Applications :: How To Create And Maintain Lossless And Lossy Music Libraries In ITunes?
Jan 14, 2010
How to - Creating and maintaining Lossless and Lossy music libraries in iTunes 9
A forum member has asked for information on how to create a new library for his music collection and below is my attempt to help. Having done this myself and never finding a complete step-by-step guide, I?ve attempted to make one of my own. Many others have helped me along the way so this is my way of giving back. Unfortunately, I don?t have my MBP right now and won?t have a Mac around for about two months. Please feel free to add feedback, tell me where I?m wrong, what?s missing or offer other ways of accomplishing these tasks. Once I get MR member input, I will update this post to reflect the best current practices for creating and maintaining two separate libraries for your lossless and lossy music collection. At the bottom of the post I list a couple of known issues and have a couple of questions so please chime in.
When I hit control click it offers option to create apple lossless version of this music. How can it create a lossless version when I ripped it at 128kbps? I don't understand.
I highlighted about 23 songs from an album, and clicked on create apple lossless version. I now have two copies of each song. Shouldn't it have asked me if I wanted to delete the original version? I guess I need to delete each one individually?
I have about 250GB of music in my iTunes Music folder, too much for any of my player devices with the exception of the computer itself. The "iTunes Music" folder is located on an external drive. I want to create multiple libraries to simplify syncing with individual devices, named something like "Nano silver 16", "classic 160", "iPhone", "iPad", etc. I know how to create the new libraries from info at: [URL] Questions:3) Is there a way to switch the "iTunes Music" folder to sort by album, (instead of by artist, then album, which lists each individual song of a compilation (Greatest Hits of...". "soundtrack", "duets..., etc. in separate folders with one song each). Royal pain! 2) How do I populate the individual libraries from my media folder once I have created them? I can't find any info to do this. Am I right that these just reference the real files, and don't duplicate them in a new location/folder? I don't want to increase the space taken up by new library files. 3) Where should all of the library files live to make it easy to find and switch from one to another? At present, I have to check/uncheck individual files to sync onto separate devices, and this becomes impossible with so much to begin with. --WWmac mini, OS 10.7.4, iTunes 10.6.1Â
I have ordered a new Retina MBP to replace my early 2008 MBP, and have been contemplating how to manage my music libraries between both computers. My music library is about 60GB, and I don't want to keep it all on my rMBP (to save space with only 256GB available). My 2008 MBP will serve as a repository for all of my music, and regular Time Machine backups will be carried out. I also have a small, portable external drive which will also have all of my music (copied iTunes folder). The goal here is to have the music libraries on my old MBP and this external drive to be identical, for backup reasons as well as to be able to transfer music to my new rMBP when necessary. To do this, I reasoned out the following method:Â
-Obtain new music on rMBP
-Transfer folder of respective album(s) to copied iTunes folder in external HD
-Connect external HD to old MBP
-Open music files from external HD (they'll copy into both the iTunes library and the iTunes media folder on the old MBP)
-Verify that the music files are in both placesÂ
I can also obrain new music on the old MBP and then transfer it to the external HD. This seems like somewhat of a cumbersome manner to go about this (first world problems, I know). Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to streamline, or perhaps even automate this process? I was trying to think of a way I could utilize the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder, but to no avail. Again, my primary goals are as follows:Â
-To have identical music libraries on my old MBP and the external HD
-To have only a small, can't-do-without-it music library on my rMBP; I could tranfer music over as necessary or play it using the library on the external HD.Â
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
I currently purchase TV shows for the kids and rent movies (Apple TV) but until the Apple iTunes store offers the choice of lossless files (like other online music stores).. I'll continue to purchase CDs. Chris Jacob is correct the "LP" series should be ALAC - Apple Lossless.
Its an interesting article, published last year;[URL]
If Apple really wants to recreate that "feel" of buying a record, I have to feel like I'm buying something that isn't just higher quality, but also permanent. If I buy a lossy AAC file from the iTunes store today, not only do I know that it's inferior to the same $15 CD, but also that I'll have to chuck it once AAC is put out to pasture.
I have a friend who plans to put an HP Mediasmart server in his house to automatically backup his MacBook and PowerBook as well as centralize his pictures and songs. He currently has the two notebooks mentioned above, 2 iPhones, and 4 or 5 iPods.
Once all of the local libraries are emptied out onto the server I'm a little stuck for what to do. I know iTunes 9.0 will stream music to all of the devices in the house. But when he leaves the house with one of his devices he's got to take the music or pictures with him.
This presents me with a few concerns:
1. Is there a way to reset the license on each song downloaded from iTunes - kinda starting fresh - so that he can sync his music with any one of his devices without getting an error about the file not being licensed to use on a particular device?
2. Building off the question above - is there a way to legitimately remove the license restriction so he (and his family) can all have the same copy of a song on their personal device without having to fuss with the license restriction?
3. When they are going on vacation (for example) and they want to take music and pictures with them on one of the notebooks how do they do it?
4. On that same vacation when they take a bunch of pictures and download music while they're out how do they get the music or pictures off the notebook and onto the server where the master library is going to be?
5. Should iTunes and iPhoto be "pointed" to a "Photos" or "Music" folder on the server, is that the best way to centralize all of the music and photos?
Is it possible to play music from multiple libraries over a single device, with control over the playlist possible from multiple devices/computers? Baiscally, in one of my smaller offices, everyone has a Mac or PC with iTunes, along with various iPads, iPhones etc etc. They randomly pick some tunes to play from each of their individual machines.
I would like to setup a system where there is a single device (Mac/PC/Airplay/Apple TV etc) with decent speakers, where anyone can submit a track(s) to play from their library, be it on their Mac, iPad iPhone etc. to stream through the central system.I would then imagine using the Remote app to control it.
They should all be able to submit tracks simultanously, rather that one device connecting with a Airplay at a time. This would also work in a party senario. Guest rock up, pair their device with the system, and they can all submit track(s) from their device and it goes into the playlist...
I still have a great number of AIFF files in my music library.
I'd like to convert them to Apple Lossless, as it's the same sound quality at half the space.
I know you can create a copy of any file in another format, but it sounds quite complicated. First you have to create a copy, and then you need to delete the "original" AIFF file.
Can't I just convert an existing file without a copy, keeping also the play counts?
It used to work: You highlighted the songs you wanted to create an Apple Lossless version of, and they would show up underneath the AIFF version.
No longer.
iTunes 9 still could do this.
iTunes 9.0.3 loses them. It processes them, puts them into the right folder, but you can't see them in iTunes.
Questions:
1. Can I downgrade to iTunes 9.0 where this bug wasn't present?
2. Or do I have to manually import into iTunes? (This would erase the playcount, I suppose)
Or is there any other way around this bug? (or isn't it a bug, but a feature that has been disabled by Apple for whatever reason?)
PS: I found a place where I can download iTunes 9.0.1 for OS X. Are there any possible problem when installing an older version over a newer version, e.g. in regards to the library?
I have a lot of TV series that I have ripped into ipad compatible format. I want to be able to put them into a folder like a playlist for movies so I don't have to scroll forever to find them. If I need to use genre how do I tag the movies so they get sorted?
I have an iMac and just bought a Seagate 1T expernal hard drive. Currently most of my music is encoded AAC so I can keep it in the imac hard drive and be able to loaded in my iPod 30 Gig.Currently I have about 24 Gig in the library.Since I use my iTunes as music server for my home Hi-Fi systems using a wireless network and Squeezebox devices connected to my steroe system I would like to create a second library with just Apple Lossless files. I would like to use this library for my home listening but keep the current library in the iMac haddrive with the AAC files to sync them to my iPod.
I'm looking for a program for mac that will allow me to create my own music, specifically electronic/dub music. I'm completely new to the whole idea of making music or being a DJ but I love dubstep and that kind of music.
I have decided to manage two iTunes libraries on a single user account by using the old "option key on launch" trick; one on my Macbook's HD and another on an external HD. However, is it possible to view and access both of the libraries in parallel, or at least switch quickly between them without having to quit iTunes and launch it again?
when I try to import one cd for my lossless folder (after telling itunes were that folder is and import setting is set for apple lossless) itunes ask if I want to keep the media organized in the itunes folder. If I say yes, some files from my aac folder is showing up in the lossless folder and versa?
I have a Mac Pro desktop and a Macbook with (mostly) duplicate music on. But there is some music I only have on one or the other. Most uploaded from CDs and some bought from itunes, Amazon etc. Each has about 20GB each but as I said it's mostly the same. I want to do a complete clean re-install on the Macbook and then not take up its HD space with music, just use Home Sharing via the desktop/airtunes. Apart from literally going alphabetically through both, is there a neat way of comparing, to make sure that when I clean off the Macbook I don't miss something that isn't on the pro?
I just opened my ~/music/iTunes folder and in the iTunes folder there was a folder named 'previous iTunes Libraries' that folder existed of two iTunes Library Data files. My question now is can I just delete that folder or is it essential to have iTunes function properly?
I've been searching the forums and web looking for info on how to / best way to sync iTunes libraries (including playlists, ratings, and play counts). I've found several programs including TuneRanger, SuperSync, Syncopation and some others (links below). The general consensus seems to be that they all suck. (TuneRanger seems to do exactly what I want, but doesn't appear to have a free trial period.) [URL]
how do backup all your itunes media? do you just use one drive and not back up? im just wondering, because i have a fear that if i only back up all my itunes media on a external drive, that one day, it will crash when i need it, and ill be screwed. so what the best way to back it up? i was thinking of burning it all to dvds but that would take forever.
I have one iTunes library on my MBP and another on an iMac that are different. I want to combine them into one (on the iMac) but when I try the songs/videos moved over can't be found by the iMac (have the exclamation mark next to the title). I really don't want to backup to disc to move them over by restoring because the library I am moving is 70+ GB (that's a lot of discs) so I have copied the folder onto a separate harddrive. How do I combine these libraries? Please give me step by step instructions that a middle aged Mom who has not slept through the night in 14 years can understand.
I have an external hard drive which holds all of my music. It is my main iTunes library and is in AIFF (CD) format. What I want to do is copy this music and convert it to MP3 (or similar compressed format compatible with iPod) from the external drive, and put it into a separate library on my Mac's internal hard drive in the MP3 format. That way I'd still have my original music in AIFF on the external drive, and a copy of it in MP3 format on the internal drive for moving to my iPod or iPhone. Is this possible? Does it make sense? Also, is there a better (in terms of sound quality) compressed format than MP3 to use?
I currently have a lot of different songs on my iMac and my MBP and I was wondering if there was a way to sync the two without having to use the automator approach found here [URL]
