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30 Most Recent RSS FeedBugs
Delete Bug or Feature?
I just noticed this today using iTunes 7.6, but I do not know how long this "situation" has existed.
As far as I've always known, when you delete a track from a playlist using AppleScript, the track is removed from the playlist; when you delete a track from library playlist 1 (the Main library), the track is removed entirely from iTunes. In both cases, the track's file remained in its location in the Music folder. Today I noticed that when doing a delete from library playlist 1, the track was not only removed from iTunes but its file was moved to the Trash! I could not figure out a way to keep the file from doing so. I tried deleting it from its Master Library--in this case the "Music" playlist--but it still went to the Trash. Deleting from a simple playlist worked as expected: the track was removed from the playlist but remained in the Master Library.
Recently, some users of Make Bookmarkable wondered where their tracks went and it turns out they were moved to the Trash. Not so bad, since the bookmarkable copy was re-added (I believe). Still, this is not the behavior I expect when using delete. And until recently this wasn't the behavior anyway.
If this is how delete works now, then there is no way to remove a track from iTunes via AppleScript and subsequently keep its file, which is an option when you manually delete a track using the Delete key.
So, what's up with that?
...And Until That Bug Is Fixed
I mentioned yesterday about the High ASCII bug in iTunes that prevents Chapter titles containing High ASCII characters from displaying in the Chapters menu of iTunes 7.5 (note that I still have yet to get a real confirmation on this). As far as Join Together is concerned, you can avoid the error caused by High ASCII in track titles by eliminating those kinds of characters in the track names in the Join Together Track List. As I mentioned yesterday, I have a fix for the error in Join Together, but because of the alleged iTunes bug, you won't have access to those titles in iTunes 7.5.
Join Together and High ASCII
I have gotten a couple of reports from users of Join Together regarding an error that occurs right when chapterizing begins. Turns out that ChapterTool was choking on High ASCII characters in the track names (?, ?, ?, ?, and so on). This error only occurs in Leopard, and I have fixed the problem. But I am hesitant to release an update just yet because it turns out that iTunes 7.5 willl not display titles containing High ASCII in the Chapters menu. At least not at my house. QuickTime will display the chapter titles, and iTunes 7.4.1 in Tiger will, but not iTunes 7.5 in Leopard.
I'd like to try to nail this down. Unfortunately, I don't have any joined files created in Tiger that have High ASCII characters in the chapter titles. What I need to know is if joined files created in Tiger display their titles correctly in iTunes in Leopard. If you can be of assistance, please email me.
AAC VBR Bug NOT a Bug
According to this article at MacFixIt, "it now appears that this [is} neither a bug in QuickTime nor a bug in iTunes; in fact, it's not a bug. What's happened is that the meaning of the choices you make in iTunes has changed (without, as usual, any explanation or notice from Apple)." For more, read the entire article.
QuickTime 7.3 Bug - AAC VBR, Whether You Want It Or Not
This thread and this thread at Apple Support Discussions describes a bug in QuickTime 7.3 which ignores your iTunes VBR (variable bit rate) settings for importing or converting AAC tracks. As a result, you always get VBR. (Thanks to Correspondent Christian who pointed this out to me when describing a problem with the "Pass-Through" setting of Join Together. This option will only be available if your selected tracks all have the same bit and sample rate. Of course, if they are VBR, they won't all have the same bit rate and Pass-Through won't be available.)
I smell iTunes 7.5.1 and/or QuickTime 7.3.1 coming soon. At least, I hope that's what I smell.
Leopard, Scripts and Migration Assistant
A Correspondent writes:
"I have managed to eliminate a '-10960' error when using my favourite scripts by simply removing the Scripting Additions folder from /Library/ folder. Which of the 8 items I had in this folder was responsible for the errors I can't say. What I do know is that the Migration Assistant application is responsible for copying these files into my clean install of Leopard. Anyway, problem solved. You may want to let your other users know of this solution should you see fit."
iTunes 7.3.2 - Capacity and Free Space Bug Fixed
iTunes 7.3.2 fixes the problem with capacity and free space for source. When getting these values for an iPod source the correct values are returned.
iTunes 7.3.2 Now Available
Apple has released iTunes 7.3.2. According to the info page it "provides bug fixes to improve stability and performance."
Capacity and Free Space Bug?
I haven't thoroughly investigated this, but I thought I'd put it out there. Using AppleScript you should be able to get the capacity and free space of a mounted iPod. These are two properties of source, along with kind. Thus, the result of this snippet should be a list of numbers representing the free space of each mounted iPod:
tell application "iTunes" get free space of every source whose kind is iPod end tell
I get 0.0 each time. This is wrong, as my Video iPod has well over 12GB of free space. Likewise, I get 0.0 if I attempt to get thecapacity.
This occurs with iTunes 7.3.1 with the iPod I mentioned above. Because the rest of my family is currently away with their iPods, I was only able to test a second generation Mini with iTunes 7.1.1 and the snippet works; it does not work with iTunes 7.3.1. So I can only assume that it's not the iPod but iTunes. Regrettably, I do not know which version of iTunes this bug first appeared.
This affects a small number of AppleScripts, notably "Rip To iPod" which uses capacity and free space to determine if there is enough room on the iPod to copy ripped CD tracks. Because of this bug, it always reports that there is not enough room. I'll update "Rip To iPod" to work around this.
Get Lyrical Error
Chris Shull's "Get Lyrical" script -- v2.3 was posted yesterday -- apparently only retrieves lyrics for "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson. I have contacted Chris about fixing it.
Update: Apparently there are some other problems with the script. After editing it myself to fix the "BJ" problem, I was unable to get correct lyric text for very many song selections. Again, I have notified Chris.
