Apple to restore duplicate song search in forthcoming iTunes 11 update

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Comments

  • Reply 61 of 73
    trydtryd Posts: 143member


    Yes, of course I realize that I'm in a small minority, but that doesn't mean that it's not a problem for me. The previous functionality worked very well, and I don't see how removing it solves any problem? In iTunes10 you could remove the field that showed the album art by clicking a button - why not leave it in?


     


    But am I so special? The trend is of course to play music from your computer. On a Mac that means almost 100% iTunes. So people are ripping their CD-collections, and there are some large ones out there. I have a friend that has approximately 30-35 000 CDs that he is ripping. My brother has about the same as me - 10-15 000. An easy way to transfer the album art to iTunes (since iTunes doesn't work well with album art for classical collections) is needed. Even more so since the album art automatically added by iTunes doesn't show up if you play your iTunes-library through Sonos or another remote music system (but the album art you add yourself does).


     


    I have no problem with them removing cowerflow. That was eyecandy without any special function. It looked nice, and was great for showing off iTunes, but it didn't add anything to the application. For people with large collectione (I have 21000 works (160 000 tracks) in my library) it was unusable. It took up space without adding any functionality.


     


    Thank you for informing me that cmd-c and cmd-v still works. I didn't know. But since it works those options should be available in the Edit-menu. And why not have it available in the contextual menu? Available functionality should be visible.


     


    And why, asPhilBoogie mentions, is there a difference in what happens depending on where you paste album art? Actually I can see the reason, but I don't understand why it isn't clear from the UI that there is a difference.


     


    BTW - I just found a bug. When you paste album art to an album, some times some of the tracks are left out. Happened to me just now. I was playing Aladdin Sane which I ripped last week when I saw that after 3 tracks suddenly the album art disappeared. The same happened with the album I played before that - Down in the cellar by Al Stewart. (I don't play only classical :D  )


     


    Question: How do you make the miniplayer display the name of the currently playing song?


     


    BTW2: Sorry if I make too many off-topic comments (RE: the name of this thread)


     


     


     


     

  • Reply 62 of 73
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    stephenbw wrote: »
    As has already been pointed out by nabziF on page 1, gapless is the default setting for iTunes.

    well, that's just stupid of me to have missed; I always read start to finish before posting as I find it annoying if someone makes a post about something that has already been posted.
    It doesn't; it plays 'side one' non-stop just as it's always done.

    That's what I was expecting; thanks for trying that out.
    tryd wrote: »
    Yes, of course I realize that I'm in a small minority, but that doesn't mean that it's not a problem for me. The previous functionality worked very well, and I don't see how removing it solves any problem? In iTunes10 you could remove the field that showed the album art by clicking a button - why not leave it in?

    Well, for starters Apple is all about simplicity. That means getting rid of the visibility of the Finders' ~/Library folder. Still available, pressing Option and such. They like to have their stuff clean, empty if you will. Some like it, some don't.
    BTW - I just found a bug. When you paste album art to an album, some times some of the tracks are left out.
    That's an old bug. Atually, there are several similar ones to that. I sometimes convert FLAC files (with XLD) and dump the resulting m4a in the (newish) folder "Automatically Add to iTunes" and even though I'm on a fast Mac it only imports a third of the tracks that get dumped in there.

    Same with changing the album name; I add a lot of concerts (audience recordings) to iTunes and like to keep Concert Album Names consistent and therefore rename a lot. Skips a few tracks if 'I do it too fast'.

    OT I also didn't like it when they removed the option to show more than a single cover art in the lower left pane; now only visible with Cmd-I, Cmd-7 but I digress. Things change, and iTunes is usually a tryout field for the engineers where to steer OSX next.
  • Reply 63 of 73
    trydtryd Posts: 143member


    Yes, I know. And I'm all for simplicity. There are always workarounds - I can live with that. The cmd-c and cmd-v info solved my main problem.


     

  • Reply 64 of 73

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tryd View Post


    Yes, of course I realize that I'm in a small minority, but that doesn't mean that it's not a problem for me. The previous functionality worked very well, and I don't see how removing it solves any problem? In iTunes10 you could remove the field that showed the album art by clicking a button - why not leave it in?


     


    But am I so special? The trend is of course to play music from your computer. On a Mac that means almost 100% iTunes. So people are ripping their CD-collections, and there are some large ones out there. I have a friend that has approximately 30-35 000 CDs that he is ripping. My brother has about the same as me - 10-15 000. An easy way to transfer the album art to iTunes (since iTunes doesn't work well with album art for classical collections) is needed. Even more so since the album art automatically added by iTunes doesn't show up if you play your iTunes-library through Sonos or another remote music system (but the album art you add yourself does).


     


     



    The thing is that those of us who rip our CDs, or even buy CDs, are in a diminishing minority. Downloads now outsell CDs, Apple hasn't updated the iPod Classic for a few years and never will, and it has removed the optical disc drive from its new iMacs. iTunes is now being steered towards iCloud usage because that's how an increasing majority are now accessing music. I'm lucky in that I ripped my existing library in 2007 and have only had incremental additions to process since then. 


     


    Quote:



    I have no problem with them removing cowerflow. That was eyecandy without any special function. It looked nice, and was great for showing off iTunes, but it didn't add anything to the application. For people with large collectione (I have 21000 works (160 000 tracks) in my library) it was unusable. It took up space without adding any functionality.


     


     





     


    You don't mind them removing Coverflow, but others do. Others don't mind that album artwork has gone from the bottom corner, but you do. I don't mind that either have gone  because I didn't use either of them. The point is that Apple will never please everybody; if they tried to it would result in a very bloated and complicated App. Again, I guess I'm lucky in that I'm generally happy with iTunes 11.



    Quote:




    Thank you for informing me that cmd-c and cmd-v still works. I didn't know. But since it works those options should be available in the Edit-menu. And why not have it available in the contextual menu? Available functionality should be visible.


     


     




     


    I agree; if the keyboard shortcuts work I don't know why it isn't an available option in the menu.


    Quote:


     


    BTW - I just found a bug. When you paste album art to an album, some times some of the tracks are left out. Happened to me just now. I was playing Aladdin Sane which I ripped last week when I saw that after 3 tracks suddenly the album art disappeared. The same happened with the album I played before that - Down in the cellar by Al Stewart. (I don't play only classical :D  )


     


     




     


    I've never noticed that happening to mine. Did the artwork for those albums not download automatically? If you pasted the artwork, did you select all of the album tracks before doing so?


    Quote:


    Question: How do you make the miniplayer display the name of the currently playing song?


     


     




    The Mini-player shows the title of the current song and the artist by default.

  • Reply 65 of 73
    trydtryd Posts: 143member


    And don't forget that it is in Apple's interest to have people buying music through iTunes. There is still a good argument for buying CDs though. At the moment it is much cheaper to buy CDs than files on the internet. I paid $120 for the 144 CD Artur Rubinstein collection. It would be much more expensive to buy it as downloads (if it had been available, which it isn't).


     


    As to coverflow vs. the artwork field in the main window there is a difference. Coverflow was pure eyecandy, while the the artwork field added functionality (or at least made some of iTunes functionality easier available). By removing coverflow they didn't remove any functionality or add complexity to using iTunes. By removing the artwork field they did. Big difference in my opinion. But of course I see that you cannot please everybody.


     


    And my mini-player does not show the title of the current song. The artwork window does, if I mouse over it, but the miniplayer just shows the controls. It shows the name of the currently playing song for about 1 second when a new song stars, but then it is back to just showing the controls. I have not changed any settings.


     


    Update: Problem with miniplayer solved. <tab> moves between controls, and if one of the controls is selected the miniplayer shows the controls and not the song title (as it should). Probably because I have checked for "<tab> moves keyboard focus between all controls" in the Keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard control panel in OS X.


     


     

  • Reply 66 of 73


    Originally Posted by tryd View Post

    …just paste the album art on the "Album art field" in the main Window. Which is now gone.

     


     



     


    So you don't mean this.


     


    image





    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post

    Nope, that's always been that way.


     


    Then why hasn't it done that for me, going back to iTunes 1? Yes, 1.





    Originally Posted by tryd View Post

    At the moment it is much cheaper to buy CDs than files on the internet. I paid $120 for the 144 CD Artur Rubinstein collection. It would be much more expensive to buy it as downloads (if it had been available, which it isn't).

     


     



     


    Why do you think that?

  • Reply 67 of 73
    trydtryd Posts: 143member


    No. The album art field in the Get info window is not what I am talking about.


     


    I think that CDs at the moment is cheaper than downloading because that is what I see when I go to buy music. Some times the files are cheaper, but most of the time CDs are cheaper. Probably because the big music publishers are selling their back catalogue for next to nothing. 


    Whether all these files will be available at one time, I don't know. They might be, but they are not at the moment. But there is another upside to buying the CDs - you get an automatic backup. The downside is of course that they take up a lot of space.


     


    As to why you don't have the problem with album art that PhilBoogie and I are having, I cannot say. I ripped 5 CDs yesterday:


    The live adventures of Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield (2 CDs)


    Celebration day - Led Zeppelin (2 CDs)


    Colori d'Amore - Simone Kermes


     


    Of these, only the album art from the Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield album survived when moving the files to another computer.

  • Reply 68 of 73
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tryd View Post


    And why do you have to drag it to the desktop - why not make the Copy-option available from the Edit-menu?


     



     


    I was wrong. You don't have to drag it to the desktop. You can just click on the artwork and CMD-C to copy it to the clipboard.

  • Reply 69 of 73
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post



    2. If you paste the art in the 2nd tab it's saved in the library, if you paste it into the 7th tab it's embedded into the song.


     


    Are you sure? Is that unique to 11? I sometimes apply artwork to several tracks at once by selecting a bunch of songs then opening the Get Info window and dragging the image into the small Artwork field in the Info pane. I'm pretty sure the art is embedded in the tracks that way, but I haven't had occasion to try it with 11 yet and don't have access to my library to try it right now.

  • Reply 70 of 73
    tryd wrote: »
    If it finds the album art, it will be embedded in the library file, and not in the music file, which means that the album art is lost if you move the file to another library, or play it through another system (like Sonos wireless).

    That… doesn't make sense. Did it just start doing that?

    No, it started doing it that way with v7, and therefore created the 'Album Artwork' folder within your iTunes lib folder.
    http://www.macworld.com/article/1056819/itunesartwork.html
    MacWorld quote:
    "In the pre-iTunes 7 days, album artwork was embedded within individual music tracks. This meant that if you opened those tracks in an application capable of displaying embedded artwork, that artwork made its presence known. The downside of this scheme is that the inclusion of artwork made the file a bit bigger—artwork can be a few hundred kilobytes in size.

    iTunes 7 comes along and changes everything. Album artwork is no longer embedded in files but, instead, placed in a labyrinth of artwork folders stored in these locations:

    Mac: youruserfolder /Music/iTunes/Album Artwork

    Windows: /My Documents/My Music/iTunes/Album Artwork"

    philboogie wrote: »
    Nope, that's always been that way.

    Then why hasn't it done that for me, going back to iTunes 1? Yes, 1.

    Aah, v1

    1000
    v5v wrote: »
    philboogie wrote: »
    2. If you paste the art in the 2nd tab it's saved in the library, if you paste it into the 7th tab it's embedded into the song.

    Are you sure? Is that unique to 11? I sometimes apply artwork to several tracks at once by selecting a bunch of songs then opening the Get Info window and dragging the image into the small Artwork field in the Info pane. I'm pretty sure the art is embedded in the tracks that way, but I haven't had occasion to try it with 11 yet and don't have access to my library to try it right now.

    Apparently they changed it back to how it was; artwork is indeed embedded into individual songs. Sorry guys - my bad.
  • Reply 71 of 73


    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post

    No, it started doing it that way with v7, and therefore created the 'Album Artwork' folder within your iTunes lib folder.

    http://www.macworld.com/article/1056819/itunesartwork.html


     


    Oh, yeah. I remember that. Hmm…


     


    image


     


    ????????


    Right, that's gone. Man, when you're dealign with multiple terabytes, a gig can get overlooked pretty easily…


     


    EDIT: deleted, nothing changed. Jeez, Apple; WHY?!


     


    Edit again: OH. APPARENTLY IT'S A "CACHE". BECAUSE IT'S BACK AGAIN. EXCEPT ITUNES DOESN'T CACHE IT PROPERLY (READ: AT ALL). The frick, Apple? This was supposed to be a fixed iTunes…

  • Reply 72 of 73
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member

    Right, that's gone. Man, when you're dealign with multiple terabytes, a gig can get overlooked pretty easily…

    EDIT: deleted, nothing changed. Jeez, Apple; WHY?!

    Edit again: OH. APPARENTLY IT'S A "CACHE". BECAUSE IT'S BACK AGAIN. EXCEPT ITUNES DOESN'T CACHE IT PROPERLY (READ: AT ALL). The frick, Apple? This was supposed to be a fixed iTunes…

    Oh my, that's bad! How come you still have that Album Artwork folder? I thought you always did a clean install with every major OSX release? I did, and restored my files from TM after installing .8

    No Album Artwork folder at my end...
  • Reply 73 of 73


    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post

    Oh my, that's bad! How come you still have that Album Artwork folder? I thought you always did a clean install with every major OSX release? I did, and restored my files from TM after installing .8

    No Album Artwork folder at my end...


     


    It still USES it, apparently!


     


    Guess it's time to rebuild my iTunes Library from scratch. 

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