Software Compendium - Mac & Windows

[piquadrat]

Hi,

have you ever wondered why it's so cumbersome to add custom cover artwork to iTunes, and why iTunes handles them differently than the artwork it gets from the iTMS? Have you ever asked yourself why you have to embed the cover artwork in every single track for iTunes to use it?

Well, I asked myself these questions and I came to the conclusion that iTunes simply isn't up to the task. So I sat down a couple of weeks ago and started to develop a solution for this problem. Several sleepless nights later, I think I've got something that could not only be useful to me, but also to other artwork enthusiasts.

underCover is an artwork managment tool for iTunes. It intercepts artwork-related communication between iTunes and the iTunes Store and can serve custom artwork or artwork from Amazon and other webservices to iTunes.

You can get underCover for Windows (tested, but still kinda experimental) and Mac OSX (very experimental) at http://undercover.piquadrat.ch/. There's also a manual that explains how to use underCover. I plan to enhance the documentation in the next couple of weeks.

underCover is released as Open Source (MIT license) and is completely free. No nag screens, no adds, no spyware.

So... what do you think? I would be especially grateful hearing from OSX users if there are any problems with underCover, since I can only use a Mac a couple hours a month, so I couldn't really test it on OSX as thoroughly as I'd liked.

[ipodenthusiast0]

I have been using MediaWidget - http://www.bootstrapdevelopment.com/...tunes-transfer - for over a year now and think its the best product out there for transferring data to and from iPods and computers. Haven't heard much about it from other users though - any thoughts?

[honeybee1236]

MediaCoder iPhone/iPod Edition

Features:

* Easy-to-use user interface
* Supporting iPhone, iPod Touch/Classic/Video/Nano
* Decoding most popular A/V formats
* DVD/VCD/CD ripping
* Clipping and cropping
* High quality, 2-pass mode available
* Optimized for multi-core processors
* Advanced encoding settings for Pros
* Absoultely FREE

Details posted here about the software:
http://wiki.mediacoderhq.com/Main_Page

[honeybee1236]

Mp3tag v2.43 - the universal Tag Editor

Mp3tag v2.43 - the universal Tag Editor and more ...

Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of common audio formats where it supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags.

It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words in tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more.

Mp3tag supports online database lookups from, e.g., Amazon, discogs, or freedb, allowing you to automatically gather proper tags and cover art for your music library.

Screenshots Mp3tag supports the following audio formats:

* Advanced Audio Coding (aac)
* Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac)
* Monkey's Audio (ape)
* Mpeg Layer 3 (mp3)
* MPEG-4 (mp4 / m4a / m4b / iTunes compatible)
* Musepack (mpc)
* Ogg Vorbis (ogg)
* OptimFROG (ofr)
* OptimFROG DualStream (ofs)
* Speex (spx)
* Tom's Audio Kompressor (tak)
* True Audio (tta)
* Windows Media Audio (wma)
* WavPack (wv)

Main features:

Batch Tag Editing Write ID3v1.1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, MP4, WMA, APEv2 Tags and Vorbis Comments to multiple files at once.

Support for Cover Art Download and add album covers to your files and make your library even more shiny.

Import from Amazon, discogs, freedb Save typing and import tags from online databases like Amazon, discogs, freedb and more.

Replace characters or words Replace strings in tags and filenames (with support for Regular Expressions).

Create Playlists automatically Create and manage playlists automatically while editing.

Rename files from tags Rename files based on the tag information and import tags from filenames.

Export to HTML, RTF, CSV Generate nice reports and lists of your collection based on user-defined templates.

Full Unicode Support User-interface and tagging are fully unicode compliant.

Besides these main features Mp3tag offers a variety of other functions and features ranging ranging from batch export of embedded album covers, over support for iTunes-specific tags like media type or TV Show settings, to combining multiple actions into groups that can be applied with a single mouse click.

Also see Making iTunes treat mp3 files as podcast.

[nina7285]

Having searched for a .rmvb converter for mac, and finally finding one. I want to share the results with all those looking. I know its a little past since the original threader asked, but for any random future searchers who end up reading this post as I did in search of answers.

I have downloaded Kigo Video Converter Free for Mac and downloaded the codec needed for .rmvb from their website but here it is anyway (Download MPlayer codec package to convert RM/RMVB, WMV).

Hope this helps.

[honeybee1236]

Floola

Floola supports almost all features offered by iPods including photos, artwork, podcasts and smart playlists!
It automatically converts any incompatible audio or video file so that you can copy almost any file to it. It allows adding youtube and myspace videos with a single click. Now it even makes it possible to keep your Google calendars synched!

Take a look at the feature list to find out what it can do and feel free to suggest anything that might be missing.

Cross plattform
Works on any Windows (98 and above), any Mac and any linux distribution with GTK installed.

Portable
Put the application on iPod and launch it on any PC, immediately.

Copy
add and extract songs to and from iPod.

Playlists
Easily manage, import and export (m3u, pls) playlists.

Last.fm
Join the social music revolution.

Podcasts
Join the social music revolution.

Web videos
add files to iPod just copying the page url

Localization
Available in different languages.

Lyrics
Lyric support even on older iPods (3G and above).

Search for duplicates
Easily find duplicated songs on iPod.

Search lost files
Easily find songs lost in your iPod.

Artwork
Add artwork to your songs easily.

Videos
Videos can be added to iPod.

Convert
Convert audio and video incompatible formats

Google Calendars
Synchronize them easily

Export to HTML
Create HTML files containing list of your iPod files

Fix iPod
Did a software mess up your iPod? Fix it!

Notes
Manage notes.

Growl support
(Mac version only) Get beautiful system notifications.

Snarl support
(Windows version only) Get beautiful system notifications.

Music
Play iPod's music.

Photos
Freedom to simply add photos to iPod.

[honeybee1236]

Video Monkey

Video Monkey is a free video encoding application exclusively for Mac. It was created after the demise of the great tool Visual Hub. Video Monkey borrows heavily from the Visual Hub video conversion tool, both conceptually and from the original code dump posted to SourceForge as TranscoderRedux.


You can download the latest version and get started converting videos today.


There’s new stuff coming all the time, so check back often!!!

[vitalyb]

Overview

Smart ArtTunes is an intelligent art generator for iTunes:

o Get album cover for your songs.
o Put track data (artist, album, name) on the cover.
o Put your star rating of the song right on the cover.
o Move around the cover and add/remove content as you'd like!

For every song it allows you to go from that ---------------------------------> To that

________________________________

Contact info

The application is currently ready to be distributed. If you'd like to join a private beta, please PM or email me at:

Requirements

Ugh. Should've posted it under Windows forum

Windows
iTunes

[honeybee1236]

Lyrics software for Mac's:

GimmeSomeTune

SongGenie