How to organize tracks the way I want them?

So this concept is very simple but might be impossible to do in iTunes. My scenario is that I am a mobile DJ, so for years I have been organizing my audio tracks on my computer following this file naming format: "Artist - Track Name.mp3", which makes my songs very easy to sort through. So, I bought my iPod classic and imported all of my tracks into iTunes, thinking that I would be able to follow this same format, but I quickly noticed that while there are many "column" options to sort the library by (title, genre, etc.), there seems to be no option to allow for my desired format. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that iTunes loads in tracks according to ID3 tag info (which is often incorrect, missing info, and so on). Simply put, I cannot figure out how to get the library in Itunes to follow my "Artist - Track Name" system, which makes sorting through nearly 10,000 songs very hard and confusing, especially when I use the iPod in conjunction with my car's Alpine head unit. So, my question is, can I get the tracks to appear how they are named on my computer using the "Artist - Track Name" format, or am I being left to edit the ID3 tag info for each song (which would royally suck for 10,000 songs!). Help.

Katrina:
Too late on your warning unfortunately! I did have that option checked off, so iTunes screwed up about half of my files on my external HD before I stopped the process it was doing once I figured out what was going on. I've had to spend hours getting everything back to the way it was. So frustrated.
ed2345:
Thanks for the information. It's disappointing because I like my iPod, but in my opinion iTunes as a bundled program is complex and lacks basic things when it comes to library organization. As a DJ who requires specific control over all of my music, the iTunes system is horrendous.

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How to organize songs the way I want!!

Ok, bear with me:
I hate the way songs are organized in Itunes. I wanted to be able to go in Songs and have everything alphabetized by artist and then song like this:
John Lennon - Imagine.
Or by titles I create like: 80's - Europe - Final Countdown.
Now, if I ever have tag info, Itunes organizes by song name only in the song list. So basically, my solution was to delete ALL tag info so that songs show up as they do on my computer. This works well for navigating to songs in the song list but then I can't have anything organized by album or artist.
My problem is this: I'd like to be able to go into Albums and/or Artists and have bands organized there as well in case I just want listen from those (potential) lists, as well as having files organized by artist-song name in Songs. In a perfect world, I'd be able to add full albums into Albums and either not have them listed at all under songs (probably not possible) or have them list the way I want in Songs: artist dash song.
Is there any way to make this happen? Thanks for any tips.

Hey, try the following video link on playlists, may be of some use.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/tutorials/#playlists

How to arrange songs on ipod shuffle the way I want them to be played

I just got an Ipod shuffle in India.....2 GB....I want the songs to be played in a particular order only the way I can do on MP3 players....How do I arrange songs the way I want them to be played serially?

If you have iOS 5 on the iPad then you can create new albums directly on the iPad - you should get an Edit button at the top of the Albums screen in the Photos app. That will allow you create and 'copy' photos into those new albums (you can't copy photos into synced albums), but you can't delete the original photo - if you do delete it then all copies of it that you've put in other albums will also be deleted. I don't think that the total number of photos increases on the iPad when you copy photos into new albums, so I think that you effectively just creating pointers to them in those new albums, so if you delete the original photos on the iPad then all pointers to it will also be deleted.

How do I sort photos the way I want them to appear within an Event? Sort Manually is always grayed out. SAR

Keep trying but sort manually stays grayed out. All I want to do is sort photos within one event the way I want them to appear.

It's like iTunes:
You can view an music album on iTunes and there are all the tracks. The hit single, the annoying filler that they stuck on, all there.
Or you can create a Playlist of just the singles, or tracks from various albums that work together well, or just your favourite tracks from different artists and so on.
In iPhoto: the Event has all the photos taken at that time. So, all 812 photos you took at the Wedding. All there.
An Album allows you to just use the 50 best ones, and possibly group them with 12 from the Rehearsal and five others from the day after. Just the best shots. Or bunch all the photos of the groom from birth to today, or all the photos of the bride and her dog. Or whatever. Really, the limit is your imagination.
Like Playlists in iTunes, images in an iPhoto album are simply referenced from the Library. So a photo can be in any number of albums and use no extra disk space.
Then, once you couple your imagination with metadata...
I use Events simply as big buckets of Photos: Spring 08, July - Nov 06 are typical Events in my Library. I use keywords and Smart Albums extensively. I title the pics broadly.
I keyword on a
Who
What
Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.
Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my 50k library in a couple of seconds.
So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.
File -> New Smart Album
set it to 'All"
title contains Seattle
keyword is mountain
keyword is snow
rating is 5 stars
Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?
New Smart Album
Keyword is John
Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending
Want only the best pics?
add Rating is greater than 4 stars
The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.
In the end, organisation is about finding the pics. The point is to make locating that pic or batch of pics findable fast. This system works for me.

Will iOS 4 for iPad let you organize pictures the way you want?

Hi,
does anybody know whether the iOS 4 iPAD edition specs say anything about being able to organize pictures the way you want in the iPad?
It currently sorts them with no options whatsoever either by date or by places.
I want to be able to create my slideshows the way I want, not Apple.
For now, I have to:
1- rename each file in the order I want, say, from 01 to 80
2- remove the entire EXIF info from each picture (so it doesn't have time stamps)
3- use a "touch" utility to change all the file dates to (current date+ 1second X picture number)
It's a bit hard and not accessible to the alpha user.
It would be nice to have a "sequential" and a "alphabetic" order in the slideshow options, as well as ascending and descending parameters.
Any clue?

Hi,
I already updated it this morning and moved the suffix as a prefix in order to get the iPad pictures grouped together instead of every other file. It's easier to select all iPad_pic01, iPad_pic02... files as they are together, rather than pic01_ipad, pic02_ipad,etc
1. I suggest that you should post your program description and
link as a brand new topic so that everyone with the same
annoying problem can find it. I would call it something like
"Photo Sort Problem SOLVED".
I'll do that in a very short time, once I have enough feedback about the stability of the utility.
2. The link you posted needs to have a .html at the end.
Yeap. I'll correct the ipad directory to be redirected on the ipad.html file.
3. Would it be possible for your program to handle some other image
formats with EXIF tags, especially Png's?
I'll check this. If my EXIF class handles them (it should also handle TIFF since Exif derives from TIFF), I will implement this a.s.a.p.
4. Would it be possible to directly change the subject files instead
of creating the _iPad copies? Perhaps as a user option?
Yes, I'm working now to add this as an option:
1) overwrite the original picture without backup copies (keeping the same name)
2) prefix the file name with a string of your choice
3) suffix the file name with a string of your choice
Thanks for your input.

HT1296 When I sync my ipad I get a message that 25% or more of my contacts will be changed. Contacts on the ipad on the way I want them to stay. What do I do?

When I sync my ipad I get a message that 25% or more of my contacts will be changed. Contacts on the ipad on the way I want them to stay. What do I do?

What is the exact error. You need to be more specific

Can I import bookmarks/favorites WITHOUT having them reorganized the way FF wants them?

This issue seems common to every browser, but it's maddening to me and has prevented me from changing browsers before, but I'm really tired of IE.
I have a lot of folders with bookmarks, and within those folders are other folders with bookmarks. The folders are in the order I want them in, as are their contents. After importing, everything has been alphabetized, and the whole structure has become worthless to me. Dragging and dropping a couple of hundred items individually is not what I want to do. Is there a way to import things exactly as they are? Would this be a logical option to have for a feature like this?

You can export the favorites in IE to an HTML file and import this file in the Firefox Bookmarks Manager.
If you do not have the menu bar in IE then right-click the toolbar at the top to enable the Menu Bar.
*Export the favorites in IE to an HTML file (bookmarks.html):<br>File > Import and Export
*Import the HTML file in Firefox:<br>Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Import Bookmarks from HTML
See "Import from another browser" and "Import from file":
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How do I maintain the file structure in iphoto 6 the way i want them?

For the past few years I have been scanning forty years worth of slides on my windows based PC. I have approximately 9500 scan as this point. Each scan is given a number such as "009500" followed by the names of persons or places shown on the picture. They are generally in chronological order. Obviously the creation of the scan has nothing to do with the date of the actual shooting of the picture. They are in the order that I want them in.
I can import them either from an external hard drive or from cds containing a few hundred scans each.
Is there anyway that I can maintain that kind of file structure in iphoto 6?
Frankly, I am somewhat disappointed by all of this. My kids told me how easy the mac was for photos and I now find that it may well complicate my computer life even more.
Mad Judge

MJ,
Once your files are imported into the library you can view them in many ways. When you import a file, iPhoto uses the filename as the photo title. I think you can achieve what you want by using View > Sort Photos > by Title. This will display all of your scans in the alpha-numeric order of their titles. You could then move the size slider toward the left (to reduce the thumbnail size) and quickly group your photos into Film Rolls. Click on the first photo, shift-click on the last photo, and all photos in between will become selected. Then use File > Create Film Roll to group these photos together into manageable chunks. Each time you create (or select) a film roll you can give it a descriptive title and edit the roll date. When you set the View to Film Rolls, each roll is listed in chronological order by the date of the roll - not the date of the photos within the roll. This is handy, since you can easily set the date for each roll, and it's a much less daunting task than redating your entire library. Photos within one roll will display in chronological order based on the date of the photos. I realize that with your scans these will not be accurate. So you could either change the date in iPhoto (but you said this would be a huge task) or don't worry about it. [You could use Photos > Batch Change to quickly redate the photos in a roll. Even if you don't take the time to set the exact dates, you can assign the group to a date or series of dates. By doing this you can use the calendar tool to filter your library by date. It is just one more way to make iPhoto a powerful organizer. Click on a year, month, or date in the calendar tool, and iPhoto filters your library to show the photos with those dates.] This is where your grouping into film rolls helps make your library organized - if the photos in a roll are from relatively the same time frame, then perhaps the internal order of the roll will be less important. And you can always switch your View back to Sort by Title when you need the photos to display in the exact order you have designated with your filenames. Just don't re-title the photos once they are in your library.
If you divided your library into Film Rolls, then you could create an Album for each roll (by simply dragging the roll to the Source Pane). The advantage there is that with regular Albums, you have the option to sort the photos manually by dragging them around. (View > Sort Photos > Manually) You can switch to another sort order, and iPhoto remembers your manual order when you return to it. You do have the option to reset your manual order if you wish.
iPhoto is very flexible, and with so many views, sorts, and filters you may well find a method that works for you. There is a shift in thinking from the way Windows software works, and if you are used to file browsers then you have to learn to play by the rules of using a database. If you can be patient and work through the learning curve, you may be rewarded. If I can clarify anything for you, please let me know.

How get links the way I want them on new pages?

For new pages, is there a way I can tell DW to make the links the color I want on all new pages? thanks.

Yes you can by learning how to style your links: I suggest try this link:
<http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_link.asp>
Make sure these new links are local to your pages. this is done by putting the styles in the header section (avoid using inline styles for reasons best kept secret to avoid arguments).
hth

Key bindings not working (the way I want them to)

Hey forum,
Annoying problem.
In the following program the key binding doesn't work. But if you add the line that is now commented out it does work. Why? and how do I make it work without that line?
import java.awt.event.InputEvent;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import java.awt.event.WindowEvent;
import java.awt.event.WindowListener;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JComponent;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.KeyStroke;
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private JPanel main = new JPanel();
public static void main(String[] args)
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public void windowIconified(final WindowEvent event)
{ /* nothing */ }
public void windowOpened(final WindowEvent event)
{ /* nothing */ }
public void windowClosed(final WindowEvent event)
{ /* nothing */ }
public void windowDeiconified(final WindowEvent event)
{ /* nothing */ }
public void windowActivated(final WindowEvent event)
{ /* nothing */ }
public void windowDeactivated(final WindowEvent event)
{ /* nothing */ }
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
class ActionNew extends AbstractAction
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public ActionNew(FrameMain main)
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}

I found the bug. In my main program I serialized the KeyStrokes to file using xstream (http://xstream.codehaus.org/). This seemed to work fine, the files were written and read without error, the deserialized objects all existed and had the right settings (printing the same output with toString()). But apparently there is still a problem. I replaced the xstream code with ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream and the bug disappeared.
Too bad I can't use this library now, I really liked the XML.

Smart Playlists aren't sorted the way I want them to be on the iPod touch.

Hello,
I have two Smart Playlists that automatically adds any songs that have four/five stars. In iTunes, it's sorted alphabetically (ascending) but when I check on my iPod, it seems to be random. It wasn't like that a month ago.
Anyone know what is going on with my iPod?
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Hello DudeOnFire,
Perhaps this Apple support document related to this issue can assist you.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3044
B-rock

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I need a recommendation for a picture organization app that will actually allow you to sort pictures the way you want and have them stay in that order.
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Hi Thom_D,
I have iPhoto and I have found that it works very well for me, organising photos etc. onto a pinboard type thing.
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Mark,
Many thanks for your very clear explanation of how this works. After posting I played around some more and I began to see a pattern which pointed to what you've written.
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why can't you use the keyboard the way it is printed?

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How to organize tracks the way I want them?

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