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An AppleScript to 'convert and remove' songs from iTunes Apps
Lately i've run into a lot of people with very little available disk space, due to the fact that they have a significant number of AIFFs in their iTunes Library. I usually tell them that they can create a Smart Playlist that finds all of their AIFFs and then select all and convert them all. Afterwards, they can select all of the songs in that playlist and Option-Delete them to remove them from the Library with the option to delete them from disk. However, this isn't always a viable solution because sometimes they will be lacking the disk space to do the conversion in the first place.

So I wrote this AppleScript that singles out all of the files in your Library and converts them to a format of your choice, but it deletes each old song (from the disk and from the Library) as soon as that song is done encoding. Thanks to Doug Adams, as I looked at one of his scripts to figure out the 'choose from list' thing.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one ... but as a general comment, if you're so hard-pressed for disk space that you can't convert then de-duplicate, you're going to have other system-related issues as well (assuming your music is on your boot disk/partition). Keeping at least 10% of your drive space free is advice that I've followed for quite a few years; I don't know if that figure is too high or too low, but I've never run into any drive-space-related issues using it as a benchmark.]
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The 10% rule...
Authored by: JB Segal on Jul 25, '05 11:50:15AM

The 10% rule is a good one in general, but if - for some reason that I'd really prefer not to try to figure out - you happen to be running off of a 4GB drive, keeping only 400MB available will still leave you in Very Bad Shape on a fairly regular basis.

Would that the 40GB drive I have work consistantly in my PB (firewire) (aka Pismo)...



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An AppleScript to 'convert and remove' songs from iTunes
Authored by: powerbookg3user0 on Jul 25, '05 01:26:17PM

Nice. But I really want this for LAME :D

---
Takumi Murayama



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An AppleScript to 'convert and remove' songs from iTunes
Authored by: Wetzel on Jul 25, '05 05:54:42PM
here ya go:
http://blacktree.com/apps/iTunes-LAME/

not only does it allow you to choose your own custom command line for lame, it also optionally deletes the source files.

just select all the files you wanna convert, and choose the program from the scripts menu.

(also, if you want to use your own lame binary, it automatically searches in directories such as /usr/local/bin)



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An AppleScript to 'convert and remove' songs from iTunes
Authored by: hypert on Jul 26, '05 11:22:35PM
This AppleScript won't compile for me. One the 2nd line I get an "Expected end of line but found identifier" error on the word "encoder":

set oldencoder to name of current encoder 
I notice in some of Doug Adam's AppleScript applications that lines like these look like:

set encoderBackup to name of «class pEnc»
Is there some "class" that I need to get Doug's scripts or this one to work?

Thanks!

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An AppleScript to 'convert and remove' songs from iTunes
Authored by: rojerww on Apr 05, '07 01:09:18PM

I have tried a few of the AppleScripts from Doug's site, but I can not get them to work for me. I have two seperate and very large iTunes libraries, one ~230GB and one ~450GB, both on external HD's. I had edited two of the scripts to point to the external libraries, but they just took a long time to do nothing.

I would like a separate program to help do the following:

Walk either (or both) of the external hard drives, delete exact duplicates and move a copy in a different format to the other hard drive. I would like to do this from outside of iTunes, keep correct tags and artwork. I'll rebuild the libraries and playlist afterwards.

My goal - one iTunes library with Apple Lossless and Protected AAC's (purchased from iTunes Music Store) and one iTunes library with MP3's and non-protected AAC's. For all of my Apple Lossless files (created from my personal collection of over 600 cd's) - I want a duplicate MP3 version in the other library.



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