Article
Ask iLounge 9-7-06
By Jerrod H.
Contributing Editor, iLounge
Published: Thursday, September 7, 2006
Category: Ask iLounge
Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-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.
How do I copy music from my iPod onto my computer?
Click here for the answer.
How do I put DVDs on my iPod?
For converting DVDs, web video, TV shows and home movies to your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV, we have a three-part series outlining the best formats, settings, and various tools to use for converting all types of video content for use on these devices.
The Complete Guide to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV Video Conversion (Mac)
The Complete Guide to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV Video Conversion (Windows)
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: I recently upgraded my iPod to the latest iPod Software Updater (2006-06-28), but I’m beginning to regret it: I’m getting bugs I haven’t seen before, and many of them are well-documented on the web. The problem is that I can’t find previous iPod Software Updaters anywhere online. Do you have a good source for these?
- Dave
A: Sure. A group of iPod modification enthusiasts at iPodWizard.net have compiled an archive of former iPod Software updaters at their iPod Updaters Archive webpage. They maintain a far more comprehensive list of Windows updaters than Mac, however.
Be aware of two facts before you attempt retrograding your iPod’s software: First, you’ll only be able to “Restore” your iPod, wiping it entirely clean in the process. Second, depending on which version you revert to, you may lose important functionality, whether minor (a volume limiter or security lock) or major (the ability to play certain files purchased from the iTunes Music Store).
Q: I was listening to my iPod, and it froze on me. When I restarted it by holding down the appropriate buttons, it came back without a single song in its library. Is it really possible that it erased its entire hard drive in a single crash? I really hope not: I manually manage my music, and I don’t have a copy on my computer.
- Stephanie
A: Stephanie, excellent news: there’s a very slim chance that your music is gone from your iPod. In fact, if you go into the iPod’s “Settings → About” menu, you’re likely to find that the iPod reports an amount of hard drive space available that indicates your music is still there—somewhere.
The likely cause of the problem is that your iPod’s internal database has become corrupted. Luckily, software developers have recognized this as a fairly common problem, and written utilities that help fix it. YamiPod, a free multipurpose iPod utility for both Windows and Mac users, includes such a feature that has worked for us on several occasions.
Download YamiPod, and follow their directions for repairing your iPod here.
If that doesn’t work, it may still be possible to save your music by copying it to your hard drive, and reimporting it into iTunes, starting over (you’ll lose playcounts and ratings this way). To do so, begin by enabling the view of hidden files in Windows Explorer or the Mac’s Finder, put your iPod in “Enable Disc Use” mode, and locate the music files in the folders contained in your iPod’s “iPod_Control/iTunes/Music” folder. Copy these back to your iTunes library, restore your iPod, and begin anew.
Q: Is there a special trick to loading music on my iPod nano? It’s advertised to hold 500 songs, but mine is full at 214. Help!
- Brendan
A: Because of the way digital audio works, it’s not the number of songs, or even play time that truly matters for capacity - it’s file size. How does this explain your issue?
Songs, when imported as digital audio to iTunes, are encoded at various bitrates, which is to say they can occupy a varying amount of file size per play time. Generally speaking, the higher the bitrate, the higher the audio quality. When Apple quotes the song capacity of their iPods, they assume that the user is importing music at 128 kbps, or kilobits per second. Additionally, they assume that the average song is 4 minutes long.
If you’ve set your music to import at higher bitrate, or if your songs are on average significantly longer than 4 minutes, you can expect your iPod to hold fewer songs.
To find your preferred balance between audio quality and the practical capcity of your iPod, change the bitrate you encode your music at. iTunes’ encoding bitrate preferences are accessible in the “Importing” tab in the “Advanced” panel of iTunes’ “Preferences” window.
If you’d like to convert existing songs en masse to the new bitrate, you can do so by selecting them, right clicking on them, and select “Convert Selection to AAC/MP3.”
Q: I periodically like to clean out my iTunes library, in a major way. However, I make myself nervous: will I delete something I want to retrieve at a later time? Is there an automated, or at least easy, way to backup files before I delete them?
- Michelle
A: Actually, we’ve recently gone through a similar cleaning-out process, and we really enjoyed the ease and safety with which we went about it. Here’s our process:
Create a new empty, standard playlist, and call it “Marked for Deletion.”
Create a smart playlist, with the single condition that “Playlist is not ‘Marked for Deletion’”. Call this playlist “Working List.”
Now, enter the “Working List” playlist, and as you progress through it, drag songs into the “Marked for Deletion” playlist. They will subsequently disappear from view, as if they were actually deleted. This allows you to see the results of your cleaning efforts, while keeping them 100% reversible: to “undelete" a song, simply delete it from “Marked for Deletion.”
Keep working through your “Working List,” make changes as necessary, and when you’re ready, open your “Marked for Deletion” playlist, and burn it to a Data CD or DVD using the procedures in our tutorial here.
Then, simply delete the “Marked for Deletion” playlist and all songs it contains by selecting it in the Source column, holding down the Shift (PC) or Option (Mac) key, and pressing Delete.
We’ve found this to be a fool-proof, easy, elegant way to conduct a massive overhaul of our iTunes Library, and we highly recommend it.
Q: A bunch of songs from multiple albums somehow got the wrong artwork and I need to get rid of them. It’s way too much of a hassle to go through song by song, so is there a way to delete all artwork from a whole bunch of songs in one go?
- Anonymous
A: Absolutely. First select all of the files you want to change, using one of the two methods below:
To select a continuous stream of files, click the first, hold down the Shift key, and click the last. All songs between will be selected.
To select files which aren’t listed continuously, you can click each file individually while holding Control (PC) or Command (the “Apple” key on a Mac) to add them to your selection.
Then, simply select “Get Info” from iTunes’ “File” menu. Here, you can change multiple properties and tags en masse very easily. Changes will be applied to any field with the checkbox checked. To erase album art across your selection, for example, select the checkbox next to the Artwork field, but don’t do anything to the field itself - leave it empty, and click “OK.” iTunes will delete the artwork of all songs in your selection.
Be careful in this multiple-song Info window, however—it also makes proper tags easy to overwrite!
Ask iLounge Archives:
8-15-08: Transferring play counts back to iTunes, Playing iPod while charging, Customizing iPhone alerts, Syncing movies to iPod nano, iTunes not recognizing new CDs, Sudoku reviews
8-8-08: iPhone and SIM card contacts, Syncing iPhone contacts, Hiding SMS previews on iPhone, Playing iPod touch on secondary computer, Syncing photos to iPod, Resuming interrupted iTunes WiFI Store downloads
8-8-08: iLounge Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz responds to reader questions on all things iLounge, including technical issues related to iPhone 3G, and behind-the-scenes editorial issues
8-1-08: iPhone Edition: Switching between apps, Car charging accessories, Activating older iPhone models, Sending MMS, App Store in wrong language, Excel and A2DP support
7-25-08: MobileMe on iPhone for Calendars only, Buying iPods for International use, Voice recorders for 4G iPods, Free Music for iPod, Problems transferring purchased content to iPod, Playing AAC files in Windows Media Player
Shop in the loungeStore for iPod + iPhone Accessories.
Comments
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1
dave,
read some of the tutorials on ipodwizard to learn how to update your ipod to an older firmware without having to restore.
Posted by mrmojorisingi on September 7, 2006 at 6:20 PM (PDT)
2
Thanks for your recommendations for deleting song files from the library and the hard drive. I am having a problem, however, deleting the song files from the playlist view. When I simply delete the playlist, the songs remain in the library and on the hard drive. When I try ALT-Delete, as you suggest, nothing happens. It’s as if I didn’t press anything at all. How can I delete all of the songs in a playlist without having to find each individual song in the main library?
Posted by jasonact on September 8, 2006 at 12:31 PM (PDT)
3
Jason:
Go in the playlist and select all of the songs. This could be by clicking one and then hitting Ctrl+A. When they are highlighted, hit Shift+Delete. A dialogue box should ask if you want to delete them from your harddrive or the iTunes library. Choose the harddrive (Obviously...) Voila!
Posted by papayaninja on September 8, 2006 at 12:57 PM (PDT)
4
Brilliant! Thanks for the tip.
Posted by jasonact on September 8, 2006 at 8:35 PM (PDT)
5
jasonact-
As papayaninja mentioned, the modifier key is Shift, not Alt. This will work either on songs (as papayaninja noted), or on playlists (as the article states).
My error, and it’s been fixed… thanks for pointing it out.
Posted by Jerrod H. in TX on September 9, 2006 at 9:37 AM (PDT)
6
I’ve managed to update to itunes ver 7. My problem lies in updating my 5G ipod from ver 1.1 to ver 1.2. I keep getting error messages, error 1417 to be precise! My 2nd problem is that whereas it was updating my Contacts and Calender perfectly fine with the previous itunes version its now asking for Outlook 2003 or later and i have Outlook 2002!Help please. I’m a Win XP user.
Thanks in advance
Posted by Taiwo on September 15, 2006 at 10:09 PM (PDT)
7
my windows computer drive completely crashed. i used podutil to reclaim the music. but my library is twice the size and none of my playlists are in itunes. where did i go wrong??? and what’s the best fix—deleted the 3 files in my music and recopy OR...? (in my defense, i found it hard to read the printed copy of the instructions b/c of the ads!) thanks for your help!
Posted by mismarbeth on October 2, 2006 at 8:30 PM (PDT)
8
My computer just crashed and the Itunes data was lost.
Can I download from my ipod mini back into itunes?
Posted by Ashly on October 17, 2006 at 4:02 AM (PDT)