Importing MPEG4 audio files to iTunes

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Importing MPEG4 audio files to iTunes

Help! I had over 3000 songs on my 5g iPOD (taken from my family's computer using Libra) and I wanted to transfer them to my iTunes on my computer. So I started using this program called PodUtil which does that(www.kennettnet.co.uk). I somehow saved all my songs first to DVD-R. Then the program transferred all the songs into my iTunes. So, when the message popped up asking if I wanted to make this iTunes my new library, and by doing so it would update my iPOD with the somgs in my iTunes, I clicked okay. After that the songs in my iTunes vanished and then it updated my iPod so that now it has NO songs. So here's the deal, I need to get the music that I saved to DVD-R into my iTunes. The songs on the DVD-R are in MPEG4 audio format. I've tried dragging and dropping, copying and pasting - but nothing has worked yet. What do I do?

SONY VAIO VGN-A160 Windows XP iPOD 5g 30G

Posted on Jan 24, 2006 1:21 PM

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Answer 1

toonz

Level 7

22,360 points

Jan 24, 2006 1:23 PM in response to hdietric

What happens when you drag a song from the DVD to the iTunes main window and drop it on the library in the source list?

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Answer 2

hdietric Author

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Jan 24, 2006 2:02 PM in response to toonz

What happens when you drag a song from the DVD to the
iTunes main window and drop it on the library in the
source list?

nothing happens. I can see it being dragged over and the library highlighted, but then, nothing.

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Answer 3

toonz

Level 7

22,360 points

Jan 24, 2006 5:43 PM in response to hdietric

If you drag the song to Windows Explorer, say, copy a folder of songs to your desktop / main hard drive and drag it from there rather than directly from the DVD, what happens?

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Answer 4

hdietric Author

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Jan 24, 2006 6:12 PM in response to toonz

If you drag the song to Windows Explorer, say, copy a
folder of songs to your desktop / main hard drive and
drag it from there rather than directly from the DVD,
what happens?

nope. still doesn't work. although I noticed that when I drag it to the iTunes grid the mouse turns into a black circle with a slash through it. I think I know what that means. It looks like somehow I have to change the way it's saved. (I tried Save As, but there isn't that option).

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Answer 5

toonz

Level 7

22,360 points

Jan 25, 2006 9:29 AM in response to hdietric

The little circle slash is the Windows standard icon for the window / application you're dragging over will not accept the file.

So, the sequence of events is that you had music in iTunes. You put it on your iPod. You backed it up with another program from the iPod to a DVD using 3rd party software. And now, even though these same songs where in iTunes previously, you can't add them back into iTunes.

1. What are the file formats, AAC, MP3? What's the 3 letter extensions on the files on DVD?

2. What program was used to originally encode these files? Were they downloaded from the internet? Were they ripped in iTunes? Were they ripped in Windows Media Player?

3. Probably the thing to do is send one of these files to the apple moderator.

iTunes will not open malformed MP3 files and that probably what you're running into. You've run these things through at least 1 shareware program it looks like and they could have easily been corrupted. The most common corruption is malformed ID3 tags, particularly multiple tag headers or tags that are too big. Sometimes you can, with ID3 tag editors, go in and remove the tag and iTunes will be happy with the file, but you would have to re-edit the tag information manually.

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Answer 6

hdietric Author

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Jan 25, 2006 10:35 AM in response to toonz

Okay, the "Details" say that it is 4.44MB and is an MPEG-4 Audio File. When I right-click and look at the properties, under location is says D:\Coldplay\X+Y .And it also says Opens with: iTunes. When I attached it to email to ipodmod I finally saw the last three letters: .m4a (which makes sense as an MPEG-4 audio).

I had originally imported these songs from our home computer. But since my laptop is my primary computer, I want these songs in my iTunes. So I downloaded this program called PodUtil from www.kennettnet.co.uk .I then hooked up my iPOD, and this program saw all my songs, and was supposed to import them into iTunes for me (the middle-man). But first it wanted me to choose where to save the files of songs, so I saved them to two DVDs. Then I saw it transferred all the songs into my iTunes. So when iTunes asked if I wanted to make this library my primary one (and by doing so it would update my iPOD with only songs in my library) I said okay, because I could see that all the songs were "safe" in my iTunes. Then it all of a sudden cleared the page of music, leaving me with what I had on my computer before - nothing. So now my iPOD is empty and all my songs are on DVD saved as MPEG-4 Audio Files, which are supposed to be playing on iTunes, but aren't.

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Answer 7

toonz

Level 7

22,360 points

Jan 25, 2006 11:25 AM in response to hdietric

Ok. Then send one of the files to the moderator like I suggested so that someone can look at it. That would let the Apple engineers know if there's a bug in iTunes.

The moderator's email address is ipodmod@apple.com

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