Section 42. Transfer Your Music to Your iPod


42. Transfer Your Music to Your iPod

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

4 Connect Your iPod for the First Time

9 Import a Music CD into iTunes

20 Purchase Audio from the iTunes Music Store


SEE ALSO

43 Use a Large iTunes Library with a Small iPod

44 Autofill Your iPod Shuffle

46 Find and Play Music on the iPod


42. Transfer Your Music to Your iPod


Many iPod owners ' first glimpse of iTunes comes when they unpack their new iPods and install iTunes for the first time on their Windows PCs. If this describes you, the first time you connect your iPod to your PC is as described in 4 Connect Your iPod for the First Time . After you name and register the iPod, you're free to disconnect it or let it sit in the Dock and charge its battery. Your iTunes Library starts out empty, and there's no synchronizing that takes place at the end of that process. However, if you've been using iTunes long enough to have added music to it, the act of interfacing the iPod with iTunes means something different: synchronizing your iPod's contents with those of the iTunes Library .

KEY TERM

Synchronize To connect your iPod to your computer so that the iPod is filled with all the music in your iTunes Library , with all the up-to-date info tags and playing history; iTunes is similarly updated to match the information on the iPod's songs.


Depending on your model of iPod, the process of connecting it to your computer can take any of several slightly different forms. The 1G and 2G iPods have a FireWire port on the top; you connect this to your Mac or PC using a double-ended, six-pin FireWire cable that either came with the iPod or that you purchased separately. 3G and later iPods (and the iPod mini) have a Dock connector on the bottom that contains both FireWire and USB 2.0 connections as well as audio output channels; this wide selection of data paths all located in the same connector means that you can connect the iPod to your computer using a FireWire or USB 2.0 cable (packaged with the iPod or sold as an iPod accessory by Apple) plugged into the Dock connector slot, orif you have onethe iPod Dock itself. This Dock accessory , which comes standard with some models of iPod and can also be purchased separately, is a white rectangular pedestal with a slot for the iPod to stand up in. When you put the iPod into the Dock, the Dock connector engages with the protruding piece inside the Dock's slot and connects the iPod in the same way that the direct cable does, while allowing you to keep the iPod upright (making sure that its back doesn't get scuffed). Finally, the iPod shuffle has a standard USB connector built into its body; you plug this directly into any available USB port on your computer (or the keyboard of your Mac). There's even a small Dock available for the iPod shuffle, if you want it to have its own dedicated place to sit and charge.

NOTE

When any iPod is connected to the computer, its internal battery is being recharged. It's best to leave your iPod charging at all times when you're not using it; see 51 About the Care and Feeding of Your iPod for more information.


The first thing that happens when you connect your iPod to the computer is that iTunes launches and begins synchronizing your music (an icon on the iPod's screen warns you not to disconnect it during the process). New songs you've added to your iTunes Library are copied to the iPod's internal disk. The number of times you've listened to songs on the iPod, and their Last Played dates, are read into iTunes, and your library is updated accordingly . Finally, when the sync process is complete, the iPod resets itself to show the Main Menu, and iTunes tells you that it's safe to disconnect the iPod at any time.

NOTE

It's important to be aware that an iPod can only be associated (or "linked") with a single copy of iTunes. If you synchronize your iPod with iTunes running on your home computer, and then you try to connect it to your PC at work, iTunes will tell you that the iPod is already linked to a different computer. iTunes then offers to delete the iPod's contents and replace them with those in the current copy of iTunes Library . This feature is obviously meant to inhibit piracy, as it would otherwise be a simple matter to use an iPod to ferry copies of music illegally from one computer to another. However, it's not too hard to imagine legitimate reasons to want to copy music from the iPod to iTunes, such as restoring your music after a crash. See 98 Copy Your Music from the iPod Back to iTunes for more information.


1.
Connect the iPod

You should synchronize your iPod whenever you've made changes in iTunes that you want to be reflected on the iPod (such as adding more music), or whenever you've spent some time listening to music on the iPod and want the information in iTunes to reflect which songs you've played most recently and how you've rated them on the iPod.

NOTE

If your iPod is connected to the computer while you make changes to your iTunes Library , the changes are not automatically propagated to the iPod; the sync process occurs only when you plug in the iPod or launch iTunes while the iPod is connected. To make sure that later changes to your iTunes' music are synchronized with the iPod, quit iTunes and restart ita new sync process takes place when iTunes restarts. Alternatively, choose File, Update iPod.

For iPods with a Dock connector (3G and later models), place the iPod into the Dock's slot until you hear the soft chime indicating that the iPod has awakened and is ready to synchronize. If you don't have a Dock, or if your iPod is a 1G or 2G model, plug in the FireWire or USB 2.0 cable directly to the iPod. If you have an iPod shuffle, plug it directly into an available USB port.

2.
Wait for Your Music to Transfer

iTunes automatically launches, if it is not already running. The selection in the Source pane in the iTunes' window switches to the iPod, which is listed by the name you gave it during the initial setup procedure.

In the music listing pane, all the music on the iPod is shown in one long list, with the text in gray (indicating that it can't be played). iTunes displays a readout showing how much space is available on the iPod and how much is being used. If there's new music in iTunes that isn't on the iPod, or songs whose info tags have changed, that music immediately begins transferring; the "progress" icons to the left of every new or updated song show you iTunes' progress as the files are transferred.

iTunes does not transfer songs that the iPod cannot play. These kinds of files include MIDI files, QuickTime movies, and Internet Radio streams, among others. A dialog box warns you that some of the songs can't be transferred; you can opt not to get that same warning again by enabling the check box before dismissing the warning.

NOTE

FireWire transfers data at a rate of 400 megabits per second; USB 2.0 transfers at 480 megabits per second (although technical limitations place it at about the same speed as FireWire). This means that a single album can be transferred to the iPod in about 10 seconds, and a single song takes a fraction of a second to transfer. A 40-gigabyte iPod can be completely filled in less than half an hour . You can't use USB 1.1 to fill any iPod other than the iPod shuffle; USB 1.1 transfers data at a rate of only 12 megabits per second, meaning that a 40GB iPod would take almost 10 hours to fill.

3.
Wait for the Sync Process to Complete

Don't unplug the iPod while the sync process is underway; warning messages on the iPod's screen and iTunes' status readout both remind you that doing so can cause data loss on either your iPod or your computer (remember, the iPod is essentially an external hard drive; like all hard drives , it must be unmounted properly by its softwarein this case, iTunesbefore it can be disconnected). When the process is finished, the iPod's Main Menu appears on its screen, and iTunes reports iPod update is complete .

NOTE

Early iPod models (1G and 2G) show a check mark and an OK to disconnect message when the sync process is done rather than returning to the Main Menu.

4.
Charge the iPod

Leave your iPod in its Dock, or connected with its FireWire cable, to charge its battery. Because of the characteristics of the lithium-polymer battery in the iPod, it's better to recharge it even after short uses than to let the battery run down all the way (as you would with nickel-cadmium batteries). See 51 About the Care and Feeding of Your iPod for more information.

When the iPod is done charging and its display shows Charged or any time after the sync process has completedyou can grab it out of its Dock or disconnect its cable and take it on the go again.



iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 152
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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