More iTunes info

I've kept playing around with iTunes for windows.  Applied the 2.1 firmware
upgrade to my 40gig iPod yesterday.  Re xfered 3000+ MP3s with iTunes.
Still had a massive skipping problem.

Today, I wiped my iPod and xfered the MP3s with Ephpod 2.73 and created a
really, really random playlist (the all minuets and scherzos in Eb playlist)
to see if Ephpod xfered MP3s suffered from skipping.  The playlist played
perfectly: 22 out of 22 selections played with now skipping, and I could >>
and << between tracks easily.

Since I had downloaded the iTunes 4.1.1 update yesterday, I thought that I
would give it a try.  After re-wiping the iPod and then using iTunes 4.1.1
to xfer the 3000+ MP3s, I checked the iPod music directories.  The MP3s are
now equally spread amongst the F00 to F19 dirs.  iTunes still preserves the
long file names.

I also recreated the same wacky playlist that I had tried with Ephpod:  this
time, the iTunes xfered MP3s played flawlessly with no skipping.

iTunes 4.1.1 seems like it's a usable iPod tool now.

That said, I'm still hoping that Joe keeps Ephpod alive.





-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Gordon Harris
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 11:34 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Cc: Alex Stapleton
Subject: [ephpod] Re: WARNING!: iTunes reorganised and renamed my MP3s



-----------On October 19th, Simon Turner said:---------

"I have also since been warned that iTunes does not spread all the files
across (say) 19 directories as does EPhpod but sticks them all in one or two
directories.. which apparently really slows down accessing the songs if you
have a large collection an iPod with a big disk. I cannot verify this
though."
--------------------------------------------------------

I can verify that. Of the 5,135 MP3s (~30gigs) that I xfered to my 40 gig
iPod with iTunes for windows, 3,843 were put in F00 and 1,292 were put in
F04.  It seems totally wacky for the Apple developers to have adopted this
scheme.  Again, my iPod now skips tracks in a totally annoying
[in]consistent manner.  Ugh.




-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Simon Turner
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 11:04 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: Alex Stapleton
Subject: [ephpod] Re: WARNING!: iTunes reorganised and renamed my MP3s



Alex.
Thank you for your kind advice:
"You realise it does ask you when you start it first if you want it to
manage your music? You shouldn't blindly click Yes to things you dont
understand."

However, I'm afraid you are wrong. There is no such message or choice when
installing iTunes on XP.
The only things you are asked are if you want to install short cuts, use
iTunes as your defualt music player or use QuickTime to play video files.
After you have performed the required reboot (why?) you are presented with
one other choice, whether you want iTunes to automatically update your iPod
when you connect it.
After this you can add a folder to your library from the Files menu. Then
iTunes will blithely rename all the files in that directory and re-organise
them for you. No warning whasoever. Judging by the Apple forums many people
do exactly that are are then very angry to find their entire music
collection has been screwed up. It seems I was lucky in that I did less than
13gb and all my tags are correct.

To the others who replied. Thank you very much. I did look a bit further
after my unfortunate incident and found that i could point iTunes to my
music directory and stop it organising my files... however... when I did
this... I found that the next time I connected my iTunes created a duplicate
set of MP3s on my iPod, giving me two of every song (but with different
titles).

I have also since been warned that iTunes does not spread all the files
across (say) 19 directories as does EPhpod but sticks them all in one or two
directories.. which apparently really slows down accessing the songs if you
have a large collection an iPod with a big disk. I cannot verify this
though.

I do think that Apple have not really taken into account that IBM users tend
to have more intimate knowledge of their machines' files (and file names)
and directories, whereas Mac users don't so much. IBM users are a bit more
"under the hood".
the default action for PC users ought to be that iTunes does not change the
files. At the very least there ought to be a big pop up warning before it
does!

Simon
Brighton UK




-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Stapleton [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 18 October 2003 16:54
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ephpod] WARNING!: iTunes reorganised and renamed my MP3s


On Sat, 2003-10-18 at 06:35, Simon Turner wrote:
> I've just uninstalled iTunes after it reorganised and renamed all my
MP3's,
> creating artists folders (my folders are named "artist - album", naming
> tracks form just their title (my tracks are named "artist - album -
> trackNo - title") and really screwing up compilation albums. Luckily all
of
> my MP3s are correctly tagged so I used a great little tagging plug-in for
> Winamp 2 (EZ-Playlist) to name them all back to my chosen convention. As
> iTunes seemed to stop importing my MP3s at about 13gb (rather than doing
all
> 80gb!) this did not take as long as it could.
>
> But I am really miffed with Apple... especially as iTunes DOES NOT WARN
YOU
> IT IS GOING TO RENAME YOUR FILES.
>
> Grrrrr...
>
> Ephod is great.
>









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