Recover my music from Apple TV?

[toomuchstereo]

With my iMac exploding, and me of course not having a back up of my iTunes library on disk. Is there a way I can get it all off my Apple TV?

 

[Cave Man]

With my iMac exploding, and me of course not having a back up of my iTunes library on disk. Is there a way I can get it all off my Apple TV?

Not easily. You can pull the drive and connect it to a 2.5" PATA adapter, then search the Media partition. Unfortunately, they'll all have names like '3MPC.m4a'. Kind of meaningless without an extractor similar to what we have for iPods (e.g., PodWorks).

 

[theBB]

Not easily. You can pull the drive and connect it to a 2.5" PATA adapter, then search the Media partition. Unfortunately, they'll all have names like '3MPC.m4a'. Kind of meaningless without an extractor similar to what we have for iPods (e.g., PodWorks).

The file names do not matter. If you can manage to copy them to a folder on your new computer, you can just drag and drop that folder on to your iTunes. It will read the tags, so it will organize them in the library properly. You don't need to know which song correspond to '3MPC.m4a'.

 

[Cave Man]

The file names do not matter. If you can manage to copy them to a folder on your new computer, you can just drag and drop that folder on to your iTunes. It will read the tags, so it will organize them in the library properly. You don't need to know which song correspond to '3MPC.m4a'.

Yeah, but they'll be a real mess on the hard drive. I suppose that doesn't matter if you're desperate, though.

 

[cohibadad]

iTunes reorganizes the files into folders based on the tags. The file names only matter outside of iTunes.

 

[petteri]

AppleTV transcodes?

Hmm, this made me wonder...

If I have my music in MP3 format on my iMac, does the AppleTV keep them this way or does it transcode them? I'm guessing not.

 

[Cave Man]

iTunes reorganizes the files into folders based on the tags. The file names only matter outside of iTunes.

Yes, I know, but his hard drive (i.e., Finder files) will be a mess. Artists and Folders will be fine, but all the songs will have spurious names.

 

[Cave Man]

Yes, I know, but his hard drive (i.e., Finder files) will be a mess. Artists and Folders will be fine, but all the songs will have spurious names.

No, it doesn't transcode unless you convert them to the file format selected in the Preferences of iTunes (e.g., MP3, AAC, etc.)