sort of OT, CD names to iTunes

Kay C Lan lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com
Wed Mar 8 08:11:07 EST 2006


Sorry for being late with this reply but I've been a bit 'listless' lately
and I've left the OT posts to last to browse through. I thought though, as
obviuosly quite a few of us have been through, going through or
contemplating digitizing analog material, I'd share my recent marathon
experience.

Alex Tweedly wrote:

I am 99.9% sure that the track names are not on an audio CD. If they
> were, iTunes, MusicMatch, etc. would surely retrieve them for us,
> wouldn't they ?
>

Yes, you can be 100% sure. If you take a commercial CD and look at it
through the Finder (Mac) or iTunes (cancel the Gracenote lookup) you will
see that the tracks are simply listed as Track 01, Track 02, etc.

Alex also wrote:

> I think today you do:
> 1. LP -> AIFF
> 2. AIFF -> CD
> 3. CD -> iTunes
>

I did it:
1. LP -> AIFF
2. AIFF -> iTunes
3. iTunes -> CD

The only reason I'd recommend this method is that I hate to waste CD space.
Most LPs are only 45 min or less. Quite a few Double LPs can fit on an 80min
CD. So by putting everything in iTunes first I can then add extra tracks
(either by the same artist or of a similar genre to fill the CD.

Some tips to make life easy entering data into iTunes.

1) Set iTunes up to list songs ordered by Album. Drag an album of AIFF files
from the Finder into the iTunes window. They will be grouped together so
when you open the Info window you can use the 'Next' button to sequential
add data.

2)    Once you've entered the first track details (Track name, artist name,
album name etc) press 'OK', NOT 'Next'. By doing so the info is 'registered'
with iTunes and from then on you only have to type the first couple of
letters and the rest will be automatically filled in (obviously doesn't work
for track name). If you don't press 'OK', but use the 'Next' button the auto
entries don't include the data you just entered so you have to type the
whole lot.

Once you've 'OK'ed the first track, for the rest you can use the 'Next'
button and every keystroke will bring up auto-suggestions.

3) Do your albums in REVERSE alphabetical order. Both by Artist and by Album
name. Consider the following list of Artist.

Pet Shop Boys
Pete Townsend
Peter Allen
Peter Blakeley
Peter Cetera
Peter Cetera With Amy Grant
Peter Cetera With Cher
Peter Frampton
Peter Gabriel
Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy and Tom Waits
Peter, Paul & Mary

Because iTunes' intelligent guess works on alphabetical order. If you enter
your Artist/Albums in alphabetical order, to enter the ones by 'Peter Cetera
With Cher' you would have to type 'Peter Cetera With C' before iTunes would
correctly fill in the rest.

But if you work in reverse alphabetical order, all you would need to do is
Type 'P' and the first guess would be 'Peter Cetera With Cher' - that is
after you have entered it the first time. Saves an inordinate amount of
typing.

HTH



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