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Monitor iTunes format conversion progress Apps

Just noticed that when using the "Convert to AAC" option in iTunes 4 on a number of songs, iTunes automatically creates a playlist called "Converting...". This is useful for seeing how your conversion is progressing.

This may have existed in previous versions of iTunes, but I've only just noticed it now.

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Monitor iTunes format conversion progress | 7 comments | Create New Account
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Monitor iTunes format conversion progress
Authored by: sjonke on May 06, '03 11:02:05AM

The temporary "Converting" folder was there in iTunes 3 as well.

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--- I hate Microsoft and I vote



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Monitor iTunes format conversion progress
Authored by: Hes Nikke on May 06, '03 03:27:09PM

why would you want to convert an MP3 to an AAC?

both MP3 and AAC are lossy formats

think about it this way:

you have a raw song with A audio data
when you convert a raw song to MP3, you are throwing out audio data X, so you wind up with A-X.
when you convert a raw song to AAC, you are throwing out audio data Y, so you wind up with A-Y
when you convert an MP3 to AAC, you are throwing out Y from a song that was already A-X, so you wind up with A-X-Y, or a poorer quality song then a direct rip with either codec. ick!

if you want your music in AAC format, go to your original CD's and rip them again, iTunes is nice enough to notice that you've already got the music in your library and asks if you want to replace it. thats what i did for 4 CDs before i found out (the hard way) that you now can't even make MP3 CD's out of your AACs. (i was hoping that iTunes would create some A-X-Y MP3's for my car) there are about 800 thousand different models of MP3 CD players out there, and AFAIK 0 different models of AAC CD players.

think before you turn your library into useless garbage.

ok, i'm done with my rant for the day :)

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vacuums do not suck. they merely provide an absence that allows other objects to take the place of what becomes absent.



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Monitor iTunes format conversion progress
Authored by: fixable on May 07, '03 05:03:11PM

I agree, but the Convert to AAC is still very useful. I have
noticed that on some of my CD's that are old or scratched, it is
more effective to rip them to aiff and then convert those aiff's
to AAC. These CD's; when ripping to AAC will have skips or it
will stop halfway through a song, but the aiff rips would be fine.

I would certainly advise against converting mp3's to AAC's or
vice versa.



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Re-encoding might be bad.
Authored by: Anonymous on May 06, '03 05:13:17PM
That would be like copying a copied tape. In the 80's, half of my cassette tapes were copies. Copying the copies always resulted in less than acceptable audio - even when high quality tapes, recorders, players, and cables were involved.

This is sort of the same thing. If you convert AIFF to MP3, you lose a little. If you convert MP3 to AAC, you lose more. If you don't use really high bitrates, you're losing quite a bit.

Sometimes I RIP straight to AIFF in iTunes - usually when I make compilation CDs and want good audio quality. Encoding that data to AAC wouldn't result in a double quality loss. It would be handy to avoid having to put the CD back in the drive and RIP/encode as AAC or MP3 again.

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Gypsy

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One of these things is not like the other...
Authored by: AMacAddict on May 09, '03 09:52:11AM

AIFF is the acronym for Audio Interchange File Format, an uncompressed digital file. An interchange format would be useless if it could not resolve sound data that preserves the full characteristics of the original recording. Two of the standard AIFF specifications most affect sound quality of the resulting file. Larger word lengths (sample size setting) generally result in a higher quality representation of the original sound. CDs are encoded in 16 bit chunks, and is the default import word length in iTunes. Sampling frequency (sample rate setting) is the number of times the sound event is quantized within a given time period, given in Khz, or the number of samples per second. The Nyquist sampling theorem states the highest possible pitch in a sound is one-half the sampling frequency. A sample rate of 44.1, the frequency used for CD sound and as iTunes default sample rate, allows for a 22.05 Khz maximum pitch, considered the average top frequency audible to humans. Therefore, an iTunes AIF file using the default settings should have no discernible difference in quality to the human ear. An MP3 or ACC encoded from an AIF file would be sonically identical to an MP3 or ACC encoded directly from the CD, as they are both the same resolution, and uncompressed. It would be quite interesting if you could provide data that showed this interchange format is not suitable for interchanging formats. only re-encoding a lossy format (MP3, ACC, JPEG) to another will result in further degradation of the file.



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ID3 tags
Authored by: unconfused1 on May 06, '03 05:20:07PM

Are ID3 tags (or similar tags) embedded in AAC or MP4 files?

Thanks



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ID3 tags
Authored by: unconfused1 on May 08, '03 01:08:17AM

Well, I found out the answer to my own question, if anyone else was also wondering.

iTunes puts a QuickTime wrapper on the AAC file that contains the artist, title, track number, etc. information. So...this ends up being a really cool deal. I transferred that file to a friend who imported it into his iTunes, which then beautifully displayed the title, artist, track, etc.

I had feared that AppleMusic had some freaky connection with iTunes, so that they didn't have to include that information with the music file itself. Glad I was wrong.

Also...these files were saved with a ".m4a" extension, which had to be changed to ".mp4" if I want to also use them under QuickTime on my Windows box.



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