how to import music to ipod from hard disk (missing CDDB info)

[underthesamesun]

Hello,

New to macs and ipods...I have a bunch of our music stored on hard disk. When I pull it into itunes I don't get song titles, I just get track1, track2, etc. When I try to update the titles from the cddb from the net, itunes says I need to re-import. I tried re-importing one cd and it took a long time. I certainly can't re-import every cd to disk, it would take a long, long time. Is there a way to import from the disk? Or how about from a samba/win32 share?

I heard of a replacement coming soon called songbirdnest and I'm hoping if itunes won't import from disk then this program will. (Does anyone know?) Are there other programs besides itunes for managing the iPod?

Thanks

[acme.mail.order]

So your music collection was created with incomplete metadata? You do have a problem.
Dragging a file with NO metadata to iTunes should create an entry with the name matching the file name. If there is something in the file that says "Name="track 1" that info overrides the filename.

Try this: select the track1, track2 etc files in the Library, Get Info and clear the invalid information (nothing or single space). iTunes will write the blank info to the file. Delete the entries from iTunes and re-import.

If you want to populate the artist, album, genre etc you will have to return to the original cds. The Gracenote CD Database won't work with digital files, only cds. So re-importing an mp3 file won't change anything. Depending on your machine and the settings it can take up to 20 minutes to import a cd.

[chabig]

Here is an app and web based service that will properly set all of your song tags for a small fee (which I think is reasonable).

http://www.scriptsoftware.com/idtunes/

It actually listens and identifies each track, then sets the metadata from its database.

Chris

[underthesamesun]

So your music collection was created with incomplete metadata? You do have a problem.
Dragging a file with NO metadata to iTunes should create an entry with the name matching the file name. If there is something in the file that says "Name="track 1" that info overrides the filename.

Try this: select the track1, track2 etc files in the Library, Get Info and clear the invalid information (nothing or single space). iTunes will write the blank info to the file. Delete the entries from iTunes and re-import.

If you want to populate the artist, album, genre etc you will have to return to the original cds. The Gracenote CD Database won't work with digital files, only cds. So re-importing an mp3 file won't change anything. Depending on your machine and the settings it can take up to 20 minutes to import a cd.

Yeah, ok, I am re-importing after hooking another drive up, so I have two drives importing. Once in a while itunes tries to re-import the cd in the 2nd (external) drive??? I'm not sure why but it's definitely a bug. I have no idea how to submit the bug so....maybe someone else will submit a bug report that also sees this problem.

The iMac is importing reasonably fast and I don't have to watch it as it does just swap the cds as they pop out.

Thanks.

[underthesamesun]

Yeah, ok, I am re-importing after hooking another drive up, so I have two drives importing. Once in a while itunes tries to re-import the cd in the 2nd (external) drive??? I'm not sure why but it's definitely a bug. I have no idea how to submit the bug so....maybe someone else will submit a bug report that also sees this problem.

The iMac is importing reasonably fast and I don't have to watch it as it does just swap the cds as they pop out.

Thanks.


Ha, something about defining a problem often provides important additional insight.....
While typing the reply above I discover that the external drive imports the cd then ejects the cd but since I was typing I didn't take out the cd, well the drive automatically unjected (opposite of eject??) the cd tray with the cd still in it and of course itunes tried to import, again. So maybe not a bug afterall but just a feature. Although I have to admit I'd rather it didn't do that, but how can it know what's happed once it's ejected.