At 7:02 AM -0800 12/3/2008, MIKO's Support, Design and Development 
Services wrote:
>
>The "Show Duplicates" option is not fully trustworthy because I've 
>tested it and known duplicates did not show up in the list of 
>duplicates.  iTunes ONLY looks for dupes by exact name.

I noticed that.  And it seems to have no mechanism to show which dup 
is better (higher quality etc).  The "add to library" function is 
similarly foo; if a track already exists in the library, and I try to 
add a dup, it ignores it - even when the new one is better quality. 
It would help if there were a pref that said "do what I tell you to, 
damnit!"

>To PREVENT or resolve duplicates in iTunes:

wow.  Lots of good stuff here.  Thx!

>1.  Always import music while connected to the Internet so that "Get 
>Info" metadata tags for the tracks has a better chance of being 
>accessed

Um.... when/how does it do this?   I've seen a few album covers show 
up suddenly.  But none of the id3 tags have been modified (I've 
verified this by sniffing the tracks with other tools before feeding 
them to iTunes).  Is this only when you import off a CD or DVD?  (ie, 
not when you Add an existing file?)

>2. ACCEPT the Internet-standardized "Get Info" metadata tags for the 
>album as iTunes finds them on the Internet or on the CD/DVD, unless 
>it's just plain wrong, because if you start using your own names, 
>you're simply going to have trouble avoiding dupes when merging 
>libraries later.  [...] Just GIVE UP on being a control freak and 
>wanting things named your way!

Give up?!  Now that's the tuff one!  There's just too much Adrian Monk in me.

>3. LET iTunes manage how your library is ordered- by artist, then album, etc.

For the most part, this seems to work ok.  But then I noticed a bunch 
of "errors".  Some artists were spread across three or four folders. 
By doing a mass- Get-Info in those tracks, and setting the artist 
name to be the same (select, copy, paste - no change just putting in 
the same info), it fixed things.  Odd.

>4.  Let iTunes copy all music into it's main folder- IF you can.

I have the "copy" pref checked.  Does that cover it, or are there 
still instances when I can do an Add that will make it NOT copy 
things in?

>5.  Keep all of your songs in only ONE FORMAT.  Try not to get 
>confused and convert songs twice or into several different formats! 
>If you have to convert a song to mp3 or AAC so that iTunes "takes 
>it", then delete the non-iTunes useable version (you can always keep 
>a backup offline somewhere). If you need two file type versions for 
>a song IN iTunes, accept that it will be there "appearing" like a 
>duplicate.

Yea.  This is starting to drive me nutz.  I have a lot of stuff in 
aac but my cheapo mp3 player only does, well, mp3.  I have no wish to 
dump the aac stuff because it's higher quality and useful elsewhere. 
There's a folder organization issue too.  iTunes makes 
Artist/Album/track and my mp3 player only does somename/Track (ie, 
one level of folder)

Is there a way to make iTunes mass-convert an album to mp3 AND push 
the results to some other location?  Right now, I use the "show in 
finder" then manually pull things out.

Once I pull things out... How do I tell iTunes to re-reconcile the 
listing to match what's left in that artist's folder?

>6.  When combining libraries, you can use the iTunes "Consolidate Library"
>option under the File menu, or to avoid THAT uncontrollable mystery if it's
>a big merger, you can do a little extra work:
[snip - detailed instructions to do it in Finder then]
>6d.  Now inside iTunes, Hose/Delete the active iTunes library completely
>from within iTunes- but before you do it make sure that you set your
>preferences so that the files themselves are not deleted!  KEEP FILES if
>asked!  There are two questions:  remove from library?  YES.  KEEP FILES?
>YES.  You just want to delete the (xml library data file) references to
>them, not the files!
>
>6e.  Now, when you have a pristine iTunes folder without dupes,  completely
>rebuild the iTunes library  by using "Add to Library" under the file menu,
>and simply add back the WHOLE iTunes Music folder.  Don't point to more
>places and don't SEARCH for media EVER.

Ok.  So everything important is in the id3 tags within the music files.

The xml stuff is just the iTunes playlist organization?


I have a bunch of albums added - they were existing files etc.  How 
do I tell iTunes to go fetch / find the album artwork?  Ditto for the 
other id3 tags?

Thanks!

- Dan.
-- 
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth

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