View Full Version : Am I using my iPod correctly?
Javery
02-20-2005, 11:24 PM
I'm old. And bad with technology. In fact, I can barely work the internet. Anyway, I just got a 40GB iPod photo and I can't seem to figure it out. I installed the software and I formatted my iPod - now I'm trying to put mp3s on there...
I insert a CD into the D:\ drive, the computer retrieves the info and the song list appears in the iTunes window. Then I hit the "Import" button in the upper left. Once that is done I go to the File menu, choose "Select All" so all the songs are highlighted and then I drag and drop the entire group of songs onto the "James's iPod" folder on the left. Am I doing this right? I'm not sure if I'm putting mp3s on my iPod or wav files... Any help would be great. Thanks!
WhipSmartBanky
02-20-2005, 11:28 PM
Sounds broken. Box it up and send it to me for further testing.
Javery
02-20-2005, 11:30 PM
Sounds broken. Box it up and send it to me for further testing.
sure, what the address? :P
Javery
02-21-2005, 12:01 AM
Help! Anyone?
waffles 'n' syrup
02-21-2005, 12:04 AM
Anyway, I just got a 40GB iPod photo and I can't seem to figure it out.You might want to get a real ipod instead of just a picture of one.
alongx
02-21-2005, 12:09 AM
You're doing it correctly. Did you even try to operate it after putting your MP3's on?
redgopher
02-21-2005, 12:12 AM
The best way to do it is to simply right-click on the iPod in the list on the left and click Update.
What's probably going wrong is you're still looking at the CD's tracks, NOT your AAC files on your hard drive. Basically you're trying to copy the music directly from your CD to the iPod, and iTunes is saying "This doesn't work."
You should just import all of your music to your drive and update songs on the iPod as described above. Hope this helps.
Javery
02-21-2005, 12:13 AM
You're doing it correctly. Did you even try to operate it after putting your MP3's on?
yeah, the music plays fine and it appears organized in the iPod menu and everything. I was just worried that I wasn't putting mp3s on there but giant wav files instead. How long does a CD normally take to transfer?
Javery
02-21-2005, 12:14 AM
The best way to do it is to simply right-click on the iPod in the list on the left and click Update.
What's probably going wrong is you're still looking at the CD's tracks, NOT your AAC files on your hard drive. Basically you're trying to copy the music directly from your CD to the iPod, and iTunes is saying "This doesn't work."
You should just import all of your music to your drive and update songs on the iPod as described above. Hope this helps.
OK, so I should load all my CDs by "Importing" them and then connect my iPod to update what's imported? Thanks a lot!
bil4l
02-21-2005, 12:22 AM
Itunes has ripping options that you can check how you ripped your files.
Haggar
02-21-2005, 12:24 AM
Sounds like you're doing ok. A normal CD (1 hour) will take a few minutes (3-5) to import.
Once you get a little more familiar with the iPod, you'll want to convert the mp3's to AAC- they sound just as good and take a fraction of the space an mp3 does.
iTunes > Advanced > Convert selection to AAC.
Have fun!
SneakyPenguin
02-21-2005, 02:00 AM
Here's a question I have about my ipod, before I call Apple. I have about 16 gigs ofmusic according to iTunes, yet when put on my iPod, they take up over 30 gigs of space. What the hell is wrong?
Javery
02-21-2005, 12:09 PM
Sounds like you're doing ok. A normal CD (1 hour) will take a few minutes (3-5) to import.
Once you get a little more familiar with the iPod, you'll want to convert the mp3's to AAC- they sound just as good and take a fraction of the space an mp3 does.
iTunes > Advanced > Convert selection to AAC.
Have fun!
AAC? Jesus Christ - I'll never keep up with all this shit. Is the sound really just as good? How many CDs worth of AAC files would fit into 1 CDs worth of mp3 files?
Mr. Anderson
02-21-2005, 06:38 PM
Sounds like you're doing ok. A normal CD (1 hour) will take a few minutes (3-5) to import.
Once you get a little more familiar with the iPod, you'll want to convert the mp3's to AAC- they sound just as good and take a fraction of the space an mp3 does.
iTunes > Advanced > Convert selection to AAC.
Have fun!
Can you convert to AAC? I thought you could only go to MP3....
Haggar
02-21-2005, 10:44 PM
Here's some more info on AAC files
http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/
Basically, the quality is better than MP3, nearly indistinguishable from the original CD, and a fraction of the file size of an MP3.
Converting MP3's is easy in iTunes (but may take awhile if you have thousands of song).
Whenever you see Apple state an iPod can hold 1,000 songs (or whatever capacity) they are talking about AAC files.
Javery
02-21-2005, 10:50 PM
Whenever you see Apple state an iPod can hold 1,000 songs (or whatever capacity) they are talking about AAC files.
Seriously? That's absolute shit, IMO. It's billed as an mp3 player...
Javery
02-21-2005, 10:54 PM
Also, do I now want to go back and delete everything loaded on my iPod and re-import from my CDs and convert the files to AAC?
SneakyPenguin
02-21-2005, 10:58 PM
Whenever you see Apple state an iPod can hold 1,000 songs (or whatever capacity) they are talking about AAC files.
Well, fuck, that explains it. Now to convert over 4000 songs.....
Haggar
02-21-2005, 11:05 PM
Also, do I now want to go back and delete everything loaded on my iPod and re-import from my CDs and convert the files to AAC?
Nope, it will detect the new files and auto-update when you connect the iPod to your computer.
1) Open iTunes, select All music files, convert the files in iTunes to AAC. Now you have two of every song. (1 mp3 version, 1 aac version).
2) Do an iTunes search for "mp3" or "mpeg", delete them (or move them to another non-iTunes folder).
3) Now all your files in iTunes are AAC files.
I think you can set iTunes to automatically convert imported files to AAC.
Javery
02-21-2005, 11:14 PM
Wow thanks! I actually just checked the settings in the options menu and I had been importing all the songs off of my CDs as AAC files so I don't need to convert anything!
I have another question though - what's the difference between Apple Lossless Format and AAC? Their website doesn't exactly explain it...
Fungi
02-21-2005, 11:23 PM
Whenever you see Apple state an iPod can hold 1,000 songs (or whatever capacity) they are talking about AAC files.
Seriously? That's absolute shit, IMO. It's billed as an mp3 player...
Umm...well, it still does play mp3s, thus, it is an mp3 player. If they advertised it as an AAC player, people new to this stuff will just ask..."what the hell is an AAC?"
Besides, I still have all of my tracks in mp3 format and my 5gig still has over 1100 tracks on it, with half a gig left to spare. All at 128kbps.
Haggar
02-21-2005, 11:23 PM
I have another question though - what's the difference between Apple Lossless Format and AAC? Their website doesn't exactly explain it...
"iTunes can give you that quality with the new Apple Lossless encoder. You’ll get the full quality of uncompressed CD audio using about half the storage space."
I'm not too sure of the difference between AAC and Lossless. I just was taught to convert the files from another Mac/iPod user.
I have an iPod mini, and have 944 songs on it, with 98.1MB of free space. I'm thinking I'll get a little bit over the 1,000 Apple says the iPod can hold (4 of the songs are 20+ minutes each, so it's a little skewed).
Javery
02-22-2005, 10:18 AM
OK, thanks. I guess I'll just keep importing songs in AAC format and transferring them to my iPod. Now that I've figured that out I've got to learn how to create playlists and take advantage of the other features. It's unbelievable to be able to carry around so many CDs in my pocket...
As you found out iTunes defaults to ripping to AAC when you first set it up.
I personally rip my stuff to 128 MP3 files. Remember the iPod is (I think) the only MP3 player out that will play AAC files. MP3s are played by virtually EVERYTHING.