecked it and it has stayed unchecked even as I
re apply the settings so I can detale my problem for this email.
Now I'm off to take a breather and scope some tunes or something.
The computer doesn't usually get me down, but ITunes is so damned
proprietary and useless, it gets the upper hand on me all the
time. I'll be greatful for any enlightenment you can give me, and
maybe when I settle down I'll have a quick google and see if I can
find a deacent ripping program for the mac. Need a catalogger too
come to think of it. I'm still using my old windows catalogging
system. It's a very nice catalogging system, but it is quite old
and under developped, and it's a bit out of the way popping up
windows just to find out what dvd's such and such an artist resides
on.
Thanks guys,
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
Scott Howell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
