Hi, Brandon has answered most of your questions, but I'll chime in here with some clarifications if you don't mind.
I believe that you need to understand the difference between the iTunes main Library and Playlists. The main iTunes music Library consists of all your imported music, no matter what genre, artist, or album. You create playlists to organize music in whatever fashion you wish. Music can belong to multiple playlists so you can create a playlist with all your practice music in it and you'd simply select that playlist when you wished to access that group of music. If you allow iTunes to copy items into its directory, iTunes will organize its folder structure by looking at the tags. It will then place the items in its Music folder by first creating a parent folder with the Artist name, then placing another folder with the Album name within that folder and then the actual song file within the Album folder. When iTunes encounters another item by the same artist, it will place it within the same parent folder and either create a new album folder or place it in the existing album folder if one already exists. All this is done for iTunes purposes only. You create your own Playlists within the UI and organize them however you want. The organization of the playlists does not affect the folder structure behind the scenes. All that is happening in these multiple playlists is done within the iTunes database. So, the database simply points the player to whatever songs it needs to play. Therefore, having a song in 20 different playlists does not cause you to have 20 copies of the song, there is just one copy of the song pointed to 20 times. In this manner, you can put the Beach Boys, Surfin' USA into a 60s playlist, a sunshine playlist and anything else you wish but only one song was ever imported into your Library. For all the noise that I hear on this list about the pitfalls of iTunes, I think its simply a preferential thing more than a usability thing. I use iTunes for all my media including Movies, TV shows, music, Podcasts and more and find it to be an awesome application for managing and playing my media. HTH. Later... whatever else you wish with only one Tim Kilburn Fort McMurray, AB Canada On 2012-10-04, at 4:21 PM, Alex Hall <mehg...@gmail.com> wrote: > Okay, I think I'm still a bit confused as far as importing into the library. > So, I can either copy it all, or just point iTunes to my music folders? If I > do the latter, are there any risks or concerns I should know about, such as > album art popping up all over the place or files getting moved around t be > auto-sorted into artist/album folders? I don't sort by album, I just put all > music in a genre into a single folder and leave it at that. As I said, I > think iTunes will give me the best of both worlds, being able to just sort by > genre, album, or whatever, but I don't want my actual directory structure > changed around if iTunes thinks it knows best. I realize I can just tell it > to copy into the library folder, but, as I said, that would take up a lot of > hard drive space and would mean any new songs I download from sources other > than iTunes would have to be manually added. Thanks for your help so far; > this is the first time I've ever used a media player's library feature and I > am, as you can tell, unsure of how it all works. > On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:13 PM, Brandon Olivares <programmer2...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> You could put it all under a particular playlist, but you'd still have to >> exclude it from the rest of your music. Honestly, I'd just not put that >> practice music in iTunes at all. >> >> Although, now that I think of it, you can set the genre to something like >> Speech or some other rarely used genre, and have a smart playlist exclude >> that genre. >> >> Also, you don't have to select the option to import it into the iTunes >> library folder. I prefer it because you always know where to find it. >> >> Regards, >> Brandon Olivares >> Azavia Technologies >> New: ZCaptcha — The Captcha Reader >> On Oct 4, 2012, at 5:50 PM, Alex Hall <mehg...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Okay, that's good and bad in a way. I have so much media that duplicating >>> it all will take up a lot of room, but I suppose it beats having to worry >>> about messing up my original copies. >>> >>> You said it will not touch any directories I have. So, then, how could I >>> tell all my practice music to be classified as some special music? I >>> suppose I could use an id3 editor to force all songs to be part of a >>> certain album or something, but is there a better way? >>> On Oct 4, 2012, at 5:42 PM, Brandon Olivares <programmer2...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Hello, >>>> >>>> iTunes will not do anything to your music. It is all configurable with the >>>> options in preferences. >>>> >>>> 1. No, it will not be converted. >>>> 2. It is an option to copy it to the iTunes library and organize it under >>>> there, but even if it does so, it does not touch your original copy. >>>> 3. It doesn't care about folders nor will it touch any file or directory >>>> you create. If it copies it to its own library, then it is in charge of >>>> organizing that folder obviously. >>>> 4. You can delete songs from iTunes without deleting the file itself. >>>> 5. The grid view will allow you to browse by album, artist, genre, etc. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Brandon Olivares >>>> Azavia Technologies >>>> New: ZCaptcha — The Captcha Reader >>>> On Oct 4, 2012, at 3:54 PM, Alex Hall <mehg...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Hi all, >>>>> I'd like to be able to add all my music to iTunes (and there's a whole >>>>> lot of it), but I have some concerns. >>>>> 1. Will it all be converted to m4a or aac? What about unsupported >>>>> formats, like wma or ogg? >>>>> 2. Will it be copied to the iTunes library, or will iTunes just look in >>>>> the folders to which I point it? >>>>> 3. Will it honor folders I make? Some music is ripped from CDs I use for >>>>> practicing songs on bass or guitar, so it has no artist or album meta >>>>> data. However, I keep it separate from my other music as most of it is >>>>> shifted to new keys and so sounds rather odd. In other words, I need to >>>>> keep it separate, or at least flagged somehow, so it does not play with >>>>> my normal music. I categorize a lot of music like this, such as putting >>>>> it in a comedy or country folder in my music folder. What will iTunes do >>>>> about that? >>>>> 4. If I decide I want to get rid of music from iTunes, can I do so with >>>>> no erasing of anything? >>>>> 5. In iTunes, can I view by song, artist, album, and so on like I can on >>>>> my iPod? I tried this with the few songs already in the library, but >>>>> could not see a way to do it. >>>>> Thanks for any help. I'm normally no fan of iTunes, but I must say I like >>>>> the remote control on the Apple earbuds and being able to sync certain >>>>> songs with my iPod to have them with me, particularly with the wifi sync >>>>> option. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Have a great day, >>>>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) >>>>> mehg...@gmail.com >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>>>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>>>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> >>> >>> >>> Have a great day, >>> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) >>> mehg...@gmail.com >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > > > > Have a great day, > Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) > mehg...@gmail.com > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
