Please help!!! Archiving vinyl into iTunes

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Level 1

7 points

Please help!!! Archiving vinyl into iTunes

Hello!

I'm using an advanced audio recording software called Reaper to archive my vinyl rocords and I'm rendering them into two formats: FLAC for home play through another program, and AAC/.m4a files for iTunes on mobile devices. Where the problem lies, is when I trie to place the "albums" into iTunes Media folder in the Finder of my Mac. I place the individual songs of AAC format, named appropriately releted to the album track list, into a file that is labeled "Title of Album" and place that inside a folder labeled "Artist" and place THIS into iTunes Media folder and the best I get is a an "Untilted" artist with and "Untitled" album and the songs are all out of order. When I trie to move it around or rename it back to what it was, it just goes back to "Untitled" and all messed up.

I've tried multiple relabeling attempts and I can't get anything but an official ripped CD to enter into iTunes correcly.

Please telll what I'm doing wrong and, most importantly, what I need to do right in order to make this work....surely there is a way to do this.....right? ...right!?

Many, many thanks!!!

-John

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Apr 17, 2013 12:51 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Mike Johnson12

Level 5

6,549 points

Apr 17, 2013 3:16 AM in response to BassTone5

Don't move things in the Finder when using programs such as iTunes or iPhoto. Make all your changes from within the program itself or it cannot track the changes that were made.

If you go to iTunes prefs>Advanced and select the copy and keep options then iTunes will do the work for you. Once the files are added to iTunes then you can delete the orginals if you need more disk space.

Use the 'add to library' from the File menu. iTunes will place things in the Music Folder in the default of Artist>Album>Track.

MJ

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Answer 2

BassTone5 Author

Level 1

7 points

Apr 17, 2013 1:03 PM in response to Mike Johnson12

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the info! Much appreciated.

This worked just like you said, but only to a degree. I'm still having a problem. Prior to using the "Add to Library" function as you detailed, I moved the files elsewhere in Finder, and named the files in Finder thus: "Queen," and under that "Sheer Heart Attack" and the AAC song files in inside of that, with each song having "01," "02," etc before each song name. When iTunes imports them, per your suggestion, it imports them as "Unknown Artist" and "Unknown Album" and still, all of the songs are out of order despite a numerical prefix to the song titles, though the song titles are intact, just out of order. I cannot seem to edit any of this from within iTunes once it's imported.

Am I doing somthing wrong here? Can iTunes even do what I'm wanting it to do? Please advise.

Many thanks!

-John

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Answer 3

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Apr 17, 2013 1:15 PM in response to BassTone5

iTunes will have no idea what the album and artist information should be. For CDs it gets the information from the Gracenote database, but cannot do so from tracks you've imported from a vinyl record nor will it pick up that information from the name you give a folder. So you'll have to edit that information manually. You should be able to do this by selecting one (or more) of the tracks and pressing Command-I (for Get Info) and going to the Info tab. Track names you'll need to change individually, but you can add any information common to all the tracks by selecting all of them and then opening the info window.

Regards.

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Answer 4

BassTone5 Author

Level 1

7 points

Apr 17, 2013 1:56 PM in response to varjak paw

Ah-ha! Worked like a charm! 😀 Bit of a pain to go through all of that, but I understand now that iTunes just doesn't have anything to 'grab onto,' so to speak, like it would with a ripped CD, and I can have my cake and eat it too, though with a little more elbow grease. It's all good!

Thanks you to you both!, I really appreciate your help. Have a good one!
-John

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