iLounge

Q: What are the best speakers to use with my iPod? (15, 76-79, and 90-92)

Q: What are the best headphones to use with my iPod? (10, 72-75, and 90-92)

Q: I really want to get a nice case for my iPod. Do you have any suggestions? (36-37, 54-67, and 90-92)

Q: How can I connect my iPod to my car stereo? (14, 32-35, 68-71, and 90-92)

Q: Are there any batteries that I can use to extend my iPod's battery life? (82-83 and 90-92)

A: Answers to these and many other questions can be found in two places. Our Free iPod Book 3.3 provides a complete report card to all of the iPod accessories we've reviewed as of summer 2007, as well as over 125 iTunes and iPod tips & tricks. Further, our new 2008 iPod & iPhone Buyers' Guide has accessory tutorials at the page numbers listed in parentheses above. These and other publications in our Library are free downloads, developed by the editors of iLounge!

Q:

When viewing videos, what does the “Widescreen” option on the iPod actually do?  I haven’t noticed any difference when turning it on or off - all my videos still play on the full screen, and some still have the black bars on top regardless of the setting.

- Heather

Firstly, the “Widescreen” option on the iPod will only work for content that has been encoded in a widescreen format. Typical TV show content is not normally encoded in this format, and therefore the widescreen setting will not do anything for this type of content.

Widescreen format is also described in terms of something called aspect ratio which is the ratio of the width of a screen to the height of the screen. The most common aspect ratio used by televisions is 4:3, although most newer HDTV sets and “widescreen” TVs use a 16:9 aspect ratio. Theatrical movies, on the other hand, generally use either a 1.85:1 aspect ratio (which roughly corresponds to 16:9) or a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, also referred to as “Cinemascope.”  You will often find these numbers indicated on the back of many commercial DVDs.

The problem is that the screen on the iPod is a 4:3 aspect ratio, specifically 320x240. This makes it a perfect size for viewing traditional television content, but when viewing widescreen TV shows or movies, it becomes necessary to add the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen (also referred to as “letterboxing”) in order to display the full width of the video. This also occurs when connecting the iPod to an external television.

If the “Widescreen” option on the iPod is set to ON, then the iPod will play 16:9 widescreen videos in their full width. This will result in black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, since the video doesn’t properly fit the 4:3 iPod screen.

However, if you find that your videos are too small to view in this mode, you can turn the widescreen setting on the iPod OFF. This will cause the video to fill the entire iPod screen. In order to do this, however, the iPod cuts off (or “crops”) the left and right sides of the video, since it now cannot display the full width. In essence, the iPod is “zooming in” on the video in order to make it fill the screen.

The result is a trade-off between being able to view the entire width of a widescreen movie, or enlarging the video to fill the iPod or TV screen. As shown above, the cropping can be particularly intrusive with the wider screen rendering of Cinemascope movies.

It should be noted that all of this is dependent upon the video content itself actually being encoded in the proper resolutions and aspect ratios. Although all widescreen content purchased from the iTunes Store is properly encoded in this regard, content converted from DVDs may not be.

The problem is that many DVDs, particularly older ones, were actually in what was known as a “letterbox” format, rather than a proper anamorphic widescreen format. In this case, even though the original video format may have been widescreen, the DVD video is not actually encoded in a widescreen aspect ratio. Rather, “letterboxed” movies were basically encoded onto the DVD in a 4:3 aspect ratio with the black bars at the top and bottom actually added to the movie. This would allow these movies to play in a widescreen format even on older DVD players that did not have a widescreen mode.

Unfortunately, however, when these DVDs are converted to iPod format, most video converters will leave them in their original 4:3 aspect ratio, with the black bars as part of the frame. In this case, the “widescreen” setting on the iPod will have no effect, since as far as the iPod is concerned, you are watching a 4:3 video. In this case, the black bars at the top and bottom are not being generated by the iPod, but are in reality part of the video image.

When dealing with DVDs, the description on the packaging can often be helpful in determining what the source format is. Although the terminology differs among the different studios, many older DVDs that used the term “Letterboxed” referred to this type of encoding: a 4:3 image with the black bars added to the frame. On the other hand, the term “anamorphic widescreen” almost always refers to videos that are properly encoded in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Note that this will be a much less common issue with DVDs that have been more recently published.

You can also check whether or not your video content is in a proper widescreen format by viewing it in a window on your computer through iTunes or QuickTime. When playing video in a window, QuickTime will not add any black bars, but will rather show the window itself in the proper aspect ratio.

On the other hand, if a video is “letterboxed” and has been encoded in a 4:3 aspect ratio, the QuickTime window will be in a 4:3 aspect ratio as well, and the black bars will be apparent in the video.

Note that the same holds true for most DVD playback applications, so you can often check a DVD before encoding it by simply playing it back on your computer in a window through your software DVD player, such as Apple’s DVD Player app included with Mac OS X.

You can also check the resolution in QuickTime with the Window, Show Movie Info menu. A 4:3 iPod video file will have a resolution of either 640x480 or 320x240, while a proper 16:9 widescreen video will have a 640x360 or 320x180 resolution and a Cinemascope movie will be in 640x272 or 320x136. Note that there may be some slight variance in these numbers depending upon the source content, but they should be reasonably close to these resolutions.

Many encoders offer the ability to “crop” videos during encoding. When converting older letterboxed videos, cropping the top and bottom will generally produce content with a proper 16:9 aspect ratio for iPod playback. Simply crop off an appropriate number of pixels from the top and bottom to eliminate the black bars, using the resolutions above as a guideline.

More information and discussion on various options and settings for encoding videos for the iPod and Apple TV can be found in our TV & Videos Forum in the iLounge Discussion Forums.

One last item of note:  The iPod itself does not provide any output support for actual widescreen televisions or other devices. The TV output from the iPod is always sent out to the TV in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with the appropriate black bars added for widescreen content if the widescreen menu option is turned on. This will result in an image that may look distorted on widescreen televisions in native 16:9 mode. Fortunately, most widescreen televisions include a mode for viewing 4:3 content such as normal (non-HDTV) broadcast television stations, and the TV should be set to this mode when viewing content from an iPod.

When I convert my AAC songs on iTunes (from my original CDs) into MP3, is the result the same as if I had imported the original CD into MP3 format in the first place?

- George

The process of converting digital audio files between formats or bit-rates is referred to as transcoding, and this term applies regardless of whether you are converting between two different formats (ie, MP3 and AAC), or simply converting to a different bit-rate in the same format (ie, 192kbps MP3 to 128kbps MP3).

In this case, it is also important to note that we are talking about “lossy” formats. This means that the encoder actually removes audio information from the track in order to produce the resulting compressed MP3 or AAC audio file. This is normally information representing audio frequencies and harmonics that most people cannot hear anyway, although the loss of audible quality will increase dramatically at lower bit-rates.

Transcoding between lossy formats is generally considered a bad idea in terms of quality, since the results will not be the same as if you had re-ripped the track from the original CD.

This may run contrary to what some people expect, since with digital audio the encoding should be a consistent process being run by a computer. If you rip the same audio CD to the same bit-rate with the same encoder, you will always get the same results. The encoder doesn’t make subjective or random decisions when encoding audio—it simply follows a pre-defined algorithm.

There are two problems with transcoding that will result in reduced quality, however:

The first issue has to do with the fact that different encoders will make different decisions about what audio data gets “thrown out” when performing the compression (remember that lossy encoders actually discard audio data). Since the differing encoders use different algorithms, when you transcode between two lossy formats, you are actually getting the worst of both encoders. In other words, you may find that the AAC encoder has discarded audio information that the MP3 encoder would not have. Unfortunately, once that information has been discarded by the AAC encoder, there’s no way for the MP3 encoder to get it back without going back to the original CD. In practical application, these differences should be relatively subtle, but they do make a difference, particularly at lower bit-rates.

The second issue has to do with something called “artifacting.”  No lossy encoder produces a perfect sound, and in the compression process, audio “artifacts” are generally introduced. These are imperfections in sound quality—effectively sounds and frequencies that were not present in the original recording. In essence, the compression process is actually adding (or at least distorting) sound.

Even if this compressed file is returned to an original WAV file (ie, burned to a CD), these artifacts will remain part of the audio. A reanalysis of the audio, whether from a burned CD or through transcoding, is going to pick up these artifacts. This will skew the reanalysis of the file in question, thereby producing a different result.

While the first issue will not affect transcoding between bit-rates with the same encoder, this second issue affects all types of transcoding between lossy formats.

In reality, the quality loss is not directly cumulative, however, nor is it as dramatic as some would suggest. There is a lot of misinformation regarding transcoding, and some will try to suggest that if a 192kbps AAC file contains 50% of the audio quality of the original CD, then a transcode to 192kbps MP3 would produce a file that is only 25% of the original quality (50% of 50%). This is not accurate, however, as there is a high degree of overlap between the information that the various lossy encoders will discard. In fact, it is not really possible to put a specific measurement on the quality loss, but it is not as high as the percentages that some often quote.

Therefore, while there is a theoretical loss in quality, it may not be perceptible, depending upon the bit-rates that you are encoding from and to, the encoders themselves, and your own ears and listening equipment. Audio quality is highly subjective, and we recommend that users conduct their own listening tests to determine what formats and methods work best for their own preferences. The best way to do this would be to take a track that you already have in your iTunes library in AAC format and convert it to MP3. Then, rip that same track from the CD directly to MP3 format. Give them both the same name and other track information, and then listen to them in whatever your typical listening conditions would be, without knowing which one is which, and see if you can hear a difference. This may not be as sophisticated a method as the “blind ABX tests” that you may have heard of, but is usually sufficient for most people.

Note that none of this applies to the available “lossless” formats, such as Apple Lossless.  As the name implies a “Lossless” format does not discard any information during compression. As a result, converting from a lossless format to a lossy format will always produce the same results as ripping from the original CD. In fact, many audio enthusiasts maintain a library of their CDs in a lossless format such as Apple Lossless or FLAC in order to provide a base library for future conversion without having to go through the work of re-ripping individual CDs.  Lossless files, although somewhat compressed, do take up a great deal more space than even MP3 or AAC files at the highest bit-rates.

More information and discussion on the relative merits of different formats and transcoding can be found in our Digital Audio Formats Forum in the iLounge Discussion Forums.

There is one other point about converting as opposed to re-ripping that is worth mentioning:  If you are planning to use the resulting converted tracks in your iTunes library, there is an additional advantage to re-ripping the audio tracks instead of converting them. iTunes will offer to replace existing tracks when you re-import from CD, which means ratings, playcounts, and entries in playlists are preserved. When converting through iTunes, however, it creates a new copy of the track in your iTunes library. This means that you will have to manually find and delete the old tracks after the conversion, and that you will lose any playlist entries or ratings and play counts pertaining to those tracks.

I recently had to replace the hard drive in my PC. My previous PC had iTunes on it, and the repair person copied the music files back into the new computer. Now, however they all have exclamation points in front of them and I get a message saying the original file cannot be found. When I try to locate it, I cannot find it. When I add new songs, they are added without problems. Any ideas as to what is causing this and how I can remedy it without re-copying all of my 300+ CDs again?  Is the only solution available to copy the songs from the iPod back to the computer?

- Mary-Jane

If the repair person actually did copy the music files back into your computer, they should be there somewhere, although it’s possible that they weren’t copied into the location that iTunes expects to find them.

iTunes stores the full path to each file within its library database, so if music files are moved to other locations, this will result in these sort of broken links in iTunes, as the files will not be where iTunes expects to find them.

In a default iTunes configuration, all new files are stored under the “iTunes Music” folder, located in the “iTunes” sub-folder in the current user’s “My Music” folder (Windows) or “Music” folder (Mac).

If your music files are in this location, then you may just want to ensure that your “iTunes Music Folder Path” is correctly set to this directory. You can find this setting under the iTunes advanced preferences by selecting the Preferences option from the iTunes (Mac) or Edit (Windows) menu, and then choosing the “Advanced” tab.

If your music files are not located in this folder, then it’s possible that they were copied to another folder or perhaps a different user profile on your computer. If you’re using Windows and have Administrative privileges, you can search the entire hard drive for files with an MP3 or M4A extension by using the Windows “Search” option found on the Start Menu. If you’re using a Mac, you can use the Spotlight feature to perform this search, but if you have more than one user account, you will need to log into each one individually and perform a Spotlight search, as even administrative users do not have access to other profiles by default on Mac OS X.

If you locate your music files in another folder, you can try copying them into the iTunes Music folder and iTunes may be able to recognize them once they are placed in this location. Alternatively, if you’re not concerned about preserving ratings, play counts, or playlists, you can simply re-import all of your files by using the File, Add to Library menu option. If you do choose to reimport your files, you will want to erase the existing entries from your iTunes library first to prevent duplicate entries, since each imported file will arrive as a new entry in the library, leaving the old reference to the missing file behind.

If a search of your hard drive turns up no files with an MP3 or M4A extension, then it’s very likely the files were not in fact transferred from your old hard drive, and unfortunately you will have no choice but to either re-rip from CD or restore the music from your iPod if you happen to have your complete library stored on there.

Is there a simple way I can associate one image as the album art for every song in my iTunes music library?

- Hugh

Although it is not possible to have iTunes simply use a single image for every song by default, you can assign an artwork image to multiple tracks at once.

To do this, simply select the tracks that you want to apply an album artwork image to. To select ALL tracks in the current view, you can use the Edit, Select All option. Once the selected tracks are highlighted, simply choose File, Get Info and you will be presented with a dialog box that will allow you to edit the properties for all selected tracks.

An artwork image can either be dragged into the “Artwork” box, or you can paste an image in from the system clipboard by clicking on the Artwork box and pressing CTRL-V (Windows) or CMD-V (Mac) to paste the clipboard content into it. Clicking OK will then apply the assigned artwork image to all tracks, replacing any artwork that may have previously been present.

Another method of assigning artwork is to use the artwork window in iTunes itself. To do this, ensure the window is displayed by choosing View, Show Artwork and that it is showing the artwork for “Selected Item” instead of “Now Playing” (you can change this by clicking on the title of the artwork window). You can then select multiple tracks and drag or paste the artwork into the artwork window. Note, however, that this will not replace existing artwork, but only add the artwork image to the selected tracks as an additional image which will appear in the “Artwork” tab of the track properties.

Also note that either procedure will embed the artwork image in every selected track, so it may take a few minutes to run on a large library, and it will slightly increase the size of each file by approximately 40-50KB (depending upon the resolution of the artwork image). These added artwork images, if transferred to the iPod, will also take up additional space on the iPod since each image must be stored individually in the artwork database on the iPod, even if they are all the same image. Each image takes up approximately 100KB per track on a 5G iPod, or 24KB per track on an iPod nano.

I downloaded a song from iTunes and when I try and transfer it over to an MP3 player it is protected. How do I unprotect this song?

- Mat

Songs purchased from the iTunes Store are protected with digital rights management, and cannot be played on a digital audio player other than an iPod. You cannot specifically unprotect these tracks, but can only transfer them to an iPod or other authorized device or burn them to an audio CD.

If you are having difficulties transferring purchased songs to an iPod, you will want to ensure that your computer is “authorized” to play that content. To do this, you can either simply playback one of your purchased tracks, at which point iTunes will prompt you to enter your iTunes Store user name and password, or you can manually authorize your computer in iTunes 7 by selecting the Store, Authorize Computer menu option.

Although it is not possible to transfer your purchased tracks to a non-iPod player, iTunes does allow you to burn any purchased tracks to an audio CD. Once a track is burned to a standard audio CD format, it can be reimported into iTunes (or any other music management application) in the same way that any purchased audio CD can be. In this case, it can then be ripped to an unprotected MP3 format that can then be transferred to another digital audio playback device.

I have an iPod video and would like to know how I can play only one song at a time from a playlist? I do not want it to play the next song.

- Chuck

Although this cannot be done directly when starting playback from a normal playlist, there are two ways in which this can be accomplished indirectly.

The first method is through the use of the On-The-Go Playlist. If you go to the Music, Playlists menu on the iPod and scroll down to the bottom, you will see the special playlist named “On-The-Go.”  You can add tracks to this playlist as you are browsing through your library on the iPod simply by holding down the centre SELECT button on a highlighted track until the highlight bar flashes. This can be used to set up a dynamic playlist for use while you’re on the go (hence the name), and when selecting it for playback it will function like any other playlist.

So, if you want to play only a single track, simply add it to the On-The-Go playlist as the only entry, and then start playing the On-The-Go playlist. The iPod will play the one track that is listed, and then stop. Note that you can also add additional tracks to the On-The-Go playlist while you are listening to it, and those tracks will be played after the current track finishes, thus acting like somewhat of a “play queue” feature.

Note that if you are using automatic synchronization with your iTunes library, the On-The-Go playlist will be transferred back to your computer the next time you sync. Each sync will produce a new version of the On-The-Go playlist, and these can accumulate after a while.  If you don’t want to maintain these playlists you can either delete them from iTunes manually after syncing, or you can ensure that the On-The-Go playlist is cleared prior to connecting your iPod to iTunes by using the “Clear Playlist” option that can be found at the bottom of the On-The-Go playlist on the iPod.

If you have an enhanced “5.5G” iPod, you can also play an individual track by using the “Search” function. If you search for an individual track by name and select it for playback through the Search menu, the iPod will play that one track and then stop.

Ask iLounge Archives:

11-6-09: Storing iPod software updates, Playing an iPod continuously, Transferring play counts to a new iTunes library, iPhone backups, Klipsch S4i earphones

10-30-09: Authorization problems with iPod touch, Changing Grid View background in iTunes, iTunes library and Music Folder are different sizes, Older iPods and firmware updates, Reconciling two different iTunes libraries, Syncing multiple devices to one iTunes library

10-23-09: Using a laptop with an iTunes library on an external hard drive, Transferring YouTube videos to iPod, iPod touch accessibility settings, Disabling Shake to Shuffle on iPod nano, Purchased songs fail to download from iTunes Store, Charging and powering off iPhone

10-16-09: Moving iTunes to a new computer, Transferring contacts from Blackberry to an iPhone, Disabling iPhone Backups, Using AV cables for audio only, Problems syncing photos to iPod touch, Memorex iFlip and iPhone compatibility

10-9-09: iPhone OS and external keyboards, Adjusting ratings in a remote iTunes library, Excluding tracks from Genius Mixes, Moving iTunes library out of My Documents, Playlist folders on iPod touch, Refreshing random Smart Playlists

See the rest of the Archives...