itunes question off topic
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Topic: itunes question off topic
Posted By: edtop40
Subject: itunes question off topic
Date Posted: 22 March 2020 at 10:28am
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need a little help from you guys.....i recently bought a
new computer and every time i open itunes the default setting for where i'd like music stored reverts back to somewhere else.....i go into edit, preferences, advanced and change the 'itunes media folder location' to my external drive 'music' folder and each time i close out the program it say C:\users\owner\music\itunes\itunes media'....i can figure out how to change it permanently....any idea? ------------- edtop40 |
Replies:
Posted By: eric_a
Date Posted: 22 March 2020 at 3:21pm
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For me, that happens if I open iTunes before Windows
acknowledges an external drive. Even if the drive is physically connected, I usually need to access it once in Windows (e.g., clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer) so it's active when iTunes opens. |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 24 March 2020 at 10:11am
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Ever since my Mac updated to the new OS Catalina (in October), 2,000 of my
songs purchased before 2009 need to be constantly authorized in order to play. If at any time they are unauthorized, they won't sync to my devices and will permanently be removed from any detailed playlist I've created. A nightmare. The files are all Protected AAC Files, and are fine once reauthorized, but they fail every other day. Apple says to just re-download the songs, but many - including all those American Idol or Glee songs - are gone permanently from iTunes! |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 24 March 2020 at 10:54am
My suggestion is to make an apple lossless copy of the itunes download and it will remove the DRM from that time period and will keep the file intact at the same bit rate it was. It won't be lossless but that is not the intent of doing it. The end result will be you can at least move on from downloads that don't exist or are not available anymore. Let me know if it works. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
jebsib wrote:Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 24 March 2020 at 4:41pm
| Really good suggestion, PopArchivist - will try this! |
Posted By: edtop40
Date Posted: 25 March 2020 at 1:35pm
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jebsib,
do you have any of the american idol version of the hits that have been deleted?....there was another thread listing the many songs and versions that are forever lost to the dustbin of apples servers....if so, we'd love to have them... ------------- edtop40 |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 25 March 2020 at 3:09pm
I second that emotion. Please reach out to Ed or I, both of us have been trying to find many of those downloads for years... ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 25 March 2020 at 4:28pm
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I don't have many - just a handful. Let me figure out what I have and post in
the next 24 hours. |
Posted By: MMathews
Date Posted: 25 March 2020 at 7:31pm
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Ed,
I don't have a fix for the folder problem but I can tell you my I-tunes does exactly the same thing. I kept changing the default folder to MY choice but every time I re-opened the program it went back to its own default. So I just live with it. Thank you Apple for yet another irritating bug. And my preferred folder is not an external drive. MM |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 25 March 2020 at 8:55pm
Considering they don't exist as downloads anymore anything is always better than nothing...let me know if the apple lossless trick works and removes the DRM from that time period. If not, I can suggest another way to go about it. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 25 March 2020 at 8:58pm
Ive avoided using Itunes unless I need to. I now use foobar2000 to convert to Apple format and mp3tag to tag and edit. Honestly other than to load my Iphone with songs or downloads of unavailable songs in lossless there are better organizing software available now. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 28 March 2020 at 10:32am
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OK - went through my iTunes library from that era and saw that many such
songs I assumed had vanished from the iTunes store (those Am Idol, Grammy performances) were still available. These are the songs I have that are np longer for sale: Praying for Time - Carrie Underwood (Am Idol version) What About Now - Daughtry (Am Idol version) Shout to the Lord - American Idols Cry Baby / Piece of My Heart - Melissa Etheridge & Joss Stone (2005 Grammys) Across the Universe - Various Artists (2005 Grammys) Trouble is these files are STILL Protected AAC files, even after PopArchivist's really good suggestion... |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 28 March 2020 at 11:50am
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Could you convert the AAC files to FLAC or WAV using a
converter program? ------------- John Gallagher Erie, PA https://www.johngallagher.com" rel="nofollow - John Gallagher Wedding & Special Event Entertainment / Snapblast Photo Booth |
Posted By: jebsib
Date Posted: 29 March 2020 at 6:53am
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I'm going to have to get a converter program, eriejwg, thanks for the
suggestion. The alternative is constantly reauthorizing thousands of songs that could potentially vanish from hundreds of playlists! I still suspect this is Apple - looking solely towards the future (streaming) - and abandoning thousands of customers who spent millions of dollars on downloads over the years. |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 29 March 2020 at 10:32am
Here is my alternative way to go. Download a free program called Virtual DJ 8 (or whatever version they are up to). If you are using it for non-monetary gain it is free if I recall. https://www.virtualdj.com/products/virtualdj/version8.html - https://www.virtualdj.com/products/virtualdj/version8.html Now open it up after it installs on your system. Throw the protected file into one of the DJ Slots. There is a button on top that looks like a star right after the MASTER-LAATER bar on the far right. Once you open that up, you have the option to go down to RECORD and create a filename and change the format to WAV. Now play the protected file you loaded into one of the DJ Slots. Since your computer is authorized, it should play. Press the START RECORD button. Make sure you save the .wav file on the desktop or somewhere you can find it. This should work. You will now have a .wav copy without DRM on it. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 29 March 2020 at 10:36am
I once tried to convert a DRM. The protection makes that impossible. My suggestion below allows you to play and record the WAV file, which bypasses the DRM. Considering that DRM went out of fashion many years ago and that the files were purchased I don't mind giving advice how to make a successful backup since that is legal, which is all he is doing... ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 29 April 2020 at 3:42pm
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OK, I have an opposite problem. I have a bunch of protected files that play on iTunes without issue, but I need to make a change to
one of them (since there's about two seconds of space in front that shouldn't be there). I can't change the file to AAC, and loading it into VirtualDJ (great program, BTW) only loads the first .4 (four-tenths of a second) of the song (it doesn't even find any of my DRM files). Any ideas? ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 29 April 2020 at 7:21pm
Try converting the file within itunes to a wav file. Then find it in your itunes folder. Then edit it as a wav file in a wav editor. Wav files to my knowledge cant retain much encoding if any. Let me know if that works. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 29 April 2020 at 7:42pm
Alas, that doesn't work either. I get an error message regardless of format saying "protected files cannot be converted to other formats." ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 30 April 2020 at 12:23pm
See if it is available on CD. What is the specific file you want? Is it available outside of Itunes? It just might be. At this point I am sure that something exists to remove the DRM but I wouldnt pay money to download software to do that. Just my two cents. Otherwise I cant suggest much. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 30 April 2020 at 12:42pm
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What's the song Doug? ------------- John Gallagher Erie, PA https://www.johngallagher.com" rel="nofollow - John Gallagher Wedding & Special Event Entertainment / Snapblast Photo Booth |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 30 April 2020 at 2:15pm
Too late--I sprang for TuneFab Apple Music Converter. Not the greatest job in the world, though--it does convert the file fairly quickly, but it relies on iTunes to play the file to convert it, and every once in a while the first second or so of another track pops up onto the end of the file (which then means I have to reconvert it in iTunes with the last two seconds chopped off). Since I already have the files organized into playlists, it's a chore to reinsert them, as you'll see below.
The mono 45 mix of the Rolling Stones' "Street Fightin' Man." That one was taken care of (after two conversions). But there's only 582 more files to reconvert. So I'll be finished by the time this pandemic is. :) ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 01 May 2020 at 5:45am
I'll preface this by saying that I've thusfar made a point of avoiding anything Apple (and this thread has only strengthened my dislike of this company), but you might want to try playing the affected song(s) with I- tunes and re-recording them with Audition, Audacity or whatever your favorite DAW software is, then save it in the format of your choice. Yeah, it adds a generation to the dub, but most modern soundcards are pretty quiet (and if it'd done thru the Windows mixer it may not do D-A/A-D conversions). Time consuming, but it might be your only option. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 11 May 2020 at 6:19pm
Have a question about this program--not sure how much experience you have with it, Richie, but maybe you know the answer to this. I have found when I try to play the Billy Joel song "Allentown" that the cue always starts in the middle of the construction air horn, instead of at the beginning (which makes for a real jarring beginning of the song). Even if I insert some silence at the beginning of the file using a program like WavePad, it still doesn't want to cue at the very beginning unless I force it to (but then I can't save the setting the next time I want to play the song). Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong? ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 11 May 2020 at 10:19pm
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Hi Doug,
I've used Virtual DJ for years now. To eliminate the issue you're having, open Virtual DJ and click on settings at the top right part of your screen. Once settings is open, type AutoCue. Change the setting from Skip Silence to No. ------------- John Gallagher Erie, PA https://www.johngallagher.com" rel="nofollow - John Gallagher Wedding & Special Event Entertainment / Snapblast Photo Booth |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 12 May 2020 at 8:37am
Thx, John. That did the trick. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 07 July 2022 at 1:00pm
OK, there's a somewhat sad postscript to this. I found a bunch of iTunes song files that have the first second or so of another track tacked on at the end. So I copied said files to WavePad (27 so far, with a lot more to come), where I could get rid of the glitch (for lack of a better term), but it wouldn't let me save the .M4A files as .M4A files. So I had to save them as .WAV files (although I could just as easily have used .MP3, but that's not really germane to the story). What is germane to the story is now I have two files of the same song, and I want to copy the iTunes track information from the old file to the new file without having to type everything out longhand. Apple Support wasn't any help. (Surprise, surprise.) Anyone have any thoughts? I've seen posts with Apple's community about scripts that can be run to isolate the info, but it doesn't really tell me how to run them or what to do (and the posts are from like eight years ago). /And yes, I know some of you despise Apple and/or iTunes, but it's what I got, so I gotta work with it. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 07 July 2022 at 1:22pm
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Create a macro to copy the tag information from one file to
the other? You'd probably have to do it track by track, but it would be easier than typing it all out for each track... you'd just have to hit your key combination to start the macro. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 07 July 2022 at 5:09pm
No idea how to even do macros. And I’m working in Windows. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: crapfromthepast
Date Posted: 07 July 2022 at 6:04pm
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I run Windows. I use a free program called Mp3tag to take care of all my tagging.
You can literally copy and paste tags from file to file. It will even do it in batches, for a group of files. I do this all the time when I convert from one format to another. You can put flac (or mp4) in the same directory or a different directory, open the two directories in Mp3tag at the same time, sort by file type (so that the subgroups are in the same order), and copy-and-paste just like MSWord. You can also read specific tags in from an external file, which is handy if you have a track listing from somewhere else and don't want to type everything in. You can also run some routines that fix the capitalization of everything, or replace & with And, or replace commas, question marks, and exclamation points with nothing. And so forth. Mp3tag. And it's free. ------------- There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one http://www.crapfromthepast.com" rel="nofollow - Crap From The Past . |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 07 July 2022 at 8:45pm
OK, I've downloaded the software. It seems I've isolated the problem files to anything I updated between May and June 2020 (which is still a ton of files--over 2000 of them). How can I get MP3Tag to just find those particular files to get the tags? ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 08 July 2022 at 4:06am
Is it possible to sort by date modified and just highlight those with those dates, and then drag and drop them into MP3Tag? Also, try dragging the WAV files you created into MP3Tag and see if the WAV files have tags. Are you sure the tags didn't convert as well? If they don't, then Ron is right, you should be able to use MP3Tag to copy a batch of tags from the iTunes files to your new WAV files, possibly even all of them at once. However, I think your m4a and WAV files will need to be in exactly the same order as each other when they're in MP3Tag. But MP3Tag sorts them alphabetically by file name, so if your WAV files have the same file names as your original iTunes files, you should be good. So try it: Drag and drop a few m4a files into MP3Tag. Then highlight all the files by hovering your cursor over the list of files and hitting CONTROL and the letter A on your keyboard. Now right click on your mouse and select "Tag Copy" in the menu that pops up. Then press the Delete key to delete the files from MP3Tag. (This does not delete the files themselves.) Next, drop the WAVs of those same songs into MP3Tag. Check to see that they're in the same order from top to bottom -- they should be, if the file names are the same as the m4a files. Again, select all the WAVs with CONTROL-A, then right-click and select "Tag Paste." Finally, press the "Save" button in the upper left. This should have pasted the iTunes tags into your WAV files. Can't guarantee it'll work, but it's worth a shot. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 08 July 2022 at 6:37am
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Copying the files into WavePad does remove the tags, unfortunately (since my copy is a free version that
doesn’t allow me to save M4As as M4As—I have to save them as WAVs then convert them in iTunes—and some tags [like artwork] don’t save in WAV files). I’m en route to my office, so I’ll give your suggestion a try upon my arrival. Thx, Brian! ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 08 July 2022 at 7:34am
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That worked like a charm. Thx, Brian! ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: AdvprosD
Date Posted: 08 July 2022 at 4:47pm
I'm glad this original topic was posted as "Off topic." I was using PCDJ Red up until I quit the business of DJing. It was a simple program, or "App" if you will. I always liked the simplicity of it and the fact that despite all the inherent problems with Windows back then, it seemed to perform without issue. I haven't looked much into Virtual DJ, but gather it is a lot like the newest versions of PCDJ. Add to the fact that I could keep all the actual music on a separate drive, and swap out a drive in a pinch. (Back when solid state hard drives cost more than my house.) I have to admit, when DJ software started taking off online, it all began to look the same. I never looked into Tractor, but heard it was pretty good too. ------------- <Dave> Someone please tell I-Heart Radio that St. Louis is not known as The Loo! |