Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

My wife has just bought an ipod and I'm trying to get the hang of files in Itunes.

Around 50% of our MP3 collection doesn't have ID3 tags - which means in itunes it just has one big mess of a list - some in albums - but some are just in one long list - and what's worse is that some of the songs are just called 'track01.mp3'.

On the hard drive they are of course in Folders that are named.

Is there anyway in itunes to display the albums as they are stored on the harddrive (taking the folder name as the album name)?

Or can I use other software for loading stuff onto the Ipod?

Tia
Richard.

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

Just found that I can use Winamp but I was still hoping that itunes could do the job for me as well.

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

Argghhh - even Winamp doesn't seem to show things as a simple 'windows explorer view as stored on disk' option! I just want to see something like the following:

d:\music\Muse - Black Hole
d:\musc\Kings Of Leon - Youth & Manhood
.
.


Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Richard.

Markus

iTunes won't give you the view you're looking for as per Explorer, nor will it read in the info from the folder name, it's looking for the ID3 tags. I think you'll find most MP3 apps will work like this as well.

As for what you can do, well, some manual work will need to be done to name the tracks correctly in iTunes. What I suggest is to use the Get Info command on a track in iTunes, look at the "Summary" section and there should be a "Where" item, which is the path to the item on disk, that'll include the folder name, so make a mental note of that, then switch to the Info section and change the Album item to this value you noted.

Of course this won't help with the track names, unless the original files have the name of the track, but from what you have said they don't.

Something like this might help you out though, as from the brief look at the info on it. It will allow you to select a folder full of items and set the ID3 tags on them. If it does work that way then what you can do is to select the tracks in itunes and use the delete command. When you are asked if you want to keep the files, say "Keep Files" and this will just remove the entry in the Libary and not the actual file on disk (you could also go into My Music then into iTunes and delete the iTunes Library file, make sure iTunes isn't running when you do this though). Once you have the info removed from iTunes, use the other app to tag each folder with the album name, then try adding one ablum to iTunes and see if it picks up the album name. If it does, repeat this process for all the folders.
As for track names, well, not a lot you can do if the info isn't already there I don't think.

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

Thanks Markus - I think that ID3 tag setter could do the trick.

I've found a plugin for Winamp that lets you use an explorer view but it's a bit clunky. I think biting the bullet and setting the ID3 tags is the way to go.

Cheers again!

Richard.

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

Used Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2) to update and insert all the ID3 tags and itunes is working great