@Mike H: As long as your comment is interesting I don't care if it's related to the original topic at all. =P
I didn't know about the arrow allowing you to cycle through messages. I wont use it often but I'm sure it'll come in handy every now and then.
It's not so much editing the metadata as browsing other areas. I'm not explaining this well so I'll just tell you how to do it.
Browse your library, find an artist and album, then double click one of their songs. Now continue browsing and look at a different artist and album. Wait for the song to end. When it ends the music should stop, instead of continuing with the original album (or even playing the first song on the second album). | |
Perhaps it is just preference, but I find iTunes a pain to manage music in. I also find the lack of filtering features to hamper it. Also, the thing is far too large to use as just a player, Winamp can get small enough to mix into the status bar on most programs. Perhaps I am missing something on the filtering though, but I only see a big ass list of all my songs, taking me minutes to scroll through.
I will admit, before posting my previous comments, I didn't notice the search box at the top of iTunes. Now that I did, it helps. I also had a LOT of troubles when I tried to convert my entire music collection from WMA to M4A. It made a lot of duplicates, froze and stopped several times, and all together crapped out on me. Come to find out, the real problem was a failing hard drive, but it didn't change the fact that I had a ton of duplicate files, which iTunes didn't help me remove(You can view duplicates, but you can't delete half of them). I manually removed them, but then I got a million 'missing file' marks, and there was no easy way to remove them. In this case, iTunes should have asked to replace the already converted files, instead of just automatically putting numbers. Then, in the duplicate view, I should have been able to automatically remove half of the duplicates(stopping all duplicates) and finally, when I manually removed them, I should have had an easy way to remove the missing files. Also, I do use multiple media players, so I so if I take action in one(Like remove files from library/drive) then there are going to be issues. It just seems like another case of "Apple knows best" syndrome. Perhaps that is great for the common man, but I'm not a big fan of giving up control. | |
View->Show Browser or Crtl+B. I have no idea why that isn't the default. Edit->Preferences->'Show genre when browsing' will get rid of the genre panel.
You can also switch to the mini player, Advanced->Switch to Mini Player Ctrl+M. I have a keyboard with media buttons so the majority of the time it isn't even maximized. I'm pretty sure a recent release has seen better handling of duplicates. Although I'm not 100% sure on that. Also, I do use multiple media players, so I so if I take action in one(Like remove files from library/drive) then there are going to be issues. I had the same problem for about a week when I was using WinAMP for playing an iTunes for syncing, but I got sick of it and went with pure iTunes. | |
Again, not to be a defensive(annoying) fanboy, but I've never had trouble doing this. While any song/album/playlist is playing, I can navigate to any others and edit metadata all I want. I do this on a routine basis. You can also double-click on any playlist to open it up in a separate window and do it that way. And when you're finished and want to return to the current playing song, just go to File -> Show Current Song (Cmd-L on Mac, I assume probably Ctrl-L on Win).
God I'm annoying.