iPod experts. I'm stumped.

[vellefromhell67]

Hi there! I have a few questions that I absolutely cannot find the answer to. I've spent 2 hours digging around this site. Please help if you can.

I just bought my beautiful 30gb iPod Video yesterday, and after I installed iTunes, I checked the "Manually Manage Songs and Playlists" option. I then went on to add a little over 1,200 songs DIRECTLY to my iPod from my computer WITHOUT adding them to the library first, and customized all the tags, album art, etc. It's probably taken me 6 hours so far. I have a few questions at this point.

1. Is the library just a "snapshot" database of your music, or is it a physical database that actually stores physical copies of your music?

2. I tried using PodUtil to copy all those songs in my iPod into my library so that if I had to wipe out my iPod later, I could restore all the songs back into the iPod without losing those 6 hours of tagging and adding album art. However, it made physical copies of the songs. This would mean that I would lose a bunch of my computer's harddrive space (since there would now be two copies of those songs: the ones from the iPod and the originals form my computer).

3. I noticed that many songs that show up in iTunes under my iPod do not actually show up when I'm using my iPod. This happens with any song that does not have an album name specified (unless ALL the songs from that particular artist dont have an album specified, in which case they do show up in the iPod). Basically, lets say I added 10 Led Zeppelin songs to my iPod. Song #1-4 have album name "Led Zeppelin 2" specified in the tag. Song #5-7 have album name "Led Zeppelin Zoso" specified in the tag. Song #8-10's album name is left blank. All 10 songs will show up in iTunes under my iPod, but when I go to the actual iPod, only song 1-7 will show up. What exactly is this?


I appreciate everyone's help immensely. Thank you!!

:)

[shinobidice]

You're not going to be able to listen to any music unless you import it into the music library then transfer it to your iPod using iTunes.

The library is a directory of your music that has been ripped/converted/bought using iTunes unless you have used the "consolidate music library" function in iTunes.

I'm not sure why your tags are messed up, they should appear the same in iTunes and on the iPod. If you downloaded the files from different sources, this may be how the id3 tags were programmed; if you ripped them off cd's they shouldnt be like that

[shinobidice]

The way iTunes works is fairly simple. It's a music player as well as a program to transfer music from a computer to an iPod.

You import music from your computer into the iTunes library. This library is just a collection of shortcuts to the music files, put simply. If you have 100 files in My Music, and you import them into iTunes, then you wish to listen to the songs, iTunes goes to the folder of which they are imported from.

iTunes also can rip cds, which creates by default AAC files that are iPod compatible, you can choose the format and quality under prefrences in iTunes. These files go into (on windows xp by default) My Music and into a folder called iTunes Music *(or something similar) Also, when you import wma files or other non-iPod compatible files and iTunes converts them, they go into that folder.

You can consolidate the music library, which copies all the music from wherever you imported it from into the iTunes Music folder.

Whichever you choose to do consolidated or unconsolidated, either work and you can now import music to your iPod, add art, lyrics, change filenames, tags, rate files, and many more things in iTunes.

Now that you have a library in iTunes with everything the way you want it, you can copy it all onto your iPod since you have manually update selected. Everything should show up exactly how it is in iTunes; all names, albums, art, ratings, and I think even playcounts.


You did unneccesary steps by copying music directly to your iPod then taking it off with PodUtil. Adding songs to the library doesnt make extra copies unless you want it to.