How to get music off your Ipod, without downloading those annoying progs

[jeff escalante]

All right guys, I've got it figured out. I'll lay it down for y'all.

1. Plug it in. Open iTunes. Click on the ipod. Check "enable disk use" if it isnt already.

2. go into "my computer", open the ipod disk. You should see some random folders like "calendars" "contacts" "notes" etc.

3. In the tools menu, go to folder options. Click the "view" tab then under "hidden files and folders" click "view hidden files and folders".

4. Now ok that, then click on the ipod control folder, then the music folder.

5. You should see a bunch of folder named F01, F02 etc. up to a high number.

6. Apple made it even harder for you though. They rename all the files and randomly distribute them throughout these folders, just to make your life miserable. But You can take care of that!

7. Now at the top menu of the folder (where the back button and stuff is) click "search". There should be a little search thing on the left. Click "all files and folders" then click "more advanced options".

8. Under more advanced options, click "search hidden files and folders" and "search subfolders"

9. DONT ENTER ANYTHING INTO THE SEARCH BOX - just click search.

10. Under the "view" menu, select "details". Then go under the view menu again. go to "choose details". Deselect everything except for "name" "title" and "artist" - those three should be checked. There are a lot of dumb options, but I'm sure you can find title and artist in there somewhere. Click OK.

11. Now you should have a list of all the stuff on your ipod (once you scroll a little down from the top. BUT they are in a totally random order, and knowing you (silly, silly you) you have about a bajillion songs on your ipod, and all you want is a few songs to transfer onto your computer. BUT YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT TOO!!

12. Now that we've got all your music up, let's narrow the search to just what you want. On the search bar on the left, click "change file name or keywords", select "anywhere in the file" and enter in a song name or artist, just as it is in iTunes. Click search.

13. It should come up with one or more obscurely named files. Unfortunately, Windows is annoying, and took away your view option changes, so you need to redo that.

14. Again, under view, (assuming it stayed in detail mode) go to "choose details" and uncheck everything except for name, title, and artist. BAM SON! you got it, the title and artist of everything you searched for.

15. Now create a new folder on your desktop, called, for example, "Music from my iPod".

16. With your search window still open, select the songs you would like to transfer, and click and drag them into the folder you just created.

17. Sit with a smug look on your face while your music files transfer onto your computer, because you just DUPED Apple, as well as all those losers who sit at home and make progams to do what you just did yourself, and people pay for them.

18. YOUR NOT DONE YET THOUGH! Now when you open up the folder, you will still get a bunch of messed up song names. If you would like to change these, you can go through the same process with the view details thing in that folder, then change the file names to the artist and song title manually (which will take forever if you did a lot of songs) OR you can just load them into iTunes or another music playing program, and it will automatically display the track and artist names.

Enjoy!

Jeff

[jeff escalante]

there is one flaw in this system - if you tranfer music onto your ipod in AAC format it will not display the title and artist. Although this is tedious, the only way to find AAC songs is to search for that file type and listen to each song.

** AAC format means its file extension is .m4a

[jeff escalante]

and one more final comment, the only way to avoid putting AAC files onto your ipod is by NOT IMPORTING CDS USING ITUNES - Apple is pretty devious, and they designed this format so that it would be specifically harder to rip music off ipods and/or handle it in anything but iTunes.

So, rip CDs using another program, like windows media, then import them to iTunes and they wont become AAC.

or if you cant handle that, download and use this free program to rip CDs directly to mp3 files.

http://www.sharewareplaza.com/CD-to-MP3-Fr...load_17601.html


- and a random additional side note, all music must me mp3 format before it goes on a CD, so if you need to get a song to mp3 format, just burn it, then rip it again. This works especially well for songs bought from the itunes store - they have "special protection" against copying, stealing etc, but since CDs can ONLY have mp3 format, they have to be converted, and are therefore free to modifying, copying, stealing, etc.

[jeff escalante]

JUST KIDDING!

disregard that last post, I now have a way to get things to mp3 directly from the source.

in iTunes (yes, its in itunes itself, even if they tried to hide it) go to the "edit" menu, then "prefrences"

then go to the "advanced" tab (a feeble attempt to scare people away) and go to the "importing" tab in there. Go to the "import using" pull down menu, and select "MP3 Encoder". Click OK.

You might also notice while you're in there that MP3 has better sound quality then AAC by a good amount. hmmmm...

THIS ABOVE PROCESS WILL RIP CDS TO MP3 FORMAT IN ITUNES instead of AAC, which is the default.

NOT ONLY THAT but iTunes also can convert your already AAC files into MP3 for you!

Select the song that you have found to be AAC format, then under the "advanced" (again) menu in the regular itunes window, go to "convert to MP3" and it will do it for you. Isn't that nice. Then you can delete the AAC version (if you cant tell which is which, right click and go to "get info") and put the friendly MP3 version onto your ipod.

Unfortunately, you cannot convert things to MP3 directly off of your iPod, so if the song is on your iPod but not your computer, you'll have to browse through the iPod's folders and find it, then transfer it onto your computer, then import it into itunes, then convert to mp3, then put it back onto your ipod. What a pain.

An easier way to do this is to use the same method you did to find artist and title names in the first post, but instead enter in ".m4a" in the file name search. It will then pop up a list of all the AAC files on your ipod. You can export these all to your computer then import them back into iTunes in mass.

[jeff escalante]

Since you cant convert to mp3 directly off your ipod, this could be a problem if you have a ton of songs on your ipod but not on your computer. So....


one final thing. lets say your ipod is flooded with AAC files, and you really dont want to listen to all that junk then rename and convert each one. Well here's my proposed method for getting rid of it.

1. clear your itunes music library. But before you do, right click one of your songs that is already in mp3 format (if you have any) and click "get info". Under the summary tab, it should show the file's location. On your computer, naviagte to that folder. It should be where most of your other already mp3'd music files are, and they should be organized by album, or just all mp3s, if you downloaded them. write down where that folder is if you think you can't remember. When you delete all the files, make sure you don't click the option that say send all files to the recycle bin, or you will potentially lose all the music you had in there already.

2. Using the specific search method described above (under "music" folder in your ipod, viewed in detail mode, searching in hidden folders and subfolders) search for .m4a

3. A big list should come up. All the file names will be random.

4. Make sure you have plenty of space on your hard drive, then create a folder on your desktop to put the music in. Make sure it is on your desktop.

5. Shift click and drag ALL the files that came up in your search into that folder. Wait a while.

6. When they are done transferring, go into itunes, and go to file > add folder to library

7. Find the folder on your desktop, and import it. When done, you will notice that the music is generally organized into albums, because the AAC files are the ones that you got from importing albums off of iTunes previously.

8. Now you need to convert them all to mp3. This could take a while. shift click them all, and under advanced, click "convert to mp3". Then wait till theyre all done.

9. Now this could be a problem - you have two copies of every song! We dont want to do any manual labor here and delete them all manually, so here's the quick route.

10. select one pair of songs, and right click the lower one (That should be your new mp3 format song) - select "get info"

11. On the bottom of the summary tab, next to the bolded word "where", it should show a folder location. On your computer, go to that location.

12. keeping that folder open on your desktop, go back to iTunes, click on any random song, press control-A, then press delete. That will once again delete all your music. Make sure you dont send it all to the recycle bin

13. Now that all your music is gone, its time to re import it all. Go back to that window you just opened, and make sure your music is still there.

14. Now go to file > add folder to library and navigate to that folder. Then go back up a level to the "iTunes Music" folder. import that, and all the songs you just converted to mp3 then deleted should come back, without the AAC versions.

15. Since you have no use for the AAC versions anymore, and you've moved on to a better place, you can take that folder you made on your desktop which contains all the AAC files and DELETE it. Yay.

15a. Before you import the rest of your music, you may want to update your ipod with the new mp3s. They should be compacted into albums, because that really the only way you get AACs. So look through your library, write down all the albums that were previously AAC, then go onto your ipod, and delete all those albums from it. Then transfer your entire library back onto your ipod. That should replace all the albums that you just deleted, except as mp3s.

16. Finally, you need to recover the rest of your music files that you deleted in step one. Go back to the folder where you had them all stored (they should still be there, unless you clicked the "send to recycle bin" option, in which case they are all in the recycle bin) and make sure they are all there. If you have more AAC files hidden away in that folder (which you can do by doing another search for .m4a in that folder) make sure you separate those out into their own folder so you can deal with them later.

17. Go to file > import folder and import that folder back in.

TA DAA!! you should have all your music back in your library, all your AACs in mp3 format, and it will now be easy to transfer music from your ipod to your computer and vice versa. Not only that, you'll never have to deal with this again, because any albums you import will now be automatically in mp3 format.

[Taaaaaaaam Bassett]

wow that was 5 really long posts all by jeff.

thanks thats really useful information, but i doubt i'll be able to remember it when it comes time to use it. you can come over sometime this vacation and take a ton of music from my library if you want, i wrote down things you want and that i need to get it together for you but it just hasnt happened yet :-p

oh yea, .m4a files suck. mp3 is the way to go baby

[andrewpark]

or
just google "ipod2pc" convertor

owned :D

[jeff escalante]

ya but thats weak.

once you read it, its actually not that hard to do - its probly easier to just do it yourself as long as your files are all mp3.

also, theres no trial edition limits or annoying registration/paying boxes...