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 iTunes gets a bad rap from a lot of people. It's considered bloated, clunky, and a lot of users hate the interface. They're not wrong. However, after a little bit of use, it is actually a powerful music (and to an extent, video) organizer. The problem is that your average iPod wielder doesn't really take the time to learn how to use it, but just spends enough time to get the music from point A to B to C. Since a lot of us use this programs for the iPod, here's a list of some tricks to help you get more use out of iTunes. Managing Music   The first and foremost thing you should do is build up some playlists. Playing music straight from the library can result in repetitive plays, mixing music with non-music tracks, and let newer songs get lost in the (literal) shuffle. The library does have it's use though, even if you're not going to be playing your music directly from it. The browser will let you keep track of particular artist's albums, look at your collection easily. Here you can see a filtered playlist, showing just one album by one artist. You can sort it by "(All Albums)" so you can see everything you have by that artist. A helpful hint is that if you're in a playlist and want to see this info in the library are to use those arrows that are usually for the iTunes Store.  These dots will redirect you to the library with the browser filtering out all of the other info. Clicking on the arrow for the artist while holding option or alt will show you everything in your library by that artist. Doing the same for the album will only show that album. Moving Your Music and Library If you are switching your computers and want to keep your library the way it was, there are one or two things you need to move. First would be the music itself, and the second would be the music library files created by iTunes. This is the music library, with the Artist, and Albums inside of it. Standard iTunes organization.  This is the actual library files. Most of the time your mp3 (or whatever format files) are going to be stored in here.  You have to replace both the folders and the library file itself. The easiest way to do this is to launch your fresh version of iTunes, let it create your new folders, and then replace them. Keep in mind you might run into a problem with your old drive name not being the same as the current. The easiest way to fix this is to use a temporary disk image. If your old drive was called "Tycho" but your new drive is called "Leela", then the library won't be able to find the files using the new location. You should be able to make a temporary disk image with the name of the old drive, and move the music into there (and any temporary folders it was in). Then change the iTunes settings to your new location, and have it consolidate to the final location. You can also export the iTunes library file from within the program by going through the menus:  Playlists These are you friends. Smart Playlists are your best friends. Once you figure out how iTunes can automatically sort music for you, you won't be able to listen to music from the Library again. Especially if you have a large library. First, my favorite playlist I call "3000".  This playlist will take out any song I've listened to in the last few months. Once I listen to a song, it is removed because it automatically sorts music by least recently played. This playlist also only looks at the Music library, so my podcasts and videos won't show up here. Now that I have a larger library, I also have this same playlist, but for 1,000 songs. That would be songs I've listened to even less recently. You can also create other playlists that follow other criteria. For example, rating your songs can be very useful. It'll let you create playlist that are only pulling songs from your favorite songs (say, 4 & 5 star rated songs). An easy way to get yourself in the habit of rating songs is to make another smart playlist.  Here are some albums that I've added recently, and listened to at least 3 times already. I can now go through this playlist, listen to the song, and rate it. Once it's rated, it's removed from this playlist. This will also exclude songs I haven't really listened to enough to actually form an opinion, as well as my non-music tracks. When a song is rated 4 or 5 star, it will automatically show up in my workout playlist. When a song is new, it'll show up in my "New" playlist, because it has less than 3 plays. Useful Keyboard Commands
IUG fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2008 00:43
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chimz posted:3. Album by year sorts by artist then year then album name then disc number then track number then name. If you want to sort everything by year, enable the Year column and sort by that. (Right click on the sort bar, or go to View Options.) Tip: Clicking the sort bars in a specific order (like date added then artist) sorts ties in the last clicked one using the first one's sort. Use that if you want a complex ordering of songs that isn't Album by Date or by Artist. Holy crap, you just solved my biggest complaint about how iTunes sorted things. I always wished that you could sort by Artist, then Album based on it's release date. I had no idea this option existed, I figured it would just sort all albums by the Album's name.
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Dec 2, 2008 16:19
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My PIN is 4826 posted:On my iTunes, I've reserved the 1 star rating as a flag for remembering to fix that song later on. For example, if I find a song with a misspelled title, or with an annoyingly long silence at the start or beginning that I want to cut off while listening to the song on my iPod, I'll just tag it with one star. For stars for me, I have a complex system. 3 is generic. Good song, nothing stand out either way. 2 and 4 are "this song is a bad/good song for this album". Finally, 1 and 5 are "this song is awful/awesome in the context of this album, or just in general". Not much stays on my computer if it's 1 starred, unless I have the rest of that album on my computer and I'm keeping it for completion's sake. I also have a bunch of 5s that I don't have the rest of the album on my computer, but those songs were too good to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lewk posted:Also, as a seperate note, am I being stupid or in the lists the playlists generate is there no way of sorting by track number? I've modded my arrows to take me to the entry rather than the itunes store, and it throws all my albums up in the wrong order, sorted by name, but I can't seem to sort by track number. The way I've observed it, sometimes the only way to get it to sort by track number for the album, is to re-import the album. It seems to want to sort it by date added really. Maybe the "Album by Year" will fix this, I don't know, I just found out that hint.
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Dec 2, 2008 23:09
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clayburn posted:Here is an issue that I want to try to fix with iTunes. I rarely use cover flow but when I do, there is a certain way that I want it to behave. I have my library set up so that albums are only associated with a song if I have that entire album. Any individual song has the album field empty. This is all good until I view it in cover flow. For each song without an album, there is an entry in cover flow of a blank album. I would prefer for cover flow to not show these unknown albums. Anyone know of a fix to this? Make a new smart playlist where the Album "is not" and leave it blank. That should do it.
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Dec 3, 2008 19:15
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Killmaster posted:All I want to do is remove a folder from the library... basic functionality but I can't find it anywhere. Is Apple really this daft? Show the duplicates, sort by date or whatever gets most of them on one side of the list, select them, delete them from library. If you're using iTunes to consolidate your library, it will ask you if you just want to remove the files, or delete them from the computer entirely (move them to the trash/recycling bin).
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Dec 3, 2008 21:43
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Abel Wingnut posted:Is there any way to sort by two different columns? For instance, the first criteria would be Album Artist, and then within each Album Artist they would be sorted by date. I somehow managed it once but I have no idea how. I just found this one out from someone else here. Click on the "Sort by Album", then again, and once more. "Album by Year" comes up, and it still sorts by Artist, THEN album. A weird spot to put it for sure. lamppshade posted:Is there a way of making a smart playlist contain all the songs in a sub-directory? I have a directory called /import where I dump things until I've listened to them and actually looked at the ID tags. I want to be able to create a playlist from that directory and rate the songs on my ipod. Do what I do. Make a "New" playlist that will only house stuff that has less than 3 playcounts. I also added something so that it takes the song out for 2 days, so I only hear the song every 3 days (to not wear the song out on myself). When it reaches the 3rd playcount, it goes into my "Needs to be Rated" playlist, which is the same as the previous one, but OVER 2 playcounts, and it doesn't filter out based on the last played. I can do pictures of these playlists if you want to see them.
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Dec 4, 2008 04:37
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So if you're using a Mac, I have two hints that are related to each other. The first one uses OS X's Spaces. I now have my main window seperated from iTunes. Space 1 is my web browser and main window. Space 2 is a full screen iTunes window (Space 4 is for last.fm). Click here for the full 1570x484 image. The only problem with this is sometimes when I'm listening to something newer, I might not know exactly what I'm listening to. Since you can't have two iTunes windows open, one for the Library, one for the mini-player, I recently found an application called Bowtie that is a themeable window controller for iTunes.  This is just one of the few themes they have. Plus, you can also rate your songs this way (I just pushed this song up from 4 stars to 5 before taking this photo). I keep it in the bottom corner of my 1st space, and it replaced GrowlTunes for me.
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Dec 4, 2008 18:08
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Alfajor posted:I had once found an application that would add lyrics to the song track, so that you could then see the lyrics on your iPod (by clicking on the middle of the wheel).
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Dec 4, 2008 19:07
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ZeeBoi posted:Here's something fun for Mac users: http://fluidtunes.com/ This is going to be awesome for whenever I have the Mac hooked up as a jukebox for a party.
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Dec 4, 2008 23:34
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Panic! at the Fist Jab posted:Be careful with this. It won't add lyrics to MP3s, and if you skip too fast for Harmonic to keep track, lyrics from the next song will end up in the metadata for the first. It adds them to the mp3. I see them on my iPod and everything. I guess the skipping thing is valid though, I always wondered why sometimes my music would have the wrong lyrics completely (but from something else in my library).
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Dec 5, 2008 01:08
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Mikey-San posted:Wanna see a cool trick? Yeah, I know you can open a playlist like that. However, I don't think you can have both windows show the same playlist. Besides, this program will show 3 lines of info, let you rate the song, and shows you the album art. Really, I just wish for a way to use old Audion faces to control iTunes.
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Dec 5, 2008 16:48
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Why not label the Beatles one as "Let It Be", and the other one as "Let It Be " with that extra space?
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Dec 6, 2008 20:30
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Super Dude posted:I just installed iTunes and added my music library, but I'm having a weird issue. Why have I suddenly lost 2.5 GB of music? I don't know anything really about Windows, but wouldn't having your music folder marked as read-only cause some problems? If it tried to write to a file that was in your library and it's locked, then maybe iTunes sees the file as corrupt, and it removes it. Just a guess on this point. As from my corner of Windows-Ignorant-Theater, it looks like you're missing 4,000 files? Does windows count the folders as a "file"?
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Dec 13, 2008 14:39
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quote:For a song to receive a "play count" the end of the song must be played. This means even if you "scrub" a song all the way to the end it will get a play count, but if you play a song, but hit the "Next" button before its over it wont get one. This is why I turned off the crossfade between songs. Sometimes the song that came up next would be one I didn't want to hear, so I would skip it. However, if you wanted the song you were listening to before the new one to count in play count and play time, you would have to sit through just over 5 seconds (or however long) while the crossfade completed.
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Dec 14, 2008 23:15
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Mithra6 posted:Does anyone know a way to link two songs together even when a playlist is shuffled? For example, let's say I have a large playlist, but I want "With a Little Help From My Friends" to always play after "Sgt. Pepper". C'mon those songs go together! No, but if you wanted to reimport the songs from the CD, you can tell iTunes to merge the songs before they're even imported into the library. After this, I don't think so (and I've been trying to find out since I put The Who's "Tommy" on my computer).
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Dec 19, 2008 03:24
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You say you have ownership, so I'm guessing you mean your permissions are alright. I'd say run the Disk Utility thing anyways just to make sure you have them set right. Otherwise, make sure the "Locked" checkbox isn't on for your iTunes Library.xml. Either it's the mp3 files themselves, or the iTunes LIbrary.xml that isn't able to be written to.
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Dec 23, 2008 03:44
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Specialbear posted:Can someone help me out real quick? Have iTunes consolidate your Library. It's under the File -> Library options. It'll move everying into folders structured as such: iTunes Library -> Artist -> Album -> 01 music.ext
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Dec 28, 2008 00:37
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Trypsin posted:it's option + delete on a mac. For what it's worth, on my newer Apple keyboard, the option key has "alt" superscripted in the top corners now.
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Jan 14, 2009 16:16
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If you're going to manually manage it the way you were before, you might as well make a regular playlist that isn't smart, and just tweak that however you want in iTunes. Then when you sync you can let the iPhone do it's thing automatically.
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Jan 17, 2009 04:58
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Baldrash posted:OK, so I just started playing around with iTunes a little more seriously, setting up a whole bunch of playlists to make sifting through stuff easier. However, something really weird has happened when I have things sorted by album in gallery view, and go into a particular album: Since you have the first CD I ever purchased as your example, you get my undivided attenion. So, have you gone into the View Menu and gone to View Options? This has all the check boxes for what you want displayed in a particular playlist. 1997 posted:Crossposting in the Mac hardware thread just in case, but.. I had to replace my Superdrive twice in my old computer. I think it's just a crap drive. I had the same problems as you.
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Jan 22, 2009 17:51
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^^^I'm not sure what the preference file on Windows would be, but try trashing that. Hopefully that's what saves the windows position settings.ottonomy posted:My library playing statistics are weak because I had to delete my old library and re-add everything a couple months ago, so there is a lot of good music buried in there that I haven't rated or even played since redoing the library, but there's a lot of crap too... Any tips, anybody? I'd try BowTie. Besides the fact that it can show you what you're listening to on any of your Spaces, it also shows rating. You can also click on the stars to change your rating for the song. The only downside is that if you use 1/2 star ratings, it doesn't show up in the app (but it will for Growl notices), but instead it rounds it up. Right now I'm listening to a 3.5 starred song, but it shows as a 4 star song. Not a huge deal, seeing as you have to edit the plist to get this to work anyways. 
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Jan 23, 2009 03:55
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sicjoke posted:If I enable Live Updating the playback of the playlist ends prematurely when ever I rate a song. What I am looking for is a quick way of forcing the playlist to update. I have looked for a hotkey, but there doesn't seem to be one. I am therefore forced to edit the criterion of the smart playlist and turn Live Updating on and then off to refresh the playlist. I have live updating on for mine. I just rate mine at the end of that play.  Click here for the full 1680x1050 image. Here's mine from the OP. They get their rating when the playcount goes to 4.
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Jan 24, 2009 04:13
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Tutu posted:Does anyone know a good mac program for adding lyrics to your songs in itunes? I'm surprised there isn't an iphone application for this. Fetching a post that I did in this thread exactly on this, hold on. IUG posted:If you're on a Mac (you guys need to specify this stuff), then there's this widget: http://mindquirk.com/apps/harmonic/
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Feb 1, 2009 05:33
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Audax posted:I have autosync unchecked on my new nano. However, I have a large list of playlists that i'd like to transfer over to the nano. I can't have it autosync playlists as well as have me add music manually, correct? You could have it autosync with a playlist that you control manually. That is, not a smart playlist.
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Feb 8, 2009 23:12
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Made myself a new playlist. "Catchup '09". This shows me everything I haven't listened to yet in this year. I have 1,556 songs in this playlist right now after creating it. It's 4 days, 13 hours, and 22 minutes long, with some songs not listened to as far back as August. I have 3,995 songs that aren't comedy or video files in my library, so there is some serious neglect going on here.
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Feb 20, 2009 15:58
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elwood posted:Don't know if my question has been answered already, but what do I do if I want itunes to automatically synchronize my playlist, but want to be able to manually add albums? If I check sync music --> sync playlists I can't manually add albums from the library, if I check sync everything itunes tries to copy my complete library, if I try to manage my ipod myself my intelligent playlists are useless. Make a playlist folder. In this folder use your smart playlist with whatever you want. Also make a regular playlist that you just add your full albums to. You can use the playlist folder to play the contents of itself. It's like having a basic "AND" feature for all the playlists it contains.
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Feb 24, 2009 18:22
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projecthalaxy posted:Can I buy a whole bunch of Itunes Store songs and pay at once, or am I doomed to a pile of 1.07 charges? 
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Feb 27, 2009 04:43
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The SARS Volta posted:So the new version of iTunes allows you to convert tracks into ringtones (.m4r file format). Problem is, however, that as far as I can tell .m4r's are only iPhone supported (I have a Samsung Eternity FWIW) and therefore I need to convert it to an .mp3. Just use Audacity instead. It's free, works on Windows and Mac, has a bunch more featuers (fade in/out for the most useful amongst ringtones), and it's open sourced. This is how I make ringtones for my cell phone.
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Mar 1, 2009 21:22
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I don't see what the question is, it looks like it's doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing. You listened to the tracks, so it would remove it from the list, as you've listened to them in the last year.
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Mar 5, 2009 03:48
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trilljester posted:Is there a utility or anything that syncs ratings made on your iPod with the iTunes library? Yeah, iTunes. As soon as you plug it in to sync it will change any rating stuff you changed on your iPod, and reflect the changes in iTunes. I use this every once in a while when I noticed a CD rip went bad, so I rate the song 0 stars to try and remind me.
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Mar 6, 2009 00:54
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pokeyman posted:Never thought about it, but yeah, I'd imagine so. No, I think it would sync the changes to the music, but I don't think it would take out the music and add new music. If you change the ratings, I imagine that's the only thing that would change if you manually manage your music.
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Mar 9, 2009 14:29
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I'm liking this update for iTunes. My library file went from 11.9 megs to 3.8 megs. That remote feature sounds really great, so now I just need an iPhone...
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Mar 12, 2009 23:25
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quote:* Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus. Anyone know what this one is talking about?
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Mar 13, 2009 14:17
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The only thing I can think of to help you is try to make sure you have the most up-to-date version of Quicktime. If that doesn't help, maybe quicktime would benefit from a re-install too?
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Mar 14, 2009 18:04
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Rison posted:drat, iTunes needs to finally integrate folder watching. I don't want to have my folders renamed and restructured, just add new files to the library. How hard would that be? If you're on a Mac:  You could either use Automator to add them, or maybe even a Folder Action (I'm not super sure on what those do).
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Mar 16, 2009 14:45
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Under the file menu, there's an option labeled "Show Duplicates". Then you just weed out which ones you don't want to keep, delete them, and have it move the files to the trash.
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Mar 29, 2009 16:23
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I have a weird thing in my iTunes now. I was rating some music, and during this, my power went out. When it came back, I went right back to rating, but I noticed that the album I was listening to was taken out of my "Needs to be Rated" playlist. Curious, I looked for the album in iTunes' Library: I was just starting "The King Of Pain" when I lost power. I guess it rated the songs based off of the average of the album. Never seen the hollow stars anywhere besides below the album artwork.
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Mar 30, 2009 16:23
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Kire posted:Is there a way to delete podcast episodes I've listened to without iTunes totally removing them from that podcast's list of episodes, making me unable to ever, ever download it again? I just want to "un-download" it, not forever delete it and block my system from recognizing its existence on the podcast server. I think when you un-subscribe, then re-subscribe, the episodes will show up again as undownloaded. There my be an easier way, but I remember this one.
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Mar 31, 2009 21:23
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Kire posted:This is retarded, I don't understand why iTunes can't manage podcasts better since podcasts are so fundamental to ipods and itunes. There's another way, I just don't remember it.
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Apr 1, 2009 15:10
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Eeek posted:I spent a huge portion of today deleting all of my dupes. I consolidated iTunes into one folder. However, I still have the old songs listed in iTunes- they have a exclamation mark and if I click it, it says it can't be found. So, great- I'll just remove iTunes and add it back with no dead link. No, that didn't happen. all of the dead links came back to. Any suggestions? Someone said earlier in the thread that there was a way to get all of the valid songs in a Smart Playlist. I don't know how to test this, but maybe you can make a smart playlist, set it to something like "Bitrate is greater than 1kbps", and that would ignore all of the dead links? Then you would make a second smart playlist where all of the dead links would be in there. From that, you would just select all of the dead linked songs, hold option/alt, and press delete. I don't know how to test this, so hopefully there's a way to get a playlist filled with only "found" songs.
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Apr 7, 2009 03:33
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