Any hardcore Itunes users?

I have finally dumped my CD collection into compressed form via Itunes. Im using a PC. There are some organizational things Itunes does that I dont like though. The help in the software doesnt get into a lot of detail on what all the preferences do. But I cant make it easily do what I want. So if theres anyone out there that knows a lot about organizing files via Itunes, I have these problems/questions.

Theres a bit of metadata in the files that say if the song is a "compilation" or not. If that is checked, it puts that album in a "compilation" folder rather than the artist folder. The site that supplies the CD info does this to a lot of my CDS, esp greatest hits CDs of a paticular artist. But I want that CD filed with the rest of that same artist CDs. If ""keep I tunes music folder organized" is checked, it wont let me put those CDs in the artist folder, only the "compilation" folder. But I want that button checked cause I want to be able to change the actual file when I change something in Itunes.

And further a problem with compilations, is even if that compilation thing IS checked (like for a real compilation CD with various artists, I tunes doesnt organize it on the screen by putting that CD together, it separates all the artists in the list. I want those CDs to appear together when browsing my files. The only way I can do it is to put "Compilation" in the "artist sort" field but this isnt something you can do to a group of files.

If anyone has any idea what Im talking about, then let me know. if not, well thanks for trying.

dave

 

I think I do know what you mean - cause I get the same problem - I've got mine checked to "organise automatically..." but it just dumps everything everywhere randomly. Some tracks are in different albums depsite being ripped from the same CD / Album / artist - I have no idea how to get around this, so I'm just gonna ignore it and when I need to find a file, I'll just...

Ctrl + L - display current playing track (if you need to)
Ctrl + R - opens a new window and displays the music file then I'll continue to do what I want with the file

Why did you want to organise it that "hardcore-style" anyway?

 

I need to find a way to separate my .mp3 files from my high quality .wav files so I do not have to deal with duplicates.

 

Well then you can click on the tab in iTunes, which is labelled "Kinds" and it will display your tracks in order of file format?

And if you want to find the duplicates, then there is a funciton in iTunes to display them.

View -> Show Duplicates

 

OK Dave, I'll answer your questions... in reverse order.

Albums flagged as "compilations" will only group properly if you have your library sorted by album... that is, click on the album header in the list.

To easily remove the compilation flag from the greatest hits album you mentioned, shift-click to select all the tracks (see why I answered Q2 first?) then right-click and select "get info". From there, you'll be able to remove the compilation flag from all the affected tracks, putting them back in their artist folder where you want them.

All the CD info you're downloading is user submitted, and many users don't understand that the compilation flag is for multiple artist compilations ONLY.

Hope that helps...