Work with iTunes


iTunes is Apple’s application to manage, organize, and play digital music files, create digital music files from your CDs, and burn CDs in either MP3 or standard music format. To open iTunes, click the iTunes icon in the Dock, or double-click the iTunes icon in your Applications folder.

When you first launch iTunes, the program asks you to agree to its license terms; then an assistant asks you a few questions about how iTunes will use the Internet and whether it should look for MP3 files you already have on your hard disk. The first screen of the assistant welcomes you to iTunes; click Next to continue.

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On the Internet Audio screen, it’s probably a good idea to check Yes, Use iTunes For Internet Audio Content. This tells your Mac that iTunes is the default music player. Let iTunes automatically connect to the Internet only if you have a permanent Internet connection; if you connect via a modem, iTunes will open a connection each time it needs to do so, which can be annoying. Click Next after choosing options on this screen.

Note

iTunes connects to the Internet (if you have set this option) when you insert a pre-recorded music CD. It does so to query a database to find the exact name for the CD and the titles of its tracks.

The next screen is the Find Music Files screen. iTunes offers to find MP3 and AAC files in your home folder or lets you choose to add them later. If you want iTunes to add any digital music files it finds, select the first option. If not, you can add your music later; I’ll show you how to do that later on in the section “Import Digital Music Files into iTunes.” Click Next to go to the next screen.

Note

iTunes can play back music files in four formats: MP3, AAC, WAV, and AIFF. You’ve probably heard a lot about MP3 files since people sharing music illegally commonly use them. The MP3 format is used to compress music, making the files much smaller than the original sound files on CDs. AAC is a different format that offers better quality and smaller file sizes at the same bit rate. WAV and AIFF are uncompressed formats.

The next screen asks you how you want iTunes to organize your music folder. If you let iTunes organize your music folder, you may find files and folders renamed in strange ways, but if you don’t plan to manually add any music, this is the best choice. If you do plan to copy files from a different Mac, for example, select the second choice. Click Next to continue.

The last screen offers to take you to the iTunes Music Store right away, or to your iTunes Library. Your iTunes library will be empty if you have no existing digital music files on your Mac, but that’s a good place to start. However, if you want to start purchasing music from the iTunes Music store, choose that option. Click Done.

After you answer these questions, the main iTunes window displays.

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Listen to CDs with iTunes

When you insert a music CD in your Mac’s CD-ROM drive, iTunes opens automatically. (You can change this in the CDs & DVDs preference pane; see Chapter 9.) If you have told iTunes to connect to the Internet automatically, it queries the CD Database (CDDB) to find the name of the CD and the names of its tracks. If the CD is listed in this database, iTunes displays this information (Figure 16-1); if not, it just displays Track 1, Track 2, and so on.

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Figure 16-1: When you insert a music CD in your Mac, iTunes opens and displays the name of the CD and its tracks, if possible.

To listen to the CD from the beginning, just click the Play button at the top left of the iTunes window. To listen beginning at a specific track, double-click that track in the list. You can fast-forward or rewind using the buttons on either side of the Play button, and you can pause the music by clicking the Pause button. (See Figure 16-2.)


Figure 16-2: Click the Play button (left) to start playing music. Click the Pause button (right) to pause, or the Fast-forward or Rewind buttons to move through the track.

Tip

The info display at the top of the iTunes window cycles between the name of the CD you’re listening to, the artist, and the name of the song. Below this info is the elapsed time of the song. If you click the time indicator, or drag its diamond, you can move forward or backward in a song. If you click the Elapsed Time text, this changes to Remaining time; click again to change it to Total Time. And if you click the Arrow button at the left of the display, this changes the display to a kind of frequency display.

Once you start playing your CD, you might not want iTunes to take up so much space on your screen. If you click the green Resize button at the top left of the window, iTunes shrinks to become just a small controller (see Figure 16-3).


Figure 16-3: iTunes in miniature mode. You can pause and play, fast-forward and rewind, and see what’s playing. You can also enlarge this window by dragging its bottom-right corner.

When iTunes is in miniature mode, click the green Resize button again to return the window to its previous size. The Controls menu lets you choose to shuffle, repeat, move to the next song or previous song, and more. The volume slider also lets you raise and lower volume.

Another way to control iTunes is from the Dock. Click this icon and hold down your mouse button. This displays an iTunes menu, as shown at right. You can control many of iTunes’ functions from this menu without bringing the application to the front.

Tip

Whenever you’re listening to music and want to pause, bring iTunes to the front and press the SPACEBAR on your keyboard. To resume playing, just press the SPACEBAR again.

Rip Digital Music Files from Your CDs

iTunes can convert a CD into digital music files with a single click, allowing you to convert your entire CD library into digital music files. Insert a CD in your CD-ROM drive. iTunes searches the Internet to find the title of the album and tracks, and displays the results. To import this disc into your iTunes library, just click the Import button at the top right of the iTunes window. iTunes begins converting the CD into digital music files, and shows its progress in the display at the top of the window.

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The time it takes to import music depends on the speed of your Mac and the quality you use for your digital music files. By default, iTunes imports music in AAC format at 128 Kbps, which is very good quality, and you can change this in the iTunes preferences. Select iTunes | Preferences and click the Importing tab, and then select a different bit rate from the Configuration pop-up menu.

Import Digital Music Files into iTunes

If you already have MP3 files on your Mac, you can import them into iTunes by selecting File | Add to Library. Select the folder containing your MP3 files from the Import dialog, and then click Open. This adds all the digital music files in the selected folder to your iTunes library.

Another way to import digital music files is to click the Library icon in the Source column of the iTunes window, and then locate the folder containing the files on the Desktop or in a Finder window. Drag the folder into the Library section of the iTunes window, and iTunes will add them to your library.

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How to... Choose the Right Music File Import Format

iTunes offers you four formats for importing digital music files from your CDs: AAC, AIFF, MP3, and WAV. AAC is a format that offers a good compromise between quality and file size; but many digital music devices, such as home CD and DVD players, cannot play these files. If you are only importing your files to play them back on your Mac, or to use with an iPod, AAC is probably the best choice. Use MP3 if you want compatibility with other devices.

AIFF and WAV formats do not compress the music, and if you want the highest quality, choose AIFF. If you're importing music from your CDs to make compilation CDs, AIFF is the best choice, since there is no compression and you won't lose any quality. Choose WAV
if you want the highest quality files to use on a Windows computer. (However, both of these formats take up a lot of disk space—about 600MB per hour.)

You can also choose a bit rate for your digital music files. By default, iTunes use 128 Kbps for AAC files and 160 Kbps for MP3 files. If you're planning to listen to your music on a portable device, or don't have much disk space, these settings are acceptable. But if you're
a classical or jazz music fan, or connect your Mac to a stereo, you might be disappointed by these imported files. Select Custom in the Setting menu, and select a higher bit rate—at least 192 Kbps. If you find the music doesn't sound as good as you want, experiment with higher bit rates—but remember that the higher the quality, the larger the files.

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If you drag a folder containing digital music files into the Source section of the iTunes window, this adds the files as a playlist; you’ll see a new playlist added to this part of the window. (I’ll tell you more about playlists shortly.)

Listen to Digital Music Files

When you import MP3 files into iTunes, they are added to your Library. You can see the contents of this library by clicking the Library icon in the source list. (See Figure 16-4.)

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Figure 16-4: A Library of digital music files in iTunes

You can listen to any of the songs in your Library by double-clicking one of them. iTunes starts playing your Library at the song you double-click, and then continues playing the rest of the Library in order.

To have better control over your digital music files, you can create playlists, which are custom lists of songs. To create a playlist, click the + icon beneath the source list. A new playlist is added to this list. Type whatever name you want, and then press ENTER.

Now, in your Library, find the songs you want to add to the playlist and drag them onto the playlist’s name. This doesn’t make copies of the files on your disk; it just adds them to the playlist.

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When you have finished dragging songs onto your playlist, click the playlist in the Source list to display its contents.

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You can drag the songs up and down in the list to change their order. At the bottom of the iTunes window, a summary text shows the number of songs, the time, and the amount of disk space used by the songs in the playlist.

To listen to one of the songs, just double-click it. To listen to the entire playlist, click the Play button.

Create Smart Playlists

In addition to basic playlists, which I explained earlier, iTunes lets you create smart playlists, which are dynamic and work like searches with multiple criteria. Smart playlists can contain music that is a specific genre, performed by a specific artist, or it can contain only songs with certain ratings you’ve given them or songs that you haven’t listened to since a certain time.

iTunes comes with some sample smart playlists—you can see them in the Source column of its window.

To create a new smart playlist, select File | New Smart Playlist, or hold down the OPTION key and click the + button beneath the source list. This displays the Smart Playlist window.

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As you can see here, you have several choices for how you set up a smart playlist. In the top section are criteria—you can choose from more than a dozen of them in the first pop-up menu, including Artist, Genre, Last Played, Year, Play Count, My Rating, and many more. In the second pop-up menu, select Contains, Does Not Contain, Is, Is Not, Starts With, or Ends With. Finally, enter the appropriate data in the field—this could be the name of an artist or song, a play count, a rating, or something else.

You can then limit this to a certain number of Songs, Minutes, Hours, MB, or GB, and choose how the songs are selected: Random, by Album, Artist, Rating, or more.

To add criteria, click the + icon at the right of a criterion line. You can create smart playlists that sort your music in many ways. Here’s one example:

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The smart playlist shown here includes up to 25 songs, all of which are by the Grateful Dead, are longer than 15 minutes, and haven’t been played since the 1st of August.

To change any smart playlist, just select File | Edit Smart Playlist, or hold down the CONTROL key and click the playlist, and then select Edit Smart Playlist. You’ll see the same window as in the preceding illustration, and you can change any of the criteria you set.

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How to... Share Your Music on a Local Network

If your Mac is connected to other Macs across a local network, such as at home or at work, you can share your music so other users can access your playlists. Select iTunes | Preferences and click the Sharing tab. Check Share My Music if you want to share your music, and check Look For Shared Music to share other users' music. You can choose to share your entire music library or only selected playlists.

When you launch iTunes, it searches the network for shared music (if you have told it to look For shared music). You'll see, in the Source column, an icon for each user on your network. Click the disclosure triangle to see their music, and listen to it the same way you listen to playlists on your Mac.

The advantage to using this feature is that you can have one Mac with all your music on it, say at home, and anyone on your network (up to five computers, even including Windows users with iTunes 4.1 or later) can access your music. You can centralize all your music files on one computer this way. However, iTunes must be running on that computer for others to access its music.

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Listen to Audio Books with iTunes

In addition to playing music, iTunes can play audio-book files you download from Audible.com (www.audible.com). When you buy books from Audible.com you get a user name and password that you must enter when iTunes requests it. You can download audio books in a special format and play them back in iTunes.

After you download an audio-book file from Audible.com, just double-click the file and iTunes will begin importing it into your Library. The first time you do this, you’ll be prompted to enter your Audible.com user name and password. You can listen to the file the same way you listen to music files.

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Note that when you quit iTunes, it remembers your location in the audio-book file, and when you next start playing it again, it picks up where you left off.

You can burn your audio books to CDs, and you can copy them onto an iPod or other compatible portable audio devices. See later in this chapter for more on this.

Burn Music CDs with iTunes

iTunes can burn music CDs from your digital audio files: you can burn either audio CDs, which you can play in any CD player, or MP3 CDs, which you can use either to back up your MP3 files or to play in compatible CD or DVD players. By default, iTunes burns audio CDs, but you can change this by selecting iTunes | Preferences and clicking the Burning tab. Check MP3 CD in the Disc Format section if you want to burn MP3 CDs, or click Data CD if you want to burn CDs but save your files in their original format.

To burn a CD with iTunes, start by creating a playlist with the songs you want to burn. You can use an existing playlist or create a new one, but you must make sure it is no longer than the amount of time available on your blank CD.

Click the Burn Disc button at the top right of the iTunes window. Insert a blank CD-R or CD-RW in your CD writer when iTunes asks you to. iTunes checks your CD and then asks you to confirm by clicking Burn Disc again.

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When iTunes has finished burning the CD, it will eject it from your CD burner and you’re ready to listen to the CD, or to archive it as a backup of your digital music files.

Listen to Internet Radio with iTunes

iTunes has another great feature for listening to music: you can listen to Internet radio stations. These radio stations “broadcast” their music and talk programs over the Internet; some are regular AM or FM radio stations that offer Internet broadcasting in addition to their regular broadcasting, and others are Internet-only radio stations.

To listen to Internet radio with iTunes, click the Radio icon in the Source list in the iTunes window. This displays a list of categories in the list window.

To see the different Internet radio stations available, click the disclosure triangle next to one of the categories. Double-click a radio station to listen to it.

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Some Internet radio stations send song information with their broadcasts. If this is the case, the artist and song title show in the status display at the top of the iTunes window, as shown in the preceding illustration.

If you connect to the Internet with a modem, make sure you don’t try to listen to any radio stations with bit rates over 56 Kbps; you’ll just get music that starts and stops as iTunes tries to get enough data to play the stream. If you have a broadband connection, you can listen to any of the stations.




How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
ISBN: 007225355X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 171

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