iTunes 5 ideas

[ShallowThroat]

So i just had an idea about iTunes 5.

I think that apple is going to start merging it's media players to a single great app. Wouldn't it be logical that the next incarnation of iTunes be able to play video, as well? and if it can play videos, might as well throw in the ability to play DVDs and web streams, so you can throw DVD Player and Quicktime player out the window. Well, maybe this super iMedia app would be more of a "Pro-sumer" app, a la Final Cut Express.

This is my idea because i thing it could work really well, and because i have no more ideas as to what MORE apple could do with an simple music player. but then again, it is apple, so i wouldnt be supirised to be blown away by tottally new, unexpected, unforseeable features in iTunes 5.

What are your ideas for iTunes 5?

[HOM]

That is the worst idea I have ever heard.

[Wrong Robot]

iTunes can play videos. there are some available on the iTMS, it uses a quicktime plugin, so essentially has a mini QT player appear in the iTunes browser. but yeah...it's there already.

[ShallowThroat]

That is the worst idea I have ever heard.

okay, but care to explain why, oh wise one?

[HOM]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
okay, but care to explain why, oh wise one?
Ok, what problem does it solve? How is DVD Player.app improved by integrating it with iTunes? What you want is for Apple to add layers of complexity to applications that currently serve their intended purposes very well. iTunes works so well because it provides a better interface for organizing and playing music. I have almost 6,000 songs on my computer, but I've only got a handful of videos. iTunes doesn't add anything to the current method of organizing and playing movies. None. As for DVDs I can only play one at a time and they're not stored on the computer, but in a nice little package. I go get the one I want to watch and put it in. How does iTunes make this better?

Like I said, this is the worst idea I have ever heard.

Do you even know what pro-sumer means?

[Brad]

HOM is on the money.

This thinking by you, ShallowThroat, is quite the very opposite of Apple's current design.

Today, Apple creates specialized apps for specialized purposes. This philosophy extends far deeper into the system itself with frameworks and OO design as well. One of the best examples is the combination of Address Book, Mail, iCal, iChat, and iSync. Each app integrates to an extent with the others, but each is also suited for a specific job, reducing bloat and clutter.

Compare this to the Microsoft school of design where everything and the kitchen sink is bolted into one mammoth app. See Entourage or Outlook in contrast to Apple's example above. Netscape is guilty of this too with Communicator and the Mozilla suite, but the open source developers have finally gotten the sense to go the Apple way with separate apps (ala Firefox and Thunderbird).

Let iTunes play your music files.
Let DVD Player play your DVDs.
Let QuickTime play your video files.

Keep in mind that there are rumors of a major update to QuickTime soon. QuickTime Player may get some interface overhauling and do something like playlists, but I don't really have any real information about that and, honestly, I don't think the idea of playlists extends into QTP the same as it does iTunes.

[k squared]

I just want the next revision of iTunes to more closely resemble the design of OS X. For example, shifting the eject buttons from the lower right corner to the sidebar a la the Finder would show a more unified vision throughout the user experience. ShallowThroat, at this point it's not so much as adding new features, but refining iTunes into the best it could be.

[ShallowThroat]

Maybe i should refine my idea a little bit.

I understand the modular approach to things, and yes, i agree that it works very well, but i also think that there are certain apps, namely quicktime, i itunes, and DVD player that would function really well if integrated.

Now HOW they would be integrated to make a successful app would be where the apple design philosophy of simplicity and elegance and all that comes into play. what i pictured when describing itunes 5 wasnt just a 'put in your dvd, itunes plays it' or 'open a movie file, itunes plays it' sort of thing, but a more advanced way of storing and organizing movies as opposed to just playing them.

imagine an itunes that could rip DVDs, allow you to archive them on your harddrive, set your own chapter marks (instead of "bookmarks" you could have "filmmarks"), etc. think about the convenience for laptop owners. saves travel space, battery life, etc. same with movie files. instead of just ploping what you have inta a folder and then finding it on your own, why no use itunes great storage/browse/find capabilities?

but thats just my idea, if you don't like it, thats fine. getting back on topic, feel free to suggest your own iTunes 5 ideas.

and "one more thing...":
Yes, i do know what "Pro-sumer" means HOM. For those of you who don't know, it's a product class that is targeted not at professionals, and not and consumers, but the group in-between. The "power users" or hobbyists, if you will.

HOM, just because your program design opinions differ from mine doesnt give you the right to be a condescending ass.

[Brad]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
imagine an itunes that could rip DVDs Ah, well, you can stop there. DVD ripping, for the most part, is illegal. Apple couldn't even consider this.

I just can't see your concept working right. The whole think harkens of Windows Media Player and I think we can all agree that it is an interface nightmare. I've yet to see an all-encompasing media player that does the job well and has an interface worthy of Apple's seal.

On top of that, I still don't see the integration as a necessity or even an added convenience. You can only play one DVD at a time. Most people don't have oodles of video files on their computer. If they do, they are part of other media projects and wouldn't do any good in an iTunes-like app. The completed projects themselves wouldn't fit either; how many people are going to be regularly queueing up a half-hour video they produced months ago?

[ShallowThroat]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
imagine an itunes that could rip DVDs

Originally posted by Brad
Ah, well, you can stop there. DVD ripping, for the most part, is illegal. Apple couldn't even consider this.


I could be wrong, but as i understand it, it's cracking the DRM of DVDs thats illegal. Apple is in the good books of the RIAA, and the RIAA is fairly tight with the MPAA, so isnt it possible that a deal could be worked out? I'm not saying to rip the DVDs into open source XVID and let em fly all over p2p networks, but give apple the chance to make their own, DRM enabled format to rip movies into and keep the size down?

Hell, you could take this a step further and say that the next logical step for the iTMS is Movie "rentals". it lets you download and/or stream them whenever you want, and they expire after a certain period of time. now i know the bandwidth requirements would be off the charts, and there isnt even really a codec is suitable for this yet, but hey, a guy can dream.

[Gon]

Video and music are totally different formats.
When you watch video you don't need a playlist, for instance. You are also not likely to edit the tags attached to video, or grade your video clip collection.

That said, I think it would make a lot of sense if one and the same video player played video irrespective whether it's on DVD, your hard disk or getting streamed. Then when you have things like video and audio filters, or subtitling, you can use the same code and same settings and do not need to learn anything twice.

IMHO the best solution would be a GStreamer-type streaming and filter framework behind the "nice" frontends.. but then I am a techie.. :rolleyes:

Just a little time ago I watched Suspiria as DivX/whatever format. The file info was somehow screwed up so that the player (VideoLAN Client) showed it in a wrong aspect ratio. I found VLC had a filter onboard that I could use to set the ratio to whatever I wanted. Problem solved.

[HOM]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
Hell, you could take this a step further and say that the next logical step for the iTMS is Movie "rentals". it lets you download and/or stream them whenever you want, and they expire after a certain period of time. now i know the bandwidth requirements would be off the charts, and there isnt even really a codec is suitable for this yet, but hey, a guy can dream.
God, I'm glad you don't run Apple.

And yes, I do get to be an arrogant asshole when you're a blistering idiot. You have yet to describe a single function that would be better served by integrating the apps together. So now rather than take it like a man and say, "Yup, sorry guys, I was wrong and you were right. Please lock this thread now." you cling to this idea that iTunes needs to be a video player and store. Why don't you suggest some features that would make iTunes' core function, you know playing ****ing music, better?

[Gon]

Originally posted by Brad
Ah, well, you can stop there. DVD ripping, for the most part, is illegal. Apple couldn't even consider this.I think they very well could consider the sort of open architecture that allows this capability to be added easily by 3rd party software. See my comment about GStreamer.

Frankly, it's no skin off Apple's back if they make things like this easy. It just can't work out of the box. There are many many places where ripping or copying a DVD is legal. I know I'll consider ripping mine or making disc images when there is enough HD space I don't need to do a lossy recompression.

[Brad]

Name-calling stops now. Next person gets a 24-hour ban, no questions asked.

[ShallowThroat]

HOM:

(edited)

I'm not clinging to any idea, i'm just throwing out ideas of what i think could make the whole program better. i do honestly think itunes is destined to became a video store? probably not. is it a possibility? sure, why not. you don't run apple (thank god (edited) :rolleyes: ), so you dont know what their planning.

(edited)

Gon:

Yeah, i've found VLC to be great as well, since i've started using it as a replacement DVD Player because of the blockiness in 10.3.3's DVD Player.

It would be cool to see Quicktime Player and DVD Player merged, then you could have one app for video and one for audio. i could see that working quite well. You and brad make a good point for keeping A/V apart, so i guess i could live with that, but where does that leave itunes 5? It's got to have some big new feature of sorts, but what?

k sqaured's idea makes perfect sense, but i could see that being more in a 0.1 update, as it's not really a major deal.

so then, if video is not in iTunes' future, what is?


(edited at brad's request above)

[Gon]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
but where does that leave itunes 5? It's got to have some big new feature of sorts, but what?

k sqaured's idea makes perfect sense, but i could see that being more in a 0.1 update, as it's not really a major deal.

so then, if video is not in iTunes' future, what is?I think I heard it said somewhere that to be an artist, you need to have good technical prowess and inspiration. To be great, you need to know when to stop.

I'm saying, if iTunes is as good as you can make it for playing music, then you should let it be.

Personally, I think it could be quite a bit faster, and have a better "barebones" mode. I like WinAmp and its clone XMMS because they do the most basic things so well - just drag a bunch of songs in the playlist and start playing them, it's lightning fast, there's nothing complicated, things "just work".
Winamp, incidentally, was screwed by the urge to add more features. They sort of "reverted" development back to the older main version when they realized people don't want their MP3 player to play video and to browse the Web.

[a_greer]

M$ merged everything into media 9 and well use windows media 9 and try to do the same things you do in itunes/itms in media player, you can but there are at least 3 extra and needless steps, and the drm. dear god the drm...

[Kesh]

Back to the original intent of the thread:

1) Revise the interface a little, so it fits in with the OS a little more.
2) Add 'sub-playlists', or folders you can stick playlists into
3) Perhaps custom fields in the Info window, stored locally rather than in the MP3's file data.
4) Slightly more robust Smart Playlist criteria

[mattjohndrow]

Originally posted by a_greer
dear god the drm...
what's the drm?

[Agent Macintosh]

Mabye there could be a "iMedia Pro" suite on a separate disc included with iLife. That might be good.

[Brad]

Originally posted by mattjohndrow
what's the drm? DRM = Digital Rights Management.

You know... the stuff that locks media to specific computers, only allows a certain number of plays, deletes or permanently disables the file when it says you hit the view limit...

[JohnHenry]

I'm still waiting for a better integration with iphoto
They did a good job with the elimination of the repeating song during slideshow, but I want multiple selection of songs instead of selecting a playlist and have it play from the beginning to end.

iTunes as it stands is fantabulous. I don't see much they could do other than making it easier to share with other users on you computer. My wife and I would really like to share an iTunes database and rate the songs individually on our own accout. As it stands this is impossible (we can share but I don't think we can give each song its own rating). It could be snappier when using browse in particular. Anything else? I can't think of any....

[HOM]

Time for some constructive comments for this thread.

Re-orderable playlists.
Eject button in the source list ala Finder.
Those are the only two subtle changes I would want.

The real improvement I want is party/jukebox mode. It hides the entire iTunes window and goes to a graphical browser. You can browse by genre, artist, album, song but rather than the normal view it's got 2 or 3 album covers on each side of the screen. At the click of a button it changes to show the next set of albums using some cool Quartz enabled animation. People than select the songs that they want to hear and it gets queued up. Also an allowance system can be added so you could set it up so that during the course of the party $20 can be spent at iTMS for people to buy songs that you don't have, but they want to hear.

[torifile]

Everything and the kitchen sink == a bad idea and one that MS would come up with. I don't like the philosophy that just because one app CAN do everything, it should. I'm a big fan of the Apple way of doing things now: each app is specialized and works well with the others. There's no reason to integrate video into iTunes. What would the usability benefit be?

I'm in favor of hierarchical playlists and reordering them would be nice too. The ability to more easily manage Libraries that span multiple drives would be welcome. Profiles for playlists would be an extension of that (I've got a powerbook and a large external HD that's not always with me - a "road" profile means my library is only on my HD, etc). Other than that, I can't think of a single thing I'd like added to iTunes.

[HOM]

Oh, last thing is I would like better integration with the iPod. Currently iTunes can remember which playlists are on shuffle and which ones aren't, but the iPod only has a on/off switch for shuffle. If I'm on auto-sync, I would like the iPod to respect shuffle settings. Similarly, I would like iTunes to be able to show me the status of the iPod's battery. Add it to the display section, so when I click on that little button I see a representation how the charge is going.

[DMBand0026]

Don't tell us! Tell Apple! A lot of you guys have great ideas, but let Apple know or they'll never happen.

Apple iTunes Feedback (http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html)

:D

[mattjohndrow]

Originally posted by HOM
I would like the iPod to respect shuffle settings.
i like that idea

Brad: thanks for letting me know

[Gon]

Originally posted by DMBand0026
Don't tell us! Tell Apple! A lot of you guys have great ideas, but let Apple know or they'll never happen.

Apple iTunes Feedback (http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html)If all posts were like this, the Internet would be regarded as a reliable source for information. :)

Keep up the good work..

[HOM]

Originally posted by DMBand0026
Don't tell us! Tell Apple! A lot of you guys have great ideas, but let Apple know or they'll never happen.

Apple iTunes Feedback (http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html)

:D

Believe you me, Apple is sick of getting my feedback. I must send 10 items a week.

[mattjohndrow]

Originally posted by HOM
Believe you me, Apple is sick of getting my feedback. I must send 10 items a week.
what, did they write you and tell you that?

[PS5533]

Originally posted by k squared
I just want the next revision of iTunes to more closely resemble the design of OS X. For example, shifting the eject buttons from the lower right corner to the sidebar a la the Finder would show a more unified vision throughout the user experience. ShallowThroat, at this point it's not so much as adding new features, but refining iTunes into the best it could be.

best idea so far.....^

[ipodandimac]

why are people so hung up on video? if you wanna watch a movie, go grab the disc from your shelf and put it in your computer. if you want it on the road, get a laptop or portable dvd player. if apple comes out with a video ipod, people are gonna bitch b/c the battery life will suck. integrating itunes is stupid b/c iTUNES is for music--it's not iMEDIA.

[a_greer]

Originally posted by Kesh
Back to the original intent of the thread:

1) Revise the interface a little, so it fits in with the OS a little more.
2) Add 'sub-playlists', or folders you can stick playlists into
3) Perhaps custom fields in the Info window, stored locally rather than in the MP3's file data.
4) Slightly more robust Smart Playlist criteria lyric search on itms - i hear a song on the radio, remember one line search for it and whala :lol:never gonna happen, would be cool though:lol:

[Amorph]

Originally posted by a_greer
lyric search on itms - i hear a song on the radio, remember one line search for it and whala :lol:never gonna happen, would be cool though:lol:

I would absolutely love to see that.

[hmurchison]

I do lyric searches all the time to find a song. As long as you can get at least one sentence your chances of "googling" and finding the song is going to drastically improve.

[ShallowThroat]

There are actually some pretty simple AppleScripts that you can throw into iTunes to do just that! just do a search at apple.com or at macosxhints.com, you should be able to come up with all that and then some. My favourite script was one that automatically rates your music based on the number of times played, which i found to be quite useful.

Alright, I thought up something new, don't shoot me if you think it's wrong:
Better integration to the Finder. wait, wait, read that again. NOT total finder integration, but better abilities to hide/show it. I find that the only two window settings, the mini player is to small and inefficient, and the full player is to large and clumsy. i think i will whip up a sketch to show, but other than that, I like the ideas being posted. :D i hope apple is listening.

edit: okay, here is a general idea of what im talking about:

http://plife.blogdns.com/images/itunes5.jpg

imagine that it's highly customizable, and you could have a search bar in there as well, and that you could either pull it out from under the menu bar, or have it pop up by clicking on a button in the center of the menu bar, or even on mouse rollover.

i dunno, could be good.

[SledgeHammer]

Originally posted by hmurchison
I do lyric searches all the time to find a song. As long as you can get at least one sentence your chances of "googling" and finding the song is going to drastically improve. Agreed, I don't think Google has ever failed me when I am searching using a line from a song. I do it all the time. It might be nice to have lyric search integrated, but googling works great, so I don't see it as a big need.

[Gon]

Originally posted by a_greer
lyric search on itms - i hear a song on the radio, remember one line search for it and whala :lol:never gonna happen, would be cool though:lol:I think this should happen and it would not cost a lot to do.

The lyrics should be timed, so they can be shown in sync with the song. There should be an interface in iTunes that lets other software sync to the lyrics as well.

When someone would write a suitable "dynamic lyric display" plugin, and someone else made a sound filter that takes out human voice frequencies (my signal processing inclined neighbor says this is very easy) every iTMS song could be instantly used to sing karaoke.

[dfiler]

My vote still goes for CD-TEXT support. It's like mp3 tags but for CDs.

The CD-TEXT standard has been in use for over a decade and all of my disc players support it. It doesn't even require the development of a user interface.

Just burn the damn mp3 tags into CD-TEXT already!

[mattjohndrow]

i like your background shallow throat, you wanna send me the it?

[sunrein]

I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.

[shetline]

Originally posted by sunrein
I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.
This is called "gapless playback", and this is my big request for iTunes too.

This has to be said before some idiot who thinks he's giving clever advice chimes in: The issue of gapless playback IS NOT SOLVED BY USING CROSSFADE SET TO ZERO.

The problem isn't chiefly due to a lack of buffering, but to the way MP3 and AAC tracks are encoded. There are short lead-in and lead-out silences encoded into each separate track, which for technical reasons aid in the encoding process at the boundaries of audio data. Although these silences are very short – just a few milliseconds – they are audible in the context of an interruption of what should be continuous audio.

Even without these silences, it's important to remember that perceptually compressed audio does not provide an exact representation of the original audio data from which it is derived, and also that something which sounds just like the original waveform to the human ear might be very different in waveform shape. Changes in the waveform shape can lead to a mismatched "seam" when one track plays straight into another track, and that mismatch can be audible.

The best solution is to improve the encoding process. Standard MP3 or AAC data can be supplemented with a small amount of data that will aid compatible decoders in producing gapless playback, data that tell the decoder how to create a smooth inter-track seam. This extra data can be added in such a way that it would simply be ignored by older decoders, keeping the music compatible even when the user won't get the gapless playback benefit.

The drawback here is that you have to re-encode music that you've already encoded once before in order to fix it. Apple would have to re-encode albums on iTMS like Dark Side of the Moon so that customers could buy seamless copies that don't have bumps between tracks. This wouldn't help people who had already purchased the album through iTMS.

So in addition to fixing the encoding, you'd also need some software trick that does the best job it can at detecting and eliminating the short lead-in and lead-in silences from older MP3 and AAC files, and then applies the right kind of filtering to make sure there's a smooth-sounding seam between tracks when those tracks are supposed to play into each other with continuous audio.

[ipodandimac]

i think what needs pdating more is ipod software. before itunes gets a makeover, the ipod needs to be able to support things like the group tag.

[groverat]

My suggestions:

- CD-TEXT in burning.
This is the only reason I still use Nero for burning CDs on my PC. My car CD player supports it and I do not like seeing "Track 1" when I could see the actual track name.

- Control over output filenames (not just Track# TrackName).
I have to go in and paste (" - ArtistName - ") in every single file I rip or encode through iTunes. Very irritating.

That's all I can think of right now. Damn... what a great piece of software.

[groverat]

I wouldn't really care about the second one if there was a powerful standalone tag editor for .m4a files. Anyone know of one?

[Paul]

Applescript
Doug's Applescripts (http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/index.php) to be more precise..

[fiddler]

I second gapless playback. Gaps are especially annoying for people with largely classical music collections (like me). Foobar2000 and Winamp (I think) on Windows have the ability to read CUE sheets, where you rip an entire CD into a single track and the playback software would read track information from a separate cue sheet, thereby allowing you to seek/search between tracks as if they were separate files. No, the "Join tracks" feature is not good enough. Moving around the slider to find the next track just sucks.

I'd also like more flexibility in the iTunes Browser, i.e. the Genre/Artist/Album panes. For example, for someone with mostly classical music might prefer to have "Composer" instead of "Artist" as the middle pane.

[mattjohndrow]

Originally posted by sunrein
I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.
exactly, i hate that damned skip!

[shetline]

Originally posted by mattjohndrow
exactly, i hate that damned skip!
Gapless playback just came up in another thread... seems more and more people are catching onto this problem.

Here's Apple's iTunes feedback page. (http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html) I've already written to them already. Let's get a few more people jumping in on this so that Apple knows that the demand for gapless playback is out there.

[mattjohndrow]

ok, so i just sent feedback there, yeah...party on!

[Amorph]

I don't know the technical details in enough detail to do more than pull speculation out of thin air, but part of me wonders whether there's some technical problem (with Quicktime? the container formats?) that keeps Apple from figuring out where a song really ends and where the next one really begins, and starting to play the next song so that its padding overlaps the last song, and the last song's padding overlaps the next song.

That seems like the most straightforward solution, but it's obvious enough that I feel like I have to be missing some technical hurdle.

[shetline]

Originally posted by Amorph
I don't know the technical details in enough detail to do more than pull speculation out of thin air...
Please see the Missing iTunes 4.5 feature (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41454) thread, near the end, for further details. :D
That seems like the most straightforward solution, but it's obvious enough that I feel like I have to be missing some technical hurdle.
It's really best to have a two-ended solution, where the encoding tells the decoder exactly what it needs to know to do gapless playback, rather than relying on a playback-only solution that where the decoder has to try to figure out things like "How quiet is silence?", "How long of a silence should be treated as real, must-keep silence, rather than a removable silence?", "If I take out this gap, will I create a clicking sound, and if so, how do I surpress it?".

[666]

one thing i can't beleive hasn't made it in yet is a group check box. You have to check/uncheck every song singley!!! Sooo 1995!!!

Also, you should be able to drag songs from ipod to itunes without any problem, and use the ipod's songs in party shuffle.

They should have both been in the most recent update!!!

[Endymion]

Originally posted by 666
one thing i can't beleive hasn't made it in yet is a group check box. You have to check/uncheck every song singley!!! Sooo 1995!!!

Install the Applescripts for iTunes (http://www.apple.com/applescript/itunes/index.html) and use the Enable/Disable Tracks command.

[Paul]

option clicking on the checkboxes will select or deselect all of the tracks in the current playlist...

[mattjohndrow]

Originally posted by Paul
option clicking on the checkboxes will select or deselect all of the tracks in the current playlist...
actually, it's command-click

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Originally posted by a_greer
M$ merged everything into media 9 and well use windows media 9 and try to do the same things you do in itunes/itms in media player, you can but there are at least 3 extra and needless steps, and the drm. dear god the drm...
If you removed all the bloated stuff, and gave it an Apple GUI feel, then it would probably work..

[mmmpie]

Back to the topic of video...

A few years ago when mp3 was starting to take off all of our uni parties went digital. We had some big collections of music floating around purely for the purpose of doing parties.

A couple of years ago ( last time I dropped in on the scene ) all of those people were moving their music collections from mp3 to mpeg. They were digitising all of the music videos they could get ( at the time off of video ). Thanks to the cost of storage and the availability of cheap video projectors music was making a big shift.

Why shouldnt itunes support video? It is a natural medium of distribution for music, while not all music has a video, a lot does. How would you output it? Well, Macs have excellent dual head support, so one head doing playlist management, just like normal, the other doing video and visualisation for projection. You would want to be able to play the video in a window as well.
You could even integrate the video and visualisation.

[G-Dog]

I would like to see artist and album ratings like there are already song ratings.

[johnq]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
What are your ideas for iTunes 5?

More E.Q. bands :devil:

1. Get rid of the floating window EQ (or at least make it optional: window or pane).

2. Make a 31-band equalizer (20 - 20k) come up in it's own pane exactly like the Search Results pane comes up from below in iCal.

[Logan]

Originally posted by ShallowThroat
So i just had an idea about iTunes 5.

I think that apple is going to start merging it's media players to a single great app. Wouldn't it be logical that the next incarnation of iTunes be able to play video, as well? and if it can play videos, might as well throw in the ability to play DVDs and web streams, so you can throw DVD Player and Quicktime player out the window. Well, maybe this super iMedia app would be more of a "Pro-sumer" app, a la Final Cut Express.

This is my idea because i thing it could work really well, and because i have no more ideas as to what MORE apple could do with an simple music player. but then again, it is apple, so i wouldnt be supirised to be blown away by tottally new, unexpected, unforseeable features in iTunes 5.

What are your ideas for iTunes 5?

woah!! yeah i thought that too!

[HOM]

^^^^ And we've come full circle.

I'm actually surprised that so many feature we suggested here made it into iTunes 4.5

Eject button in the source view.

I know it's not lyric searching, but now if you hear a song on the radio you can go to iTMS's Radio Chats and see the songs that the station was playing.

A party interface. Might not be a jukebox, but it' better than nothing.

Now if only the iPod would respect the shuffle settings. :(

[a_greer]

Originally posted by johnq
More E.Q. bands :devil:

1. Get rid of the floating window EQ (or at least make it optional: window or pane).

2. Make a 31-band equalizer (20 - 20k) come up in it's own pane exactly like the Search Results pane comes up from below in iCal. ...and call it "Pro tunes";):lol:

[miguelcolina]

I like the idea of lyric searching but I'd also like to see ID3 tags have lyrics support. I don't know a lot about ID3 from a technical standpoint but I think it could use a lot more features, not that improving ID3 is Apple's responsibilty...

I'd also like to have album cover art automatically show up when a CD is put in, just like the track names do from CDDB so that I wouldn't have to manually add them to albums I rip.

Those are my two cents, there have been some great suggestions so far, and from the 4.5 update it looks like Apple was listening to some of them :)

[a_greer]

Originally posted by miguelcolina
....I'd also like to have album cover art automatically show up when a CD is put in, just like the track names do from CDDB so that I wouldn't have to manually add them to albums I rip...... YES, YES, OH GOD YES Please submit that to itunes suggestions, as I have.

[spankalee]

Originally posted by shetline
The problem isn't chiefly due to a lack of buffering, but to the way MP3 and AAC tracks are encoded.

Shet, thanks for the good explanation. This has been one of my biggest gripes since iTunes came out, but I never knew exactly why it was seemingly so tough to solve.

I wonder if the lead-in time is constant for all tracks and encoders. If not, I would think a player could analyze files that you set to be seamless and skip the silent lead-ins and lead-outs.

[mattjohndrow]

Originally posted by a_greer
YES, YES, OH GOD YES Please submit that to itunes suggestions, as I have.
hell yeah!

[Cam'ron]

Fetch Art ( http://staff.washington.edu/yoel/fetchart ) will use amazon.com's album covers to add to your iTunes songs. Isn't exactely the same but it should be a good substitute for now.

[eVo]

Here's my idea:

Now that we have the Eject buttons in the source list, there isn't really any need for the Eject button at the bottom-right corner of the window. I say, make that button into an Info button [ i ] like the one in iCal. Clicking that will open up a drawer (again, like iCal) with the selected items' information, with an updated look (to match that of iCal).

[a_greer]

Originally posted by Cam'ron
Fetch Art ( http://staff.washington.edu/yoel/fetchart ) will use amazon.com's album covers to add to your iTunes songs. Isn't exactely the same but it should be a good substitute for now. (eyes well up with tears of envy)It is mac only, awwww....when will someone bridge the digital divide, when will Santa leave me a powerbook?

let me anser: as soon as I find work for the summer and save $1500ish :)

[CosmoNut]

I haven't read the rest of the thread, so if this has already been mentioned...well then I second it:

Smarter playlists with the ability to "and/or" criteria, such as "Genre is Rock OR Genre is Alternative AND Play Count is more than 2."

Oh, would I love that. :smokey:

[Noleli2]

iTunes won't/can't have drawers because it Carbon.

Something I'd like to see is support for AudioUnits plugins. A compressor would be especially nice on my iPod because when I'm on a bus I have to turn it way up to hear soft sections, but the louds are too loud, so I'm constantly messing with the volume. I can't just put it in my pocket and forget it.

[spankalee]

Originally posted by Noleli2
iTunes won't/can't have drawers because it Carbon.

Something I'd like to see is support for AudioUnits plugins. A compressor would be especially nice on my iPod because when I'm on a bus I have to turn it way up to hear soft sections, but the louds are too loud, so I'm constantly messing with the volume. I can't just put it in my pocket and forget it.

AudioUnits in iTunes is technically feasable, but AUs on an iPod is impossible. First, it's not PPC. Second it doesn't have an FP unit. Third it doesn't have the libraries (or memory to store the livraries) to support AU.

The EQ shows that the iPod and do some DSP though, so maybe Apple could pair AUs for iTunes with some effects built into the iPod. I agree a compressor would be nice.