InformIT: Mac OS X Unleashed

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iTunes

iTunes is Apple's contribution to the digital audio playing field. It can serve as your CD player, MP3 ripper, song organizer, jukebox, eye candy, and CD burner. And, amazingly, it's simple enough to use that even if you've never burned a CD, ripped an MP3, or listened to Internet radio, you can be doing all three within five minutes—tops.

Although iTunes didn't ship with the original release of Mac OS X, you can download the latest version from http://www.apple.com/itunes/, or use the Software Update System Preference panel. (See Chapter 29 for more information on the automatic software updating feature of Mac OS X.) If you're using Mac OS X 10.1, iTunes was installed with the operating system.

First Run Setup

The first time you launch iTunes, it will run through a setup assistant to locate MP3s and configure Internet playback. The welcome screen is shown in Figure 7.45.

Figure 7.45 Setting up iTunes requires a few clicks; then you're in digital music paradise.

During the setup procedure, click Next to go to the next step, or Previous to return to the last screen. Clicking Cancel exits the setup utility and starts iTunes.

The second step of the setup process, displayed in Figure 7.46, allows you to set Internet access options.

Figure 7.46 Choose how iTunes works with your Internet applications.

iTunes is perfectly suited for handling streaming MP3s. By default, the Use iTunes for Internet playback radio button will be selected. If you have another application (such as Panic Software's Audion http://www.panic.com/) you'd rather use for streaming, choose Do not modify my Internet settings instead.

When extracting CDs, iTunes can look up information about the CD, such as the artist and song title. The Automatically connect to the Internet radio button, set by default, enables this feature. To force iTunes to prompt before connecting to the Internet, click Ask me before connecting.

Click Next when you're satisfied with your responses.

During the final step of the configuration, shown in Figure 7.47, you are prompted on how iTunes will find MP3s.

Figure 7.47 iTunes can search your drive for MP3s, if desired.

By default, iTunes will locate all of the files on your drive. To disable this feature, click I'll add them myself later. The process of searching the drive for MP3 files can take awhile, so I prefer to add MP3s when I want to.

Click Done to begin using iTunes.

The iTunes Interface

Everything you need to do anything (well, almost anything) in iTunes is found in the main window, pictured in Figure 7.48. The main control areas are listed here.

Figure 7.48 A single iTunes window provides access to almost all application functions.

Player Controls— The player controls move between different songs, play, pause, and adjust the output volume of the current playing track. Clicking directly on the sound slider moves the volume adjustment immediately to that level.

Status Information— Displays information about the currently playing song. Clicking each of the status lines toggles between different types of information. The top line displays the artist and can be toggled to the name of the song with a single click. Likewise, the Elapsed Time line can be toggled to display remaining time and total time.

The progress bar shows how far along the playback of the current song has progressed. Dragging the progress bar handle can move the playback back or forward in the audio track.

Finally, a stereo frequency monitor can be displayed by clicking the arrow on the right of the status display.

Search String— Typing a few letters into the iTunes Search field will immediately display all audio tracks within the current playlist or library that match the string in any way (artist, song, album).

Song/Source Panel Action— The action button performs a different function depending on what source is currently being viewed. As you work in different areas of the program, this button changes to an appropriate action for that area:

Library— When viewing the main song library, the action button toggles between two different browse modes. The first mode is similar to the Finder's List view. Each audio track is listed on its own line. The second mode uses a paradigm similar to the Column Finder view. A first column lists the artist, the second column shows the albums for that artist. Finally, a lower pane shows a list of the song tracks for that artist and album.
Radio Tuner— The Radio Tuner's action button is Refresh—this reloads all available stations from the iTunes Internet Radio station browser.
Playlist— A playlist is your own personal list of music that you've compiled from the main library. Playlists are the starting point for creating a CD. When viewing a playlist, the action button is Burn CD.
CD— When a CD is inserted, iTunes prepares to import the tracks to MP3 files. The action button is Import when a CD is selected as the source.
Visual Effects— No matter what source is selected, iTunes can always be toggled into Visualizer mode to display dazzling onscreen graphics. When the visual effects are active, the action button becomes Options for controlling the visual effects.

Sources— The Source pane lists the available MP3 sources. Attached MP3 players, CDs, playlists, the central music Library, and Radio Tuner make up the available sources.

Songs— A list of the songs on the currently selected source. When in the main library view, you can click the action button to toggle this list between a simple list and column-based browser. Double-clicking a song in the list will start playing from the selected source. To change the visible fields in the list, choose View Options from the Edit menu.

Playlist Controls— Three playlist controls are available: Create Playlist, Randomize Order, and Loop. As their names suggest, these can be used to create new playlists and control the order in which the audio tracks are played back.

Visualizer Toggle— Turns the visualization effects ("music for the eyes") on and off.

CD Eject— Ejects the currently inserted CD.

So, now that you know what the controls are for, let's take a look at putting iTunes through its paces.

Encoding MP3s

Encoding, or ripping, CDs lets you take the tracks from a CD and save them in the MP3 (MPEG Layer 3) format. MP3s are a highly compressed audio format that has been made very popular due in part to controversial services such as Napster (http://www.napster.com) and Gnutella. These free file-sharing protocols allow users worldwide to trade audio files—much to the dismay of the recording industry.

Upon inserting a CD, iTunes will query the Gracenote's CDDB (CD Database). If you've chosen to manually query the CDDB, you can force a query by choosing Get CD Track Names from the Advanced menu. An iTunes window is shown with a CD inserted in Figure 7.49.

Figure 7.49 iTunes locates CD and track information for an inserted CD.

The CDDB Internet database contains information on hundreds of thousands of CDs. If a match is found, the CD will be displayed by name in the Source listing. If a CD is not located, it will be listed as Untitled.

Click the CD name in the Source pane to view the tracks. You're now ready to start importing. Select the tracks you want to encode. If no tracks are selected, the entire CD button to encode the selected tracks.

By default, the encoded MP3s will be stored in ~/Documents/iTunes/iTunes Music. You can adjust this location through the Application Preferences. An entire CD can take from 5–74 minutes, depending on the speed of your CD-ROM drive. To pass the time, you can continue to use iTunes while the tracks are imported. When the import is finished, the MP3s will be available under the Library source listing.

Editing Track Information

If your CD's track information is not shown, you can edit the CD tracks by slowly double-clicking the track name. Type in the correct name, and then press Return to save it. You'll want to take this step before creating MP3s.

Each MP3 file contains ID3 tags; these tags are saved with each file and identify the artist and song title. Without this information, iTunes is unable to catalog the MP3 correctly.

To fully edit the encoded information for each track, choose Get Info (Command+I) from the File menu. The track info window enables you to change titles, artists, and genres for a given song. There are three panels within the Song Information window. The top of each panel is the song name in an editable field. At the bottom are Prev Song and Next Song buttons to move forward and backward through the song tracks without exiting the Info window.

The Info panel is shown in Figure 7.50. This panel displays a summary of information on the selected track.

Figure 7.50 The Info panel shows a summary of information about the selected track.

Next, the Tags panel can be used to set each of the possible ID3 tags. Although they are not necessary to play the song, each field aids in the cataloging process. When you have several thousand songs, you'll appreciate any information you can get! The Tags panel can be seen in Figure 7.51.

Figure 7.51 ID3 tags are used when iTunes catalogs your music.

Be careful to use the exact same album titles and artist names for each track of the same album. If the strings vary by even a single space, they'll be listed as different albums or artists.

Finally, the Options panel can set a per-track audio adjustment to quiet those really loud songs during playback. In addition, a start and stop time can be set for a track. These settings will not affect the file itself. Figure 7.52 shows the Options panel.

Figure 7.52 Control volume on a per-track basis, or set alternative start and stop points in a song.

Make your settings (if any) and click OK to exit the Song Information window. If you'd like to send CDDB your updated CD information for inclusion in its database, choose Submit CD Track Names from the Advanced menu.

Adding MP3s to iTunes

If you're working with an existing Library of MP3s rather than a CD, you can easily add them to your MP3 library. Use the Add To Library option from the File menu to choose a folder that contains MP3s. Alternatively, you can simply drag a folder of MP3s from the Finder into the Library song list.

The process of importing MP3s takes time. Each MP3 is examined for ID3 tags and is cataloged in the iTunes database. If you're adding iTunes from a network drive, be prepared to take a quick lunch break.

iTunes Music Library Oddities

iTunes will not copy files that are added to its Library into the ~/Library/iTunes/ iTunes Music folder. Although the songs will work during the current execution of iTunes, subsequent program executions will not be able to find songs that aren't stored in the iTunes Music folder. You must manually copy songs to this location or reassign the iTunes music directory (using the application Preferences).

Creating and Working with Playlists

The key to many of the remaining iTunes features lies in creating a playlist. A playlist is nothing more than a list of songs from your Library. To create a new playlist, click the

Add Playlist button in the lower-left corner of the iTunes window or choose New Playlist (Command+N) from the File menu. The new playlist ("untitled playlist") will be added to the Source pane. Use a slow double-click to rename the playlist.

The next step is to add songs to the playlist. To add songs, follow these steps:

Select the Library source.
Verify that the song you want is in the main MP3 Library. If it isn't, you must first add it to the Library.
Select one or more songs in the song list.
Drag the selection to the playlist in the Source pane.

The selected songs will be added to your playlist. Click the playlist to display the songs. You can drag the tracks within the playlist window to choose their order.

Burning CDs and Exporting to MP3 Players

After a playlist has been built, you can drag its name in the source listing to any listed MP3 player source. The files will automatically be copied to the connected player. If the player does not have enough available space, you will need to remove files from your playlist or select the external player and remove tracks from its memory.

If you have a Mac with a supported CD burner, you can use a playlist to burn an audio CD laid out exactly like the playlist. Click the Burn CD action button in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window, and then follow the onscreen instructions, inserting a recordable CD when prompted.

Internet Radio

Before iTunes, I had only a few experiences with streaming MP3s—extremely poor experiences. As a user, I'm uninterested in the mechanics of the connection—I want to see a simple listing of radio stations, choose one, and listen. This is the approach Apple took when creating iTunes.

To display a list of the available streaming stations, click the Radio Tuner source. After a few seconds querying a station server, a list of available music genres is displayed. Each genre can be expanded to show the stations within that group by clicking its disclosure arrow. Stations are listed with a Stream (station) Name, Bit Rate, and Comment (description). The Bit Rate determines the quality of the streamed audio—the higher the bit rate, the higher the quality—and the higher the bandwidth requirements.

Figure 7.53 shows a list of hard rock stations (is there any other type of music?).

Figure 7.53 Stations are grouped by genre. Expand each genre to reveal hundreds of available stations.

Double-click a station to begin playing, or select it and then click the Play button. iTunes will buffer a few seconds of audio, and then start playing the streaming audio. If iTunes stutters while playing, look for a similar station using a lower bit rate.

Playing Audio

As I'm sure you've discovered by now, the iTunes push button player controls work on whatever source you currently have selected. After a song plays, iTunes moves to the next song. You can also control the playing via keyboard or from the Controls menu:

Play/Stop— Space bar
Next Song— Command+Right-arrow key
Previous Song— Command+Left-arrow key
Volume Up— Command+Up-arrow key
Volume Down— Command+Down-arrow key
Mute— Command+M

To randomize the play order for the selected source, click the Shuffle button (second from the left) in the lower left of the iTunes window. If you want to repeat the tracks, use the Repeat button to toggle between Repeat Off, Repeat Once, and Repeat All.

iTunes Window Modes

iTunes' window is a bit large to conveniently leave onscreen during playback. Luckily, there are two other window modes that take up far less space. Quite unintuitively, you access these small modes by clicking the window's Maximize button.

After clicking Maximize, the window is reduced to the player controls and status window. Figure 7.54 shows the "maximized" iTunes window.

Figure 7.54 Click the Maximize button to collapse the iTunes window.

Even this window is a bit large for some monitors. To collapse it even more, use the resize handle in the lower-right corner of the window. A fully collapsed iTunes window can be seen in Figure 7.55.

Figure 7.55 The fully collapsed iTunes window includes only the basic playback controls.

To restore iTunes to its original state, click the Maximize button again.

Visualizer

The iTunes Visualizer creates a graphical visualization of your music as it plays. While playing a song, click the Visualizer button (second from the right) in the lower-left corner of the iTunes window. Use Turn Visualizer On (Command+T) to activate the display from the Visuals menu. Figure 7.56 shows the Visualizer in action.

Figure 7.56 The Visualizer displays images to match your music.

The Visualizer is simply a plug-in. You can download other plug-ins to add new graphics to the system. Plug-ins are stored in the ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/ folder. Choose among the installed plug-ins by choosing their name from the Visuals menu.

The Visuals menu can control the size of the generated graphics as well as toggle between full-screen (Command+F) and window modes. To exit full-screen mode, press Escape.

Visualizer Options

While the windowed Visualizer display is active, the Options action button in the upper-right corner of the window will become active. The Visual Options window is displayed in Figure 7.57.

Figure 7.57 Visual options alter the Visualizer display.

If you're interested in how quickly your computer is generating visualization images, choose Display framerate—this will add a frames-per-second counter to the display. To conserve CPU time on extremely fast machines, use the Cap framerate setting to limit the display to 30 frames per second. This is the rate at which standard movie footage is displayed. On the opposite side of the coin, some machines might not display visualizations fast enough. For these machines, click the Faster but rougher display check box to double the size of the pixels, but greatly speed up the rate of display.

The final option, Always display sound info, adds an information display to the visualization window that contains artist and song info. Typically this data is displayed only when a song begins playing.

Click OK to set your options.

iTunes Preferences

The iTunes Preferences control everything from the appearance of the iTunes listings to MP3 encoding rates and CD burner behavior. There are three panels—General, Importing, and Advanced.

The General panel, shown in Figure 7.58, controls the appearance of song listings, connections to the Internet, and what to do when a CD is inserted.

Figure 7.58 Use the General preferences to set appearance and other miscellaneous options.

Source Text— Choose the size of the text labels for the Source listing.
Song Text— Choose the size of the text in the main song listings.
Show Genre When Browsing— When viewing the songs in column mode, include a Genre column in addition to Artist and Album.
Connect to Internet When Needed— If checked, iTunes will automatically connect to the Internet for CDDB access and other data.
Use iTunes for Internet Music Playback— Click Set to register iTunes with the system for all Internet streaming audio playback.
CD Insert— Choose how iTunes reacts when a CD is inserted. Your options include Begin Playing, Show Songs, Import Songs, and Import Songs and Eject.
Battery Saver— If checked, and you are using a PowerBook or iBook, iTunes will use 20% of the available memory to cache songs—thus allowing your hard drive to spin down and conserve power.

The Importing panel configures how CD tracks are imported into the song library. Choose between different bit rates to create CD quality or highly compact MP3 files. Figure 7.59 displays the Importing panel.

Figure 7.59 Choose the import encoder and sound quality.

There are three available import engines that can be used when a CD is inserted: WAV, AIFF, and MP3.

The WAV format is native to the Windows platform, and will result in extremely large file sizes. Similarly, AIFF files are the Mac OS X default audio format. Like the WAV, an AIFF encoding of a typical CD track will be huge: 50–60MB.

The best option for building your song library is the MP3 format. MP3s are lightweight, cross platform, and the whole purpose for iTunes' existence!

After setting an import method, use the Configuration pop-up menu to choose a recording rate. The higher the bit rate, the higher quality the recording will be. Audiophiles can create their own custom configuration with even higher bit rates by choosing Custom from the pop-up menu.

To listen to songs as they are imported, make sure that Play Songs While Importing is selected.

Advanced options set the location of the iTunes music library and the parameters used when burning CDs. The Advanced panel is shown in Figure 7.60.

Figure 7.60 Advanced preferences control the location of the music library and CD burning preferences.

The Music Folder Location is where iTunes looks for your MP3 files. By default, the music folder is set to ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Music. You can adjust this to a more global location, such as /Library/iTunes/iTunes Music, so that files are shared among all users on the machine.

The options for controlling CD burning are the Burn Speed and Gap settings. The Burn Speed option controls the speed with which your CD burning will store songs. Occasionally, using the highest speed results in audible pops during playback. If this occurs, lower the burn speed and try again. To increase the amount of time between audio tracks on your CDs, adjust the Gap Between Tracks setting appropriately.

The final setting, Streaming Buffer Size, sets the size of the memory buffer for streaming music stations. If your playback is prone to stuttering, choose a larger buffer size.

Click OK to set and activate your preferences.

Menus

I've used iTunes for months without ever touching the menus. If you're interested in keyboard commands or a few obscure options, be sure to read through these listings.

File

Use the options within the File menu to create playlists, add songs, and retrieve information about selected audio tracks.

New Playlist (Command+N)— Create a new playlist.
New Playlist from Selection (Shift+Command+N)— Create a new playlist using the currently selected audio tracks.
Add to Library— Choose an MP3 folder or volume that contains MP3s. They will be cataloged and added to the Library source.
Close (Command+W)— Close the frontmost window.
Get Info (Command+I)— Get information and set ID3 tags for the selected item.
Show Song File (Command+R)— Reveal a track's file location within the Finder.
Shop for iTunes Products— Launch a Web browser to browse the Apple store for audio-related products.

Edit

The Edit menu provides the standard selection of options, along with the ability to Select none—effectively deselecting all tracks in the playlist. You can also use the Show current song option to jump the playlist to the song being played, and the View options to control what fields are seen in the listing.

Controls

The Controls menu does what its name suggests: controls playback of tracks. There are keyboard shortcuts for everything you could want to do, making iTunes an effective music entertainment system.

Play/Stop (space)— Play or stop playing the current song.
Next Song (Command+Right arrow)— Move to the next song.
Previous Song (Command+Left arrow)— Move to the previous song.
Shuffle— Shuffle the play order for the selected source,
Repeat Off— Do not repeat the playlist.
Repeat One— Repeat playing through the source songs once.
Volume Up (Command+Up arrow)— Turn up the volume.
Volume Down (Command+Down arrow)— Turn down the volume.
Mute/Un-Mute (Option+Commamd+Down arrow)— Disable iTunes' sound output temporarily.
Repeat All— Repeat playing the source songs.
Eject CD (Command+E)— Eject the currently inserted CD.

Visuals

The Visuals menu can be used to control the Visualizer, as well as choose from additional Visualizer plug-ins, if installed.

Turn Visual On/Off (Command+T)— Toggle the visuals on and off.
Small— Use small visuals (good for slow computers).
Medium— Use medium-sized visuals.
Large— Use the entire window (or screen) for displaying visuals.
Full Screen (Command+F)— Clear the screen and display only the Visualizer onscreen.

Advanced

The Advanced menu has several interesting features, including the capability to export text listings of your song libraries and submit information back to the CDDB. If you find a CD that isn't automatically recognized by the CDDB system, this is a great way to help CDDB find your music.

Open Stream (Command+U)— Open an MP3 stream directly by entering its URL.
Convert to MP3— Select a sound file (including CD tracks) to convert to MP3 format.
Export Song List— Save a text list of the current source. The output file includes all fields visible in the song listing.
Get CD Track Names— Force iTunes to retrieve the CD track data from the CDDB.
Submit CD Track Names— Submit edited track names back to the CDDB for future inclusion in the online music database.
Convert ID3 Tags— Convert ID3 tags to version 1.0 through version 2.3. This is necessary for some older MP3 players to recognize the tags.

iTunes is a fantastic tool for anyone interested in any type of digital audio. It provides the first glimpse at Steve Jobs' "digital hub" future, in which a single computer serves as the control point for many other devices. If you have an MP3 player and a CD burner, iTunes is your one-stop shop for everything audio.

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