Hey everyone,
I have somewhat of a dilemma. I have quite a large CD collection that I have been ripping to ALAC using iTunes on a Windows laptop to an external drive. Now, ideally what I'd like to do is keep the ALAC versions on that external drive and keep local AAC versions on my MBA (or a Nifty MiniDrive) to listen to on the go and sync to my iPod.
So, what I want is basically a program that can monitor a certain directory in my external drive for changes (which happen whenever I change something in my Windows laptop's iTunes library), creates suitable AAC versions of the new songs, deletes the ones which are no longer available, and updates the tags of the ones which were changed. And doesn't completely mess up when the drive is disconnected...
I tried to do this using iTunes. I added the external drive's folder to my library, which imported all my ALAC songs. I then created two smart playlists, one that contained only ALAC songs and the other that contained only AAC ones. Then I mass-converted the ALAC songs to AAC, which added them to my media folder (local) and the AAC playlist.
So far, so good. But as I expected, it wouldn't automatically detect changes made to the external drive's folder. And that makes it somewhat of a nightmare... I have to memorize or write down any changes I make to the library while I'm on my Windows laptop and then manually manage everything when I'm on my MBA, i.e., selectively add certain folders, remove and edit things from my Library, all by hand. Is there any way to automate this whole process?
Is iTunes not the best tool for the job? I've tried Clementine, which does track whatever changes I make to the various Library folders I can select, but transcoding wasn't so easy... What other alternatives are out there?
And how would I pull this off with iTunes Match? I may just bite the bullet and try it out... It seems like it's the simpler option.
Cheers
I have somewhat of a dilemma. I have quite a large CD collection that I have been ripping to ALAC using iTunes on a Windows laptop to an external drive. Now, ideally what I'd like to do is keep the ALAC versions on that external drive and keep local AAC versions on my MBA (or a Nifty MiniDrive) to listen to on the go and sync to my iPod.
So, what I want is basically a program that can monitor a certain directory in my external drive for changes (which happen whenever I change something in my Windows laptop's iTunes library), creates suitable AAC versions of the new songs, deletes the ones which are no longer available, and updates the tags of the ones which were changed. And doesn't completely mess up when the drive is disconnected...
I tried to do this using iTunes. I added the external drive's folder to my library, which imported all my ALAC songs. I then created two smart playlists, one that contained only ALAC songs and the other that contained only AAC ones. Then I mass-converted the ALAC songs to AAC, which added them to my media folder (local) and the AAC playlist.
So far, so good. But as I expected, it wouldn't automatically detect changes made to the external drive's folder. And that makes it somewhat of a nightmare... I have to memorize or write down any changes I make to the library while I'm on my Windows laptop and then manually manage everything when I'm on my MBA, i.e., selectively add certain folders, remove and edit things from my Library, all by hand. Is there any way to automate this whole process?
Is iTunes not the best tool for the job? I've tried Clementine, which does track whatever changes I make to the various Library folders I can select, but transcoding wasn't so easy... What other alternatives are out there?
And how would I pull this off with iTunes Match? I may just bite the bullet and try it out... It seems like it's the simpler option.
Cheers