Where's Katrina when you need her?

edited August 2010 in General
I am trying to figure out the best way to split up an iTunes library, as detailed here. Any thoughts? Anybody? Bueller?

Comments

  • edited August 2010
    I'm right here, bless your heart.
    Your link doesn't take me to a specific post. It takes me to the top of a forum.
    I will check again if it's a Doofy post.
  • Nope.

    I'm so geeky I have been having fun the past few weeks switching to Windows 7 . Egads I adore this stuff!
  • edited August 2010
    I want to start a business helping folks with itunes. I am expert in moving itunes library & content around to different drives and OS. I asked several folks at my last job what to call my biz....I thought ComputerGal on the local craigslist sounded OK...my coworkers nixed it. I don't think I can call myself iGal or maybe I should? Let's face it, a bunch of guys have seriously bombed on being nice to folks and helping....that would be the geek squad. I'd like my biz name to reflect my gender. Bless you for for any ideas!
  • It's such a specialized market, I have no hope of succeeding.
    It's such a burgeoning market, I have nowhere to go but up.
  • Move her ITL to to new machine & let it load from the exHD which has the same drive letter as it had on the old machine.
    Then change the new PC's itunes preferences to have the itunes media folder on an internal drive. check the box to "copy files when adding..." and do an itunes menu > file > library consolidate.

    Aha! Thank you, iGal. :) See, I knew there would be a rational way to do it. That's a beautiful thing. Can't wait to try it!

    I kinda like "iGal"! There are other "i" things out there being used by non-Apple people, like iLounge, etc.

    I have tried to help out on the iTunes forums from time to time...people get so confused about such basic things it's hard to know where to start. There was a person yesterday who wanted to know how to re-DL all her songs, since she had given her computer away!

    God knows there's a need for such a service, will people pay for it is the question. At some point while I was on Apple help, there was a call link with support people "standing by." Who are those people, and who pays them, I wonder?
  • Just thought of something...Will that move or copy the files from the external HD? As mentioned in my original post, many of the songs in her library are in my library too.

    I suspect either way, I would have to do some manual maintenance. If songs in her itl are "cut" from the external HD, I will have to go and find the ones that are also in my library. If her songs are just "copied" from the HD, I would have to go in an manually delete the ones that are not in my itl. (If I didn't just want to let them sit there.)
  • The consolidate command will copy the files from the exHD, not move them. You'd have to remove them from the exHD if you didn't want a backup copy there.

    Yeah, that's the #1 question asked on those forums - how to redownload lost purchases.

    Let me know how the consolidate goes!
  • ok, here's my itunes problem: I listen to 99% of my music on two gen 2 1 gig ipod shuffles. I keep a running list that I throw stuff in that I'd like to get to soon(er or later). I used to be able to pull stuff off of my ipods and throw it back in that list, so if I was done for now, but wanted it to pop back up in the rotation, I'd do that. Then I upgraded itunes. Now it no longer lets me pull stuff off my ipods and into my shuffle list. So everything that I delete from the ipod, I have to find it my library and drag it back to the list. Does that make any sense? If so is there any way to fix it?
  • The consolidate command will copy the files from the exHD, not move them.

    This is good news. Much easier to delete her stuff from the HD leisure if I want, than have to go find things that were cut. Won't get a chance to try this till later this week, but she's psyched about having her music on her computer.

    I was looking at her library a while ago, and it's pretty funny. How many times can a person listen to the music from "Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog" and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical? Quite a few, as it turns out. Now she has seen "Jersey Boys," and she wants to get some Frankie Valli!

    ac2, so you are managing these iPods manually? I sync mine, so I wasn't aware that you could ever drag songs from an iPod onto a playlist...so now there has been an update and you can no longer do this?

    FWIW, I have a Shuffle that I use for the gym, with a smart playlist that picks (non-jazz, non-classical) songs randomly, that I haven't played for x weeks, and that I haven't skipped for x weeks. You could create regular playlist with songs you want to appear on the Shuffle eventually; then a smart playlist to choose a selection of those songs each time you sync, minus the ones you have played recently.

    If you see what I mean. I realize that some people want to manually put everything on the iPod, rather than choosing randomly....
  • Shuffles are a different beast. My husband has a 1st gen shuffle he never uses. They have taken away a neat feature over the years, it let you see what was loaded on the shuffle even when it wasn't plugged into the PC. That went away in itunes 6 or 7...it was really handy.
    Can't you drag & drop a playlist onto it, though? I'd have to find the darn thing and see if it still works. I always synced it from the Mac for hubby, and I think I remember just dragging a playlist over to it, but as I said, it's been a while.


    Ah, the "repeat" on an ipod is MUCH easier than the olden days of getting up and putting the needle back down on the track you wanted to play 10 times in a row. Or rewinding a cassette tape. Haha, Dr, Horrible Singalong Blog...I checked it out on itunes and it does look campy enough to sing along to, several times at least!
  • You can drag a playlist onto the Shuffle. ac2 seems to want to drag songs off the Shuffle into a playlist, which he apparently can't do anymore. That's what I'd suggest, is creating a playlist of songs he wants to rotate, then use that to fill the Shuffle either manually or "autofill." You could order them by date last played to keep things fresh.

    I like my my little 1st gen Shuffle...I use it whenever I'm walking/running, etc, which has surely extended the life of my iPod "Classic." The Shuffle does get left behind by iTunes updates from time to time, they eventually correct the prob in subsequent updates.

    Dr Horrible is quite amusing, but not that many times...!
  • Okay, here's a weird question. When I download music (source doesn't matter) random tracks will be locked and uneditable in my iTunes. So I can't change the tags on them. Then a couple of days later, they will magically be unlocked. Now, I usually remember to go back and change things that need it, but it's a real pain my arse.

    Any tips on how to correct this issue?

    Craig
  • I saw that every now and then on my XP machines. I haven't seen it yet on WIn 7. I think the OS got cnofused nd thought some other program had a lock on the file - maybe the amazon or emu downloader? The BPM analyzer program? Not exactly sure. Usually it would go away if I restarted itunes. Sometimes I'd have to restart the whole PC.

    When you say it gets magically unlocked, do you recall restarting itunes in between?
  • I basically never restart iTunes, but I'll give it a shot.

    I'm on a Mac by the way.

    Craig
  • Prob. a different issue, but I have had music files that were marked "read-only," which I had to uncheck in Windows properties.
  • Let me know how the consolidate goes!

    It was a smashing success, that's how it went! Bit of an anxious moment when I saw some of her music files were in a different folder, but I eventually came to realize they were just copies. (a) I must have consolidated at some earlier time, (b) if I hadn't, I could have solved this problem by consolidating, then doing the move, then consolidating again.

    Cheers Katrina, she's thrilled about having her music on her own computer. I took advantage of the oppty to show her how to disk check and defrag...The essential life skills that we parents have to pass along.
  • i'm tossing out "the girl with the golden ipod tattoo" as y'er nomenclature.

    clink.
  • Golden? Nah. Gotta be "the U2 iPod tattoo"

    I see the bears didn't eat you. Or the self-proclaimed Bonnie & Clyde outlaws.
  • we had a blast in the park! and we'll go again in about 3 years as both boys will be able to do back-country hiking by then. we had to be a bit creative around the sturgis biking event...it ate up every hotel within 150 miles in all directions of rapid city...grabbing a couple nights in bozeman, mt. damn - the ride from bozeman to the park (we did the north and northwest entrances) is intoxicating.

    the real thrill was the return drive - thru bighorn park. at 9000 feet a storm of some sort pancakes fog so think you could eat it with a spoon...er...uh. i ended up using the navigation system to drive rather than the usual arsenal of scopes and mirrors.

    lots of bison, elk, geysers...came across bear poo on one path. and a huge matted grass area about 2 feet off the trail. so, whoever paid the bear to eat me, it didn't work! ha!
  • I'm delighted to read all of this. Very delighted.
  • Dear Katrina, please see the Help Meeeee! thread - two most pressing questions for me are 1. is everything on the new iTunes folder going to have the current date, not the previous (actual) Date Added? and 2. Am I going to have to manually recreate my Playlists? Or is there a way to transfer them? Well, and 3. Is this the dark side of digital media? Help me, Obi-wan.
  • Hey BigD, I thought I answered you last night or early this morning. I posted over there just now.
  • Katrina the ipod Gal as a name???Sounds a great idea to me, I never fully understand what I'm trying to do with my ipod at times
  • It's all just a plot to justify purchasing one of each model ipod...
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