iTunes ?

it's a computer program, not a fucking mind-reading machine

of the songs i actually listen to, i probably skip 75% of them just before the end, when i know the last verse is over and it's just the wind-down, or a 20-second fade-out, or 64 bars of beats so that it can be mixed into the next track by a dj.

I have a question: When I burn a CD using iTunes, the track information isn't always retained when I play the disc on a different computer. Why not? If it shows up on one computer, shouldn't it show up on all the others?

it's a computer program, not a fucking mind-reading machine

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, January 6, 2009 2:05 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when you burn a CD, iTunes grabs the info about it from an online database, based on the number of songs on the CD and the exact length of each song. CDs themselves don't have any information about their tracks on them. another computer may be grabbing the info from a different database, or from the same database but a different entry in that database. the Gracenote database, which i believe iTunes uses, isn't perfect.

n/a i think you will agree that in my case - and probably many others - the skip count probably closer resembles the number of actual plays than the play count does.

when you burn a CD, iTunes grabs the info about it from an online database, based on the number of songs on the CD and the exact length of each song.
That's kinda what I figured. But I still don't get why the software can't just burn the text information to go along with each track, bypassing the online database altogether. I never have this problem when burning a data disc, which retains everything without looking it up on the web.

the CD audio standard was invented a looong time ago, computer-wise

tracer just ffwd the last 20 secs or whatever rather than track skip. I do that cause I have a playlist of stuff that hasn't been played or skipped in XX weeks, but if I skip a track on my ipod, it doesn't register as a skip and therefore stays in my list of "unplayed/unskipped".

A state of the art personal computer in 1980, the year the Red Book (audio CD standard) was published:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Trs80_2.jpg

Basically, almost no metadata (artists, track names, etc) is supported by Red Book.

n/a i think you will agree that in my case - and probably many others - the skip count probably closer resembles the number of actual plays than the play count does.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, January 6, 2009 2:31 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's because it's a computer program, not a fucking mind-reading machine

last.fm scrobbly thing counts it as a 'play' after two minutes or halfway through the track, whichever is shorter. far more sensible, no mind-reading involved.

bought my eldest a cheap-n-cheerful laptop for crimbo/homework demands.
tonight he proudly told me that had installed iTunes on it.
10 minutes later that was no longer the case.
47Mb RAM useage as opposed to a much smaller memory footprint by the just as effective Media Player proved my case.
[1Gb RAM vs Vista = performance concerns]
not only that, but he hasn't got an iPod, so dont see the point when WMP will rip his 4 cds for him into mp3s for his phone.
someone convince me why he needs it ?
i suspect his reasoning is that classic case of 'everyone else has it'.
i feel like i am a bad bad dad for making his life iTunes free.

that's because it's a computer program, not a fucking mind-reading machine

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, January 6, 2009 1:31 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ profoundops.

XP: Its a nice interface for accessing the iTunes store, and now that iTunes is going DRM free I guess that's something. As with their portable devices, I guess its fashionable, if you value that above other virtues. If the kid doesn't care about performance issues, I'd let him get fed up on his own first.

But for almost any other purpose there are better alternatives. I'm a fan of MediaMonkey, which helps me effectively manage about 35,000 mp3s in a my own file hierarchy. Apple has joined my short-list of developers I associate with bloated resource use. As with everything MS other than the OS, there are useful alternatives for QuickTime codecs (though not development, AFAIK) as well.

my gonad for an iTunes/Media Monkey merger, where MediaMonkey redoes the iTunes UI, while iTunes keeps its proprietary store services

what is your major malfunction n/a? computers are able to do lots of amazing things, like measure how long you've been listening to a track. on your ipod, it even prints this information out on a constantly updated basis. i'm pretty sure it doesn't need to read your mind to do this.

Returning a "percentage played" figure instead of a boolean "played/not played" figure is pretty low not only on the Features Users Want list, but also pretty useless from a business standpoint.

Keep in mind that I'm talking strictly UI here. iTunes DOES keep track of how much of a track you played, because there is resume functionality per media item. This may be turned on for video only for now, but it could be turned on for audio as well. It's just not that useful from a User Interface standpoint to provide it, not point out if a track was fully played or not.

And as someone else pointed out, last.fm has a compromise system. Who knows what Genius is doing in the background.

(besides probably making iTunes less robust. oh snap.)

my gonad for an iTunes/Media Monkey merger, where MediaMonkey redoes the iTunes UI, while iTunes keeps its proprietary store services

― 909090909 Rivethed Brikkchin Reverk now DANZ (Mackro Mackro), Tuesday, 6 January 2009 22:10 (1 hour ago)

OTMFM <3 MM UI (but don't forget the internal file management, all it lacks is a built in power tagger)

Don't all of the OCD folks scrobble on last.fm anyways? The last.fm client gives you a full song listening credit 1/2 way thru the song.

If the freaking click wheel worked better on my iPod, that clip might be exciting, derelict, but until then, fuck 'em.

iTunes increments play count when you play THE END of a song. Skip to -0.02 from the end and play.

I think last.fm scrobbler just picks up the ipod play count from iTunes rather than listening for two minutes or whatever.

Jazzbo- what you'll want to do is check the button in your CD burning options menu that says "use CD Text." This will let other computers and some stereos and car audio systems to load artist and track title info, even on custom mix CDs and not just copied discs.

This will let other computers and some stereos and car audio systems to load artist and track title info, even on custom mix CDs and not just copied discs.

iTunes in still not reading CD-TEXT shockah?

47Mb RAM useage as opposed to a much smaller memory footprint by the just as effective Media Player proved my case.

that's not very much RAM usage at all, how much does the machine have?

maybe i'll reinstall media monkey, didn't really like it on first use. plus points = being able to change almsot all id3 tags with 'f2' rename shortcut, rather than tedious 'right click-->info'. minus point (which i didn't investigate too much, just a first impression) was folder structure in the left-hand pane. am very happy to let itunes organise all my folders and files based on the tags.

You know that you can edit multiple ID3 tags at once, right?

what? yes? probably? i just meant e.g. 'f2' when the 'year' field is selected for a single song. no can do in itunes.

If I ever run into mass tagging jobs that iTunes can't handle, Media Rage always does the job. I guess it's Mac-only, though.

iTunes increments play count when you play THE END of a song. Skip to -0.02 from the end and play.

Haha and I actually DO THIS! Which is just retarded. I have no idea why you're all acting like I'm wishing for something MAGICAL and IMPOSSIBLE when all I want is for iTunes to be like "He listened to 2 minutes of that song, therefore he likes that song more than the song he skipped after hearing for one second".

Basically what I'm saying is that Apple needs to adjust to our CRAZY CUT UP CULTURE of BLIPVERTS and FASTVERTISING.

Tracer H, how come you keep skipping songs right at the end? That seems a bit odd to me.

I do this mainly on mixes and podcasts coz they often seem to have about thirty secs of silence at the end and I need the next banging hits straight away.

iTunes is dick though. It could easily be so much better.

Basically what I'm saying is that Apple needs to adjust to our CRAZY CUT UP CULTURE of BLIPVERTS and FASTVERTISING.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, January 8, 2009 2:39 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the crazy thing is that this seems so obvious.

i don't know shit about programming but isn't this like the kind of thing that would take an afternoon of code writing before the next version update?

so is everything pretty much DRM-free now, or has that not happened yet?

Prob. Apple needs to insert fuzzy logic into its song counter.

if you're having issues retagging in iTunes i suggest you go to dougs apple scripts and find the good ones there. i'm using 5 or 6 of them to make tagging much, much easier.

Jazzbo- what you'll want to do is check the button in your CD burning options menu that says "use CD Text." This will let other computers and some stereos and car audio systems to load artist and track title info, even on custom mix CDs and not just copied discs.
I did. Still no workie. The disc name and all the tracks are there after the CD is burned, but disappear when I pop the disc into a different computer.
It doesn't happen all the time. Most recently, the track names weren't retained for some Beatles comps that I made. I thought maybe it was because iTunes doesn't carry the Beatles, but it should use a larger internet database, right?
Very strange.

This happens to me as well but it doesn't surprise me, I figured that since CDs don't generally hold text data (that 'CD text' thing notwithstanding) that iTunes just manages to remember data for CDs you've burnt on that particular PC. Although it's odd you say it doesn't happen all the time, perhaps it's just for copies of commerical CDs that it works? Then the CD database thing would kick in.

iTunes in still not reading CD-TEXT shockah?

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Wednesday, January 7, 2009 3:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Only a few CD drives support reading CD-Text RW subcodes from the program area

Also kind of weird that iTunes doesn't support automatically removing silence from the beginning and end of tracks yet. This has been a configurable output plug-in option in WinAmp and MediaMonkey for about 3 years now.

Randomly tested 2 computers and 6 apps and none of them displayed the CD-TEXT I burned a disc with, so I'll buy it.

So this is more of an iPod question than iTunes, but maybe someone has had a similar problem. Lately my iPod (160 GB classic) has developed a twitch where, every so often, it will just pause during playback. Not pause the unit itself, but it'll be playing a song then seemingly freeze up for 4-5 seconds and continue with the song. Doesn't happen frequently, but its pretty annoying when it does. It feels like the hard drive is just struggling to keep up and getting kind of sluggish. I figured resetting the unit might help, and it might have, since the clickwheel response time vastly improved. But the weird pause issue seems to continue.

Mine does that too (also iPod classic 160 gb -- but only about 95 gbs on it so far)

In my case the pause is less severe, just a half second or so.

Does it pause on all types of files? E.g., MP3, AAC, ALC, FairPlay, etc.