Recently in iTunes Category

"Now that Apple owns lala.com can I transfer songs on lala.com to iTunes and then to my iPod?"

In order to put songs from your Lala.com account into iTunes and on your iPod, you need a Lala.com account. You also need to have purchased the download version of the song. Any song you can download as an MP3 from Lala can be added to your iPod. Songs that are web songs, cannot be added to iTunes or copied to your iPod. You do need some additional software to make it easy.

"I have a problem in opening my iTunes. When i double click the icon, a box written with "The iTunes library.itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file" came out and it prevented me from running my iTunes. What should i do?"

Fortunately problems with opening iTunes don't happen very often, but when they do a feeling of panic can set in. What if you can't access your music. There are a number of potential causes for this error, which makes it hard to narrow down the exact cause. In most cases the solution is one of two things.

"If I have a playlist of songs in iTunes, can I import my iTunes playlist in Windows Media Player and have it work there too? Or do I have to recreate my iTunes playlist in Windows Media Player?"

There is not direct solution to export a playlist from iTunes and import the playlist into Windows Media Player. The two applications use a different structure for their playlist data and don't communicate. Fortunately, there's a workaround.

"I have an ipod U2 20gb, which has gone corrupted. I don't have backup of the music in it - can i do anything? The iPod just does not turn on. iTunes says, it has detected an iPod that appears to be corrupt. My Computer option does not recognize the iPod. If it shows as an E drive, under the properties, I see zero bytes of data - I have about 1500 songs."

This is a common problem that seems to have more to do with a communication error between iTunes and iPod rather than there being something actually wrong with the iPod. A series of troubleshooting steps may be required to identify a solution, although in some cases the solution is to have Apple Care.

Marty writes, "I just installed a Sony DVD/CD re-writable drive with Nero 7 essential software. I downloaded a movie from iTunes and I can't get the software to burn it to disc. I would appreciate any help."

Any iTunes movies or tv show episodes purchased from the iTunes store will fail to burn to DVD. This isn't a flaw in your Nero DVD burning software, it's a limitation of the video downloads. Apple's copy protection on each of the files prevents making DVDs that would be usable in a set top DVD player.

"How do I move songs from an external drive to iTunes?"

There are two possible answers to this question depending on whether you want the songs available in iTunes anytime the external drive is connected to your computer, or if you want the songs available in iTunes even when the external drive is disconnected to your computer.

Adding Music on an External Drive to iTunes

If the external hard drive is always connected to your computer and you simply need to add music from the drive to iTunes, the solution is quite simple. With iTunes open, go to File > Add Folder to Library and choose either the entire hard drive (if appropriate) or the folder where the music files are stored on the drive.

Copying Music from an External Drive to iTunes

If what you want to do is make music on the external drive available even when your computer is not connected to the drive, you'll need to take a few additional steps. The first thing to do is to copy all the music from the external drive to a folder watched by your iTunes software. This is typically your Music or My Music folder. Once you do this, you may have to either close iTunes and re-open it in order for iTunes to find the songs, or you may have to choose File > Add Folder to Library and select the folder you just copied music into before iTunes will recognize the songs.

"I purchased about 300 songs from iTunes. I just got a new Zune MP3 Player and I can't figure out how to get my iTunes songs on my Zune. I really don't want to have to buy all these songs again."

Unless you purchased songs from iTunes very recently as iTunes Plus files, your iTunes music purchases are locked down to only work with iTunes, an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. There are basically two ways to solve your problem - you can burn audio CDs of all your iTunes purchases and re-rip them using the Zune software, or you can get some help from software that simulates CD burning. Burning CDs can take an extremely long time, while using software works very quickly.

The first step in converting your files is to download SoundTaxi and install it.

Once the software is installed, you simply need to select which files you want to convert, choose a Zune compatible audio format like MP3 or WMA, and wait a few minutes for the software to make all the files playable on your Zune.

After conversion is complete, open your Zune software and import the converted tracks into your Zune music library.

"I just got a new iPod Shuffle. All my music is currently in Windows Media Player, but I can't see it in iTunes. How can I transfer music from Windows Media Player to iTunes?"

If the songs you have in your Windows Media Player library are primarily stored in your My Music folder (or just Music in Windows Vista), you can automatically import everything into iTunes in a few simple steps. If you have music stored in other folders besides the My Music folder, you can repeat the same steps for each folder that has tracks you want to import. Follow the steps below to import your music to iTunes:

"I downloaded a bunch of AVI movies from the Internet. How can I convert these AVI files to something I can watch on my iPod?"

I frequently mention WinFF as my favorite solution for converting files between various formats. Converting AVI files to the iPod compatible MP4 format is no exception. WinFF is the app that will do the trick with the least amount of effort. One of the reason's I'm picking WinFF to convert from AVI to MP4 is because it supports batch conversion, so you can line up 20 or 2000 videos to convert and walk away. When you're finished converting simply add the MP4 files to your iTunes library and sync your iPod to watch the movies on your iPod. Here's how it works:

"All my music is saved as m4a and m4p files. I just bought a new phone that only plays wma music files, so I can't use any of my m4a and m4p music files on my computer. Is there a way I can convert these files from m4a and m4p so that they work with my new phone?"

Most m4a files are created when you use iTunes to rip CDs. iTunes Music Store is the most common source of m4p files. Each of these file types require different methods for converting to wma. Because the m4p files are protected with DRM, you have to play by the iTunes Music Store rules in order to convert them - in this case, the easiest way to go from m4p to wma is to burn an Audio CD in iTunes and then use Windows Media Player to rip that CD as wma files. Converting m4a files to wma is fully automated using my favorite freeware media converter, WinFF.

"When I rip my CDs with iTunes, the AAC files it creates won't work in my car's MP3 CD player. How can I rip CDs as MP3s instead of AAC files?"

Apple defaults to ripping AAC files because that's the format it encourages iPod owners to use. For maximum compatibility with devices like Sony's PSP, your car stereo, and even most non-iPod portable media players, MP3 is a safer choice.

To change the way iTunes rips CDs on import, go to Edit > Preferences, click on the Advanced tab, then click on the Importing tab. Choose MP3 Encoder from the drop down menu and click OK.

All future files ripped from CD will be MP3 format.

On the Burning tab in the same location, you can change the CD Burning preferences to burn MP3 CDs, although I personally prefer building MP3 CDs with Roxio Easy Media Creator or Roxio Toast.

"How can I put my home movies on my iPod? I edit my movies in Windows Movie Maker, but I can't add the files to iTunes to put them on my iPod. How can I get movies I made in Movie Maker to play back on my iPod?"

Windows Movie Maker saves files in two formats - either DV-AVI, which is the format compatible with your camcorder tapes; Movie Maker also outputs WMV files, which are compatible with things like Zune and Creative players, but not compatible with iPod players. In order to get your movies from Movie Maker to your iPod, you need to first convert the files to an iPod compatible file format.

To get from Windows Movie Maker to an iPod playable file, first save the movie to your computer asa you normally would, then convert the file using a freeware app called WinFF.
Save your movie from Windows Movie Maker using one of the higher quality WMV options, preferably at either 640x480 or 720x480 resolution. It then takes four simple steps to get from WMV to iTunes in a format playable by your iPod.

1) After the movie is saved, open WinFF and add it to the list of movies you want to convert for your iPod (you can do one or several in a batch).

2) Choose Convert to XviD for iPod (4:3) from the Convert to menu. If your movie is widescreen choose XviD for iPod (16:9).

3) Browse to the iTunes Movies folder on your hard drive on the Output Folder menu. This is typically {username} > (My) Music > iTunes > iTunes Music > Movies.

4) Click the Convert button to start converting.

By saving your video in the iTunes Music > Movies folder you automate the process of getting files from WinFF to your iPod by always saving them in a folder that gets watched by iTunes. Occasionally this does not automatically update, and you will have to use the File > Add Folder To Library function in order to add your movie.

After all these steps are completed, open iTunes, verify that the converted movie is now in your iTunes library and sync your iPod with iTunes to transfer the video.

Director Wes Anderson of Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic fame, offers a brilliant marketing piece for his new film The Darjeeling Limited. Hotel Chevalier is a 10 minute short film starring Jason Schwartzmann and Natalie Portman, setting the stage for the first act of The Darjeeling Limited. The marketing genius is Anderson and Fox Searchlight Pictures are giving away Hotel Chevalier free on iTunes. The short features Portman's character, the unnamed ex-girlfriend to Schwartzman's character Jack, coming to say goodbye on her way to the airport, which sets the stage for the events that take place in The Darjeeling Limited.

You can download Hotel Chevalier free from any US iTunes account.

Download YamiPod

If you connect your iPod to more than one computer on a regular basis or if you move tracks between computers, you've seen the iTunes message offering to delete files from your iPod. This is theoretically Apple's way of protecting themselves from being associated with piracy, but it's a lousy user experience in almost every case. YamiPod provides a great alternative to the iTunes interface, running as a standalone app for managing songs on an iPod. You can even copy YamiPod to your iPod and run it from any computer. Copy songs to and from any Windows, Mac or Linux computer with YamiPod. Update and manage playlists. Play songs from your iPod through your computer speakers. Add lyrics to songs. Manage existing notes or add additional notes all from one central interface. YamiPod is a solid alternative to iTunes as an iPod interface, but you can use it in combination with iTunes so that you get the benefit of multiple computer connections as well as iTunes interfacing for paid downloads. [Windows/Mac OS X/Linux $0.00]

Cristina writes, "I am making a Christmas slide show on my Windows Movie Maker but it absolutely will NOT let me import ANY of my Christmas music and U think I've tried everything. I tried dragging it from iTunes. I made a new folder on my desktop and tried getting the songs from there and still did NOT import. Now I understand that if the song is downloaded from a source it won't import because of its format but my songs are actually from a CD so I'm not sure what to do anymore."

Since you're importing songs from iTunes and they don't work, I'm going to assume you also ripped the CD of Christmas songs using iTunes. If you purchased the tracks from iTunes, you'll need to download SoundTaxi to convert them because the method described below won't work with iTunes purchased tracks.

By default, iTunes rips CDs to the AAC format, which is a great format for storing music, but is also incompatible with Windows Movie Maker. There are two ways to solve your problem:

Geoff writes, "I was wondering if there is a way to burn your purchased iTunes movies to DVD?"

Movie purchases from iTunes are protected with Apple's DRM, preventing you from burning them to DVD playable on a set top DVD player using software solutions like Nero, Roxio, etc. You can burn the movies as data files to back them up, storing them for recovery in the event of a hard drive failure. If you want to watch iTunes movies on your television, I recommend getting the iPod A/V Cable for your iPod and watching movies with iPod connected to television. The iPod scales video from the portable resolution to a television-quality resolution well enough for standard definition video playback. If you have an HD screen, turn off image stretching so that the video isn't distorted.

Bebe asks, "Is it possible to transfer music from an iPod to a Zune?"

There's no direct way to copy files from an iPod to a Zune. Files purchased from iTunes music store will not play on a Zune, just as files purchased from Zune Marketplace won't play on an iPod. There are some tools you can use to get songs from your iPod to your Zune and get them all to play, but you have to be prepared to spend a little money or a whole bunch of time.

Andy writes, "I purchased songs from iTunes Music Store and I locked all of my songs so my sister couldn't use them, and now I don't know how to unlock them. We are now only using one user on Windows XP. Would you know how to unlock these songs so I can play them on my PSP?"

iTunes Music Store songs not playing on your PSP isn't something you did specifically; it's by design. Apple uses copy protection on all items purchased through the iTunes Store in order to prevent you from playing the songs anywhere but on your iPod or on an authorized Mac or PC. Sony's PSP is not an iTunes supported device. If your PSP is the primary device you plan to use for playing back songs on the go, I would suggest buying CDs and ripping them rather than relying on iTunes as your method of song acquisition. You spend less time working with your music files to get them where you want and more time actually listening or doing something fun. There is a legal (although somewhat time consuming) way around this problem.

One option would be to purchase software that automatically converts your iTunes purchases to MP3. An app called SoundTaxi does this quickly, basically automating the free method I describe below. If you have more than a few songs to convert for PSP playback, use SoundTaxi.

Your other option for playing songs purchased from iTunes on your PSP, is to burn them to a CD first. Apple allows you to make an audio CD in iTunes by burning tracks from your iTunes library to disk. These can be several songs from the same artist or a playlist of your favorite tracks from many artists.

First create a new playlist in iTunes and name it something like "New Audio CD".

Add songs to your playlist until you have approximately 72-minutes of music, which is the maximum supported by Audio CDs.

Verify your CD burning preferences in iTunes by opening Edit > Preferences > Advanced and checking the button next to Audio CD on the Burning tab.

After verifying preferences, click the Burn Disk button.

Once the disk is burned, you can rip the songs on the disk as MP3s either using iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Michael asks, Can you play a Windows Media file on an iPod or download to iTunes?

Unfortunately you can't play a Windows Media file on your iPod. Apple doesn't support playback of WMA or WMV files on the iPod, in part because it might hurt their business model in selling you something they hope you'll fill with music and video from their store. The good news is, you can convert Windows Media files to an iPod supported format and play them back either in iTunes or on your iPod after the conversion completes. The caveat to this is Windows Media files purchased from places like MTV URGE, Napster, Yahoo or any of the other online stores using Windows Media with DRM will not work and cannot be converted. Depending on whether the file you want to play is audio or video and how many files you want to convert, there are a number of ways to approach this problem.

I purchased the new 80GB iPod 5.5G model today because I need to do some video testing with it. Along the way I figured I'd download a movie and a game to see how the new store features work. The purchase experience and the user interface are both horrid. After buying Zuma twice, I had to enable interface features to even find the game in iTunes. I'm someone who looks at software UI every day, how are normal people dealing with this?

I started out purchasing a copy of Mulan with my card on file in the iTunes store and then proceeded to purchase Zuma. All seems good. Looking in my Purchased folder, I can see the episode of Desperate Housewives I purchased last year when Apple first announced video sales and Mulan, which is currently downloading. No Zuma.

Maybe the sale didn't take, so I try it again. According to iTunes Store, I already purchased Zuma. Or so the dialog box tells me.

Following directions and looking under the Advanced menu, I see no option to Check for Purchased Music.

Maybe that's because the option is under the Store menu and it's actually Check for Purchases

Using Check for Purchases and providing my password takes me back to the Purchases folder with the same two results. Desperate Housewives and Mulan, but no Zuma.

I paused the download of Mulan, which froze iTunes and forced me to do an End Task to shut it down. After rebooting my machine to see if that fixes Zuma not showing up, I relaunch iTunes and still no Zuma in the interface. I open the iTunes Store and attempt to purchase Zuma one more time. This time when I click the Zuma buy button I am told I may have duplicate items.

I clicked Buy just to see if I could finally get the game. This time, Zuma shows up in the Downloads along with Mulan.

After downloading completes, the game was nowhere to be found in iTunes. I connected my new iPod and saw the game sync in the status bar at the top of the iTunes interface, so apparently it's on my machine somewhere. After syncing I saw Zuma in the iPod browser in iTunes.

After further digging around in iTunes, I finally find an option to check the box next to iPod Games in the Edit > Preferences menu.

Hello Apple People! This should have been enabled automatically or at the very worst it should be enabled the second I make a game purchase. What a craptacular experience. This is the kind of UI I expect from Microsoft, complete with incorrect dialog boxes. Where's the consistent Apple user experience? It cost me a second download of the same game and even then, I don't see a quantity of two in the games list.

Maybe I was supposed to buy a Mac before downloading? I have one. It doesn't have all my music on it because I started ripping music before OS X exsisted and you couldn't pay me to own a Mac before OS X. Most iPod customers are Windows users, which means the Windows iTunes experience better rock harder than the Mac experience or you will lose customers.

At the end of the day, I'm only out $4.99, which isn't a huge thing, but it's the principle of getting a bad experience. I'm probably not the only confused customer. The question is, how much of the early sales figures were seeing from Disney can be attributed to purchasing errors. If it had been a company I didn't know, I'd have given up after the first try. Apple is generally known for providing a great user experience, so I assumed it was something I did and tried again. I was on the verge of calling the company when I finally found the hidden setting to reveal the games in the interface. If this is the next generation of customer experience at Apple, we're all in for a rude awakening.

In the meantime, I think from this point forward, I'll stick to gaming on my PSP. At least Sony knows how to make the gaming experience just work.

Mike writes, "I had an iPod and wish to get a different mp3 player and was wondering how I would go about transferring my iTunes music (from their store thingy) to Windows Media Player."

The one flaw in online music stores is portability of content when things change. iPods remain the hottest portable music player on the market, but what happens when they aren't any more or when people like yourself decide you want something different. Everyone who purchased music from iTunes will no longer be able to play that music on their next portable device unless it happens to be another iPod. Fortunately you can download SoundTaxi and convert your iTunes music to MP3 or any other format by creating a virtual CD.

Dan writes, "I have been intrigued by the number of podcasts that are out there I subscribe to a few of them and listen on my computer and then delete them. I really don't have any desire to sink a small fortune in one of those IPOD things or clones thereof. Is there a way to put the music podcasts that I really love onto a CD?"

The short answer is yes you can burn CDs of your favorite podcasts. How you get there depends a little on which software you currently have available and what type of CD player you have. If iTunes is your primary solution for downloading podcasts, the built-in CD burning feature will work to create a CD from your podcasts. Windows Media Player also includes built in CD burning. Or you could opt to burn a CD using an app like Easy Media Creator or Nero. In each case there are a few basic things to keep in mind.

Vicki writes, I just got an iPod for Christmas. I have been downloading songs (from my CDs here at home) onto Windows Media Player. I was able (but I have no idea how) to get those all to tranfer to iTunes. But now, I have since added more songs to Windows Media Player and they are not automatically transferring over to iTunes (so that I can transfer them to the new iPod). How did I do this the first time? How can I do it again?

It's been awhile since I installed iTunes on a totally clean system, but if I remember correctly, the first time you install iTunes on your system it automatically checks for music files on your hard drive. If you have WMA format files (the default for Windows Media Player), the software offers to convert WMA files the first time around. Going forward, any new WMA files are ignored until you add a single file or folder to your iTunes library. Since you likely want to put any new music tracks on your iPod going forward, there are a few ways to handle this.

I transferred videos to my iPod but they don't show up in my TV Shows list on my iPod. Where did they go?

The latest version of iTunes offers three options for categorizing your video collection: Movie, Music Video and TV Show. You can choose any of these three video types from the Options tab of Get Info. While these are obviously not the only three categories of video, these are the three options Apple supports at the moment. Unfortunately, there are some small inconsistencies in the way Apple supports the choices on the iPod.

The TV Show option, while sensible if you record your own shows using a Tivo or other PVR, is reserved for shows purchased through iTunes Music Store. If you label a file Tivo Show using the Video Kind selection, it won't show up in the reserved TV Shows playlist when transferred to your iPod. There are currently a few ways to solve the problem.

One somewhat complex solution is to use the open source Atomic Parsley to re-write the Video Kind information in your file so it is recognized properly on your iPod. You need some command line knowledge and a Mac to make Atomic Parsley work properly. Combined with the GUI Lostify, the re-classification process is improved although both seem a little buggy and don't work consistently. For Windows users, iPodTVShow might do the trick, with the catch that it creates a second copy of your video file during the re-write process.

A second option is to change the Video Kind on the Get Info Options tab to Movie or Music Video.

A third option is to leave the Video Kind setting the same and create a custom video playlist containing your TV Show videos. Synchronize the playlist to your iPod. Locate the video playlist under Videos > Video Playlist on your iPod and select your TV Show videos.

While it would make more sense for Apple to solve this problem by making the TV Show option available for all videos, the solutions above will make your missing videos available on your iPod.

So it's late, you're feeling like rocking out to your favorite tunes, and you really don't want to listen to a random selection of everything in your iTunes Music Library. You could really go for just the best tracks of your collection without the weird b-sides or songs that just didn't quite make the cut. This is where the Rating Stars come into play.

Rating stars are a way to organize your music in yet another way, unique to you alone. It is a way for you to pick just the cream of the crop when a playlist is too limited and the full library is too much. Rating stars allow you to listen to just those couple of great tracks that get your heart rate jumping and your feet hopping, like radio stations way back when, but without the annoying DJ's and used car commercials.

To assign a star rating from 1 to 5 onto a track, right-click (or Control-Click for 1-button users) on a track name in the iTunes main window. This will bring up a short menu on which the second track is My Rating. Select a star or 5 and let iTunes do the rest. For even more control, make a Smart Playlist and tell it to put only 5-star songs in that contain "Sad Songs" in the comments box. I explain the beauty of Smart Playlists here. For now, shoot for the stars!