iPod touch Best way to selectively sync music to iPod without moving audio files?

[anthrovisual]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to figure out the best way to selectively sync music to an iPod without moving the audio files.

Let's say I have a folder of lots and lots of music but I do not want iTunes to mess with it, so I want to keep the folder where it is and manage/add/change that collection myself.

Now let's say I have an iPod and I want to add music to it but since it's only 8GB I want to be selective and be able to easily swap albums and such over time.

Is iTunes able to do this or can iTunes only manage music that it imports?

Also, perhaps a separate topic, some of my music is FLAC and I'm guessing I'm going to have to use a separate app for those albums, so if anyone recommends the best app for this I would appreciate it.

Thank you for your help.

 

[anthrovisual]

I saw that you can set in preferences not to copy files to the iTunes folder. Is this the best way? Is it easy to update if I move the files or is there a better way?

 

[shinobi-81]

How about utilizing playlists in iTunes to do this? Then you can either select which playlists are going to be synced to your iPod, or sync the same playlists but swap out tracks back and forth to the playlists.

Yes, iTunes can do this, but the music must have been imported to iTunes in the first place. It's mainly a database management system, not a file manager.

 

[mactmaster]

The best way is to let iTunes copy the audio files into the library. It's much easier to keep iTunes organized and working right when the library is consolidated into one folder. Help keep down problems like missing files in the future. You'll have to convert a copy of your FLAC files to an iTunes supported format in order for those to import.

 

[Sackvillenb]

You can tell iTunes to stop copying files into it's own library, and you can also tell it to use a different folder as your media folder (so point it to the folder that contains all of your music). This is all done in the preferences. And then you can select only the albums or songs you want in iTunes for syncing, although I tend to use playlists to speed up that part.