Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes

More Airplay stuff

dougscripts — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:33:10 +0000

Earlier, I posted a way to hardcode the Airplay devices in a script. But if you only have one computer, AirPort Express, or Apple TV kind of Airplay device you can forego using the name property and do something like this, which sets my lone Apple TV as the current Airplay device:

tell application “iTunes”

set current AirPlay devices to (get AirPlay devices whose kind is Apple TV)

end tell

Even though there is only a single item result from Airplay devices whose kind is Apple TV, it’s returned as a list which is what current AirPlay devices takes.

The other kind values, AirPlay device and unknown are too generic to use this way—unless you know you only have one of them.

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Hardcode Airplay Device Speakers

dougscripts — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:22:27 +0000

Correspondent Matt Stevens sent the following, which illustrates how to hard code your Airplay device names:

tell application “iTunes”

set computerSpeaker to (first AirPlay device whose name = “Computer”)

set kitchenSpeaker to (first AirPlay device whose name = “Kitchen”)

set current AirPlay devices to {computerSpeaker, kitchenSpeaker}

end tell

The current AirPlay devices application property accepts a list—even if the list is only one item.

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Airplay device properties

dougscripts — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:25:01 +0000

These are the new Airplay device properties accessible via AppleScript:

active (boolean, r/o) : is the device currently being played to?
available (boolean, r/o) : is the device currently available?
kind (computer/AirPort Express/Apple TV/AirPlay device/unknown, r/o) : the kind of the device
network address (text, r/o) : the network (MAC) address of the device
protected (boolean, r/o) : is the device password- or passcode-protected?
selected (boolean) : is the device currently selected?
supports audio (boolean, r/o) : does the device support audio playback?
supports video (boolean, r/o) : does the device support video playback?
sound volume (integer) : the output volume for the device (0 = minimum, 100 = maximum)

Notice that all the properties are read-only (r/o) except for selected and sound volume, meaning only those two properties can be changed; the others can only be polled.

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Basic Airplay script

dougscripts — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:54:37 +0000

This is a pretty basic use of the new Airplay stuff. Select and set your Airplay devices:

tell application “iTunes”

set apNames to (get name of AirPlay devices)

set apDevices to (get AirPlay devices)

set rez to choose from list apNames with prompt “Select Airplay:” with multiple selections allowed

if rez is false then return

set apPlays to {}

repeat with i from 1 to length of apNames

if item i of apNames is in rez then set end of apPlays to item i of apDevices

end repeat

set current AirPlay devices to apPlays

end tell

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iTunes 11.0.3 Released

dougscripts — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:42:53 +0000

iTunes 11.0.3 was released today. Mods to the Mini player seem to be the most obvious. Under the hood, AppleScript has some new Airplay access.

First, there’s a new Airplay device class and AirPlay enabled and current AirPlay devices application properties which should make scripting Airplay operations pretty easy. I’ll have some stuff later.

The track class gains a iTunes U property (”is this track an iTunes U episode?”).

More as it develops.

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UPDATED: File Renamer v2.2

dougscripts — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:08:07 +0000

File Renamer will rename the files of the selected tracks (or the files of the tracks in the selected playlist) with a filename pattern that is formulated using the tracks’ tag data. Optionally, export a copy of the files to a chosen location and rename the files in that location.

This latest version fixes a problem with escaping file path delimiters, fixes an issue with closing the Preview window, and has other minor fixes and enhancements.

You can download it here.

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UPDATED: Export Selected With M3U v1.1

dougscripts — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:48:54 +0000

I’ve been wrestling with how to get files onto a USB stick for my car’s audio system for some time now. The system can read files on a stick and then sort them by Songs, Artist, Album, Genre, Folders, and Playlist; but unless the files are loaded just-so, playlists are empty, data goes missing, files can’t be played. I’ve also heard from Correspondents who report similar difficulties with their devices and it’s obvious that there is no single standard convention for file storage among the many types of media players out there. Some players can’t read subfolders, some require subfolders; some need everything in a “MUSIC” folder; some need specialized file-naming; and so on. (My car can also read the data from various generations of iPods and iPhones but, again, not consistently.)

Export Selected With M3U v1.1 will copy the files of the selected tracks to a user-chosen location—presumably some kind of portable media—and then create a M3U playlist file in the same location with relative file path references to the copied files.

The options available should be able to contend with any configuration required by any particular player. This latest version adds pattern-substitution file renaming and can optionally detect if the selected volume is FAT32 formatted which some players require.

More information, screenshot of results, and download is here.

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UPDATED: File Renamer v2.0

dougscripts — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:06:28 +0000

Week or so ago this site got some hits from a post at Reddit which served to remind me that “Uh, this site’s been around for thirteen years.” One of the comments reported that “I used a file renamer script that renames files based on the tracks metadata. It changed all my .m4a tracks to .mp3 and broke a lot of my library even though I told it to not replace file extensions.” Sorry about that.

The original version of File Renamer (which was written by a fellow named Tino Heth) was posted in January 2002 and it hasn’t been updated since. Back then, there were only MP3s, so the script didn’t have to account for M4A. Unfortunately, it didn’t account for any other extensions either. So I thought if people are still talking about it after all these years I’d better update it.

You can download it here.

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iTunes 11.0.2 Released

dougscripts — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:06:40 +0000

Apple released iTunes 11.0.2 today. It fixes some iCloud/iTunes Match playlist issues, adds a Composer View, and other fixes and performance enhancements. More as it develops.

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NEW: Search Results to Playlist

dougscripts — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:52:26 +0000

I’ve been using a variation of this search script for a while so I thought I’d update it with some customization settings nailed on and post it (there’s a simple snippet version of it here). The thing is: I often want my iTunes search results to go directly to a playlist so I can get right to work on them there, usually tag editing. Without some automation this is typically a multi-stage grind comprised of searching, selecting track results, making new playlist, naming new playlist, locating and selecting the tracks again when new playlist gets focus (stab!), putting tracks into playlist by any one of various means, and then forgetting why I was searching for these tracks in the first place. (Related memory-loss issue: Name New Playlist From Selection.)

Search Results to Playlist puts a floating window over iTunes that provides the ability to search iTunes and copy the track results to a designated Results Playlist.

It can search the entire library, the selected playlist, or any of the categories (Music, Movies, Books, etc) for text in All, Name, Artist, Album, or Composer tags and then copy the results to a playlist. The script will create this Results Playlist if necessary. If the playlist already exists then the track results can replace its current contents or may be appended to it.

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