Key Code Searching

Here’s a snippet I’ve been using for awhile which I just got around to posting on the key codes page. I keep my iTunes Column Browser set with Artists and Albums listed On Left. Whenever I’m looking for a particular album I run this script to select the Music library and put focus on the Search box:

tell application "iTunes"
	activate
	-- select the Music library
	reveal (some playlist whose special kind is Music)
end tell
tell application "System Events"
	-- bring focus to Search box - Command-Option-F
	key code 3 using {command down, option down}
end tell

I’ve given it a keyboard shortcut of Command-Option-S.

More information on AppleScripting iTunes with key codes and keystrokes is here.

Make Ringable at iPhone Ticker

German iPhone site iPhone Ticker posted a nice article and You Tube video describing how to use my free Make Ringable script to create ringtones from your iTunes tracks.

Create Shortcut Keys to Select Libraries

There are no shortcut keys to select the Music, Podcast, TV Shows, and other libraries. But you can use AppleScript to create some. Here’s how:

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All Those Audio Formats

Via Lifehacker, this How-To Geek article is a great primer on the differences among digital audio formats.

Skip Back or Ahead Custom Mods

Recently, I was watching a DVR of a football game I had made with EyeTV. In general, I prefer to skip the parts that aren’t showing football players playing football. So, while watching the game on iTunes I used the script Skip Back or Ahead to jump ahead 120 seconds when necessary.

The thing about that script is that I didn’t exactly streamline the workflow. Here are the steps required to skip ahead 120 seconds:

1. Click the iTunes Scripts menu, scroll, and click the script’s name to launch the script
2. Enter the number of seconds in the dialog that appears–in this case the three digits “1-2-0″
3. Click the “Ahead” button to dismiss the dialog

…and then the playing iTunes track, my football game, advances two minutes. But although it looks like just three quick steps it seems to take about a half an hour to perform. OK, not a half an hour. But it does seem kinda clunky to have to do a lot of mousing and key pressing just to perform a simple task like skipping ahead.

Here’s what you can do to streamline the script at your house.

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Take Your Album List WIth You

You probably know that you can use iTunes’ Print command to create CD box labels and stuff, which I’m guessing not many people need much any more. You can also print a list of all your Albums, sorted by Artist. Big whoop? Well, instead of printing it to paper, use the PDF Service in PDF Adder to add the listing as a PDF to iTunes’ Books library. It syncs to the iBooks app on your iPhone or iPad, too, so you can keep a portable list of all your albums with you. Update it once a month or so. Mine came to thirty-two pages! (Gotta work on my iPhone Cross-Country-Ski-Fingers Speed Scroll technique.)

BTW: I was reminded of album list printing when I heard Kirk chatting with Chuck Joiner about his new book, Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ (which will also sync nicely to your iBooks app).

Migrate Your iTunes From Windows to Mac

I frequently get asked if there is an easy way to move an iTunes library (files, playlists, ratings, and all) from a Windows machine to a Mac. My friend Kirk McElhearn has written it all down in this how-to at Macworld.

Size of Files, Size of Library

It’s not the size of your “iTunes Media” files that best describes how big your media file collection is. Often, querying Correspondents will report that their iTunes Media folder is so many GBs (or so many days-worth). But if that total includes a lot of video then the number of files is smaller than the same-sized folder containing just 128kbps audio files (eg: my “Star Trek” with Extras at 6GB+ is a little smaller than my “Compilations” folder which contains over a thousand files). Very few of my scripts and apps directly work on the files in the iTunes Media folder anyway, so in many cases its size is irrelevant; scripts work with tracks in iTunes, so the number of tracks is more important than the size of their files. A better relative measurement for comparison purposes is the size of your “iTunes Music Library.xml” file (located in ~/Music/iTunes). It has an entry for each track in your library and all (well, most) playlists. Therefore, the more tracks and playlists you have the larger the XML file will be.

Gathering Far-Flung Files

I’ve gotten several emails lately inquiring about scripts and apps that can assist with gathering up far-flung files from old music folders. It’s the sort of thing that happens when you move to a new computer, upgrade iTunes, and add hard drives without doing the requisite housekeeping at the time (or on a regular basis). This is fairly typical:

Throughout the last 4-5 years, Iʻve ended up with an enormous bunch of music which is all on one of my hard drives, and Iʻd like to consolidate all of it, get rid of the dupes, junk/damaged recordings, etc. For instance, some of the data are backups of my old iTunes libraries that I created before upgrading to newer versions. I like the way the script addToLib works. but Iʻm looking for a way that I can accomplish the same thing without moving the music from each album folder, and then Trashing each folder individually.

I’ve been recommending using Music Folder Files Not Added which allows you to scan a folder any number of folders deep for files not in the iTunes database and optionally add them. Of course, you may still want to Trash the folder once the files are added—and this presumes you have “Keep iTunes Media folder organized” set—but you’ll only have to move the single parent folder to the Trash and not dozens of sub-folders. And if duplicates are a problem, there’s always Dupin, right?. Yes, still some work involved (after all, it took a long time for you to make that mess!) but operating on one set of parent folders at a time will make the process easier.

iTunes Status Display Sees Your Selection

Rob Griffiths points out that in iTunes 9, as you are selecting or de-selecting tracks in any playlist or library, the size and time in the status display along the bottom of the iTunes browser window increases or decreases respectively. Neat!