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2 iTunes questions from a novice
Hello all
I am finally falling into the whole iPod/iPhone/iTunes hole (only took me 5 years lol)
while I do not own an iPod as of yet and will try to avoid the iPhone until I actually see someone with one, I am starting to convert my music over to iTunes , thus giving me a justifiable reason to aquire one of the two devices
anyway
I am starting to add music to my iTunes library and I am quickly finding that htis will et up quiet a chunck of my hard drive
I use my desktop g5 to keep up with software upgrades and what not becasue I am an adjunct college teacher so I need to be carefull not to fill the drive on the computer itseelf with too much
I do have an external drive that I can “give” to iTunes
but my questions are these1) how can I move my exisiting iTunes material (music. album artwork) over to an external drive without it causeig issues I know this is probably adrag and drop thing but what I am really trying to find out is if there are any hidden files like a .plist or something that I need to bring along as well to avoid issues
2)does anyone have a good compression setting for me to use within iTunes to optimize space but not sacrafice quality..I am no audiophile but I do want my tunes to sound good. I may be over thinking this a bit as I am basing this question on early mp3 technolgy and I am ware of the fact that the latest iTunes seems to doa good job with compression, but it never hurts to ask
thank you all in advance for your help
ane good luck to those who get the iPhone this weekend I am jealous!take care
Todd George
Instructional Media Services
John Carroll University
University Heights, OH 44118 -
2 Replies
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Start in the PREFERENCES > ADVANCED > IMPORTING section.
If you’re going to stay with iPods or the Zune, I’d go with this setting for compression: AAC (Higher Quality) 256 kbps
If there’s any chance you’ll be moving your music to who-knows-where in the future, go with this: MP3 (Higher Quality) 192 kbps
The first choice is better, the second is more compatible with other devices. I go with AAC, but those are your two best bets.
Next, go to PREFERENCES > ADVANCED > GENERAL. Make sure that “Keep iTunes Folder Organized” is checked. Then, make a folder on your external drive and click the “Change” button there to select that folder as your music’s home.
Now, any future imports will go there. To move all your current music, go to the “Advanced” menu (in iTunes, not Preferences) and select “Consolodate Library.”
That will move everything in your library to the new location. Your iTunes library and playlists remain in your home folder on the internal drive, but all media goes to the new folder you’ve set on the external drive.
After it consolodates, check the music folder in your home directory. I THINK that the music will still be left there. Find the folder with the sound files and erase the contents of that folder, leaving everything else you find (iTune files) intact outside of that folder.
While those files are in the trash (but BEFORE YOU EMPTY THE TRASH) test iTunes and make sure it’s playing the media from the external drive just fine. If it works, feel free to empty the trash and erase the original music.
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the EASY thing to do is copy the itunes folder from your music folder to the external drive, then open itunes while holding down the option key. this will let you select to open the itunes library on the external.
By default itunes is already set to keep the library organized and when you choose the library on the external itunes automatically switches the import location to the external.
Then just delete the library on the internal
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