iPod, iTunes and Floola

[3 phase]

My daughter gave me an iPod Classic 120GB for my birthday last week. Very nice, but what a palava so far. Have I done anything wrong, because I am still pulling my hair out over how slow iTunes is. This is what I have done.
Had to download i Tunes then import everything from my separate hard drive where all my music etc is stored normally feeding media player 11, into a new iTunes folder in my music, then transfer over to iTunes. Then it has to convert the files, this alone took 2 whole days then it lost a lot of the artwork so had to go to a website to import those, and then when the syncing was complete only half the music went on to the thing. I have 40GB of music on my pc but only 23 went to the iPOD. Googled this and I'm not alone and forums suggest Floola, anyone tried this??
My iPod could end up being a nice paperweight!!

 

[whitenemesis]

Patience!

iTunes works, feed it good data and everything is fine. Artwork is a plus, not required for music.

Perhaps time to rationalise your collection?

 

[Antharro]

I don't use iTunes on a regular basis - never have. But when I used it a few times to try and organize my music collection, I found I had to change one important setting.

By default, when you import music into iTunes, it copies it to My Music \ iTunes. So even if the music is on another hard drive, iTunes will copy it to your My Music folder.

Way around this is to go to Preferences and make sure the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder" setting is unchecked as shown here:

Now, I've had this setting unchecked for so long that I actually don't know if it's set like that on a fresh installation of iTunes, but it could be worth a check.

If it is, then I would suggest deleting the iTunes folder in My Music (unless you have music you have paid for!). This will delete all the duplicates of your music that are taking up disc space. Then start up iTunes again, make sure that option is unchecked, and re-import all your music. You can just drag and drop into the iTunes window. Should be a lot faster now!

I have no idea why it was converting the songs... if they were in MP3 format to begin with then it shouldn't've had a problem with them that required converting. Just copying as I explained.

 

[3 phase]

OK thanks for that, I think the reason for the conversions is that 90% of my music on the hard drive was on wma format which iPod doesn't use. Majority of my music is ripped from cds so goes in as wma, have downloaded say 200 tracks over time and they are mp3 already.

I have 7,892 tracks of music so you can see that there is a lot to convert.

If I take the default of my music/iTunes out do the files go direct to the apple/iTunes file then, but surely they will still have to be converted won't they?

 

[3 phase]

And I think the issue with iTunes is that it appears so clunky compared to media player 11, it seems to take up nearly all the processing power, I have a 6 month old pentium 4 pc which until iTunes went in was super fast, now the whole thing seems to have treacle in it. Googling this revealed that it seems quite common.
Maybe I am trying to add too much in a short time and patience is the answer.

 

[Antharro]

Ah, WMA files. Lovely. I hate WMA files. MP3 or FLAC for me all the way. That would be the reason that iTunes is converting them, however. It shouldn't matter that you're telling to do the whole lot at once - I dropped some 10,000 MP3s into iTunes a few versions back and it didn't have a problem with it. And yes, it would need somewhere to stick the converted files.

I've not experenced (or heard of anyone experiencing) the slow issues you've explained, but there Google does seem to have plenty of reports of it.

Try this:

- Uninstall iTunes.
- Delete the iTunes folder in My Music.
- If you have a registry cleaner, then use it to get rid of any registry entries related to iTunes. CCleaner will do this for you for free.
- Restart.
- Install iTunes.
- Pop in a CD and rip it using iTunes.
- Is it still slow?

 

[3 phase]

TBH Antharro, am reluctant to do this as we had a right battle getting iTunes on in first place with registry issues, it seems to be working better now I'm doing it album by album and also reminiscing too with some good music, so will live with it for now. PC working quicker as well now, thanks for your help again.


Ade

 

[kay7]

iTunes is fine for use on Mac. If you use it on Windows , sometimes its slow( depends on your OS- XP/VISTA/Ultimate ) . 32 or 64 ?
My iPod has 160Gb and so far transfered 86Gb of music. Wav files and mp3 files on itunes *sometimes* are slow ( ! Apple Forums Advice ) so done mine in AAC+. Nero Ultra Edition is good for ipod or the latest Winamp 5.4. Another thing: make sure you download those files in good quality as itunes will try to adjust the bass/treble etc then you won`t like the sound.