[mdawson]

No problem guys. The funny thing is that I know about that and only use iTunes for music. Apparently Apple decided to fix one major gripe from iTunes 7, now if they would only fix the organized music library issue, which at this point has moved from oversight to bug.

[ibeetle]

Plan_K said:

You can change an audio file type from Music to Audiobook, which forces those files to go into the Audiobook section of iTunes. Yet, those files don't change in behavior at all. They will not be bookmarkable and they will not play at variable speeds on an iPod. If they are AAC files (.m4a), they will still be m4a files.

You can change the behavior.

Go to the Mp3 audiobook you just transfered to Audiobooks>bring up the Info for the book (command, i)> Go to Options. Under Options there is a Remember Position. If you click yes you will now get a basic bookmark function. You can even quit iTunes and when you bring iTunes back up, and go back to that same book it will pick up where you left off.

As far speed playback I do not know if this is new to iTunes 8 or an update in the iPhone software but playing back Mp3 audiobooks now allows speed changing to faster or slower when they are placed under the Audiobook listing.

I have not tried it if you not only quit iTunes, but turn the computer off then try picking up where I left off the next time I restart the computer.

[peterdlederer]

I guess my tastes are also "special" -- and my current effort to load my classical cd collection onto a Mac Mini has been thrown a real monkey wrench by iTunes 8.0. The inability to hear what is being recorded is bad enough, but just to top it off, if you want to paste in album art while recording -- you can't! The album box shows "nothing playing" while the cd is recording.

What on earth were the good folk at Apple thinking of??? Does anyone know a work-around?

[mdawson]

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peterdlederer wrote:

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I guess my tastes are also "special" -- and my current effort to load my classical cd collection onto a Mac Mini has been thrown a real monkey wrench by iTunes 8.0. The inability to hear what is being recorded is bad enough, but just to top it off, if you want to paste in album art while recording?

One of these Macworld articles in reference to iTunes 8 mentions that while you can no longer set the preference to automatically start playing a CD while ripping it, you can simply press the play button an playback will commence. As to the album art, why would you want to add it before all of the tracks are transferred to your computer?s hard drive? The album art should be applied to all of the tracks for a given CD, so it would be much easier to add the cover image in a single shot rather than track-by-track as the files are still being created.

[peterdlederer]

Thanks for your helpful reply; I had overlooked the comment about hitting the "play" button while ripping the cd, and that works! As to why I want to add the album art while ripping -- that's simple. On a classical album the cover art is the same for each "song", i.e., movement or piece. Doing it while ripping lets me do a one-stop edit for art work, modifying the artist, title or composer information, etc. I don't have to return and can simply start on the next cd. And often, I have to find the album art -- usually on Amazon or one of the European sites.

As to how, that's also simple. I simply select all the tracks while the cd is playing and only have to paste once. Mind you, I still have to from time to time repaste the cover art I want (it tends to go missing) or have the frustrating message appear in the box that "album art can't be modified" Sigh...

I don't know that wanting different performances of the same piece is a classical peculiarity -- in my jazz collection there many instances where I enjoy the same "song" by different performers, or on piano versus on guitar, or an instrumental version.

We learn together....Thanks!

.

[mdawson]

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peterdlederer wrote:

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As to why I want to add the album art while ripping -- that's simple. On a classical album the cover art is the same for each "song", i.e., movement or piece. Doing it while ripping lets me do a one-stop edit for art work, modifying the artist, title or composer information, etc. I don't have to return and can simply start on the next cd.

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As to how, that's also simple. I simply select all the tracks while the cd is playing and only have to paste once. Mind you, I still have to from time to time repaste the cover art I want (it tends to go missing) or have the frustrating message appear in the box that "album art can't be modified"

Part of the reason you are getting the intermittent error is due to how you are adding the album art. If you modify the text-based ID3 tags before ripping, a good idea, that information is stored in either a separate database file or iTunes database file. That is why your changes remain intact the next time you insert a CD despite the fact that you cannot change the CD?s contents. For instance, when I update the artist, track, album, year and genre info on a CD before ripping, if I have a reason to load that CD again, my changes are still present.

CDs are read-only so iTunes, or perhaps OS X, is storing the information I modified somewhere allowing it to recognize CDs that is has ?seen? before. The reason I believe the database of CDs is separate from iTunes? database is because a modified album name is reflected in the Finder when the CD is mounted implying that OS X is recognizing the disc under the new album name and not based on the content stored on the disc.

The fact that you can update ID3 data while ripping is another reason to suspect that a separate database is involved, because your iTunes library uses the information in the ripped files. When you rip the CD that new ID3 data is written to the ripped files as they are created, so if you needed to make track by track changes and iTunes somehow got ahead of you, some of your ripped files would not have the new information.

With album art, this may not work exactly the same so you may lose the images. If you paste album art directly into the Artwork tag in a track or Multiple Item Information window in iTunes after ripping, the artwork is added to the ripped files.

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peterdlederer wrote:

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I don't know that wanting different performances of the same piece is a classical peculiarity -- in my jazz collection there many instances where I enjoy the same "song" by different performers, or on piano versus on guitar, or an instrumental version.

I never wrote anything about wanting different performances of the same piece. ?:| If anything, I am well aware that having multiple copies of a single piece by different performers is a very common practice amongst classical music collectors. Where did that come from? (I want the blush emoticon back!)

[nbpace]

What about when downloading and installing iTunes 8, it automatically removed the album artwork from a large portion of my albums, unless the artwork was downloaded from iTunes itself? The software update may be great, but that alone will prove to be a time-consuming annoyance. I would think that a company that prides itself on "intuitive" software would be intuitive enough to know that I want to keep my album artwork.
And yes, I am a Mac user... just annoyed!

[rostasi]

Two things (at least) that made me go back to 7.7:
• Removal of adjustable shuffle mode
• Some clearly obvious attempts at
getting you to shop at the iTunes store.
(try highlighting a Beatles cut and asking the "Genius")