CC Multimedia

Posts Tagged ‘Itunes’

Making your own iPhone ringtones in iTunes with any non-DRM protected music file is free and very easy to do.

First, you must make sure that iTunes is using the AAC encoder when importing files. For Windows users, click Edit > Preferences, then click on Import Settings under the General tab (Mac users click iTunes > Preferences). Select the AAC Encoder in the first drop down menu, and click OK.

Select the Music folder on the sidebar, Right Click your song (ctrl + Click for Mac users) and then Get Info. Now go to the Options tab and designate a Start and Stop Time for the portion of the song you wish to use. Make sure that the interval is less than 40 seconds, and that both check boxes are filled.

Return to your music library, Right Click on your song, and then select Create AAC Version. This will create a new shortened copy of the song beneath the original.

You will now need to convert this copy into an .m4r file so it can be imported into your iPhone. Right click the file and select Show in Windows Explorer (Show in Finder on Mac). Select the file, then copy and paste a new version into the same folder (Windows users can do this by pressing Ctrl + C then Ctrl + V, and Mac users by pressing Command + C then Command + V).

After pasting the new copy of the file, simply select the file and click on the file name, then change the .m4a extension to .m4r. If the .m4a extension does not appear in the filename, Windows XP users can click on Tools > Folder Options, then click the View tab and uncheck “Hide Extensions for known file types”. On Windows Vista, this same option can be found under Organize > Folder and Search Options. You can also change the filename if you wish, and make sure to remove any hyphens or other symbols from the name.

Go back into iTunes and delete the first shortened AAC clip you converted. Now return to the folder where the .m4r file was created, drag the file into iTunes, and drop it onto your iPhone on the sidebar. Your ringtone is ready to go!

If you are one of the iTunes aficionados that enjoy listening to music, podcasts and you download iTunes files from the online store, then you are probably feeling weird knowing that the digital format of these files doesn’t allow you to play them outside this application. It seems a really unfair since you paid for the files; do you need to have an Apple Mac or media player to reproduce these files?

The answer is that in this format you cannot play them in any media player not supported by apple or its software. The reason is that these files are in AAC or mp4 format, which is the default iTunes and Apple format. The only thing you can do is convert iTunes files to mp3 and play them in every device, using any kind of media player you prefer.

According to Apple, these files are in mp4 format because it is the only that gives such a high sound quality. For the average user though, this is pretty inconvenient, as most media players play files in mp3 format but thankfully, there are solutions. What can you do?

The first way to convert iTunes files to mp3 is to burn the downloaded files in a CD and then copy them back to your hard drive in mp3 format. This method allows you to store songs in any audio format you like, no matter what the encryption or protection of the original file was. You can use any kind of program that burns audio CDs. This is quite easy method but takes some time – and you will need to use some CDs as well. You can also create a virtual CD drive in order to eliminate the need for CD-Rs, as your system will behave as the virtual drive is real, allowing you to ‘burn’ and save the files in any format you want.

The second most popular method to convert iTunes files to mp3 is to use one of the numerous converters that exist online today. You can find several both free and shareware on the Internet. If you perform an online search you can find many converters that can help you convert even protected files to mp3 format without any compromise in quality.

I have always tried to maintain an organized music collection ever since I was young. When modern digital media took the world by storm, I jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded iTunes into my desktop computer. After its fateful launch in 2001, iTunes has helped me accumulate almost a thousand music tracks. Admittedly, I am a certified music lover and so every chance I get, I download all the latest music files that I can find on the net as well as rip music from rare CDs that I happen to come across at times. But with such an enormous number of digital media tracks, there came a point wherein my music collection needed a major clean up.

I looked over my collection one day back then and finally realized just how incomplete my collection was in terms of song info. With missing or inaccurate ID3 tags, my collection looked like a confusing list of words in my iTunes! I frantically thought of ways how to find iTunes song info at this time, but I came up with no ideas. However, the thought of manually fixing the inaccurate info or filling in the missing details was too overwhelming for me to even consider it.

“What do I do now?” I wondered back then. I desperately needed to find a way to find iTunes song info that matched my tracks. Just thinking about the fact that I had to look over almost a thousand tracks made my head spin. How was I supposed to find iTunes song info without being inaccurate? The missing metadata in my iTunes was so overwhelming that I even thought about junking my collection and just starting over again to have a clean start. I spent several weeks researching the possible options that I could possibly choose so that I would have a less hard time trying to find iTunes song info. I asked my closest friends, my colleagues at work, my family at home but still I had no answer. As a last resort I finally turned to my computer to surf online for a solution, even if I knew there was a risk that the tools that I would see there might turn out to be useless or unsatisfactory.

That’s when I finally found the number one iTunes plug-in that has changed my digital media collection forever. Thanks to TuneUp Media, my collection is complete with song info like the track’s artist, song name, album, release year and genre. With this user-friendly mechanism, one can easily find iTunes song info in a matter of a few clicks. That is because TuneUp Media has a function called CLEAN which recovers missing or incorrect ID3 tags. No more confusing words or titles such as Unknown Artist or Track 01 for me!

It can get really frustrating trying to use iTunes when it becomes disorganized. Trying to locate a specific song or album can be almost impossible and the thought of editing every track to get your iTunes back in order can be very daunting.

How To Do An iTunes Cleanup

If you’ve ever tried editing your iTunes manually you’ll know the amount of effort it takes to organize iTunes your library. It’s also common to make mistakes along the way, which could end up causing you even more problems down the line.

The great thing about iTunes is that there is an easy, stress free way to organize your whole library. Using an automatic iTunes organizer you can save yourself hours of tediously editing every single track.

What iTunes Organizer To Use To Organize Your iTunes Library

It can become really confusing when you have several different options when buying a piece of software. It is also advisable to know that a lot of programs can make problems worse. When searching for an iTunes organizer you’ll find time and time again one program ranking above all others, Tidy Songs is the most reliable organizer available; it can help organize iTunes by correcting the following problems:

1. Remove duplicate songs
2. Fix misspelled song details
3. Add missing album artwork
4. Rearrange iTunes songs into the correct order

Tidy Songs is the perfect remedy to any problems that occur in iTunes. Another great benefit apart from saving a lot of time and stress is that if you ever have any more problems when uploading or downloading new albums you can quickly run Tidy Songs again, all with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Is your iTunes application crashing after installing updates? Does your system stop responding when iTunes crashes and you need to do hard reboot? This behavior can occur due to numerous reasons, ranging from application faults to system errors. It eventually makes your iTunes library and the hard drive volume inaccessible, causing critical data loss situations. In order to get your valuable data recovered in such situations, you need to opt for Mac Recovery if an updated backup is not in place.

After you install the latest updates or an unexpected system shutdown, you may come across an error message about unable to access iTunes library with an error code, when you start the application. After this behavior iTunes application crashes without starting. Sometimes, the application works fine if you access the file by logging in as another user.

Grounds of the issue:

You may come across this problem if any of the below conditions are true:

• iTunes library is corrupt.

• iTunes application is malfunctioning or its system files are damaged.

• The hard drive volume on which the iTunes library is stored, is corrupted.

• Mac system files or critical data structures are either missing or damaged.

If any of the above situations occur, you may not be able to extract data from Mac OS X hard drive. In order to get your precious data back in such circumstances, sort out this behavior by performing Data Recovery Mac.

Solution

Try out the below things to fix this issue:

• Delete the iTunes library and rebuild it. The library is located in “documents/itunes” directory. The library is used by iTunes to store information about your music files.

• Reinstall the iTunes application if the system files of application are damaged.

• Run fsck or Disk Utility to check hard drive and file system errors. These are inbuilt disk repair tools in Mac OS X.

• If the problem persists, perform “Erase and Install” installation of Mac OS X operating system.

Although, Erase and Install option resolves most of the hard drive related errors, but it also removes all the volumes and data from hard drive. It causes serious data loss situations and itunes application restore mac tools are required.

The Mac Data Recovery utilities are incorporated with advanced scanning algorithms and perform absolute recovery in majority of data loss situations. They are completely safe and easy to use.

Incoming search terms:

A playlist is similar to a folder. It allows you to group together types of music, mixes, or any combination of songs.

To create iTunes playlist, click on the ‘Create a Playlist’ button at the bottom left side of your iTunes user interface…it looks like a plus sign +…or you can choose ‘New Playlist’ from the top of the ‘File’ menu.

This will give you a blank playlist under the ‘Devices’ menu on the left-hand side of your iTunes interface.

Type in the name of the new playlist and press enter. Your playlists will be alphabetically ordered by iTunes.

To add songs to your playlist, click and drag the titles over the playlist and drop them in. Your new playlist will be automatically updated on your iPod the next time you connect it to your computer…unless you chose to update it manually.

The new playlist will automatically show up on your iPod when you choose ‘Playlists’ from the ‘Music’ menu. To listen to a song, select the playlist and song and press play. It will now only play the songs in this playlist.

How To Update iPod Manually

If you have an extensive iTunes library you may want to update your iPod manually. Connect your iPod to your computer.

Open iTunes and click on ‘Users iPod’ under ‘Devices’ on the left hand side of iTunes user interface.

Click on ‘Summary’ and you will see the details of your iPod, its ‘Version’ and ‘Options’. Under ‘Options’ check the box that says ‘Manually manage music’.

A dialog box will appear saying that “are you sure you want to manually manage music and videos on your iPod” in which you should click ‘OK’.

Note: You will need to manually eject your iPod from your computer before it can be disconnected safely if you choose to manage your songs manually.