ipod music files question (1 Viewer)

[Rob_BG]

A few years ago i spent an entire weekend putting all my cd's on my computer harddrive using Windows Media Player. I've used a Rio player with no problems but was thinking about getting an ipod b/c of the extra storage capacity. I downloaded itunes and tried to import from "My Music" folder and itunes tells me that the music is in a "protected WMA format" and can't be imported. Is there a way to unprotect these files? Put them in a MP3 format? help. Also how do avoid this problem in the future when i put more cds on my harddrive?

 

[JeremyErwin]

Good old Microsoft, eh? Always thinking of someone besides the end user... For some reason, you can opt to copy protect your own music.

Microsoft says


In any case, the ipod won't play wma files. The ipod can play mp3, aac (advanced audio codec) and apple lossless. Some aac files are copy protected, but if you import your own, they can be played by any device. I'd suggest reripping your music collection from cds, and storing the results as mp3 files (or, if you're quite set on getting the ipod, as aac or even apple lossless).

 

[Ronn.W]

No need to re-rip everything again. There are converters available out there that can go from the protected wma (assuming it's you that protected it, not content that you purchased and downloaded) to MP3. Try doing a google search on 'wma to mp3 conversion' and you'll find some options.

 

[JeremyErwin]

But the artifacts! Oh please, won't someone think of the artifacts? I suppose 5 minutes per CD may be a tad onerous.

 

[Ronn.W]

I just ripped 600 CDs from Christmas Eve until last night for my wife's new iPod. I don't want any other living human to have to go through that again.

 

[Citizen87645]

I recently finished ripping my entire collection, but of course I found another thing to occupy my time - importing album art. That was almost as painful a process.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

In most cases, you don't have to. Just play one of the tracks (from each album) using Windows Media Player and it will automatically download the album cover for you. This will work with about 80% of your albums.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

You don't even have to play a track. If you just check (paraphrasing) "Allow WMP to search internet for info" in the "Tools", "Options" menu; you just click the "Get info" button under the "Rip" tag on WMP 10 and it will download album, artist, track, album art, etc., if they exist.

 

[Citizen87645]

I used EAC to rip/encode all my music and use iTunes for my player/manager. From what I can tell with WMP10 I have to go through the same manual process to add album art to the ID3 tags if I've used a separate app to rip the album.

 

[DarrenAlan]

Slightly humorous story: For Christmas 2004 I gave my wife an iPod. It literally sat unused for an entire year. So about a week before Christmas 2005, I spent I don't know how many hours downloading about 60 albums and 650 songs. Then I put a bow on it and regave it to her, saying to her in front of her entire family, "Here's your iPod again. The mistake I made was giving you an EMPTY iPod ... but don't worry, this one's full of music."

Now she's using it at work along with the docking station/speaker set I gave her in '04 and the cassette adapter I gave her in '05..........

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Nice to know there's still women in this world who aren't all about the money...instead they're all about the money, plus hours and hours of tedious work!

 

[Ronn.W]

Nice Darren!

That's why I spent last week ripping our CD collection! She would never have ripped them herself.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

out of curiosity, what bitrate do you guys usually choose? I tend to use 320 kbps for orchestral works, 256 for Jazz and 224 for pop/rock.

 

[PaulP]

High VBR is my preference (192/320).

Speaking of iPods, I'm getting one and I have a question that's glossed over in the stuff I've read. How exactly do you import album art into the albums on the iPod?

 

[Ronn.W]

Usually no more than 192, sometimes 128 depending on what the source is. I used to be production manager at a digital music company, and found that MP3's start to lose ground with quality vs. size when you go above 192kbps. In other words, not enough quality to warrant the larger file size. That was back when a 512mb player was HUGE though, so I may need to re-evaluate that a bit

I would agree that may not be the case with 'richer' recordings like classical, orchestral, opera (depending on the recording) and a lot of jazz. I could see going up to at least 256kbps.

 

[Citizen87645]

The method described here: http://www.chrismyden.com/bestmp3guide.php produces variable bitrate from 128 to 320. You can adjust the range though.

Album art can be imported a couple different ways:

1. Manually: Go to Google Images, locate the album art you want (I try to use images at least 300 X 300) and then drag the image from your browser to the iTunes application. Doing it this way you will of course need your windows arranged so you are seeing both browser and iTunes windows and the artwork pane in iTunes will need to opened by going to Edit>Show Artwork (the last button on the bottom left does the same thing).

Keep in mind that if you have only one track selected it will only add art for that one track, so you must select all the tracks first or have only the album name in the album browser window selected.

An alternative method is to use the Get Info dialog (which is essentially an ID3 tag editor) and dragging or copying-pasting the image into the artwork area.

2. Automated: There are some third party apps that will facilitate the search/addition of artwork. The one I used with some success on Windows was iTunes Art Importer. The auto import got some things wrong, but it got a lot of the tedium out of the way, leaving me just quality control checks when it was finished.

On the Apple side you can either install Find Album Artwork script from Doug's Scripts, which automates the Google search a tad or install a program called FetchArt, which I think is the better of the two. It scans your collection, finds possible artwork and all you do is click a button to add it.

Assuming you are using syncing the information for each track will update when you connect your iPod to your computer. If you have things set to manually manage, you'll have to drag the files to the iPod yourself and maybe even delete the old versions from the iPod first.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I use 192Kbps VBR encoding for all my MP3 files. Since I listen to MP3's exclusively on an iPod through earbuds, the added quality of going to a higher bitrate is not worth the larger file size to me. If I was playing the MP3's through my main sound system at home, I may feel differently. As it is, at 192Kbps I still cannot fit all my music on my 4th generation 40GB iPod.

Thanks for the link to the album art utility, Guo. Album art is a project I've put off, since I cannot view it on my current iPod. However, I need to get around to it sometime, because I'm sure an iPod with video capabilities is in my future at some point.

 

[PaulP]

I'm asking because I haven't gotten my iPod yet actually, so I'm curious as to how it all works. I currently have lots of albums ripped on my PC, arranged in folders (a folder per album) which contain artwork as JPGs. These folders can simply be copied to the iPod and will work as albums with cover art, or is it more involved than that?

 

[Citizen87645]

If you get an iPod you have to use iTunes to transfer your music over. In iTunes you can add existing files or directories as sources for your library. If you want to maintain those existing file locations, be sure to uncheck "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library," otherwise you'll end up with a duplicate set in your iTunes music folder. If you choose to use iTunes to rip any new CDs, you might want to designate the directory you currently use as the iTunes music folder.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

if you want to just drag and drop a'la explorer, you can use a program called AnaPod.