There's a checkbox for this in the preferences pane. Is there some reason anyone would NOT want this? Would all files just go in the same folder otherwise?
iTunes v11.01-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Files that iTunes is responsible for creating will always be organized using its rules, i.e. rips, purchases or consolidated files go to <Media Folder>/<Artist>/<Album>/## <Name>.<Ext>. If that option is enabled then if you make any changes to the media tags the filename & path may also be updated to reflect the change. Some users have different needs and prefer to manually organize their files and folders so that option is useful for them. I, for example, have separate folders for Comedy, Classical, Soundtracks etc. and my file & folder names use more than the 40 character limit imposed using iTunes for Windows.
tt2
OK. Now a related question: I ran "Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Music". Based on http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847, the new organization scheme made a lot more sense to me. Why have folders like Movies and TV Shows at the same level as songs and albums?
OK, after running the reorganize command, I now have a new folder called Home Movies with 5 movies in it that appear to have come back from the dead. However, four of them on my iPad. (I may have well deleted the fifth one directly on the iPad.)
So what gives? Why the new folder "Home Movies"? Why five movies resurrected from the dead?
Oh, and most (all but 5) of the movie files in the Movies folders are actually in subfolders (of Movies) of the same name, except for "A Clockwork Orange", whose subfolder contains both the main movie file and a separate movie file containing "extras."
Any idea what's going on here?
Also, if you manually move files to different subfolders of iTunes Music, will everything still work? (I assume this is what turingtest2 is doing.) And if you make your own subfolders, are they somehow reflected in listings in iTunes?
Thanks
AEF
Home Movies is now the default media kind for video files manually added to the library. You should be able to change the media kind and (if iTunes is keeping things organized) the files should move accordingly. Bonus video clips included iTunes LP or iTunes Extra packages should not really be added to the main body of the library (copies are OK) as if moved they will be detached from the package and won't work. Movies or TV Shows that you have in both HD & SD versions will appear as a single entry in the library even though there are two files in the folder.
iTunes does not handle it well if you move files around. I used to painstakingly rename things the way I wanted by hand, then delete & reimport the files. Some time ago I wrote a script to automate the process of moving and naming files the way I like, then updating iTunes' knowledge of the location so that I no longer need to lose ratings & play stats when rearranging things. I don't recommend this level of attention to detail. It gets in the way of simply enjoying the music.
tt2
How do you change the media type?
I have something like 40 "home movies" (exports from iMovie) and only one purchased movie. Five of the home movies are in Home Videos folder. The are "naked", that is, not in subfolders. The rest are in the Movies folder. This includes one movie purchased from the iTunes Store, and the thirty-some home iMovie exports. Most of these are in subfolders, but six of them are not.
Can you explain this?
Select file, press CTRL+I to Get Info. Change Media Kind on the Options tab.
The presence of subfolders may depend on whether the Album field has been completed, but I don't have time to switch to libraries so I could test that right now.
tt2
Breaking news!
Running the 'Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Music"' broke iMovie's link from my VFT movie to its music file! I had to manually copy the music back to its original folder. (Thankfully there was an error message telling me this, and telling me what the old folder (path) was!)
This caused strange problems in iMovie. The affected movies could only be played with music if a copy of it was in the Media Browser. But I could not export them anymore, as I would get the error message I referred to above. Not only that, but the playback in iMovie was of reduced quality. It was as if I had exported it to H.264 with the medium or medium-low quality setting! Oh, maybe because it had to get the sound from the copy in the Media Browser it had to use the video from that, too? Interesting.
And I also got some un-removable keyword lines! Very strange. How could a missing music file cause so much damage?! OK, perhaps another blasted side effect of using 18 fps footage. Even so.
So be warned: If you run the 'Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Music"' function, you might break some of your movies. Evidently the reference is by name, not inode number.
I'll cross-post this in the iMovie forum.
AEF
Background info on the setting you just tweaked...
Here are typical layouts for the iTunes folders:
If you have upgraded from version 8 (or earlier) to iTunes 9 (or later) at some point, then your media folder (everything inside the red outline) may still be called iTunes Music instead of iTunes Media. The extra Music folder inside the media folder is used if you have allowed iTunes to Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization (iTunes 9) or used File > Library > Organize Library > Reorganize files in the folder "<Media Folder>" (iTunes 10). Depending on your choices for Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library plus a little bug in which one build changed the name of the file storing the choice of layout it is quite easy for some of your files to be organized according to one layout and some the other.
You should also be able to close iTunes, rename iTunes Music as iTunes Media, then restart iTunes and the library should cope, though again you'd need to recreate, or reassign, the objects that iMovie is looking for.
tt2
Hello turingtest2: a quick note. In the very latest version of iTunes, is there any chance the iTunes media folder has reverted back to the earlier format - artists intermingled with TV Shows and Movies, etc. Mine has apparently done so - I keep it on a NAS - -and it has me very confused. I would love to know if yet another of your easy to understand screenshots is required to see yet another new file structure from Apple.
I don't use the newest iTunes but I suspect if anything had changed I would have read about it on the forum. What I can say is when you use a NAS with iTunes pretty much anything possible can happen with media organization. Just about every issue here mentioning iTunes and NAS comes up with something different and it is better to just not use a NAS with iTunes (I know you don't want to hear that). Somewhere along the line of communication things break down. Not for all NAS users and we can't predict to whom it will happen but you better make sure you have a solid set of backups. better is to use the NAS for backup and put your library on a regular hard drive.
"Keep iTunes Media folder organized" option
