Cleaning House in iTunes

--- begin forwarded text
From: Doug Adams

Hi Adam,

Enjoyed your piece on Cleaning up iTunes. Don't forget that we have
tons of AppleScripts for iTunes (well, over 300, anyway) that can
assist with tidying up yer iTunes.

One you might be interested in is called "Corral iTunes Dupes". it uses
a Perl mechanism to locate dupes in the XML database based on a choice
of Name, Artist, Album, Size, etc. Beats the Show Duplicate Songs by a
bit.
<http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=corralitunesdupes>

Cheers,
Doug
--
Just Play Music!
--
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/
RSS feed:
http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/dougs.rss
Mail & iChat/AIM:

--- end forwarded text

As I was playing around with Clutter, I noticed some of the bands on my albums had slightly out of sync names. Like "Fountains Of Wayne" vs. "Fountains of Wayne" (Capitalized "Of" vs. "of"). Just for a lark, and knowing full well it doesn't work, I selected the songs from the two "Of" albums, hit "Get Info", and was allowed to change the name of the band on of all the albums at once. I could have sworn that this wasn't possible before. I was also able to change the genre of miscast artists en-mass too (Betty Dylan is no Country duo). Was this some sort of feature I previously missed?

[Yes, this has been possible for a long time. -Adam]

I then copied an album cover from one song, selected all the other songs in the album, and pasted that album cover by simply pressing Command-V. Now, I _know_ I couldn't do that before! Before, I had to select the songs one by one and paste the cover manually. It was one of the big reasons I downloaded Clutter in the first place.

This certainly seems like a fairly new feature to me. I don't remember seeing it in the release notes. Did anyone else notice this?

[Apple isn't good about documenting such changes, but I seem to remember the artwork always working this way. But then, that could be faulty memory on my part too. -Adam]

======================================= Help Fight Diabetes! Sponsor me in the Tour de Cure <http://tour.weintraubworld.net> =======================================

David Weintraub Type II - Diet and Exercise davidweintraubworld.net

--On March 3, 2005 4:33:35 AM -0800 David Weintraub
<davidweintraubworld.net> wrote:

> Just for a lark, and knowing full well it doesn't work, I selected the
songs from the two
> "Of" albums, hit "Get Info", and was allowed to change the name of the
> band on of all the albums at once. I could have sworn that this wasn't
> possible before.

It's been awhile. Maybe 4.5 added it? Maybe earlier than that. I use it a
lot with Audible downloads because I don't like their tags (I want the
radio show/book in the album name) plus for radio shows I add the year and
sometimes they don't have the Author or Host as the Artist and I like to
assign a Grouping for playlists -- so I set all those too. Since I
frequently go a month before I download my audible radio subscriptions, the
ability to change these all at once is nice.

There was a bug in the earlier versions where the checkmark in front of an
item wouldn't turn on when you changed the value. If that checkbox isn't
checked, it won't change that field.

Another tip for when you're changing lots of tags, but can't use the
multi-selection method. Keyboard shortcut Cmd-n will move you to the next
track, and Cmd-p returns to the previous track. I use these a lot so I
don't have to take my hands from the keyboard (shift-tab moves you
backwards through tags too.)

Finally since you mention artwork in your note, I read somewhere that the
artwork is stored in the id tags in each song. So if you have a 1 MB
artwork and add it to 12 tracks that will take up 12 MB more of space.
Since I have 11,000 songs I'm kind of reluctant to chew up that much disk
space for artwork.

Anyone know if this is true?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin van Haaren [mailto:kevinvanhaaren.net]
> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 9:47 AM
> To: tidbits-talktidbits.com
> Subject: Re: Cleaning House in iTunes

> Finally since you mention artwork in your note, I read
> somewhere that the
> artwork is stored in the id tags in each song. So if you have a 1 MB
> artwork and add it to 12 tracks that will take up 12 MB more
> of space.
> Since I have 11,000 songs I'm kind of reluctant to chew up
> that much disk
> space for artwork.
>
> Anyone know if this is true?

It is true. It's also the case that there's not a single ID3 metatag that
all MP3 programs use for storing artwork. For instance, iTunes and
MusicMatch will not display artwork added by the other.

Album art can also make mp3 files unstreamable. Some mp3 clients (I think
iTunes is one) can't play streamed files containing album art. I don't mean
iTunes sharing, I'm talking about streaming using playlists in .m3u or .pls
files. The conditions in which streaming fails may be more narrow than that
but it's something I've definitely experienced.

At 6:46 on 4-3-05, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
> Another tip for when you're changing lots of tags, but can't use
> the multi-selection method. Keyboard shortcut Cmd-n will move you
> to the next track, and Cmd-p returns to the previous track.

Also, Cmd-1, Cmd-2, Cmd-3, Cmd-4 will switch between the tabs (from
left to right). So you can move between the tags and artwork tabs
using the keyboard.

As far as the ability to change multiple items at once, it's been
around for as long as I can remember. I'm tempted to say since the
beginning, but if not I was certainly using this feature as far back
as iTunes 2 under OS 9 (ditto for the keyboard shortcuts). In fact, I
just ran iTunes 2 under OS 9 to verify this, and it's surprising how
little iTunes has changed (aside from the iTMS and a few extra tags
like ratings and album art).

Cheers,
Jolin

_________________
=> Jolin Warren, Edinburgh, Scotland

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 04:33:35 -0800, David Weintraub
<davidweintraubworld.net> wrote:
> I then copied an album cover from one song, selected all the other
> songs in the album, and pasted that album cover by simply pressing
> Command-V. Now, I _know_ I couldn't do that before!

Maybe not, but I think it always worked this way. OTOH, I'm not
exactly following your methodoogy, so it's possible something there
has changed. I usually did album covers all at once by dragging them
from the finder into the artwork panel in iTunes.

I like Synergy, but am annoyed that it won't copy the artwork to the
track, and there is no way to tell it "no, this is the WRONG artwork".
 Currently it thinks one of my Etta James albums is some christian
choir music album or something. I had to manually track down an album
cover and copy it into iTunes myself (at least Synergy gives prefernce
to local album covers).

I still have not found a good method for sharing the songs etween our
multiple machines. I tried using an NFS mount to point to the iTunes
Music folder, but getting it to always mount is problematic, and
itunes complains that the mount is not writeable.

I have far too much in MP3s to store multiple copies (I'm almost back
up to 80GB), but I normally want to listen to iTunes on the iMac,
which has the least space (260GB vs 550GB on the G4), or on the iBook,
which has no space at all (40GB drive, 30GB full).

Kevin van Haaren said:
> Finally since you mention artwork in your note, I read somewhere that the
> artwork is stored in the id tags in each song.  So if you have a 1 MB
> artwork and add it to 12 tracks that will take up 12 MB more of space.
> Since I have 11,000 songs I'm kind of reluctant to chew up that much disk
> space for artwork.

This is correct, although there is no reason to be storing 1MB album
covers in the artwork for the track. If you have covers that large by
all means, keep them, but cnvert them to a reasonable sized jpg or png
first. If you have ImageMagick installed this is stupidly simple from
the commandline:

% convert -size 320x240 Sacre_Coeur_1990.JPG Sacre_Coeur_1990_320.jpg
% ls -lsh Sacre*
328 -rwxr-xr-x 1 kreme kreme 160K 13 Dec 22:17 Sacre_Coeur_1990.JPG
 56 -rw-r--r-- 1 kreme kreme 24K 5 Mar 10:40 Sacre_Coeur_1990_320.jpg

--
<http://2blog.kreme.com/>

I have a somewhat related iTunes problem.

In short, I want to change _all_ of the instances of an artist's name on multiple albums. I know this sounds weird but here's my rationale. I have many albums that are collections of music by different artists. I also have albums of music by a single artist who is also represented in the collections. Of course what this means is that iTunes and iPod put the artist's tracks together in the list_by_artist display. Good you say - not so good says I. If I choose an artist from the list I want to hear an album, not just a single track. So what I want to do is add a prefix character (z seems to work well) to the artist names for all compilatations. This sorts them to the bottom of the list where I can find them if I choose but leaves their albums in the right place. I can do this by hand but very slowly as I must change each track individually.

Does any one know of a way to select all of an artist's tracks in all albums and change his/her name on all of them like you can do for changing the album name for all of the tracks on a CD?

On 3/8/05 8:07 PM, "dgrant" <dgrantiastate.edu> wrote:

> Does any one know of a way to select all of an artist's tracks in all albums
> and change his/her name on all of them like you can do for changing the album
> name for all of the tracks on a CD?

Well, yeah. Select all the tracks of all an artist's albums and then do
Command+I to get to the Info dialog where you make the change.

I don't think I get the question, since the answer's pretty simple.
 

Kirk
 
                      Author of: iPod & iTunes Garage
                     http://www.mcelhearn.com/ipod.html
               - - - - - -
             Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
          Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more
      Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France

On 3/8/05 at 11:07 AM, dgrantiastate.edu (dgrant) wrote:

> Does any one know of a way to select all of an artist's tracks in all
> albums and change his/her name on all of them like you can do for
> changing the album name for all of the tracks on a CD?

Here's how I'd do it:

* First, make sure the Browse by Genre/Artist/Album lists are turned on.
(Click on Library in the source list on the left. If you don't see three
separate lists appear for Genre, Artist, and Album, click on the Browse
button in the upper-right of the window to make the lists appear.)

* Select the artist in the Artist list. (A shortcut for this is to click
on any name in the Artist list, than type the first few letters of your
artist's name.) In the Album list, you'll now see all the albums you
have with tracks by that artist; in the list of songs, you'll see all
the songs by that artist. As a bonus, if the artist is in there more
than once (say 'Simon and Garfunkel' and 'Simon & Garfunkel'),
command-click on each of the artist listings to cover the songs under
all variants of their name.

* To make things even easier and just cover the compilation tracks you
want to edit, command-click to select each listing for a compilation
album in the Album list. The first one you click on will show just the
songs for that album in the songs list; each one you add to the
selection will add the songs from the new album to the songs list.

* Now the songs list should show just the tracks you want to edit the
artist name on. Click on any song in the list, then choose Select All
from the Edit menu to select the entire list of songs.

* Finally, choose Get Info from the File menu. You may get a warning
that you're about to edit the information for multiple songs; click OK.

Now you can edit the artist name in the edit information dialog, and
it'll apply to all the song tracks you have selected!


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

At 11:07 AM -0800 2005/03/08, dgrant wrote:
>Does any one know of a way to select all of an artist's tracks in
>all albums and change his/her name on all of them like you can do
>for changing the album name for all of the tracks on a CD?

        Sure. In a current version of iTunes, Option-click on the
arrow to the right of the artist name. This will take you to the
Library, Browsing with the artist's name selected. In the main
Library, you'll want to sort by Album, so you have an easy time
distinguishing between the compilations and the full albums.
Unfortunately, you cannot add Compilations as a column in the Library
display.

        Alternatively, create a Smart Playlist showing songs where
Compilation is Yes. Then sort by artist, and it should be easy to
Shift-select all of an artist's tracks for renaming.

        That said, I think you'd do better to skip this, and create
two smart playlists: Compilations and Albums (Compilation: No), and
just pick artists from the Albums playlist...


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

Here's another wrinkle. I have an iTunes library at home (my primary
library) and another at the office. Not all of the songs that I have at home
are at the office, but the reverse is true.

I've added lots of album art to my home library. I've also added ratings for
tons of songs to my home library.

Is there a way I can get my work library in sync with my home library? Since
they do not contain exactly the same songs (for good reason), I can't just
use a simple file synchronization utility to do this at the Finder level.

What I need is something that will take a song I have at home, look for it
in my work library, and if it's there, copy album art and/or ratings to it.
Luckily, I have a PowerBook, so getting my home library in the same physical
proximity as my work library is possible.

I haven't seen this kind of problem mentioned anywhere, but I bet I'm not
the only one who has it.

Thanks,
Khoi


work: www.behaviordesign.com
play: www.subtraction.com

To all that replied:

Thanks much for your suggestions and solutions. I _thought_ I had tried to do the multiple-select-&-change-them-all trick with no success but either I was misremembering or some intervening iTunes update added this functionality. In any case all is now well.

DG

On 3/11/05 8:57 PM, "Khoi Vinh" <publicsubtraction.com> wrote:
> What I need is something that will take a song I have at home, look for it
> in my work library, and if it's there, copy album art and/or ratings to it.
> Luckily, I have a PowerBook, so getting my home library in the same physical
> proximity as my work library is possible.

I'm pretty sure that Doug Adams has a script like that on his site:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/index.php
 
 
Kirk
 
            Author of: How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
               - - - - - -
             Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
          Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more
      Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France