I accidentally deleted an app. Where it was a free app before, it's now a paid app. In my "SendTo\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications" directory, I see the .ipa file. In my iTunes Apps screen, I see the app. Is there a way I can move the app from iTunes into my iPod? Obviously, I still have it on my computer, I just need to figure out how to get it from PC to iPod. In addition, I recently moved a ton of songs from one drive to another. As a result, I am seeing a ton of songs with the "!" symbol. I could have sworn I asked before, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, how do I delete all the songs with "!" symbols in one swoop?
I'm a little late, but you should just be able to connect your iPod to your PC, wait for it to pop up in iTunes and then drag the app onto the iPod. I'm not aware of any automated method...
I got an iPod Touch because I'm learning to program them, and I figured I might as well use it as an iPod as well. I can get music onto it fine, but I can't seem to figure out how to get movies on it. I see that iTunes has a conversion feature, but you first need to get the movie into iTunes and it refuses to do so without telling me why it is refusing to do so. I assume the idea is that I can just drag files from Windows Explorer onto the Movies label on the left, or use File->Add File To Library but nothing happens in either case. And what do those mean? Am I allowed to say I hate iTunes after only a day of using it, or do I have to suffer for a longer period before doing so?
The iPod player can only deal with video files that are formatted in a specific way. If you want to play files that are encoded with DivX, Xvid, etc. then you need a third party app. I use VLC for my iPhone. It's free and it works great, only .mkv files are a little choppy. Unfortunately the app has been pulled from the app store. VLC is open source and one programmer filed a complaint with Apple because of the licensing. Really stupid if you ask me. Anyway, if you plan on jailbreaking your iPod, you can still get it via Cydia or Installous. Otherwise there are alternatives in the official app store, but I don't have any experience with them myself. Cinexplayer and OPlayer seem to be popular alternatives, they are not free though (I think there's a free version of OPlayer, but I don't know in what ways it's limited...). Alternatively, you can always get a converter app for your PC. But that would be too much trouble for my taste. A lot of people hate it, and I did too at first, but by now I really love iTunes. If you just want to listen to some music that you have sitting somewhere on your hard drive, there are better apps out there (I loved WinAmp before I switched to a Mac, now I use VLC for that purpose). But iTunes is a great media library and the iTunes store is full with awesome (and free) content (like iTunesU or Podcasts). I use iTunes to organize and listen to all my albums, as well as for audiobooks, podcasts, iTunesU, iPhone apps and the occasional TV series I buy. However, my old (and inconsistently tagged) mp3s that are loosely put together on some hard drive won't get anywhere near iTunes.
I know iPods need video in a certain format, but shouldn't iTunes recognize video in most formats? Or anything besides Mac formats? Being a media library and all? The iTunes documentation doesn't even say this. I only figured it out by trying the only .mov files I own: some 8 year old porn. If using VLC for file conversion, what codecs do you use for the audio and video streams? Any size or bitrate or other requirements? They are not just sitting on my hard drive - they are very carefully organized. I can't trust a media player that wants to spray my William Shatner music all over "pop", "rap", "cult", and (shudder) "comedy" categories when they deserve to be kept all together in my Religious Music folder.
I dont know too much about the video formats iTunes can deal with. I don't use it for video, or rather only for videos I buy from the iTunes store which obviously work fine... Actually, I did try it a couple of times with various other video files and I think it always played them fine, it's just that the iPhone couldn't play them. In those cases I did actually convert them with iTunes which also worked, but I might have been lucky there. I've read that iTunes isn't the best converter... Actually, I don't convert files with VLC. I don't convert them at all, I simply use the VLC player for the iPhone. It can play everything natively. As I said, mkv files are somewhat problematic, decoding them seems to be too much for the iPhone processor, so if I really wanted those, I'd have to convert them. For converting I usually either use "HandBrake" where I use the h.264 codec to produce a m4v (mp4) file, or I use "MKVtools" if I specifically want to convert a mkv file into something else (mp4 or avi) [both are Mac tools though]. The HandBrake app does have presets for iPhone conversion. The iPhone 4 settings (which I think are the same as the new iPod Touch settings) are the following: File Format: m4v (mp4) Video Codec: h.264 Picture size: 720x480 Framerate: 29.97 (NTSC) Now I don't know if the frame rate is that important, in fact, I don't think so, so I'd rather use the frame rate of the source. Other than that I don't think there are any requirements for file size or bitrate. The iPod touch preset only has a resolution of 480x368, but I suspect that this is for the previous iPod version which didn't have the retina display. Actually, this is kinda what I meant. For iTunes to make sense, your files need to be tagged exhaustively and consistently. If you buy your music within iTunes (or anywhere else for that matter) they usually are perfectly tagged, but if you got them through alternative sources, very often the tags suck. I used to organize my music with folders and filenames. This is of course a crude way to do it, but it works well. It's how a lot of people I know still prefer to do it. In that case I'd forget about iTunes and stick to WinAmp or VLC. You can of course manually create playlists within iTunes which reflect your file structure, but even then you need some basic tags (like artist, title, track number, album,...) in order for iTunes to make any sense at all. Compared to the static file structure, tags are of course a much more powerful way to organize music if done right. So when I made the switch to iTunes, I used a third party app to tag my music, at least my albums. My file structure used to be like this: ~/genre/artist/album/tracknumber-trackname.mp3 I used a (Windows) tool called "Godfather" to create tags from folder and file names. It's semi automated, but it was still a lot of work. Afterwards I found out that there are fully automated tools as well, but since I never used them, I don't know how well they work. The songs that were only loosely organized within my file structure (~/genre/artist-trackname.mp3) proved to be virtually impossible to tag in a consistent manner within any reasonable timeframe. Maybe a fully automated tool might do the trick though. Anyway, those songs won't get near iTunes, because inconsistent tags are the worst thing that can happen to you there, plus I made the decision for myself, that I only want complete albums within iTunes.
Let me add (and I might be stating the obvious here) that to convert video files with iTunes, you simply need to go to "advanced>create iPod or iPhone version" This has always done the trick for me. But as I said, instead of this time consuming process, I rather use VLC for the iPhone and circumvent the conversion. Plus I'm not sure how reliable this works.
This is really late but for future reference. The "!" symbol means that iTunes cannot locate the song anymore, because the location of the song has changed. That does not mean the song is not on your computer. To solve the issue, click on the song with the "!", it will ask you if you want to locate the song. Click on that. Then go to your Music file under your Folders. The location of the song can be tricky, it can be in a separate folder labelled by the artist/band's name. It can be in a folder labelled Downloads. It can be in a folder labelled by the music store you purchased the song from, i.e. iTunes(yes it can actually be in the iTunes music folder), Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, etc. It can also be found separately by itself usually near the bottom of the Music folder. It will be labelled by the name of the song, sometimes the artist/band. If you put the music in another folder completely different than Music, say My Documents, search there. As to the other part about simulataneously deleting all "!" songs, I'm not sure you can do that. But you might try and right click on the column that has Name, Artist, etc. And click on Category and or Comments. If that doesn't work you'll just have to delete them one by one.
You can always shift click to select all of them and delete them. I keep my iTunes music on a separate hard disk and sometimes I will start up iTunes without having the disk plugged in. Then will bring up those lovely little "!" right away. A couple of tips, if you've moved files around and ended up with these exclamation marks then a simply solution might be to move the files back and restart iTunes. That should make them all linked again right off the bat. iTunes, on the Mac at least, is in my opinion a pretty good app if you manage it well. Let iTunes manage your files for you, have "Keep iTunes media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" checked. When you are going to add something you downloaded just drop it in iTunes and then delete the copy you downloaded (as iTunes will have copied it). Take the time to make sure the tags are in order when you import stuff. Most new rips are with complete tags, but if you come from Windows and WinAmp you might find you have a collection of stuff with incomplete tags. Fix it on import and you'll be happy in the long run. You follow those steps and your iTunes library will build nicely and organized in folders by artist name > album name. I have 16,227 items in my iTunes, it's over a 100GB, and it's all stored on an external hard disk. Everything runs perfectly and without any problems. On a PC iTunes is pretty shitty, decent enough for people to support it I guess.
But that's where I get most of my stuff. Most of my music is ripped from CD and I used EAC which uses freedb for tags and freedb only uses a subset of ID3v1.0 for tags. And then I have lots of even weirder stuff. Where do I get tags for songs taken from Taco Bell commercials or recorded from witches performing a reel live or ripped from the Firefly DVD? I can use Amazon to get album covers from some stuff, but not for CD's I got from death metal bands that sell only at their concerts or stuff I got from mp3.com way back when from bands that never even released a CD. I just spent the last half hour looking for and formatting an appropriate image for Sad Kermit songs. What genre is Sad Kermit anyway? -- And why is the Touch so pretty? I don't even want to hold it because after a day of use it looks like it has been let loose among a bunch of 5 year olds with a bucket of KFC chicken and it pains me because it used to be so shiny and elegant. And earbuds seem to give me tinnitus. I need some over-ear headphones. But what I hate most about it is that I hate Apple stuff and I can't hate the Touch because it is so nifty.
Definitely get a sleeve of some sort for it. I bought a clear Body Glove sleeve (with nifty diamond pattern that REALLY makes it pretty) at Wal-Mart for mine the second or third day I had it ... around the time I saw I'd already put a small scuff in it. I don't do much with mine besides occasionally taking it for runs or using it around the house and at work, so I have no problems with a soft-rubber/silicone cover. Some people prefer the hard cases. Up to you, but I would definitely get one. I'd also get a screen protector. They're pretty cheap, even if I don't like the 'feel' of it. But should save you from wear and tear.
While covers are nice to have (over time I completed my library covers to 100%) they're not essential. Tags are however. As I said, there are automated tools like this one: http://musicbrainz.org/ And here's an iTunes plugin that supposedly does the same: http://www.tidysongs.com/ They usually analyze the song and try to identify it against their database. If you have some weird or rare stuff, automated tools probably won't do the trick (it's still worth a try though). In this case, you either have to tag them manually (for example within iTunes) or if there are still too many left, you can also use semi-automated tools like this one: http://www.jtclipper.eu/thegodfather/ Here, the tool can use file and folder name to create tags. If you named your files consistently (i.e. always 'artist-song.mp3') you can use this tool. Lastly, not all tags are equally important. Personally, I don't use the 'genre' tag at all for example. I never sort my library by genre, nor do I have automated playlists based on the genre. I either use my manual playlists or the 'genius mixes' which work really well. The essential tags are 'artist', 'title' and 'album', because that's usually what you sort for, all else is bonus...nice to have (so that you can create an automated playlist with stuff from the 1980s for example), but not essential. Yeah, I have a special cloth that deals with that...but I still find myself washing my hands a lot more often ever since I got my iPhone... I know, I used to hate Apple as well, now I have lots of Apple stuff...their products are just so nice...
I can say I've had two iPhones over the years and I never used and never will use one of those awful screen protectors that inevitably leaves you with tons of bubbles on your screen. In my opinion all you need is nice sleeve like this and little attention and common sense: http://www.senacases.com/apple/iphone-4-cases/ultraslim/ Nice and elegant and you can get the phone out quickly and actually appreciate it's nice design.
Same here - I have so far not used genre tags on the device. I have those tags from before (mostly), but I think having covers really makes the experience nice and is helpful for me to identify music. One tag that turns out to be important on iPods is Album Artist - if you have songs by different people on the same album they get split into separate albums unless you set Album Artist to "Various Artists" or some other thing that is the same for all files. Just leaving it blank won't do. I certainly won't start liking their programming environment. It's absolutely archaic compared to the tools and help provided by Microsoft - probably equivalent to what you had in the late 90's on PC's. -- What are good free apps and games for the Touch? Not too good - I don't feel like getting addicted to something and end up walking into a mall fountain.