[Macworld]

Post your comments for Ask the iTunes Guy: Album art and tagging here

[daveerato]

Does anybody know if the info in the lyrics is searchable? Like say, if I'm looking for videos of Bob Mintzer, will a search give me Yellowjackts, Thad Jones Big Band, Jaco Pastorius, etc. if tagged in the lyric field?

[kirkmc]

daveerato, on 23 March 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

Does anybody know if the info in the lyrics is searchable? Like say, if I'm looking for videos of Bob Mintzer, will a search give me Yellowjackts, Thad Jones Big Band, Jaco Pastorius, etc. if tagged in the lyric field?

No, it's not.

[sermonauthor]

In audiobooks, mostly from Audible.com, many of the titles under Devices > Books are listed as "Unknown Album." This is even though they are correctly titled and tagged under "Library" > "Books" and on the actual files themselves.

Is there a way to change these titles from "Unknown Album" to their actual names? Normally I would select the file, press Command-I, then fix the title. But it is already correct here.

Also, Sometimes when I click the Artwork tab and try to select the cover itself on a song it cannot be selected and therefore cannot be deleted and replaced with the right cover. Why does this "freeze" and can anything be done? Thanks!

[Ch1llP1ll]

I was recently planning on adding multiple images to the album artwork for tracks---eg. front and back covers---but Apple appears to have removed any means of navigating and viewing any image other than the first in iTunes' GUI. Previously, the "item artwork and video viewer" would display arrows allowing you to navigate left and right through available artwork for the selected or playing track; now, these arrows are missing (iTunes 10.5+).
Is there a method of viewing additional images that I'm not aware of (and that doesn't involve the "Get Info" window)?

[KeithSmith]

It might be worth mentioning that tagging in iTunes adds much of the tag information into the iTunes database, not the individual file. If you ever have to recreate your iTunes library - upgrade the computer, move the library to an external hard drive, whatever - the tags aren't going to be there when you reimport your files. Using a tagging app can be useful here because it will imbed the tags into the individual files, so if you have to reimport them, all the tags come with.

[kirkmc]

KeithSmith, on 23 March 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

It might be worth mentioning that tagging in iTunes adds much of the tag information into the iTunes database, not the individual file. If you ever have to recreate your iTunes library - upgrade the computer, move the library to an external hard drive, whatever - the tags aren't going to be there when you reimport your files. Using a tagging app can be useful here because it will imbed the tags into the individual files, so if you have to reimport them, all the tags come with.

All of the main tags - name, artist, album, comments, etc. - are embedded in the files. The only ones that aren't are the iTunes-specific ones, such as Skip when Shuffling, and other playback tags. Metadata such as ratings, play counts and last played dates are naturally only in the library, and are not embedded in the files.

[Ch1llP1ll]

kirkmc, on 23 March 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

KeithSmith, on 23 March 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

It might be worth mentioning that tagging in iTunes adds much of the tag information into the iTunes database, not the individual file. If you ever have to recreate your iTunes library - upgrade the computer, move the library to an external hard drive, whatever - the tags aren't going to be there when you reimport your files. Using a tagging app can be useful here because it will imbed the tags into the individual files, so if you have to reimport them, all the tags come with.

All of the main tags - name, artist, album, comments, etc. - are embedded in the files. The only ones that aren't are the iTunes-specific ones, such as Skip when Shuffling, and other playback tags. Metadata such as ratings, play counts and last played dates are naturally only in the library, and are not embedded in the files.

This doesn't appear to be the case for videos. Setting video type (eg. TV Programme; Movie) is not stored in the file itself, even though this is a valid tag type. I found this out after manually copying files from one Mac's iTunes Library to another.

[kirkmc]

Ch1llP1ll, on 24 March 2012 - 03:17 AM, said:

kirkmc, on 23 March 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

KeithSmith, on 23 March 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

It might be worth mentioning that tagging in iTunes adds much of the tag information into the iTunes database, not the individual file. If you ever have to recreate your iTunes library - upgrade the computer, move the library to an external hard drive, whatever - the tags aren't going to be there when you reimport your files. Using a tagging app can be useful here because it will imbed the tags into the individual files, so if you have to reimport them, all the tags come with.

All of the main tags - name, artist, album, comments, etc. - are embedded in the files. The only ones that aren't are the iTunes-specific ones, such as Skip when Shuffling, and other playback tags. Metadata such as ratings, play counts and last played dates are naturally only in the library, and are not embedded in the files.

This doesn't appear to be the case for videos. Setting video type (eg. TV Programme; Movie) is not stored in the file itself, even though this is a valid tag type. I found this out after manually copying files from one Mac's iTunes Library to another.

Yes, that's an iTunes-specific tag. But videos will retain much of the naming information.

Nevertheless, your saying "much of the tag information" above is incorrect.

[MrMojo1]

A note to people that Apple currently "fixed" iTunes' long standing problem of messing up the album art with various songs even when it was tagged Properly! This issue has been a continuing issue for some for awhile now.

When you play songs and have the album art shown during playback, sometimes you'll get a different album art cover shown.

I've had to go into iTunes to make sure the songs were properly tagged (It was!) and then remove the songs off my iPods/iPhone then transfer those same songs back over. Guess what? It's still messed up!!

This happened a couple of times but now noticed that the album art issue seems to be corrected with the updated iOS5.x in the iPhone and the newer iTunes 10.x versions

Hope that this album art mess-up issue doesn't return!

Tagging files are laborious and time consuming but you'll appreciate it later.

[seasonsinthesky]

joining tracks into one file is a very, very silly suggestion. if you want to keep a group of tracks together even when you shuffle, give those tracks the same Group tag (the title of the songs, for instance), then Shuffle by Groupings. any tracks that aren't grouped shuffle normally, but tracks grouped will play in the order determined by their track numbers. voila! (that's why iTunes has the feature!)

[MaxCe]

Is it possible to record radio when listening ? Through iTunes ? Or other ways ?

[DreamcatcherDB]

kirkmc, on 23 March 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

KeithSmith, on 23 March 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

It might be worth mentioning that tagging in iTunes adds much of the tag information into the iTunes database, not the individual file. If you ever have to recreate your iTunes library - upgrade the computer, move the library to an external hard drive, whatever - the tags aren't going to be there when you reimport your files. Using a tagging app can be useful here because it will imbed the tags into the individual files, so if you have to reimport them, all the tags come with.

All of the main tags - name, artist, album, comments, etc. - are embedded in the files. The only ones that aren't are the iTunes-specific ones, such as Skip when Shuffling, and other playback tags. Metadata such as ratings, play counts and last played dates are naturally only in the library, and are not embedded in the files.

I often use my ratings to sort my 12k song music collection. You say it is "metadata" Is there any way to move the metadata as a separate file when migrating to a new computer? Do lyrics migrate or is that metadata too? How about groups? Got any helpful tips for migrating from a Mac to a PC or in general keeping sync between them? My personal computer is a MacBook Pro and that's currently where I store, edit, and organize my music but my work computer is a PC and that is where I would like to mainly listen to my music in the near future. For now I take my MacBook to work and listen on that while working on my PC.... awkward.

DCDB

[webdesigner]

Thank you, the smart playlist is fantastic.