Need Help Choosing Tag & Rename Software

I'm looking for a T&R software that not only works well with iTunes, But also writes the changes back to the playList.

Nothing will write the info back to the iTunes library file. iTunes is the only application that will read/write this file.

If you change something in the song file name then the play list may not work if it's not changed to match?

Correct. If you let iTunes copy the file sto iTunes when adding th etlibrary then you need to change the song name in iTune sin order to change the filename.

Or if you are keeping the music files in your own folders, you will need to delete them from iTunes then re-add them.

I'm manually managing my music.

That only applies to putting music onto teh iPod.

What are you looking for that iTunes doesn't do?

Also, if you're manually managing your music, as I understand it, you'll have to remove it and put it back on on your iPod if you want the information to update. Could be wrong about that, though.

By "Playlist" do you mean "Library". In iTunes, playlists are just pointers to songs in the Library.

I've possibly covered some of this in one of your other threads, but itunes won't automatically know if you move, rename or update a file or it's tag using a third party program. I'm not aware of any software that specifically retags a file and then updates iTunes. I've explained that if you move or rename files there are tools that can update iTunes with the changes. iTLU can also be made to get iTunes to refresh it's copy of changed metadata although that will make the program run more slowly. Obviously if you move or rename files as part of the update, and thus have to remove & reimport then iTunes will get the new metadata.

If you just update tag data without renaming any files then you can get iTunes to refresh it's internal copy of the metadata, either by selecting each track in turn while the album artwork preview box is visible and set to Selected Item or by selecting all the tracks that are likley to have changed, using Get Info, and then clicking OK, WITHOUT MAKING ANY CHANGES first. Get this last bit wrong and you can easily wipe out important information in lots of tracks at the same time. This is one reason why I like my tracks to have full length titles and don't let iTunes organise them. Should I ever make a mistake I can easily retieve the data from the filename & path, although having a complete backup is also a good security measure.

tt2

As Meg says an iTunes playlist is just a list of pointers to entries in the database. When you edit a file's properties within iTunes, wherever you selected it from, that update is global. If you have smart playlists that are dependent on values you've changed then files may be added or removed from those playlists accordingly.

tt2

A playlist is simply a link to a song in the library.
Changing it in the library will change it in a playlist because it is the same thing.
Changing a song in a playlist or in the library is all you need to do.

For what it's worth, someone in another thread uses Media Monkey and seems to like it. I don't use iTunes much on my Windows machine. On my Mac, I use MpFreaker but I think it's Mac only.

It might all become clear if you just experiment a little with your library. For example create a playlist and call it Test. Drag & drop an album from Music onto that playlist, select the playlist, then a track, Get Info and make a minor edit e.g. put a word in caps. Now go back to the main Music section and find the album - the word you put in caps will be in caps. There is only ONE file. There can be many references to it from different playlists. If you update information then it's changed no matter which route you use to find it.

I've obviously complicated things by discussing Smart Playlists at this stage. A Smart Playlist is one whose contents are set by rules rather than manual drag and drop. One such playlist could be called Comedy with the fairly obvious rule *Genre is Comedy*. Once you have created such a playlist you might be looking through your collection and discover you have a "Weird Al" album you feel is misclassified as Rock. If you select the album, Get Info., change the Genre to Comedy and click OK then the album will become automatically included in the Comedy playlist.

tt2

PS. Yes Meg, I suspect that the "someone" you noticed was me. I've mentioned MediaMonkey in another of micro32's threads here.

Message was edited by: turingtest2