*Official* iPod thread - all iPod discussion in here

[ChrisF]

2x £15 iTunes vouchers for £20 in-store at Argos until 22nd folks!

[Number45]

http://kotaku.com/5305944/playstation-meets-apple-in-the-best-iphone-case-weve-ever-seen

Is it wrong to want a Touch/iPhone just so that I can get one of these:

[CMcK]

Yes. Phone cases are pointless and the original PlayStation was one of the ugliest consoles ever.

[Geoff D]

I've just been given an Ipod nano as a prezzie (result!) & have imported all of my music into Itunes - but my laptop hard drive is nearly full so I'd like to move them all to an external HDD; is this possible? Will i have to reimport it all again or something?

[CMcK]

I've just been given an Ipod nano as a prezzie (result!) & have imported all of my music into Itunes - but my laptop hard drive is nearly full so I'd like to move them all to an external HDD; is this possible? Will i have to reimport it all again or something?

Have a look in the iTunes help menu or on the Apple support site. It'll tell you how to move the files. It's easily done.

[randombs]

I always do this whenever I move between laptops and I've never had a problem. In iTunes:

Go to Preferences
Go to the Advanced tab
Set the iTunes music folder location to the new folder you want to use on your external hdd (create the folder yourself)
Close iTunes (not sure if this is necessary but I do it just in case)
Copy all the music to the new folder
Open iTunes
Run the 'Consolidate Library' function. In my case it's in the File menu, then 'Library', then 'Consolidate Library'. Normally, consolidating copies all the music in your library into the library folder. This is useful for people who don't have iTunes set to copy music as it's added, so it brings all the files from all their random folders dotted around the place into one organised folder. In your case, it realises the music's already organised in the folder and so doesn't move anything. It also means you preserve your playlists if you have any.

If all goes according to plan, it'll consolidate within a few seconds (as all the files are already in the new folder). Also, if you use an iPod and it's set to automatic sync, it won't need to recopy the songs as it's still the same library.

In my case, "keep iTunes folder organised" and "copy music when adding to library" are both checked in the Advanced tab. If your iTunes isn't already set up to copy music to the folder when you add it to the library, I imagine it would simply be a case of moving the music to the new folder, clearing your iTunes library and re-adding everything. As it doesn't copy the files themselves, it won't take nearly as long, probably a minute or so to just read the file names.

[phillai]

I just got a 3rd gen iPod touch 64GB recently to replace my 1st gen iPod touch 32GB.

So far so good but I got a problem with music albums... It's duplicating the same music album so instead of 1 album it's showing up as 30 (or so).

Anyone any ideas how to avoid this?

I'm currently using itunes 9 and I've not updated my iPod touch 64GB - It's still on 3.1 firmware.

[Dogg Thang]

Is it happening with all albums or just some? And, if it's just some, are they compilations/soundtracks/albums with more than one artist? If so, it seems the Touch 3.0.1 firmware has buggered up compilations and lists them as single tracks. I think you can solve this by amending the tags of the affected track and making sure that the 'Album Artist' bit is checked and filled in (whether by Various Artists or whatever). If that's consistent, I think it should be fine. At least, I think that's probably it.

[phillai]

Is it happening with all albums or just some? And, if it's just some, are they compilations/soundtracks/albums with more than one artist? If so, it seems the Touch 3.0.1 firmware has buggered up compilations and lists them as single tracks. I think you can solve this by amending the tags of the affected track and making sure that the 'Album Artist' bit is checked and filled in (whether by Various Artists or whatever). If that's consistent, I think it should be fine. At least, I think that's probably it.

Yup, you're right. It's only happening with some albums!

So flipping annoying. I'll try what you suggested thanks.

[ChrisF]

I logged repeating albums as a bug with the betas of the 3.1 firmware. I was told that it's by design, so I went back to 3.0 where everything was fine again. But now 3.1 is officially out what do you do eh?

Sometimes marking them as compilation and then making the track numbers correct worked, but for the most part it didn't

[phillai]

So it's not just be then! This has been driving me nuts...

I just want my album covers correct!

[randombs]

A bunch of my mp3s are suddenly missing their album names and track numbers (iTuns 9.0.2, Leopard 10.5.8)! I've no idea how it's happened, but I'm gonna have to go through and manually correct these one-by-one. I hope this doesn't keep happening, as it could really ruin things. So far it was only about four or five albums from what I can see, but I wonder what caused it...

[Number45]

I have an odd problem with an iPod, hoping someone in here might be able to give me a solution. I have a 2g 4GB Nano, which recently I accidentally attempted to sync with a library that was too large (Converted some tracks from lossless into AAC but forgot to remove the lossless files from the library before starting the sync). Weirdly, the sync process didn't report any errors.

When I realised what I'd done I removed the lossless files from the library and tried to sync it again. Unfortunately it crashed iTunes, and the iPod itself seemed to hang - or at least it seemed like it was perpetually trying to reboot itself.

Now I've tried running the battery dead and doing a restore to defaults from the Nano itself. This allowed me to get into the menus so it seemed like the iPod was working fine, but again when I try and sync with iTunes it crashed and I ended up with the same symptoms on the iPod.

I've tried syncing with a completely clean (Newly created) library as well as with another PC, same end result. When I do get any kind of response it tells me to reset the iPod from the devices section within iTunes, but it never shows up in there.

I'm at a loss really. It's out of warranty so sending it back is out of the question, so I'm hoping that someone here knows of a process that I've missed. Would appreciate any suggestions.

If all else fails it's Mrs 45s birthday at the end of the month (It's her iPod), so it'll at least make picking a pressie for her nice and easy.

[randombs]

Have you tried forcing disk mode by restarting (menu+select for six seconds) and then quickly holding play+select when it restarts and keeping them held for about three to four seconds. If you do it correctly, you'll get a very basic-looking black and white usb connect mode.

Try doing that and then connecting it to the PC. If iTunes picks it up, try performing a software restore from the iPod's page and see what happens.

Another thing I've tried that has sometimes worked is to format the iPod within Windows/OSX by right-clicking it and formatting (I think you'd need to enable manually managing songs to get it to show up in Windows normally) and then rebooting it and reconnecting it to iTunes.

Sorry if it sounds ultra-basic but it's not intended - I've no idea what your iPod knowledge is like so figured we'd start simply and work our way up

[Number45]

You sir, are a genius. Formatting in Windows seems to have done the trick.

Now, any suggestions on what I can get my wife for her birthday?