Wednesday, June 4, 2008

iTunes upgrades! Full Lyrics, Album art, ordered Music

So - iTunes has some problems. If you follow along, I will show you a few nifty tricks/programs to do these things:

1 - get lyrics to almost every song you have on your ipod and in your itunes
2 - do the same for album art work
3 - remove those pesky (!) missing files from itunes
4 - find/add the files that you didnt know you had
5 - fix all the ID3 info tags - remove those www.musicblah.blah.whatever links

There are a few things that I can’t do yet - so hopefully more soon. Here is what I can’t do for you:

1 - delete duplicates easily aka not one by one
2 - do ALL the work for you. You still have to put in fifteen minutes. I did all this, and I still have about 100 problem tracks. I will fix them one by one, because I am that guy. Most people probably don’t care. The point is, this stuff does 95% of the work, you still have to help it that 5% along.
3 - i am sure there is another one ;)

So - I did a few simple things to my itunes, mainly:

1 - fix all the ID3 tags (a LOT better than itunes automatic service can)
2 - remove the bad stuff (missing files, ect)
3 - get the lyrics
4 - get the artwork
5 - sync!

To see the rest of this - You will need to click read the rest link right below

Starting with 1 - fix all the ID3 tags
Flat out, this is the hardest and/or longest step. Once this is done, its just one click and waiting on your part, so stick the first part out!
1) download a nice program called MusicBrainz http://musicbrainz.org/.
2) install, open
3) add folder, and select your My Music folder (or main music folder - it will get subdirectories auto)
4) once it is done processing, click cluster
5) both of those steps take a bit. Once that is done, select all unclustered files (to save time here, try to only select the files that you know are songs. Aka dont select your recorded lectures - you are just wasting time) and click scan
Note: basically it is ‘listening’ to every file, and trying to match it against a database of files. This is really nice, it can turn ‘track 15′ into ‘Crash Into Me’ by …

6) Select all the albums that popped up on the right (click one, and hit ctrl + A) and click the big ’save’ button at the top.
Note: Scroll to the top of the right album list before you click save, and you can see the *’s going away. AKA they indicate unsaved albums.

7) Open itunes, if its not open, and select all songs (click to select one, and hit ctrl + A). right click, and choose get info. Ignore the warning, and hit ok — NOTE: DO NOT HIT ANYTHING BUT OK. YOU WILL WIPE ALL DATA FROM YOUR SONGS OTHERWISE

8) this is the end of the auto tutorial on this part, but FYI this is a really powerful program. You have to put some effort in to understand how to really work it, but if you are a fanatic this program is very valuable.

Now on to 2 - remove the bad stuff (missing files, ect)
1) Download and install ITLU http://itlu.ownz.ch/wordpress/?page_id=5. Note: he recommends backing up the library, which I did, but I have had no problems with the program

2) open the beast
3) click the blank square next to Location, browse to your My Music directory (or other main music place) and click ok to add it.
4) click every single box
Note: it is smart to actually repeat this step twice. (well, from 2 ;) ) The first pass will remove all the files that are linked incorrectly, and the second one will add them back, linked correctly. In laymans terms, run it twice ;)
5) click start, and grab a snack

Pressing on …. 3 - get the lyrics
1) download/install iLyrics http://code.google.com/p/ilyrics/downloads/list
Note: this is in Beta - so you kind of have to sit there and watch it and click ok everytime something unexpected happens. THis is why we removed the bad stuff first - this program has a tendency to crash if a file is missing
Note2: lyrics come from lyricwiki.org - so yea, if you have a song and want lyrics - you can add them to LW and iLyrics will suddenly work for those songs

2) open itunes, and ilyrics
3) in itunes, click music, click on a song to select it, and hit ctrl + A to elect all songgs
4) in ilyrics, click both checkboxes
5) sit there and babysit while it runs. You will probably have to click through about 30 error messages (thats what I had to, with about 2500 songs in my itunes)

Sweet, so on to album art
this ones pretty simple, just choose all songs again in itunes, (select one, then hit ctrl + A) and choose advanced->get album artwork

Sync!!!
now plug in your ipod, and wait for the massive sync

Note: on an ipod touch, seeing the lyrics means playing a song and clicking once on the screen (its kind of hard to find, so fyi if you see the repeat symbol, you are in the right place. If you dont see lyrics, there are no lyrics on that song in itunes. To check - open itunes, find that song, right click and do get info, and check the lyrics tab)

Hope that helps some people! It took me a while to do all this, so I figured I would share some stuff ;) Also - please digg this baby if you liked it!

Hamy

No comments: