[Tips N' Tricks] Apple's Itunes For Windows

[shockme17]

i'm pretty sure you can.. try it and find out. if it doesn't work, re-enable it.

[mdog17]

I know how to do smart playlists in iTunes, but does anyone know if its possible to do them for the iPod itself? Like the Most Played Playlist actually records which songs are played the most on my iPod and updates itself. As of right now, it just corresponds to the Most Played songs when I play them through iTunes on my computer.

Thanks in advance

[mastarh]

Is there any way to change the Text that iTunes sends to WLM (MSN Messenger)? Actually, it's "Titel - Artist", i'd like to have it the other way...

[flai]

My favorite iTunes trick is the Multi-Plugin. Its just amazing!

[mystikalfogz]

Anyone know how to add many folders into iTunes at once? Right now all my music is in the "my music" folder, and within it there are many subfolders with more subfolders inside as well. I've tried adding the whole "my music" folder into iTunes, yet not all the songs get added, and I usually have trouble finding which folders it missed. So is there any better/another way of adding multiple folders?

[nrossow]

@mystikalfogz

Theway you are doing it works fine for me.

Maybe the missing songs are in a format that iTunes can't recognize.

[mystikalfogz]

Well, when I do that to add, it also adds the wma files and converts them automatically, so I don't think it's the format problem. Maybe I have too many folders, because it doesn't add all of it properly.

[dilz]

Sometimes I'd rename the files after I already added them to my Itunes library. Over time this becomes a problem as in I have a lot of files in the library that don't exist anymore.

Is there anyway to force Itunes to parse through the whole collection and remove the files that don't exist anymore.

I had a lot of problems with this til I found iTunes Library Updater (iTLU). Its a great program with lots of options. Just read the .pdf manual that comes with it and run it to scan folders to automatically add and remove songs from your iTunes library. There's other stuff in there to update your ipod and things like that.

Here's the link to the download:

http://itlu.ownz.ch/wordpress/?page_id=5

[Slewed]

BIIIIIG BUMP.

have you moved a folder and found itunes to be stupid in realising you did so? Were there too many files to tell the program one by one where they went?

if you didn't consolidate the iTunes Library because that seemed a bit too excessive to you (and you didn't really want itunes managing your music exclusively), you can use an xml editor to change the file locations for the library.

Notes:

• This broke the way iTunes organised video, i had to tell it what was tv, music vid and movie all over again
  
• If it doesn't work or something else bad happens, close itunes, replace both the files and reopen
  
• Because this takes a bit of a while to do, i suggest only doing it if you have details in the file you care about (ratings, play counts) and have many files to fix (i moved my whole library from C: to D:)
  
• Worked on iTunes 7.3.2.6, the person who told me was using iTunes 6.
  

1.Close iTunes if you have it open, and copy the .xml out of the itunes library to another folder (usually iTunes music library.xml)

2. Open the file in an xml editor (i used SciTE...)

3. Find the location of the folder where it used to be (localhost/C:/ wherever your location was [don't forget spaces are replaced by %20 and is / ])

4. Replace the address with the new location (again, don't forget spaces are replaced by %20 and is /, and make sure to capitilise appropriately)

5. Then save the file (it should be a copy in another folder, remember ), and back up both the .itl file and the .xml file in the original itunes folder (in case this doesn't work)

iTunes will not realise that you've changed the .xml file, it uses the .itl file, and if there is nothing wrong, it'll delete your xml. What you have to do is break the .itl file so it is forced to use the .xml. I hoped you backed those two files up!

6. Paste the modified xml into the itunes folder.

7. Open the .itl in notepad and delete EVERYTHING, then save. Check that the filesize is now 0

8. Open itunes, it'll load and take ages to do it (5 minutes for my 3000 song library), then it'll say the library was damaged and it tried its best to fix it.

9. When it opens, you'll have all your files and details intact, and the songs you moved should now work!

If it doesn't work or something else bad happens, close itunes, replace both the files from where you backed up and reopen