[bernardlanguillier]

Does iTunes 8.0 support ripping to flac and replay of flac files?

My Denon A/V amp doesn't support Apple lossless and my .wav files are starting to take a little bit too much space...

Cheers,
Bernard

[Wabbitguy]

Penner was right on the money when he said that if you have your own music (you're a musician) or a library of niche songs that aren't available on the iTunes store, the "Genius shrugs its shoulders".

I guess the problem is iTunes is mainstream. And if you're anything other than mainstream, they don't have anything for you or can do anything for you. I tried the "Genius" out a number of times and the best it could do was come up with songs by the same artist. When it didn't crap out and have nada suggestions.

I also have to question the "Album" view where the tag says "Play Album" except, it's not an album. I have a number of "one hit wonders" and it insists each of the single songs by a different artist is an album (semantics). The only useful view is the "Artists" for me.

Oh well, I didn't expect too much with iTunes 8, least they didn't disappoint me...:-)

Mel

[natmusak]

Thanks for the explanation, mdawson. :)

[aderksen]

What is the workaround? I had it implemented in the last version, but I've yet to remember what it was for this one. They are irritating - I'd like them there as a choice when I want them, not as a requirement.

[aderksen]

As of about 8:50 EST, the iTunes store appears to be non-functional. My guess would be that maybe they are trying to fix the HD/SD download problem right now... or they got hammered by a lot more folks looking to download the HD versions of television shows than they initially expected.

[macavenger]

mdawson said:

If you never look at the contents of your music folder then why would you bother to set that preference? iTunes does not need to have your songs set up in an Artist/Album folder structure to operate properly or efficiently. The purpose of that feature is to make it easy for a human being to find music on their hard drive without having to scan through thousands of files with no reference to the artist or album.

The fact that you do not use the feature does not negate the fact that an organized music folder should mirror the organization in iTunes or at the very least set up the folders such that the tracks/albums from a single artist remain together in a single folder for that artist and subsequently songs from the same album remain in a single folder for that album within that artist?s folder. The organized folder feature is not enabled by default, so it stands to reason that if someone goes out of their way to activate it, they have done so with a purpose in mind and therefore (rightfully) expect their music folder to be properly organized by iTunes without having to resort to some convoluted tagging scheme to force the issue.

I set the preference to keep my music folder - or perhaps more appropriately I should say hard drive - organized. As I said, I use it so that when I rip a CD, download music (not always from iTunes itself), etc, I don't have to think about where it ends up on my hard drive. No, iTunes doesn't care, but I do. Even if I don't browse the directory directly, I don't want my music files scattered all over my hard drive. And as I see things, that is at least one valid purpose of the feature - not so much to make it easy for you to find the files directly (although it does serve that purpose as well, albeit not as well as it could, as you have pointed out), but to keep your files from cluttering up your hard drive.

Now keep in mind, this is NOT to say that your idea is bad or shouldn't be implemented - actually, what you are suggesting about how iTunes should sort the folder makes perfect sense, and I see no reason that Apple shouldn't do this any more than you do. As you have pointed out, a more reasonable naming scheme on the folders would make it easier to track down files directly, and make the feature much more useful. I can fully agree with your statement that "an organized music folder should mirror the organization in iTunes". I am merely trying to make the point that even as it stands there are uses for the feature, specifically that of consolidating your music into a single folder. After years of downloading music from various websites, ripping CD's, and copying files from friends flash drives, not to mention the iTunes store, I would hate to think what my desktop/downloads folder/documents folder/etc would look like without this feature - I would have hundreds of music files all over the place. Yes, I could clean them up manually, even if it was just to toss all the files into one big folder, but having the feature, even in its current state, saves me the hassle. And to me, and doubtless others as well, that makes it a worthwhile feature, even without a good organizational scheme :)

[johnzocco]

I've bought Heroes, Season 2, and the HD files have a 1 at the end; i.e. 02 Lizards 1.m4v (HD file) and 02 Lizards.m4v (SD file). Also I would like to add that unless you have a very fast broadband connection, downloading HD content can take several hours. I have DSL Elite from AT&T, which is approx. 5 Mbps, and it took me about 10 hours to download Heroes, Season 2 in both HD & SD content! I've checked my DSL modem speed and it varies greatly; I got a low of 745 Kbps to a high of 4.6 Mbps. I've contacted AT&T and someone will come over on Sept. 12 to check my line. However something tells me that the fault lies with the iTunes servers; they're probably so overloaded that they cannot keep up with the demand. Unfortunately I am still downloading content, Battlestar Galactica, Season 4, so I'm going to wait until it's finished and then restart my computer and check my DSL speed. It's now Sept. 10, 9:10 p.m. PST (I'm in California), so based on how long it took Heroes to load, I'm expecting downloading Battlestar Galactica will take until the next day, Sept. 11, sometime in the afternoon!

[mdawson]

Quote

macavenger wrote:

>

Quote

I set the preference to keep my music folder - or perhaps more appropriately I should say hard drive - organized. As I said, I use it so that when I rip a CD, download music (not always from iTunes itself), etc, I don't have to think about where it ends up on my hard drive. No, iTunes doesn't care, but I do. Even if I don't browse the directory directly, I don't want my music files scattered all over my hard drive.

Clearly you do not understand what the ?Keep iTunes Music folder organized? preference does. ;) iTunes will not scatter files all over you hard drive as doing so would be poor database design. All of you music files whether ripped or downloaded from the iTunes Store will always be dumped either into your iTunes Music folder (default) or the music folder you designate in iTunes? preferences as the location of your library. If you acquire music from other sources, then you should make a point of having the files placed in your music folder.

What the organization preference does is structure the contents of that music folder. If you left it disabled, all of your music files would simply be in your designated music folder. The only organization of the files would be the sorting preference you have when you browse the content of that folder in the Finder. With the preference enabled, iTunes creates artist sub-folders within your designated music folder and album sub-folders within those artist folders that contain the songs for that album. So it is the difference between having AC/DC?s Hells Bells contained in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music (no organization) and ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/AC_DC/Back In Black (organized). It is not a matter of reducing clutter; the preference creates a structured file system within your designated music folder.

Quote

macavenger wrote:

>

Quote

I am merely trying to make the point that even as it stands there are uses for the feature, specifically that of consolidating your music into a single folder. After years of downloading music from various websites, ripping CD's, and copying files from friends flash drives, not to mention the iTunes store, I would hate to think what my desktop/downloads folder/documents folder/etc would look like without this feature - I would have hundreds of music files all over the place.

That is actually what the library consolidation function is for (File > Library > Consolidate Library?). Library consolidation?gathering media files from various directories then moving or copying them into a single central music (library) folder?is completely independent of organizing that music folder. You can consolidate your music library and still have an unorganized music folder.

[jonathannasution]

there are something new too in iTunes 8:

we can copy text files of list of albums that iTunes don't have (though I don't know the use of it).

[fithian]

I installed iTunes on a Mac Mini, a MacBook and a G5 Powermac. Everything went well on the Mini and the MacBook. When I opened iTunes 8 on the G5, it started to make thumbnails of all my album covers, and then it crashed. There is probably a corrupted album artwork file that is causing the problem. Reinstalling does nothing. I recovered my iTunes 7 from Time Machine, but that could not open the music library which was now converted to iTunes 8. I had to recover the entire music folder in order to get iTunes 7 to work again. Any idea how to find the corrupt album art?

[viralata]

Why didn't Apple go ahead and allow HD movies to be played on computer? What is the advantage of NOT doing that? Many people have computers (mini-mac, in particular) hooked directly to the TV or to large screen monitors and do need or want AppleTV.

[griffman]

The studios are so concerned about piracy that they control what's allowed and not allowed in their rental contracts -- so I'm guessing it's a studio restriction, not an Apple restriction. After all, it's in Apple's best interest to let movies be seen on as many of their devices as possible. So if they could have, I'm sure they would have enabled Mac-based HD movie rental and playback.

-rob.

[BoxOfSnoo]

This release is a disaster!

I sync my files between two machines, and have different libraries between them. This has always been fine since I have the same naming convention set in the preferences. Except now they REMOVED the option to have the track number prepended to the filename. So when I consolidated one library it renamed every single file and broke the other library completely.

I don't know the easiest way to fix this. I may end up losing all of my ratings and play counts.

[tallscot]

Genius fails to connect with Apple on Step 2. Oh well.