Editing CD tracks before import

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Editing CD tracks before import

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Q: I’m ripping CD’s into my iTunes library and the artist and album names aren’t coming up on the information. Is there any quicker way of adding the info rather than doing them all individually, or can you do it once and then copy it for the whole album?

- Gerald

A: The first thing you should check if the CD information is not coming up properly is that you have a working Internet connection when you insert the CD, since the track information is downloaded from the CDDB system on the Internet. You can also force iTunes to check again by selecting Advanced, Get CD Track Names from the iTunes menu.

Keep in mind as well that non-commercial CDs, such as “mix CDs” that you’ve made yourself, will not be identified by the CDDB service, since these are not standard CDs.

In terms of editing the track information for a CD before importing it, this is actually handled in much the same way as it is for normal tracks that are already in your iTunes library, meaning you can also very easily edit the properties for multiple tracks. Simply insert the CD, select all of the tracks in the track listing, and then choose File, Get Info:

From this dialog box, edit the common track information like you normally would (ie, album, artist, etc) and click “OK” to apply these changes to all of the selected CD tracks.

Naturally you won’t be able to edit the names of individual tracks from this dialog box, since these are likely going to be different for each track, but here’s another useful shortcut that may help: You may already be aware that when editing the track information for an individual track, you can use the Next and Previous buttons at the bottom of the track information dialog box to navigate between tracks. However, you can also use keyboard shortcuts for these buttons: ALT-N/ALT-P on a PC or CMD-N/CMD-P on a Mac will quickly move you through the track listing and the cursor will remain in the current field. This should help you make short work of entering individual track names without having to use the mouse each time. Simply enter the track name, hit ALT-N or CMD-N and then type in the next track name, and so forth.

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