Yet another iPod question.

[Slosh]

It seems as if there is no way to add tracks or playlists to the iPod without overwriting what's already on it. This can't be right. :confused:

I know how to extract music from the iPod to put back into iTunes (thanks for the link, Mr MidFi) but having to copy the entire iTunes library just to get a couple of new songs on the iPod is a major PITA.

Am I missing something or is it designed this way to discourage people from raiding other peoples' iTunes libraries?

NP: Tracker - Polk

[Davey]

NP: Tracker - Polk
I got nothing, including no iPod, but just curious, was that Tracker a result of my comments in the Grandaddy thread at obner? And do you think it fits what I said?

:)

[Troy]

No, you should be able to just drag and drop new songs onto your iPod when in iTunes.

Check your preferences and see if you have some kind of auto update feature checked. Turn off any automaitic updating. That may be it.

obner is an anagram of boner.

[Slosh]

I got nothing, including no iPod, but just curious, was that Tracker a result of my comments in the Grandaddy thread at obner? No, I have "Photograph The Ancestors" on the hard drive and it came up in random play and that made me want to play the whole CD.
And do you think it fits what I said?Not at all, sounds more like EZ T to these ears.
No, you should be able to just drag and drop songs onto your iPod when in iTunesWhen I do that all of the existing songs disappear. I do have it set to manually manage but I must have missed a setting somewhere.

NP: "She Sends Kisses" - The Wrens

[bacchanal]

Slosh - Assuming you're in manual mode just make a selection in your library and drag it to the iPod icon. If you try to drag the entire library it will rewrite everything instead of just adding the new songs. Are you using windows or mac? Also what gen/model iPod are you using? You may be able to fix the problem with an firmware update.

I'm not too familiar with mac, but in windows if you want to highlight a bunch of stuff quickly just click on one item in a list, hold the shift key, and highlight another item, everything in between the two items will be selected. Alternately, you can hold down CTRL as you click to select individual items. This should work using the browse pane in iTunes (handy for selecting an entire artist or album) or in the track list pane.

Remember, everything dragged onto the iPod will be written or rewritten, so only drag material that isn't already on the iPod.

If you want to transfer stuff off your iPod you'll need a 3rd party program, but it looks like you've figured that out. Just be sure to 'eject' your iPod when using manual mode.

[Slosh]

Thanks. Actually it's my daughter's (30 gig) iPod but she kept getting my songs on it too and I have a lot more songs in iTunes than she does (and in wav format, at that).
If you want to transfer stuff off your iPod you'll need a 3rd party program, but it looks like you've figured that out.No, this is how I've been doing it (on a PC):

1. Plug in the iPod.
2. Launch iTunes, which will ask you if you'd like to replace the contents of the iPod with the contents of the iTunes library. Answer no.
3. Select the iPod in iTunes source list and click the iPod icon at the bottom of the iTunes window.
4. Enable Manually Manage songs and playlists option and enable disc use option. Click ok.
5. Double click My Computer.
6. Locate iPod in the window and select it.
7. Choose Folder Options from the Tools menu in the My Computer window.
8. Click View Tab in the Folder Options window.
9. Look for Hidden Files and Folders and apply.
10. Click ok.
11. Double click the iPod icon in the My Computer window.
12. Double click iPod Control.
13. Drag Music folder to desktop and copy it.
14. Send copied Music folder to My Music.
15. Open My Music and send Music folder to iTunes.

It's a lot easier than it reads. Once you've done it once or twice you won't need instructions any longer.

[bacchanal]

Okay, I don't totally follow what you're doing, so this might not make sense, but you shouldn't really be doing anything in My Computer, unless it is to add songs to your default iTunes music folder (assuming it is My Music?).

What you want to do is add music to your iTunes library, and then move it from the iTunes library (within the program) to the iPod.

To add music to the iTunes library, put the music in the desired location in My Computer (My Music?). Then open iTunes, go to File, and Add File or Add Folder. You can re-add the entire folder (which won't take too long unless you have a very large library) or you can individually select the music you just moved to My Music or whatever folder you're using.

Now that you have added the songs to iTunes, drag your selections (see my first post) from the panes in iTunes to the iPod icon in iTunes.

If you want to separate your tunes from hers, the best thing to do (assuming you want to work within iTunes) is to create a playlist or playlists for her music and for your music.

If you want to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer you'll need a program like Anapod. Check out ilounge (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod-software/) for more details on that.

I should also mention that the people in the ilounge forums can probably explain the whole process a lot better than I can.

[Slosh]

Those are the steps you take to get music off of the iPod that's not already on your hard drive without having to buy any additional software. Often she'll copy her friends' songs off of their computers to her iPod. So this way I can take those songs and put them in my iTunes library without having to borrow her friends' CDs or download them so she can make a CD-R copy if she wants.

Has nothing to do with my original question. Just thought I'd share the procedure :)

[ForeverAutumn]

I'm the first to admit that I'm technologically challenged but I don't understand the issue here.

Maybe it's because I only put stuff in iTunes off of CDs, I've never downloaded a tune from the internet...but I put my tunes in iTunes and they go into my library. When I plug my iPod into my computer, it automatically transfers the new songs onto my iPod. It doesn't update my whole library. I don't have to drag and drop anything...it all happens automatically (which is a good thing). :confused:

[Slosh]

I'm the first to admit that I'm technologically challenged but I don't understand the issue here.

Maybe it's because I only put stuff in iTunes off of CDs, I've never downloaded a tune from the internet...but I put my tunes in iTunes and they go into my library. When I plug my iPod into my computer, it automatically transfers the new songs onto my iPod. It doesn't update my whole library. I don't have to drag and drop anything...it all happens automatically (which is a good thing). :confused:That is exactly the problem. It was updating the whole library even when only a couple of songs were new. You'd think the damn thing is smart enough not to recopy songs that were already on it. I was just trying to figure out why it was doing that.

[bacchanal]

Oh okay, I see what you're doing.

It could be an issue with the way the iPod and iTunes keeps track of the songs. I think they use XML lists. It could be that it wants those lists updated every time a transfer is made??? I'm not sure, but I'd definitely try ilounge.com.

For what it's worth, you sound like a pretty good canidate for Anapod Explorer. It's $25, but there are other more expensive ways to get iTunes to work properly...

[Troy]

1. Plug in the iPod.
2. Launch iTunes, which will ask you if you'd like to replace the contents of the iPod with the contents of the iTunes library. Answer no.

Good, but you need to turn this off, I'm a Mac guy, but it's probably in preferences.

The rest seems insanely complicated, like you are trying to circimvent iTunes . . .

Look, get to where you have iTunes open like this:

http://www.designshed.com/samplestuff/itunes.jpg

Note that I am in "Library" which is the songs on your HD.

Click on a song and drag it over to either your ipod or a playlist you make on the iPod and drop it there. The song is now in your iPod. That's it.

Yes Bacchanal, the "gang select" has been on the Mac os since the early 80s.

FA, I don't like auto update because I'm a control freak.

[Slosh]

Troy, that is exactly what I was doing. Wasn't working though. I'd drag songs over to the iPod icon on the left and nothing would happen. Maybe the iPod needs new firmware or a new driver or something because the only way to get anything on it is to recopy the entire library, which is why I had to drag stuff off of the iPod that wasn't in my library or it would be lost forever.

Sheesh, for $300 you'd think the goddamn thing would have full functionality :(

[bacchanal]

Yeah Slosh IS trying to circumvent iTunes. I'm about 95% certain that the problem has to do with the method used to remove tunes from the iPod.

Apple doesn't like giving you full functionality. It is something that us windows users have gotten used to at the cost of security.

This little program (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod-software-windows/comments/sharepod-17/) looks like it is free and might do the trick. Though it seems a bit buggy. I haven't used it myself though.

Also Xplay (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod-software-windows/comments/xplay-212/) has a free trial. It's $30 though.

[Troy]

Apple gives you full functionality in their OS software. You just have to know where to look. The beauty of the system is that you don't have to know how to dig deep in the nuts and bolts of the OS/software to know how to use the computer if you don't want to.

You don't need to know how fuel injection works to drive a car either . . .

ANYWAY.

The iPod/iTunes does not allow you to take songs OFF the iPod to put someplace else. It's Apple's way of appeasing copyright laws.

Use the freeware PodUtility to circumvent this issue.

Slosh, where did these songs come from you are trying to put on the iPod? If you somehow grabbed them off another iPod without using some kind of software designed to take songs off of iPods then they may be incomplete or corrupt which may be causing problems when you try to re-install them.

The other thing to try are the apple.com troubleshooting forums. People there are very helpfull.

[Dave_G]

LOL.

Ya'll need to get a turntable and a cassette deck and be done with it!

Dave

[Troy]

LOL.

Ya'll need to get a turntable and a cassette deck and be done with it!

Dave

Heck, why not 8-track, ya goofball?

The iPod/iTunes is one of the easiest, most fool-proof UI I've ever used. The problems that Slosh is having are mystifying.

[Slosh]

Slosh, where did these songs come from you are trying to put on the iPod? If you somehow grabbed them off another iPod without using some kind of software designed to take songs off of iPods then they may be incomplete or corrupt which may be causing problems when you try to re-install them.
She grabs songs off of her friends' iTunes libraries sometimes. The iPod doesn't actually have any copy protection per se; it simply hides the files and the method I posted above reveals them. I have no problem dragging songs off of the iPod and putting them into iTunes and they play back just fine both in iTunes and on the iPod. I went through all of the options and it (the iPod) still won't copy individual songs or playlists without first erasing all of the other existing files. I've been doing everything right all along but either there's something wrong with the iPod itself or perhaps I need to do a fresh install with iTunes? :confused:

BTW, do you guys ever defrag the iPod?

[Dave_G]

My son will be getting an ipod in about a month, he is fired up about it, he had one in the past and tore it up...

I would like one maybe, how is the sound quality of the things?

Dave

[Troy]

My son will be getting an ipod in about a month, he is fired up about it, he had one in the past and tore it up...

I would like one maybe, how is the sound quality of the things?

Dave

Depends how much you compress the songs when converting to mp3. At 196k there is very little loss. I can only hear it on the big rig. There is also a variable rate that many people say is very good.

[Mike]

Well it's a compression format so something has to go, but to be honest unless you did side by side testing you would be hard pushed to tell the difference. The higher the bit rate the better the quality and a lot of people recommend the vbr (variable bit rate) as the way to go.

Ipods also offer aac recording, it's apple's version of mp3, which I've read in a few articles is better than mp3. End of the day if yer listening on headphones you would be hard pushed to hear the difference from the original, but like Troy says though hook it up to your main rig and it's a different story.

If you do hook it up to your main system use the bottom output connector instead of the headphone output there's a big improvement in sound. You can buy a docking port or a lead for under 10GBP ($15)

Cheers
Mike