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if you're going to muck around with your iTunes files via Applescript, this is a good place to start to get the lay of the land. Covers simple things like accessing a playlist to more complicated album art interactions.
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Online reference for iTunes scripting. You can also click in Applescript Editor on Window -> Library and select iTunes. (took me a while to figure that out!)
links for 2010-03-07
Fixing The Windows Media Player vs. iTunes Album Art Mess
Years ago, I built the majority of my digital music library under Microsoft’s Windows Media Player (WMP). Since then, I’ve switched to Mac and iTunes as my digital media of choice.
Generally, importing your MP3 music folders created by Windows Media Player into iTunes on the Mac works just great. Pretty much all the track data stays intact… except every track is missing it’s album art! That wasn’t a big deal for a while, but now that all my various devices (iPod, iPhone, Squeezebox) display that art while playing it’s become a more glaring issue.
So I decided to try to fix it.
I Guess I Could Update Them All Manually?
Obviously, I could manually go into each folder, find those files in iTunes and add the folder.jpg file as the album art. But I’ve got 100+ folders that I’d have to do it on. Not an optimal plan.
There’s Got To Be a Better Way….
Unfortunately, after much Googling, I was unable to find a good utility or script that did something like this. I was actually surprised how little code there seems to be out there for shoving local image files into an iTunes track. There were a couple scripts that download from the web and one that saves from iTunes to your hard drive. But nothing really that close to what I needed.
I’ve got to give a shout out to Doug Adam and his site, Doug’s Applescript for iTunes. It’s a heck of a resource for music management scripts.
So armed with the courage ignorance brings, I decided to write an iTunes utility in Applescript that looks for a folder.jpg file in the track’s location and, if needed, puts that art into the track in iTunes.
If It Was That Easy, Someone Would Have Done It.
I figured it’d be a quick hour or two to crank out. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t. iTunes doesn’t just let you take a jpg and push it into the MP3 track. I ended up having to convert the folder.jpg to a PICT and then load the PICT file data directly into the album artwork.
I did get it all to work in the end.
Well since I’d come this far, I figured I should go the extra mile and make it “real.” I cleaned up the code, tested it for bugs as best I could, and added a couple features that I thought others would like. I’ve never released software personally before; hopefully I put it all together correctly.
Download It Now
Hopefully there are other folks stuck in a similar boat as I was and could use this utility. I’m releasing it here for other folks who might find it a time saver:
Download iTunes_Set_Track_Location_FolderJPG_as_Album_Art.zip (37 kb)
You can run this either with selected tracks in iTunes or you can choose a playlist of tracks to update. It checks whether you want to just add missing art or override the track’s current album art. It tries to log what happened on every track it tried to update in case you hit a problem.
This software is provided as-is, with no warranty or support. I generally tried to make sure the code erred on the side of no changes to your tracks except on success, but I can’t guarantee that.
If you do run into an issue, let me know via @bryanselner on Twitter. I don’t promise to get time to fix it, but I’d like to know and will certainly try.
One parting thought… If this script saves you tons of time and energy or gets you jump-started on your own project, won’t you leave me a tip for the help?
links for 2010-02-24
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Sync your Google Apps or Gmail contacts into Thunderbird.
links for 2010-02-08
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Config settings for getting a Google Enterprise email account up and running in Thunderbird 3
links for 2010-01-18
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dupeGuru Music Edition (ME for short) is a tool to find duplicate songs in your music collection. It can scan filenames, tags or contents. dupeGuru ME is a big brother of dupeGuru. It does everything dupeGuru does, but it has more information columns (such as bitrate, duration, tags, etc..) and more scan types (filename with fields, tags and audio content). dupeGuru ME runs on Windows and Mac OS X.
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iDeskCal embeds your calendar on your desktop, above your wallpaper but below your desktop items. With iDeskCal you can quickly and effortlessly know exactly what is on your calendar for the current day, and beyond.
links for 2010-01-17
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If you have separate contact entries for the same person, there are two ways you can merge them: one at a time, or all your duplicates at once.
links for 2010-01-10
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Back to My Mac is a Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard feature that makes it easy to automatically connect to your other computers over the Internet. It requires the use of either an AirPort base station with NAT-PMP (NAT Port Mapping Protocol) enabled, or a third-party Internet router with UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) technology.
For more information about setting up Back to My Mac, see this article.
Note: For best compatibility with Back to My Mac you should:
* Update to Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later. You can use Software Update to download and install available updates.
* If you use a third-party router, install the latest firmware available for your third-party router (check the manufacturer's website for instructions). -
Using and troubleshooting Back to My Mac in Mac OS X 10.5
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Back to My Mac is a feature in Mac OS X v10.5 and later that makes it easy to automatically connect to your other computers over the Internet. Once you've signed into MobileMe on your computer and enabled Back to My Mac, you may securely reach other computers via the Internet. The other computer(s) also must be signed into the same MobileMe account, be using Mac OS X v10.5 or later, and have Back to My Mac enabled on them.
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Quickly share any web page with your friends, even when you're not on Facebook.
links for 2010-01-02
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Workaround for ReadyNAS port conflict when Twonky and SqueezeCenter are both installed.
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Instructions on how to clean install the SqueezeCenter software
links for 2009-12-14
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CHDK is a firmware enhancement that operates on a number of Canon Cameras. CHDK gets loaded into your camera's memory upon bootup (either manually or automatically). It provides additional functionality beyond that currently provided by the native camera firmware.
links for 2009-12-07
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Here's the workflow that I use
1) ASK FINDER FOR ITEMS
Start at /Volumes
Type: Files and Folders (Allow multiple selection)2) RUN SHELL SCRIPT
shell: /usr/bin/perl
pass input as argumentsfor $f (@ARGV) { $r = quotemeta $f; $c = `basename $r`; print `lsof +fg | grep -v " EVO " | grep "$r"`};
3) ASK FOR TEXT
text: "The Culprits"
default text: "Nothing Found"
require an answerWhen you run this, it opens /volumes and lets you pick the disk you cannot eject. then it tells you which apps are locking it.
