Automater and iTunes
I have a question about Automator scripts. I'm very new to the Mac and forgive me if this is a very stupid question, but looking at the Apps, I think the best way to accomplish what I want to do, is using Automator.
My music library is moved to my PowerBook from a Windoze PC. The top level is organized by genre.
I would like to take (for instance).
/Music/Soundtracks/
And have EVERYTHING in the Soundtracks folder and sub-directories, have an ID3 tag added to the file (or changed if it already exists and iTunes and CDDB have turned it into something I don't want there). Which is just the GENRE field. I want to set everything in /Music/Soundtracks to Genre: Soundtrack.
How would I go about doing this please. Or if there is something obvious I have missed, feel free to flame me for being an idiot
Richard
My music library is moved to my PowerBook from a Windoze PC. The top level is organized by genre.
I would like to take (for instance).
/Music/Soundtracks/
And have EVERYTHING in the Soundtracks folder and sub-directories, have an ID3 tag added to the file (or changed if it already exists and iTunes and CDDB have turned it into something I don't want there). Which is just the GENRE field. I want to set everything in /Music/Soundtracks to Genre: Soundtrack.
How would I go about doing this please. Or if there is something obvious I have missed, feel free to flame me for being an idiot
Richard
Comments
What I want to do is very simple.
If <FILE> is located in <DIRECTORY> then <SET ID3 Tag "genre" to SOUNDTRACK>
That's it.
Unless I am mistaken, iTunes with all its smart playlists and features, sorts and organizes everything based upon ID3 tags. There does not appear to be any option that takes <Some Action> based upon the files' location on a volume.
Then I can set up a Smart Folder, with the rule: if <FILE> is <genre: Soundtrack> then it goes into that Smart Folder called Soundtracks.
It is impractical to sort through a very large music library, and pick out what goes where by hand. The files all have different names, genres, whatever I Eat Brainz and CDDB threw into the ID3 tags for the most part (which varies greatly).
I'm not talking about 45 files, I have rips of my entire CD collection. My soundtracks directory alone is 18GB with thousands of entries.
iTunes is nice, but the lack of Folders and lists within folders (such as Mail 2.0 or iPhoto have), is annoying.
Richard
After playing around I answered my own question. It's very simple with Automater.
Get Specified Finder Items
Add files to playlist.
Presto.
...
In theory.
In reality it works fine with a test run of 7 songs.
Trying to import over 100 results in the perpetual spinning beachball of doom.
<Buzz> Automator is a neat ...something or another; that doesn't quite actually seem to work.
Oh well.
p.s., I'm using a PowerBook 15" 1.67GHz with 2GB RAM and a RAID. Oh and that Tiggr thing too. Perhaps by 10.4.3 (Winnie the Pooh internal release!) it'll actually work.
Very exciting.
Richard