Copying iTunes music to a USB drive for car audio

I think I understand the scenario. islero47 started off with AAC files but the player only plays mp3s. You have to convert the AAC to mp3s for the player but you don't want to get rid of the originals (you get quality loss with any lossy conversion so you never want to get rid of your only copy of a file if all you have is a lossy format secondary version). This results in a list of apparent duplicates in the iTunes playlist used for this. It should be a simple process of sorting by the media kind column to separate the two versions.

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=convertandexport should simplify this whole task.

Craig,

As an experiment I drag-n-dropped 3 song files from iTunes on an iMac to a USB, and then looked at the USB on a Windows machine. There are no hidden files.

Craig Hustadt wrote:

Unfortunately you are incorrect if you are using the latest MacBook Pro with the latest OS.

Your post referred to an "Apple Product." If you are seeing something unique about the MacBook Pro, you may want to try your question on the MacBook Pro Forum:

MacBook Pro

Tackjim wrote:

my files are saying they are protected and will not convert. why? and how do i fix this? i thought maybe i did not by it but the option to pay is not there.

Protected files would either be downloads you bought from the iTunes Store prior to mid-2009, or else Apple Music tracks that you downloaded. They are non convertible.

I did not buy back then i just downloaded it, probably from apple music track. So how do i buy it so i can convert it? In the store it only gives me the option to play, but all the other songs on the albums have a price.

In General you cannot copy or drag iTunes files to a USB and play it in a car when using an apple product.

I have spend hours with Apple support and the answer was that apple adds files when you copy iTune files to your USB which most cars do not understand. On the bright site I was told that if you are using a PC no additional files will be transferred which is true. But what if you don't have a PC?

Apple is not addressing this problem I am very disappointed in their support and fixes.

Still hoping for a solution.

Thanks

Craig Hustadt

chustadt@cogeco.ca

Craig Hustadt wrote:

In General you cannot copy or drag iTunes files to a USB and play it in a car when using an apple product.

Craig - That is not correct. See the information higher up in this thread (which by the way is 6 years old).

Unfortunately you are incorrect if you are using the latest MacBook Pro with the latest OS.

I have allowed Apple support to view my laptop and my PC we draged and copied iTunes files to both computer and confirmed the result.

2 days of my work to find out the hidden files that the MacBook Pro suppresses but they show up when you take the USB to a PC.

3 hours with Apple support level 1 level 2 end result is what I said.

If you have valid information or Apple contacts at a higher level I would be interested.

Thanks for responding.

Craig Hustadt

Unfortunately you are incorrect if you are using the latest MacBook Pro with the latest OS.

I have allowed Apple support to view my laptop and my PC we draged and copied iTunes files to both computer and confirmed the result.

2 days of my work to find out the hidden files that the MacBook Pro suppresses but they show up when you take the USB to a PC.

3 hours with Apple support level 1 level 2 end result is what I said.

If you have valid information or Apple contacts at a higher level I would be interested.

Thanks for responding.

Craig Hustadt

The hidden files are called "dot underscore files" and when you simply copy a file to a UBS drive with the usual FAT32 or other file system, those files are copied too. So you get two files for every one you think you are copying:

mumblesong.mp3

._mumblesong.mp3

It seems completely mystifying because those files don't show up when Apple shows you the contents of the folder but they are there. You can see them using Terminal and you can get rid of them although it appears to be a tightly held secret.

Apple finally provided an application to do this. It is called dot_clean and you go to the Terminal app, open a window, type in man dot_clean and try to make sense of the result.

Basically you end up typing a command something like

dot_clean -v /Volumes/UBSDRIVENAME

Easiest way to get the name of the drive right is to select it in the finder window and use Cmd-C to copy the name. Then paste it into the Terminal command at the right spot.

This worked as recently as MacOS 10.12.5. It works for any files by the way, including JPGs if you want to copy them onto an SD card for use in a slide/frame viewer.

Good luck.

Craig,

When you copy/drag files from iTunes or your hard drive to a memory stick you do get additional files, but you can fix this. Each song file you copy has a corresponding file created that is the name of the song file with a "._" prefixed. You just need to remove the "._" files.

As far as I know if the file is of the kind Protected they won't be playable from a memory stick but may be playable if you copy it to an iPod/iPad and then connect the iPod/iPAD to your car.

ONLY DO THIS IF YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH USING TERMINAL COMMANDS!!!!

To remove the "._" files:

Open a terminal window

Determine the mount point of your stick. It will be /Volumes/stickname where stickname is the name that shows up in finder as the top folder when you plug the stick in.

Enter the command:

find /Volumes/stickname -name "._*" -delete

this will find all the ._ files and remove them.

Good luck,

Joe

Just wondering if you changed you songs to mp3??? (it's been a while since i did this, but I think you right click on the song and then click on Create mp3 version). I changed every song in itunes on my pc to mp3's, then I copied the mp3's to the flash drive and now i have a whole lot of songs on a little usb flash drive. i checked it out to see if worked in the car - and - yippee! it does! Hope this helps.🙂

For your problem there is a simple solution:

Assuming all your music is high resolution, such as Apple lossless, this will not play from a USB thumbdrive in most cards. Here is how to accomplish your goal:

Create a NEW library in itunes.

(option open iTunes to create a new library)

Import all the music you want to have available in the car.

Set the import settings to .mp3, custom settings, 320K (for best fidelity)

Select all the music in your library

From the File menu: Convert: Create Mp3 version. (this will convert all your music in your library. - it will take a while)

When completed, sort by kind and delete all the lossless music, keep only the MP3.

Now you have a library with only car music!

Start with any USB Thumbdrive. It must be MSDOS formatted.

Manually copy your .mp3 files onto it.

(They can be in folders, such as by album name, etc. There are limits, but unless you are really loading up large Thumbdrives, you are unlikely to hit it, so leave your music sorted as in iTunes folders.)

The next step takes some command line steps, but is not hard to figure out.

Name your Thumbdrive a short name, no spaces, such as MUSIC

Now when you have the Thumbdrive ready to go:

Open the terminal.app (Utilities folder)

Paste the next two lines in: (change MUSIC to your name of your Thumbdrive volume)

cd /Volumes/MUSIC

find . -name ‘*.DS_Store’ -type f -delete

When the process is completed, you will get a command line prompt.

Quit Terminal.

Unmount your Thumbdrive

Put it in your Car USB port, and when it shows up, you can sort by name/artist, or play randomly.

Tuxs1 wrote:

... I currently have iTunes set to import as apple lossless which I want to keep but maybe this is why they won't play on my USB drive?

Is there any way I can make all the tracks work on my car USB drive.

Every music player has it's own limitations.

To get music to play you'll need to convert the tracks to a format that your player recognizes (Most likely NOT Apple Lossless).

* Nearly all players can read MP3s,

* many play NON-protected AAC.

* some play WAV, and / or AIFF

So, your best bet is to

1. IDENTIFY COMPATIBLE FORMATS:

a. Figure out which tracks are not playing (if music players' manual is not clear)

b. In your iTunes library Window make the category "kind" visible in window to identify formats

(View Menu -> View Options) use this to identify songs in incompatible formats.

Alternately view the songs on your computer (try sorting by kind to help identify)

3. SET UP DESIRED CONVERSION SETTINGS:

An example assuming MP3 ("MPEG audio file) will work:

a) under Preferences General > Import Settings button

choose import using MP3 encoder

you can then set to custom: I'd set the "Stereo Bit Rate" to 256 or 320kbs

(256 is safer, 320 is better - some devices might not accept over 256)

it's PRETTY safe to check Use Variable Bit Rate (High quality)

I'd leave the other settings to defaults.

4. CONVERT DESIRED SONGS

Finally, right click any song you wish to convert, then choose "Create MP3 Version"

THIS will create a COPY of the song you selected, as an MP3 (you'll still have your high res version)

Repeat step 4 for any desired song

PS: You might want to make a smart playlist of MP3 only (or any acceptable format) songs to copy over to the USB drive in the future.

HTH - Alix

Great advice! Now maybe you can help with this. I have ACC and MP3 files of some songs, but they're not identified as such in i-tunes, and I'd like to know which is which so that I know what to load onto a USB playlist. Also it would be nice not to look at duplicates of every song.

islero47: Realize nobody has posted to this topic in 4 years.

I use an older iTunes. In column view I have the option to display a "Kind" column where it shows mp3 as "mpeg" and m4a as "AAC audio file".

Check the Dousgscripts web site for a new script for copying to usb media to deal with the duplicates issue.