iTunes issues

pior

Hi all

I recently started using iTunes in order to easily transfer my CDs to HDD. So far so good, I like the the fast easy ripping and love browsing my library with Coverflow.

However there is still a couple things that either don't work or that I don't understand yet in the program. Maybe third party plugins enable what I need, I don't know.

Global hotkeys?
I like how Winamp lets you define keyboard shortcuts that work no matter the app in focus. I have things like the windowskey-up/down set to volume up/down and win-pageup/down for previous/next track in Winamp. Is it possible in iTunes? And even if global hotkeys are not possible at least standard user-defined hotkeys are to be tweakable somewhere... right?

Weird shuffle behaviour?
I like to simply start playing an album of choice and have the program pick the next one at random, lets me hear things I sometimes forget I have. This 'shuffle albums' mode works for most of my files but some albums behave oddily. At the moment I have 23 CDs (out of a few hundreds...) whose indivdual songs behave like they are albums themselves. Typical behaviour : iTunes plays an album alright, picks the next one, and if the one to be played next belongs to that list of 23 doomed albums it will only play one track of it (randomly picked so it seems) and jumps to *another* album once done.
So far I only managed to fix one album out of these odd ones by deleting it/reimporting it multiple times... Very frustrating ! Note that these albums play alright when in shuffle is off.

Playing one album only?
Like I said I like to shuffle albums but I also enjoy listenning to one album only. I would expect to just turn shuffle off, click a cover and voila. However when I do this iTunes plays the desired album, BUT also automatically starts the next one. Annoying!

Borderless Coverflow?
One last thing... I love Coverflow but I'd love it even more if I could have it in a separated, borderless window floating on the desktop. Not fullscreen, just a kind of menufree interface to skip through covers with in a corner of my workspace. Is it possible to move it out of the main iTunes interace to make it standalone somehow?

I know I'm a noob at this, always loved the physical contact of CDs and Vinyls more than virtual music but I'm starting to see the good sides of this kind of music useage. Help appreciated, 'Just get a Mac' replies to burn in hell.

Yay!

Joshua Stubbles

If you want to listen to or shuffle individual albums, you have to make each album into a separate playlist. Kind of wonky, but that's how iTunes does it.

Hotkeys should work though. I can use the play/stop/pause/volume keys on my media keyboard and they work just fine.

There is no borderless coverflow though. Would be nice the way you described it, but I'm afraid you're stuck in the iTunes interface.

Mark Dygert

[ QUOTE ]
whose indivdual songs behave like they are albums themselves.

[/ QUOTE ] The meta data for those tracks isn't the same. Highlight all the tracks you know belong to one album, right click and choose "get info" Then edit the album data. Make sure to copy the album name from a track that belongs to the main album, one that has the cover art. I use this trick when I have a bunch of tracks from the same artist but they come from different albums. I just lump them into one album so they're easier to find. In the comments section I put what album they are really from.

hawken

itunes is annoying

but its my weapon of choice you'll get used to it

notman

My wife's been using Floola. It seems to work pretty nicely for transfering via non-iTunes methods.

Pedro Amorim

i donwloaded the new winampversion the other day and have been using it. kinda coo'
very customizable, just select windows tyou want to display and stuff and album art. very cool




ANd this is how it is latelyu


ps: sorry for the big images

rooster

old skool winamp skin ftw

bearkub

The only thing I can wonder is why you decided to post 3 HUGE images that are totally unrelated to the topic being discussed. He asked for help with itunes, not which media player you use.

Pedro Amorim

yeah. i guess its pretty offtopic. im kinda retarded you know.
but you cant argue that pretty pics are fun to watch.

moose

a;ksfd;lasdfj;alksj big images are in fact, not fun.

P: Itunes isnt that bad

press control - b to open the browse window, this should always be open. While your at it, disable Genre browsing in the main preferences... unless you have 50 billion songs through the most eclectic genres ever and neeeeeddddd it.

From that, you can select an artist, do random with just the artist, or random within an album. You can set itunes to have smarter "shuffling" when on random, but not sure exactly what it does. Most of the time, i'll just use the Party Shuffle mode (at the bottom w/ playlists), which is essentially "shuffle," but it intelligently backs songs with eachother based on genre, artist, album, and # of times you've listened to the song.

This also singles the album out too, so you can just listen to that one only, or a collection of that artist. Coverflow kind of ignores this unfortunately and has no concept of artist vs album like browsing does, which is why i prefer the album-browse/list over coverflow (even though it is pretty!).

You can select multiple albums/artists as well, just hold down ctrl when selecting. When you have them shuffle from there, they'll only pick from the selection that appears at the bottom. (i use the album cover list view personally). Don't need to make playlists.

Not sure about a borderless coverflow... though that would be tits. When you go to the mini player (ctrl -m) it gets really mini.

While you're at it too, Rclick on the list view column titles and hide the annoying columns they put in

pior

Ha-HAAAA!
I fought against the app for some days and finally managed to fix the weird album shuffle issue. Here is the scenario for those who might get the same problem (Vassago once the fixes below are applied there is no need for CD-by-CD playlists to shuffle albums.):

-My iTunes is filled with music I imported from physical CDs. Since I did not run the automatic track name finder thingy all the tracks are called track01 track02 aso for each and every album. It's all fine when playing music normally or for individual tracks shuffling but this causes problem in the case of two albums from two different artists, with the same album name. Exemples:

*The Music - Self Titled* conflicts with *The Servant - Self Titled*.
Fix : Use the band's name as the album name. ex *The Music - The Music*

*The Doors - Best Of* conflicts with *Curtis Mayfield - Best Of* and the same problem occurs with unknown albums.
Fix : renaming the tracks from *track01* to *name of the artist - Best Of - track01*

Tricky! But it all works fine in shuffle album mode now.

Moose I indeed love to listen to music according to genres! I like to use my own terms like 'scratchy guitars' aso :P Instead of filling the 'genre' tags I created playlists for each of these personnal genres, and use that to play music according to my mood. That way my music is stored in iTunes just like it is in my physical CD collection - otherwise I get somehow nauseous when shuffle jumps from punkrock to funk to triphop and back :P

Also hiding the annoying colums is one of the first things I did in the program :P And I love the miniplayer yeah!

Bitmap I tried that version of winamp a few weeks ago and it gave me an instant crash on startup, never had that with winamp before, weird.

Well notman I think I have been unclear - I'm not using any Ipod or similar devices, I am merely transferring music to the puter. I guess it's the first step before buying a portable player tho, since I don't really see myself turning on a computer every time I want to listen to something... Yet I guess that 100+ gigs models are super expensive?

Also! Found a nice tip. Once you get the Apple Store downloaded covers you can right clicthe little 'now playing' cover window to copy the image to the clipboard, handy for cover touchups. Last but not least, if you ever get dled covers you are not happy with -which happens more often thatn I think it should, ex. badly balanced blacks or edges not cropped properly- you need to :
-select all tracks, go to get info;
-tick the box near the blank square, apply changes;
-unselect the tracks;
-right click the album cover still showing and hit 'clear downloaded artwork' - otherwise you'll have trouble updating the picture at once.

Hope this helps!

If you have ideas for the global hotkeys problem I am eager to find a solution. Also interested in sober visualization plugins like jumping equalizer bars aso, but I don't know where to find them...

Rock on!

notman

Good to hear it's working. I actually had a similar problem when making an MP3 CD for my car. It blended tracks from two greatest hits CDs, so it plays a song from one band, then a song or two from the other band, then back

Anyway, yeah, I misread/misinterpreted your post. I automatically thought you were transferring to an iPod because you were using iTunes. I forgot that it's also a way to purchase music. I just never hear of someone actually using iTunes voluntarily

pior

Yo all, thread back from the grave!
So far the program has been great for file ripping ... and I finally got myself a fancy iPod (I sooo hate these iWhatever names ... but the device is great.)

So now most of the issues I had with Itunes are pretty much solved since I very rearely use the app now - I much prefer physically plugging my player to my stereo over having a heavy program running in the background of my desktop.

However! From time to time I still use the app, mostly to convert recently purchased CDs and to organize track names and such. But this program is soooooo cluttered and SLOW! I just can't believe how sluggish the scrolling is for instance. Also what the hell does 'Album by Year' means...

So I'm left wondering ... is there any other frontend availalbe? So that I could access my library, edit it, maybe even download track names and play music without running iTunes. Ideally I would like to restrict iTunes to iPod synching and store purchases.

Thanks if you can help!

j_bradford

Have you guys checked out winamp remote? It allows you to stream all your songs off one PC to another. I use it at work to listen to all my MP3s I have on my home PC. Bad ass.

https://winamp.orb.com/orb/html/login.html

(Apologies if this is old news)