I’ve gotten plenty of exciting questions recently, many of which cross deep into how iTunes manages documents. the first one I have a look at asks approximately double entries for songs in iTunes. I additionally study a probable manner that Apple ought to upload new, thrilling smart playlist situations, and that i speak vacation music, that you sincerely don’t need to listen all year spherical.
Doubles
Q: I moved a number of my music documents from the iTunes Media folder to an external tough drive. The tracks remained seen in iTunes, however unplayable (clicking on them induced a conversation container asking to find the tracks). I re-introduced the track documents to my iTunes library, but now every tune is indexed two times. If I delete one of the indexed tracks, the related record gets deleted. How can i get rid of these double entries?
You’ve discovered one of the keys to preserving a healthful iTunes library: in no way circulate files on their own. iTunes is a database that continues records of where your documents are positioned, and in case you circulate them, iTunes doesn’t know in which you’ve positioned them. adding them back delivered every other reproduction of every track, but iTunes become clever enough to recognise that the unique tracks had been in that area, so it set the location to the same document for both entries for every song. Deleting both of the entries deletes that file, but now not the second entry for a music.
To save you this within the destiny, positioned all of the tracks you intend to transport in a playlist. pass them inside the Finder, if you must, then delete them from the playlist. whilst you re-upload them, you’ll handiest have one access for each music. but it’s nice to now not make this sort of flow at all; if you run out of area, either pass your whole library to a bigger tough pressure, or use TuneSpan, which can flow a number of your media documents to a special disk.
To repair your hassle, you could use Doug Adams’ test for Double Entries AppleScript. read this blog publish explaining the way it works, and down load the script right here.
No repeats
Q: I’d want to create a smart playlist to do the subsequent: a) now not repeat a tune within a sure wide variety of months, and b) now not repeat an artist within, say, some days, or perhaps until, say, 25 songs through other artists get played. the first element is easy, however is there any way to get the second one component to paintings?
As you are saying, the first element is easy. you place a situation in a smart playlist wherein last played no longer within the closing three months.
remaining three months
you may set a circumstance in a clever playlist to no longer repeat track you’ve heard in the previous few days, weeks, or months.
however, there’s no way to accomplish the second situation. I frequently get questions about this; humans need to not pay attention returned-to-back songs via the identical artist, or not hear the same artist more than once in 10, 20, or 50 songs. it would be notable if Apple could add this kind of circumstance, and i’m able to consider one manner they may do so.
when you have a these days played clever playlist, you’ll see the most recent tracks you’ve listened to. if you had been to restriction that playlist to, say, 25 tracks, you can exclude tracks the use of that playlist as a condition. (Playlist isn’t always currently performed.) To exclude an artist, you would want so that you can use a circumstance along with Artist isn’t in Playlist recently performed. so you might leverage the lately performed smart playlist, and be able to exclude any music from an album, artist, genre, and so forth., which is in that playlist. you can restriction the playlist to any quantity of tracks, so in case you wanted to not listen the identical artist for 10 tracks, you set your currently performed playlist to handiest display 10 tracks. if you want that restriction to be 50 tracks, you place the playlist to display that many tracks.
holidays
Q: Is there a way to hide a style? we have a huge library of Christmas tune that we listen to from after Thanksgiving until early January. The relaxation of the year we don’t need to look it.
you can’t cover a genre, sadly. i get this query plenty, in particular about excursion track. you could eliminate this tune out of your library completely, shop it in a folder, and add it returned while the vacation season comes around, but doing this will lose any ratings or play counts, and also do away with the tracks from any manual playlists you’ve created.
in case you want to try this, the perfect manner is to create a smart playlist with the condition genre is holiday (or something you use as the genre for this music). visit the Finder, and create a new folder; call it excursion track. Open that folder. again in iTunes, choose all of the tracks from the clever playlist, and drag them to the folder’s open window inside the Finder. iTunes will replica all the authentic files. subsequent, lower back in iTunes, delete all the documents from the clever playlist; press Command-alternative-Delete to do that.
while the vacation season comes around once more, simply drag that folder back to iTunes window to feature the documents.
individually, I’d leave them in iTunes; there’s extra of a threat of losing files while you shunt them inside and outside of the iTunes library. in case you need to ensure they don’t get played in shuffle mode, use the clever playlist I counseled above, choose all of the tracks, right-click, after which pick out Uncheck selection. iTunes doesn’t play tracks that are unchecked while in shuffle mode or if the tracks are in playlists. (you can still play a unmarried song if you double-click on it.) subsequent Thanksgiving, pick the tracks, proper click, and pick take a look at choice and also you’ll be able to play them once more.