iTunes Help Me please
Discussion
I know I'm usually offering answers rather than questions here, but I've got an idea that I'm not sure how to implement efficiently.
Basically, my iTunes Library isn't huge (60-odd GB) but resides on a disk inside my beloved Cube. There is no protected music or iTunes Store bought music in there - the overwhelming majority of the music is ripped from CDs that I own, and are boxed away for protection. Ripped music is all in Lossless format so I don't have to re-rip from CD again. The remaining stuff is downloaded, such as mix sets etc. and is in whatever format it came in.
The problem is that the vast majority of music is in Lossless format for quality. This is fine when it's being flipped around my network and played by various devices, but really limits the number of tunes I can squeeze onto my iPhone. It's an 8 GB iPhone, but I can't have more than 5 GB of music on there because of the OS and all my modifications, apps and unix stuff. I've witnessed what happens when an iPhone gets very low on root volume space... and it ain't pretty.
Now Lossless format, the (decent) iPhone DAC and Etymotic ER-6 earphones make for stunning sound (well to my ears, I've not heard better, but I'm no audiophile). However I am willing to bet that my non-'golden' ears and my preference in music means that high-bitrate AAC would sound just as good.... and be virtually half the space, meaning double the music on my iPhone.
Ideally, iTunes would have a nifty auto-format-switcheroo option, that allows you to keep your main network library in lossless format, but automatically compress to your choice of MP3 / AAC when copying onto a mobile device with limited storage. Unless I've overlooked this feature for years, it doesn't exist AFAIK.
How could I get close to this? I know I could script something up easily enough that manually copies the files out of my iPhone playlist, compresses them offline, then copies them onto the iPhone using AFC hackery, but this will be broken by any iPhone firmware update. It's also messy, and depends on the mobile device being an iPhone - and I'd like this to work for iPods as well.
At the expense of disk space, could I rip *everything* to dual formats, and then have some sort of smart playlist functionality that chooses between the compressed and uncompressed forms?? In the past, when I've had two versions of a particular album (compressed and non-compressed, or AAC and MP3, etc. - needed for MP3 CDs in the car, where AAC is not supported), then the songs are duplicated in album view, which is really annoying. Previously, I've had to choose an album, convert to MP3, copy to CD, then delete out of the library (taking care to pick the MP3 versions to delete and not the uncompressed versions). It's irritating.
Anyone have any clever trick to get round this? Ideally not involving scripts and hacking - I can do that - but often with Apple software it's best to work within their concepts... I'm thinking something to do with 'smart playlists'.
Basically, my iTunes Library isn't huge (60-odd GB) but resides on a disk inside my beloved Cube. There is no protected music or iTunes Store bought music in there - the overwhelming majority of the music is ripped from CDs that I own, and are boxed away for protection. Ripped music is all in Lossless format so I don't have to re-rip from CD again. The remaining stuff is downloaded, such as mix sets etc. and is in whatever format it came in.
The problem is that the vast majority of music is in Lossless format for quality. This is fine when it's being flipped around my network and played by various devices, but really limits the number of tunes I can squeeze onto my iPhone. It's an 8 GB iPhone, but I can't have more than 5 GB of music on there because of the OS and all my modifications, apps and unix stuff. I've witnessed what happens when an iPhone gets very low on root volume space... and it ain't pretty.
Now Lossless format, the (decent) iPhone DAC and Etymotic ER-6 earphones make for stunning sound (well to my ears, I've not heard better, but I'm no audiophile). However I am willing to bet that my non-'golden' ears and my preference in music means that high-bitrate AAC would sound just as good.... and be virtually half the space, meaning double the music on my iPhone.
Ideally, iTunes would have a nifty auto-format-switcheroo option, that allows you to keep your main network library in lossless format, but automatically compress to your choice of MP3 / AAC when copying onto a mobile device with limited storage. Unless I've overlooked this feature for years, it doesn't exist AFAIK.
How could I get close to this? I know I could script something up easily enough that manually copies the files out of my iPhone playlist, compresses them offline, then copies them onto the iPhone using AFC hackery, but this will be broken by any iPhone firmware update. It's also messy, and depends on the mobile device being an iPhone - and I'd like this to work for iPods as well.
At the expense of disk space, could I rip *everything* to dual formats, and then have some sort of smart playlist functionality that chooses between the compressed and uncompressed forms?? In the past, when I've had two versions of a particular album (compressed and non-compressed, or AAC and MP3, etc. - needed for MP3 CDs in the car, where AAC is not supported), then the songs are duplicated in album view, which is really annoying. Previously, I've had to choose an album, convert to MP3, copy to CD, then delete out of the library (taking care to pick the MP3 versions to delete and not the uncompressed versions). It's irritating.
Anyone have any clever trick to get round this? Ideally not involving scripts and hacking - I can do that - but often with Apple software it's best to work within their concepts... I'm thinking something to do with 'smart playlists'.
Not sure how well this will work....
How about a second iTunes library for the iPhone to sync to? Script something to take tunes from the main library (from a smart playlist maybe?), re-encode to AAC and whack them in the second library?
I'm guessing this could be fairly easily done with a bit of AppleScript trickery, but you're probably the man who knows
How about a second iTunes library for the iPhone to sync to? Script something to take tunes from the main library (from a smart playlist maybe?), re-encode to AAC and whack them in the second library?
I'm guessing this could be fairly easily done with a bit of AppleScript trickery, but you're probably the man who knows
One way I can see it being done, but at the expense (obviously) of extra space being eaten up, would be to create another set of Library files.
The "issue" arises in that you'd have to swap the files before launching iTunes (or Quit, then swap, then relaunch) and your iPhone can access the encoded ones.
The alternative is to find all the MP3/AAC ones and deselect them - this way they'll not play, but can still be seen in the Library. Again, you'll have to flit back and forth between encoded and lossless, although if you create playlists of the encoded ones, then option that only those playlists and checked files get sync'd, you're starting to get somewhere.
The "issue" arises in that you'd have to swap the files before launching iTunes (or Quit, then swap, then relaunch) and your iPhone can access the encoded ones.
The alternative is to find all the MP3/AAC ones and deselect them - this way they'll not play, but can still be seen in the Library. Again, you'll have to flit back and forth between encoded and lossless, although if you create playlists of the encoded ones, then option that only those playlists and checked files get sync'd, you're starting to get somewhere.
Edited by PJ S on Wednesday 6th February 00:58
I just use Max (http://sbooth.org/Max/ ) to rip my CDs as it lets you dual-rip (well, as many formats as you like really) to MP3 and FLAC at the same time. I then use the lower quality MP3 files for transferring to iPod/iPhone and use the FLAC files for playback on my hifi (through Squeezebox). Max does loads of formats including AAC as well.
You can set a flag to automatically add the converted files to iTunes too. I've never tried so I don't know if you can just specify one of the format (if you're dual ripping like me) to add to iTunes or whether it tried to add both. Instead I use an iTunes script from Doug's Apple Scripts (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php ) to monitor a dumping folder (where I rip the MP3s to) for new songs which get added to my iTunes library and then deleted from the folder.
It takes a bit more time to set up and a bit more storage space but storage is relatively cheap these days.
You can set a flag to automatically add the converted files to iTunes too. I've never tried so I don't know if you can just specify one of the format (if you're dual ripping like me) to add to iTunes or whether it tried to add both. Instead I use an iTunes script from Doug's Apple Scripts (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php ) to monitor a dumping folder (where I rip the MP3s to) for new songs which get added to my iTunes library and then deleted from the folder.
It takes a bit more time to set up and a bit more storage space but storage is relatively cheap these days.
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