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Posts Tagged iTunes

DIY : Escape from iTunes

May 17

Posted by The Nut in Tech | 3 Comments

Some people don’t really like iTunes, but are entrapped, mainly because they’ve got an iPod or perhaps their libraries are too integrated with iTunes. But it really isn’t all that hard to move to Windows Media Player, WinAmp, Real Player or one of the other alternatives.

First, try to get all your music in one place. This might be unneccesary if you’re like me, and have your entire collection in one folder (actually, in my case, partition). This helps when you’re adding the files to another media player. Do this by going to the Edit menu -> Preferences. Click on the Advanced Tab, and set the iTunes library location to the place you want all your music to go. Now, clik on File -> Library -> Consolidate Library. Will take some time, but will make sure that all the music in your iTunes library is now organised in one folder.

I’m trusting that you didn’t try and play video with iTunes. It is possibly the worst player for video. Apparently it refuses to take video codecs from the OS’s codec library, and will only support .mov (QuickTime) and .mp4 files. I can’t say about podcasts, mainly because I don’t really use them too much.

All you need to do is add that folder to your new media player’s media library and/or watch list. A watch list will monitor that folder for any changes, and automatically add new media to the library as and when you add it to that folder.Now, the main problem arises when you’re thinking of moving metadata. This can be a pain with iTunes, mainly because it doesn’t believe in keeping stuff like playlists, play counts and ratings as metadata with your music files, but it keeps it hidden away in that crappy iTunes library XML file. That place looks like a complete junkyard. And I can see why searches take so long in iTunes. Anyway, there’s a solution I stumbled across – MusicBridge.

Actually, this only works for iTunes -> Windows Media Player. It’s a tool which copies all that info from your iTunes Library to your WMP library. All I had to do was just add the media files into the WMP library, and then run this program which did the rest for me. I had an option to copy just General Metadata, Ratings, Playlists, Artwork and more such stuff. It could also copy stuff from WMP -> iTunes, but such a person would be a moron, right?

In it’s defense, iTunes does seem to use less RAM in Windows 7 for some reason. Apparently, window management’s gotten better, and this means that it needs less of private memory. But that’s about it…;-)

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iTunes 8

Oct 11

Posted by The Nut in Tech | 3 Comments

Now, I could sum up the entire player in a few words (mainly expletives) and that would be the end of the review, but I’d prefer to a go a bit more in-depth than that.

The Package

It’s 64.6 MB for Windows. Which is a lot, when you compare it with stuff like Windows Media Player (WMP) and Winamp, which are less than half that size. The reason it’s so bloated, is that it’s got a lot of stuff riding piggyback.

QuickTime Player comes default. I don’t blame Apple for that, because .mov is their own codec. But I think that they should go the Microsoft way, and let iTunes run the entire show. Apple could save a few MB there. Then, they’ve got some useless stuff. Like the Bonjour service, which allows you to access other iTunes libraries, over the local network. Then, there’s the Apple Mobile Device service for iPhones and iPod Touches. Again, not a necessity. Despite all of this, the installation is pretty easy.

Mainly because they never bother to ask you before installing each of these.

Really, not everyone needs all of the features the iTunes package has to offer, so Apple could add a few check boxes here and there during the install, and then shift the blame off to dumb users who just click ‘Yes’ throughout the installation.

The Features

OK, so I’ve disabled the useless services, and taken care of everything. And then I start up iTunes. One thing you’re likely to notice when you start it up, is that, unlike WMP and RealPlayer, it doesn’t have a video-centric layout, with a large empty space in the middle. iTunes, as the name suggests, is mainly for songs.

In iTunes 8, by default, you’re greeted with the Grid layout. This is a nice touch they’ve added in this version – you can choose to sort by Artist, Album, Genre or Composer, and the items are arranged in a grid, with multiple rollover Album Arts in case of multiple results for one grid item. This is a good replacement for the Browser in the list view, where you can select songs by artist, album or genre in a dropdown box. The original list view is still there, and so is Cover Flow. Cover Flow, as you should know by now, displays the album art as if you’re browsing through a large collection, flowing from side to side.

Genius is a nice touch. It’s not groundbreaking, but at least it’s here in iTunes now. You can upload your music tastes, like ratings, to Apple’s servers, and you can download the cumulative results from Apple, which includes ratings from all over the world. If you select one song, and click on the Genius button, you can get a list of songs similar to your selection. Call it refined shuffle if you will…

Unfortunately, you need to create an iTunes Store Account for this, which is of no use in India, as there aren’t any songs for sale, only iPod Touch and iPhone applications. Still, I did give Mom’s credit card details over a secure(?) connection. The results are somewhat accurate. The iTunes Mini Store, has been integrated with the Genius sidebar, which recommends songs which go with the one you’re listening to, and recommends other top songs as well.

There’s a new visualiser. Apple’s apparently bought a visualiser called Magnetoshpere, and has made it one with iTunes. To be honest, I like it, even thought it hasn’t got too much variety, and the visualiser changes only when you change the song, or pause it. The good thing about it, is that it uses the graphics card, so it can deliver incredibly smooth animations, assuming your CPU is not bottlenecked either.

Apart from this, like older versions of iTunes, version 8 supports videos, podcasts and also radio. If you look around on the iTunes Store, you can find a selection of free podcasts, which aren’t all that bad. Also, Radio stations they’ve listed aren’t bad either.

There’s a problem, which has persisted ever since iTunes was released. iTunes can’t read most video files. It has to be in the few handful formats that it supports. Unlike WMP and RealPlayer, iTunes does not check up with the Operating System what all codecs are installed on the PC. It’s beacause WMP does this that it can play DivX files with ease. Feels more friendly too. But Apple won’t give in, and that makes iTunes suck.

Genius hasn’t ousted Party Shuffle, which lives on in the left sidebar. You can get it to randomly select songs from the entire library or a particular playlist, and also give preference to higher rated songs. iTunes supports smart playlists, like any other music player worth its salt. You can give multiple conditions to get results like all Coldplay songs with ratings of 4 or higher.

Even though there isn’t a way to directly convert songs to MP3 or change bitrate, there is a convoluted way to do that. Go to Edit -> Preferences, and click on the Import Settings button on the General tab. Then set your preferences, save them, right-click the song you want and select  ‘Create MP3 version’.

iTunes also connects to the Gracenote CDDB online database for CDs, which allows you to download info about the songs on a CD. Speaking of CDs, iTunes can burn audio CDs, MP3 discs and Data discs.

The Performance

Going back to when I fired up iTunes for the first time.

It doesn’t exactly fire up.

It crawls half-heartedly. Taking up 50~60 MB when I first start it. Can fluctuate wildly. Plus, this is way too much, to listen to a song, or just grab a bit of a video, iTunes is impracticle. Useless, rather.

Scrolling through lists of songs can be a pain, but not browsing Cover Flow, for some reason. It stores the library in an XML file, and boy is it slow! Search is really stagnant, and it takes ages for iTunes to respond to a keystroke in the Search bar.

Videos are not smooth. Period. Of the few videos that iTunes can play, when you move the mouse over the video, a semi-transparent control overlay appears, which causes the video to jar till it disappears. iTunes remains the very worst player, when it comes to video playback.

When you connect an iPod, iTunes simply freezes up as the PC and the pod chat about a bit. No control at all. Luckily, the music doesn’t stop, or I’d be tempted to put my foot through the monitor.

Unfortunately, if Apple decided to release a minor update to version 8.0.1, you’ll be forced to download the whole thing again. All 65 MB of it! A rather huge pain in the ass.

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Transplanting Music

Nov 24

Posted by The Nut in Tech | No Comments

Today, I wanted to organise my hard drive. OK, so what if it’s much better organised than those of others I know…I wanna make it better! So, I start with my music. I use iTunes, and the setting ‘Copy All Music To iTunes Library’ is checked. So that means that there is a lot of duplicate music lying around, as even my bro uses iTunes. So, I can’t delete downloaded music from it’s spot, as my bro will mince me.

I come up with a simple plan – to fuse the 2 libraries. I would copy the music to a ‘D:Music’ and everyone can access it from there. It seems simple, but is not. The fact of the matter is that I keep everything organised in my library – ratings, album art and all that. My IDv3 tags are full. My favourite songs even have lyrics!

You’ll say, you NUT, why don’t you just copy all your music to another place, delete the songs and add the new ones? Well…I’d lose all my ratings and a few more iTunes centric stuff. So, I devise a simple, yet effective plan.

I went to the ‘Preferences’ in iTunes, and went to the Advanced tab. In the iTunes library path, I changed it to the path I wanted. Then, I went to the ‘Advanced’ main menu (not tab), and clicked Consolidate Library. That copies all music to the iTunes Library Folder i.e. the folder I wanted. Then, I proceeded to delete the music from the old path…in My Music. Quite a simple affair.

Now, I’ll do the same for bro, and then we can cut down on hard drive space usage, coz’ I’m starting to feel the squeeze with 160GB, coz’ I’ve got movies, games and music, and a lot of warez. Will need to upgade soon…

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