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Ask iLounge 11-13-09

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By Jesse Hollington

Applications Editor, iLounge
Published: Friday, November 13, 2009
Category: Ask iLounge

Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-, iPhone-, iPad-, iTunes-, or Apple TV-related questions from a member of the iLounge editorial team. We'll answer several questions here each week, and of course, you can always get help with more immediate concerns from the iLounge Discussion Forums. Submit your questions for consideration using our Ask iLounge Submit Form. We reserve the right to edit questions for grammar, spelling, and length.

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And now, for this week's Ask iLounge column:

Q:

I hope you can help me with this. My husband and I just put both of our iTunes libraries on one computer. Everything is working perfectly except that when we sync our iPhones, it is syncing both of our Yahoo contacts on to each other’s iPhones. So I now have all of my contacts and all of his contacts and the same goes for him. Is there a way to make it so that we are just getting our own contacts on our own phone when we have two iTunes libraries on the same computer. Prior to syncing the phones, we each open our respective iTunes library file. Thanks.

- Sara

A:

Unfortunately, when using multiple libraries under the same user account on your computer, the preferences and other settings are still shared between both libraries—only the actual media side of the iTunes library is kept separate. So while you can sync different music, videos and playlists, other settings for things like contacts, calendars and bookmarks will still be shared between both libraries.

The only simple way to solve this is to set up completely separate user accounts on your computer, which will keep your iTunes preferences and other settings separate, including sync settings for your Yahoo contacts. In this scenario, you would each have your own user accounts in your operating system and would log in as your own identity and create and maintain your iTunes libraries separately under each account. Note that you could still share your media content by placing it in a shared folder on your hard drive and having each library reference the same media files, but all other sync settings would be kept completely separate from each other.

Q:

I recently purchased a new computer and followed all the directions for using my iPod nano to transfer my music library from my old PC to my new one. In doing so, all of my data on my iPod nano now shows as orange “Other” data when plugged into either computer, and no music will play on the nano. When I followed the directions to transfer the data to my new computer, none of the music is visible in iTunes but I can see it in my music folder in my documents and it looks okay, but I cannot play music through my iPod nano or in iTunes on my new PC.

- Kathryn

A:

Chances are that your iPod nano suddenly showing your content as “Other” has nothing directly to do with switching your library to a new computer, but is rather an unfortunate coincidence. The iPod stores information about your music and other media content in a database on the device itself, and both the iPod and iTunes read this database in order to determine where you content is. If this database is damaged or erased, then neither iTunes nor the iPod will be able to locate your media content, even though it’s still physically stored on the device. In this case, iTunes sees that some space is being taken up by something but labels it as “Other” since it has no idea what it is.

In terms of the situation with your iTunes library, it sounds like you may have copied the media files themselves over to your new computer, but missed copying the iTunes library database, or did not put it in the correct location. Similar to the iPod itself, iTunes uses a database to catalog the media content on your computer. This database contains information about the media files themselves as well as other data such as your playlists, iPod sync settings, and so forth.

If you still have the old computer available, your best option is to re-transfer your iTunes library from that computer, making sure that you get all of the necessary files in the process. Our article on Transferring your iTunes Library provides detailed instructions on how to do this.

If you can get your library transferred over and working properly, you can simply “Restore” your iPod back to factory settings and then re-sync your music and other content back on from iTunes. Failing this, however, it is also possible to access the iPod in “Disk Mode” and locate the files and copy them back from your iPod onto your computer. You could then create a brand new iTunes library and reimport these tracks into it. More information on how to do this can be found in our iPod 201 article, Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer.

Q:

We have 200 GBs and growing in our iTunes library of mixed media, audiobooks, music and movies.  We have an iPod mini, and 80 GB & 160 GB iPod classics. To manipulate everything I have set up the 160 GB as manually managed and put the 80 GB & iPod mini on selected playlists.  I can mix media with the manual option, but not with the selected playlists.  I want to be able to mix media (music, audiobooks and movies) on the playlists for long nights on watch but nothing I have tried has worked. Any suggestions?

- Norm

A:

Although you can mix media content in individual playlists, you’re generally best to use separate playlists for different types of content. The other key point to remember is that each tab in your sync settings in iTunes is specific to that particular content type: The “Music” tab for music and audiobooks, the “TV Shows” tab for TV Shows, the “Movies” tab for Movies, and so forth.

What this means is that if you have a playlist that contains Movies that you want on your iPod, you must select this playlist from the “Movies” tab and not the “Music” tab. If you have a single playlist that contains both music and movies, then you would need to select it from both sections in your synchronization settings in iTunes; the songs will be transferred based on the playlist being selected on the “Music” tab and the movies would be transferred based on the playlist being selected on the “Movies” tab.

Q:

I just logged onto my iTunes library to play some tunes and they won’t play. There are exclamation marks to the left of all the songs. A ‘locate’ prompt keeps coming up and that isn’t working either. I have downloaded the new version of iTunes and all updates are done. I used it a couple of weeks ago and everything was fine. This is very frustrating, hope you can help! Thanks.

- Erin

A:

The exclamation marks indicate that iTunes cannot locate your media files where it expects them to be. The iTunes library database stores a full path to each media file in your library, and if you move those files, then iTunes will lose track of them and not be able to find them.

If you’ve moved your iTunes Media folder manually, then the solution to this problem is simply to put it back where it was originally located. You should never move files around in the underlying file system as iTunes will lose track of these file locations. Instead, if you need to move your iTunes content to a different location, use the “Consolidate” function built into iTunes itself. This is explained in more detail in our article on Transferring your iTunes Library.

If you haven’t changed or moved anything that you’re aware of and are storing your iTunes library on an external hard drive, it’s also possible that the drive letter has changed. Windows will often reassign drive letters dynamically if things are connected in a different order. If your external hard drive was originally drive E: for instance, and is now drive F: for whatever reason, then iTunes will not be able to locate your media files as it still expects to see them on drive E:. You can reassign drive letters in Windows by visiting your Windows Control Panel and selecting Computer Management and then Disk Management from there.

Q:

I have the new 3G iPod shuffle and am running iTunes 9. The iTunes window shows selected podcasts are on the playlist of the shuffle and that list changes as I update and sync but they won’t play. How do I get podcasts to play on the shuffle? The gurus at my closest Apple Store couldn’t seem to figure this out either.

- Tim

A:

On the 3G iPod shuffle, podcasts are excluded from your normal music rotation on the assumption that you probably don’t want to listen to podcasts mixed in with your music. Instead, you need to specifically select either a playlist that you’ve set up containing your podcasts, or the general “Podcasts” category on the iPod shuffle by using the Voice Over controls for playlist selection.

To do this, simply hold down the main play/pause button on the headphone controls. You will first hear the name of the currently-playing track—keep holding the button down and the iPod shuffle will emit a short beep sound and start reading off the names of your playlists on the device. Once it has gone through the playlists, the next option should be “Podcasts.” At any point after hearing the name of the playlist you want to listen to, simply release and tap the button again to select that particular playlist, or the Podcasts category.

Note that there is no way to select a specific podcast to listen to on the iPod shuffle; the “Podcasts” category simply begins playing all of the podcasts that are loaded onto the device, although of course you can skip through the individual episodes using the headphone controls as you would for any other track. If you want to listen to a specific podcast, your best option is to create a playlist in iTunes for that podcast, and then select the specific playlist using the method above rather than choosing the general “Podcasts” category.

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Ask iLounge Archives:

2-3-12: Deleting pictures from Photo Stream, Transferring Apps to a new iTunes library, Apple Universal Dock and iPhone 4S, Getting Track Names after CD Import, Video Playlists on the iPad

11-25-11: Removing music after activating iTunes Match, Smart Playlists and iTunes Match, Backing up data from an iPhone, Syncing MP3s to an iPod nano, Migrating Playlists to a new Computer

11-11-11: Configure Apple IDs on family iOS devices, Recovering lost audiobooks, Unable to disable passcode lock on iOS devices, Buying an iPod for audio-only use, Preventing deleted tracks from coming back from an iOS device

11-4-11: iPhone 4S storage capacity doesn't match, Transferring HD video from iPhone 4S to a computer, Recovering photos from iPod touch, Notification Center and iMessage in iOS 5

10-21-11: Using iCloud's Find My iPhone on older devices, Batch deleting photos in Camera Roll, Using iTunes Gift Cards internationally, Audiobooks and iCloud, Merging contacts from two devices into iCloud

See the rest of the Archives...

« iPhone Gems: Brain Challenge 2, Impossible Quiz, Jeopardy, Trivia Wars + Wheel of Fortune

Ask iLounge 11-6-09 »

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Comments

1

why won’t Itunes recognize my ipod as plugged in when it is plugged in?

Posted by Bennett on December 7, 2009 at 4:14 PM (PDT)

2

Dear Sirs,
I think my Ipod is a generation 4,30G, with the wheel and video. I had been able to play my lectures and audiobooks, etc seemlessly moving from one to the next just as my music playlists do. But since one of the updates installed I have not been able to do this. I have tried everything I could think of, but it plays one chapter then goes all the way back to music.  Please help, I’m going back to school in a few days and trying to hit the buttons while driving is very dangerous. Desparate.

Posted by jmpfeifer55 on August 16, 2010 at 4:05 PM (PDT)

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