iTunes 9.1 to Bring eBook Support, Genius Mix Enhancements, Automatic Bitrate Conversion?

[hachre]

The option for the AAC conversion is exactly like the Shuffle option, here is a screenshot.

 

[ungraphic]

Almost no one else in the world does this.

LOL, wrong. A lot of people do this, you know, the ones that care about organization and proper tagging.

I do it all the time.

 

[MikhailT]

They should change the name to iMedia.... iTunes does really fit with applications & books

also movies / video should open up in QuickTime X, and apple should remove the video playback in iTunes because its ****! and Itunes is getting to fat! needs to lose some weight

iTunes is far too popular of a brand, I don't know if Apple is willing to let go of iTunes yet.

It is possible iGuide could be the new name, a guide to all of your media files,. We still haven't seen anything regarding to that since the iGuide trademarks was made aware.

 

[pacohaas]

I remember begging Apple for the automatic conversion in a feedback I sent a couple of months ago... this will be awesome!

Keep sending feedback. They need some more configuration for this to be really useful.

Something like: Only convert if kind is 'lossless' or 'Wave'
or, only convert if bitrate is over 320kbps(configurable)
and a configuration for the bitrate to convert to would be nice as well

Even though I can't tell the difference between the lossless and my 128kbps copies currently with most of my music played from my iPhone in the car or on earbuds. People always like configuration and this seems like such an easy win now that this option is reaching the masses(instead of just Shuffle and ROKR owners). It might be nice to see the potential space saved by this option calculated by iTunes and show how much more music your device would hold.

Even if they just allowed the "convert to" bitrate to be specified, you could set it at 320kbps so everything over that would convert, that would be nice.

 

[Rantipole]

LOL, wrong. A lot of people do this, you know, the ones that care about organization and proper tagging.

I do it all the time.

You're living in a dream world if you honest think "a lot of people" indicate music traits, dates, release history, and which friends and family likes each track using their initials in the Notes field.

If you meant, a lot of people use the Notes field somewhat... maybe. But you and about 37 other people use it to the extent you are describing.

 

[ChromeAce]

Well I guess you win. I have a similar setup with about 17,000+ tracks of Apple Lossless. Like you, I have also ripped everything twice (again in 256K AAC). Unlike you, it's still manageable enough so that Genius works and performance is tolerable. I use Smart Playlists to keep track of it all but I haven't needed to resort to using the Notes ID3 tags of the songs. It took a while but I finally got a Smart Playlist that includes Lossless files, 128K AACs that don't have a corresponding Lossless file, older MP3 files, and any marked "Protected" or "Purchased".

I welcome the ability to transcode any portable device (iPad/iPhone/iPod) on the fly but it would have to slow down the initial sync process quite a bit, much like doing it for photos. The other problem I could see is that it would be impossible to gauge how many songs would truly fit on your device since you'd be transcoding everything.

But one thing about the current "rip twice" system that I wouldn't mind seeing end is the problem with the Genius feature. Well, not your problem of you having too many songs that it breaks it entirely. But right now when Genius makes a playlist, it doesn't care if the song comes from the Lossless list or the AAC list...it just picks whatever it finds first. When you sync a Genius list to your iPod, you end up with a mix of the AAC files you want combined with huge Lossless files you don't. And vice-versa for playing the files at home on your expensive stereo system.

As far as 64-bit multi-cored goodness, I'm sure a rewrite has been underway for awhile. But iTunes is probably one of the more complex rewrites to do primarily because of it's interface to the massive ERP system that is the iTunes store, not to mention whatever method they choose to replace the current iTunes database system. We'll see it when it's ready.

I have a couple of tips for you. Highlight all your ALAC versions of your tracks and choose Uncheck Selection. Then on your iPod/iPhone/iPad preferences, check the box that says "only copy checked songs." This will save you some time. Also, iTunes won't play songs that aren't checked unless you specifically click on them.

Second tip... no need to rip twice. That's a big time-waster. Rip once into ALAC, then highlight all your new ALAC songs and convert them to AAC (after changing the import settings). This will create your AAC versions all ot once, much quicker.

 

[ChromeAce]

Almost no one else in the world does this.

Well, actually, anyone who uses Playlists at all should be doing it. Why? Because if you ever have to start over with a new iTunes database... and I have several times... you lose all your playlist information. And if you have a lot of playlists, for years, moods, memories, themes, people, places, etc... this would be a LOT of work to recreate.

By embedding your own codes into the track files themselves all of this work can be preserved forever. You simply use Smart Playlists to automatically read the codes and generate the playlists. The only thing you'll have to keep track of are you code system and what playlist they correspond to. For example, a song with the [AJH:+] code in it belongs in the playlist for songs you like to listen to with Andrea Jenna Hoffman.

Anyone serious about music will have a lot of playlists. And this system I believe, is essential to managing them.

 

[ChromeAce]

iTunes is far too popular of a brand, I don't know if Apple is willing to let go of iTunes yet.

It is possible iGuide could be the new name, a guide to all of your media files,. We still haven't seen anything regarding to that since the iGuide trademarks was made aware.

I kinda like iPlay.

 

[ChromeAce]

You're living in a dream world if you honest think "a lot of people" indicate music traits, dates, release history, and which friends and family likes each track using their initials in the Notes field.

If you meant, a lot of people use the Notes field somewhat... maybe. But you and about 37 other people use it to the extent you are describing.

I would add about three or four zeros to that number when considering that many people do in fact use playlists for those very reason but aren't aware of the benefits of encoding that information into the music files themselves.