iTunes Help

Willis

Willis

Willis

Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2006
Posts
2,544
Location
Aviemore, Cairngorms, Scottish Highlands
God I hate iTunes, How do I delete the library. I got all my music in folders from my vista machine and imported them to iTunes on my iMac and now they are all over the place. If I play a album from a folder on my Hard drive it plays the song twice as its also in my library :mad:

Windows Media player was so much simpler to use you just clicked play all from the folder and it just played that album/tracks in order. You cant do that with a mac you have to highlight all the tracks :confused:

Any Help :)
 
[DOD]Asprilla;12106960 said:
I've got to say, as a new iTunes User, I can't beleive the samce company designed the iPhone / iTouch / iPod and iTunes.

The interface is terrible and it's frighteningly unintuitive.
Click to expand...


I'm of the opposite opinion.

A lot of people struggle if they want to maintain their own file directory structure. I personally let iTunes do whatever it wants in terms of file organisation
 
AdWright said:
I'm of the opposite opinion.

A lot of people struggle if they want to maintain their own file directory structure. I personally let iTunes do whatever it wants in terms of file organisation
Click to expand...

I'm more than happy to let it maintain the file structure, but that's got nothing to do with the interface. I've had to use the help files more times in two days than I've ever had to use them on any other application, ever.

First thing that bugged me was that on set up it didn't ask me where my music library was or where I wanted to put it, it just assumed C drive.
 
I see. What have you found to be non-intuitive though? When I first started using iTunes (~5 years ago, when the first Windows version came out) I found it fairly straightforward to do all the basics: rip CDs with auto-ID3 tagging, create playlists by drag'n'drop, sync iPod (1st gen 5GB :p) by dragging playlists/albums onto the iPod icon etc
 
I think that it's generally more complicated than it should be and it doesn't explain things very well.

For instance, and I'm describing this from memory having only used it at the weekend and avoided it since, simply syncing your songs. I don't use play lists, I've never have done before and I don't want to now, I just want to select the songs I want, put them on the device and listen.

Instead I have to tick all the songs I want in my iTunes library, then find an option which says 'only sync selected songs' in the preferences, and then I have to go into the device within iTunes and select sync. That's three seperate areas I have to go into on order to add a track. Why can't I just drag and drop the tracks onto the device from the library?

I've been trying to put video on as well, but ITunes differentiates between TV and Movies when it would be much easier if it jsut had a 'Video' section. presumably this is because it focuses on stuff you buy from iTunes as opposed to adding your own video.

I think, in general, things just aren't where you expect them to be and I just can't fathom the logic in many of the decsions. I help Users design UIs and workflow processes for their applications and I wouldn't have let iTunes out the door.

Everything else I've seen from Apple looks great and rarely needs any sort of instructions, but this jsut doesn't fall into that category.
 
I can understand your gripes, but here are a couple of solutions to your problems:

[DOD]Asprilla;12107712 said:
For instance, and I'm describing this from memory having only used it at the weekend and avoided it since, simply syncing your songs. I don't use play lists, I've never have done before and I don't want to now, I just want to select the songs I want, put them on the device and listen.

Instead I have to tick all the songs I want in my iTunes library, then find an option which says 'only sync selected songs' in the preferences, and then I have to go into the device within iTunes and select sync. That's three seperate areas I have to go into on order to add a track. Why can't I just drag and drop the tracks onto the device from the library?
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You can set your iPod to either automatically sync your entire library (assuming your iPod capactiy > your library size) or set it to manual. Once set to manual, you can drag individual songs/artists/albums/playlists straight on to the iPod. I've never used those tick things.

I've been trying to put video on as well, but ITunes differentiates between TV and Movies when it would be much easier if it jsut had a 'Video' section. presumably this is because it focuses on stuff you buy from iTunes as opposed to adding your own video.
Click to expand...
If this bothers you, it is possible to set an ID tag within each file to either 'TV show' or 'Movie' so they are treated the same
 
Unfortunately Library >>>>>>>>>>>>> iPhone capacity.

Dragging and dropping was the first thing that I tried and I just couldn't get it to work. If I drag to the selected tracks to the device (or any of it's sub-icons like play-lists, pod casts, music, etc) I just get the opaque grey 'can't do this' symbol over the icon and / or mouse pointer.

If I do manage to get drag / drop to work how does it cope with accidental duplication and if you make selections in two different syncs; do they overwrite or add to what's on the device?

Edit: I'm sure there are ways of doing what I want, it's just that they aren't obvious (I'd go so far as to say hidden) and the documentation is appauling.
 
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aha, you're using an iPhone. They're a special case (and maybe iPod Touch as well), as Apple don't allow you to see the file structure on the drive as they do with regular iPods. This is probably an attempt to make hacking/unlocking/jailbreaking harder...

With iPhones, you have to select playlists to sync from within the iPhone's settings in iTunes. I created a playlist called 'iPhone' and then set the iPhone to sync this playlist. Now I can just drag'n'drop everything I mentioned before onto this playlist and it syncs.

IIRC, if those songs already exist in the playlist, you are asked whether to skip or add duplicates.

I'll grant you that things aren't as simple for the iPhone as they are for normal iPods, due to the restriction imposed by Apple.
 
It's not just iPhones.

I also have a shuffle, but I avoid iTunes for this as well, simple because it's a pain in the bum to select the order that I want my tracks to play in. I can't add a load of songs and then decide the order, or mess around with it. I have to load the songs in the order I want to play them.

At least as far as I can tell that's the case.
 
Cheers for that, you've been a great help.

I wonder what the problem with my drg and drop is, as I have the latest version. I bet that I can only drag and drop for playlists and not straight into the device library.

Multi device support is also clunky as I understand that you've got to create seperate play lists for each device.

I'm not going to start liking it any time soon, but I can probably do what I need to do now.
 
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