Digital Media?Music Management

To do what ? I thought you had a Unitiserve ?



James

Why use the iTunes interface when you have the Serve interface?  Doesn't it compile all your files into one searchable database?

I have a large number of digital files (ripped cd's), that I saved and are currently stored on my mac mini. I am not able to transfer these to my unitiserve; and I still want access to them (which I currently have through the unitiserve).

The problem with itunes is that the files are stored and album art is not recognizable through the nserve interface. I have to physically go through all my files and insert album art as "folder.jpeg", into each of the artist/album folders. This is a lot of work. Additionally, when the files are read from my mac/itunes folder, many of the songs are listed with track number beside them, and sometimes with "odd" characters "-_+ etc. Which again will require me to go through them individually and edit them.

I also have plans to download hi-res files from the net and need a place to store/compile them.

I guess I could rip the files to a cd and then to the nserve, but this becomes a bit redundant. 

Scot

Scot - there are a number of scripts for iTunes to sort the album art out for you.

Try Image fetch

James

Thanks James. Hoping others have some insight as well.

Media rae can hep sort out art work, there are plenty of scripts and applciations that put art work into itunes.

For a more 'audiophile' experiences there is ayrewave for mac.

You could really go to town and waste 800 quid on ammara, plenty have done so you could be next.

How is Amarra going to do anything if the files are played via the Unitiserve. Come on Gary, if you are going to slag the product off (as you always have done) then at least try to understand what it does first ..

Hi Scot,

IMO iTunes can't be bettered as a tool to manage your tagging, artwork, etc. especially on the Mac. An 'audiophile' solution only becomes relevant if you are using it to rip or to play music, which of course you are not, having the serve. The only down side is that it doesn't do FLAC, but you can convert any of these to ALAC and the Serve will be able to handle them from iTunes.

What you need is a way to automate the process of extracting the artwork and removing numbers, etc. from songs. As others have said, AppleScript is the way to do this. Google Doug's iTunes Scripts and have a browse. There are plenty on there which can remove track numbers and tidy up track names and tags in other ways. A quick search on there also reveals "Save Album Art To Album Folder 2.0" which seems to do what you want with the artwork.

Cheers,

Ben

Thanks Ben,

I have installed them as directed on the site, but cannot figure out how they become active (ie  haven't noticed any changes in my folders). Trying to figure things out, but am a bit stumped (bit of a novice at this sort of thing).

Thanks for the help, and if you can offer any further instruction, please do.

Scot

James, the guy said he uses itunes. I therefore made a leap. Seemed reasonable to me.

Hi Scot,



Once you have the scripts in the correct folder, open iTunes and along the bar at the top of your screen, together with File, Edit, View etc. you should see a little icon that looks like a scroll. The scripts are activated from there. Normally you first highlight the tracks you want to apply the script to (try a small number as a test first) then select the script to run on them from that menu.



Hope that helps.



Ben

Thanks Ben. I'll give it a try