iTunes confusion

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apple impapple imp
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Ok so I have an iTunes library on my Mac and I wanted to move it to my PC. Mainly just cuz its faster. (My mac is a G3. its old and slow lol.) So from what I hear, iTunes 7 has the ability to merge your itunes from one library on one computer with another.



So yea I logged in on my PC and clicked "Consolidate Library"....and nothing happens. Is the computer messing up (cuz I count count the number of times my PC has failed me) or am I just being stupid and not doing something right.



I'd appreciate some help!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    justinjustin Posts: 403member
    Hi there,



    As far as I can gather you have better adaptability if you had synch'ed your iPod to your PC and then updated on your Mac.



    As you have formatted on Mac, your PC may not be able to consolidate the library. You could try and do it manually, although I think the iPod website links on www.mac.com indicate that there is on compatibility in the direction of Mac--->PC that you are trying to synch'.



    It's probably not what you wanted to hear. Sorry!
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  • Reply 2 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    It would seem that you must be missing out some information about what you did. Because obviously if you have some music stored on your mac, and all you do is turn on your PC and press a button that says "consolidate library", there's no way that that can copy your music from the Mac.



    You know, the Mac has to be on, and stuff.



    And anyway, I'm not sure if the "consolidate library" feature is really what you want here.



    Answer me these questions three, and I will give you a hand.



    1.) How much music is on your Mac?



    2.) How much free space is there on your PC?



    3.) Do you have some way to connect the Mac to the PC, or otherwise transfer files from one to the other (e.g. external hard drive)?
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  • Reply 3 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Justin View Post


    As far as I can gather you have better adaptability if you had synch'ed your iPod to your PC and then updated on your Mac.



    I'm confused. Who said anything about iPods?
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  • Reply 4 of 8
    justinjustin Posts: 403member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mr. H View Post


    I'm confused. Who said anything about iPods?



    oops. I'd assumed he was going to transfer the libraary on an iPod

    Maybe there's more convenient way that you know of?
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  • Reply 5 of 8
    apple impapple imp Posts: 21member
    Ok im still a little confused. I thought the point of the Consolidate Library feature was so you could update your iTunes at home. Then just bring those songs over at the office. If you need some sort of connection between the two computers than whats the use of the feature? Anyway nevermind that, I ended up just re-burning the CD's to my PC.



    Ok now a part 2 to my question. My PC is old....its dying. Im waiting for it to die so I can finally upgrade to a Mac. But once again im afraid of having iTunes problems seeing as I've now re-formatted to my PC and am gonna be moving to Mac.



    Now, i've seen my uncle switch from OS to Windows on his Mac and it all seems to work together. If I get a Mac and update the iTunes library using windows on it, will the songs also be there when Im using OSX?
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  • Reply 6 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple Imp View Post


    Ok im still a little confused. I thought the point of the Consolidate Library feature was so you could update your iTunes at home. Then just bring those songs over at the office. If you need some sort of connection between the two computers than whats the use of the feature?



    ????????????????????????? I'm very confused. How did you expect this consolidate library feature (not that it actually does what you think it does) was going to work? Magic?



    Just so you know, this is what "consolidate library" does:



    In the "advanced" section of iTunes preferences, in the "general" tab, is the "iTunes music folder location". This is the folder on your hard drive that vital iTunes files (e.g. the iTunes database) are stored. It is also where "artist" folders (which themselves store "album" folders, which then store the actual music files) are created when you import from CD or download from the iTunes store.



    However, you can add files to iTunes just by dragging and dropping to the library section on the left, or by double-clicking on audio files. In either of these two cases, if the "copy file to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" is not checked, there will not be a copy of any files so added to iTunes in the library folder. Therefore, if you then copy the iTunes library folder to another computer, files added by drag&drop or double-click will not be in that folder and won't get copied.



    The "consolidate library" feature copies any items that show in the iTunes library but are not in the iTunes library folder to the iTunes library folder.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple Imp View Post


    Ok now a part 2 to my question. My PC is old....its dying. Im waiting for it to die so I can finally upgrade to a Mac. But once again im afraid of having iTunes problems seeing as I've now re-formatted to my PC and am gonna be moving to Mac.



    Now, i've seen my uncle switch from OS to Windows on his Mac and it all seems to work together. If I get a Mac and update the iTunes library using windows on it, will the songs also be there when Im using OSX?



    I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean that you intend to use Windows on your new machine using boot camp, and you want to be able to access all your music whether you are using Windows or OS X?
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  • Reply 7 of 8
    apple impapple imp Posts: 21member
    ^^^idk about the whole consolidating thing. Yes I thought it would work like magic I guess but thats usually what apple does. Work magic. Idk maybe I was expecting too much from them.



    And yea, I want to be able to access all my songs in iTunes whether im in windows or OSX. I plan on using OSX for pretty much everything, but I figure it would be easier to transfer my iTunes(that are now formatted to PC) to Windows on my mac. And I was hoping that even if I load the songs in Windows, i'll be able to play them in OSX.



    I want to know this before I go buying TV shows and Movies off of iTunes. I dont want to buy them then find out I cant bring them to my Mac when I get it.
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  • Reply 8 of 8
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Hard drives have formats e.g. HFS+ (used on Macs), FAT32 (Windows), & NTFS (Windows).



    Audio files also have formats, commonly referred to as "codecs". Some codecs are:



    PCM (pulse code modulation, uncompressed digital audio, can be stored in WAV or AIFF files. AIFF is a better choice as it supports tags)

    AAC (advance audio coding, lossy compression (information is removed from the audio in order to reduce the space required to store the file))

    MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 3, lossy compression)

    Vorbis (used with Ogg files, lossy, open-source)

    WMA (Windows media audio, mostly lossy with a lossless option)

    FLAC (open-source lossless compression)

    Apple Lossless (lossless compression)



    iTunes on the Mac and iTunes on the PC both play the same audio formats. The format of the hard drive has no consequence:



    AAC

    AAC with Fairplay DRM (aka iTunes Store music downloads)

    MP3

    AIFF

    WAV

    Apple lossless



    In addition, you can add WMA files to iTunes in Windows, but when you do that, it immediately converts them to the format chosen in the "import" tab of iTunes advanced preferences.



    So, you can get the files currently on your PC onto your Mac and play them in OS X without a problem. You will need some way to connect your PC to your Mac though. The easiest way is an ethernet cable assuming your PC has an ethernet port.



    When you install boot camp, your Mac's hard drive is divided into two partitions: One for OS X, and one for Windows. The OS X partition is formatted using HFS+, and the Windows partition can be formatted as either FAT32 or NTFS. If you choose FAT32, OS X will be able to read and write to the Windows partition. If you choose NTFS, OS X will only be able to read from the Windows partition. For most people FAT32 is the better choice.



    If you don't need to be able to play your audio files in Windows on the Mac, it's probably best to keep the audio files on the OS X hard drive partition.



    Once you've got your new Mac and an ethernet cable, you can come back here and request a step-by-step guide to getting your music files from your PC and old Mac onto the new one.
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