quick question about itunes

[leonthepro]

okay, I know that itunes sync the ipod to your music library. Wat I want to know is: if an id3 tag changes in your music library will itunes update the tag on the ipod? And would it do this by changing the tag, or uploading the file again?

cheers
Leon

[Thesorus]

yes, it will be updated next time you sync.

[MacMuse26]

The file is recopied over to the iPod.

[ashawley]

No, the file is not recopied over again. Just the iPod's database is updated with the new tag info.

Adam

[leonthepro]

well I've now been doing it and have found out that itunes does recopy the entire file over to the ipod if the tag has changed. So ashawley you are wrong, and itunes is long.does

[ashawley]

OK, well, that sure would be news to me leon as there is no reason for it to do that.

Please enlighten us all as to how you are proving this in your tests.

I don't use iTunes (although I've tested it extensively), I use MC9 which does not recopy the song over (I know because it was a requirement I put in w/the developer).

See, you save a lot of time by not having to recopy the song. A lot of time. Especially if say, you change the genre on 100 songs.

It would be very lame of Apple to not just update the iPod's database. But I'm not going to load my iPod w/iTunes just to see you're right--so I ask. How did you test this?

Adam

[leonthepro]

I tested this by changing a tag name on my computer. I then plugged in my ipod, itunes then says updating ipod, and I could see it was uploading the entire song. Although I guess I can't know for sure that it was, but it did take about as long as uploading the song did.
I also have suspicion to believe that itunes doesn't delete the old copy (it just takes it away from the ipod database), as I noticed the ipod used space meter rise a little when it was updating my song (which it surely shouldnt do if the song was already there).