iTunes help for ergotia?

[ciphergoth]

A slightly geeky questions on behalf of ergotia. She's just installed iTunes so she can use the iPod she got for Xmas, but it seems to have a problem fetching track title information from the Gracenote database - the message flashes up that it's accessing Gracenote, but when the dialog goes away, it still shows "track 01, track 02" as before. We're running ZoneAlarm and we've disabled Windows Firewall, but ZoneAlarm isn't blocking iTunes. Any ideas what we can try? Running XP SP2. Thanks!

Comments

[lovingboth]

Presuming google isn't revealing what the problem is, I'd be tempted to stick another machine inbetween her PC and the internet, set up as a logging proxy, and see who's saying what to whom and with what result.

Alternatively, not having iTunes, can it be told to use freedb instead?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, it can't be thus configured.

Time to fire up Ethereal on the router then, I guess!

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

No idea. I'm using iTunes atm to import my CD collection, and apart from the occasional bootleg or really really obscure cd, it's working fine. Has the CD used gracenote ok on another piece of software or another program? You can manually search for a CD here: http://www.gracenote.com/music/ if it's a CD-R it also doesn't always work i've found...

Odd that.

I've not had an issue with itunes and gracenote running through either my home connection, the work connection or the work proxy.

[grumpy-sysadmin.livejournal.com]

Gracenote (and freedb) will happily "almost match" CD-Rs, based on the track lengths, it's just that the "unique" identifier number in the header on the CD won't match.

Does iTunes really not offer the "fuzzy match, is this what you mean?" reponse that Gracenote definitely gives? Lame, if so.

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

Yes it does, but even so, I still have some CD-Rs of official releases that don't get their titles picked up.

[figg.livejournal.com]

Gracenote doesn't have a complete catalogue. I recall having error dialogs when iTunes tried to check CDDB and couldn't access the internet.

MusicBrainz is an alternative music tagger. It uses acoustic fingerprints to get the right information. So you can tag existing mp3s automatically.

Download for windows

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

But does it work seamlessly with iTunes?

[some-fox.livejournal.com]

No idea I'm afraid, but I just got an iPod too - will I be able to put yours and Js music on it easily?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

iPods have many features designed to make it harder for people to share music. Jess fortunately has an iRiver which it's much easier to do these things with. For example, if Jess visits you, you can use your computer to copy music from her iRiver onto your iPod. But if Lisa visits, the two of you will not be able to share the music you are carrying.

Make sure you configure iTunes to encode CDs as MP3s rather than any other file format, otherwise sharing music will be practically impossible.

[devilgate.livejournal.com]

iRivers rock, I'd just like to say.

[topbit.livejournal.com]

I bought a 1gb flash iRiver a couple of weeks ago. The battery life on a Duracell is nothing short of stupendous, though I've had a little less luck with recording voices in anything other than a crowded environment.

[aegidian]

There are plenty of freeware and shareware utilities to get music files off an iPod. There are the means for stripping DRM from m4p files too.

I imagine biggest drawback is the lack of any ogg vorbis playback on the iPod (you can plug iTunes to do it, but the iPod's not such an system to modify - using linux on the iPod will do it though and you can dual-boot it).

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

cool - post us some links then!

[aegidian]

And ogg vorbis for iTunes (quicktime plug in)

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=41359

De-snarked links

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

iPod file utilities:-

http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?mode=basic&action=search&str=ipod&plt%5B%5D=windows&x=15&y=8

De-DRM your iTMS files:-

http://hymn-project.org/

Linux on iPod:-

http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/index.shtml

Re: De-snarked links

[aegidian]

Whether comment deletion is more or less rude than suggesting someone use Google is perhaps a matter for discussion elsewhere, but I feel I'm a gruntle or two fewer than I was.

Not an answer but a few more questions...

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Does it do this for all CDs?

What happens when you try to access CDDB manually? (Select the CD in the Source list, then choose Advanced > Get CD Track Names.)

What happens when you enter the data for a CD manually - does it remember?

Is iTunes cleared for both incoming and outgoing traffic in ZoneAlarm?

Re: Not an answer but a few more questions...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

> Does it do this for all CDs?

It once worked, for the first CD I installed, and has never worked since.

> What happens when you try to access CDDB manually? (Select the CD in the Source list, then choose Advanced > Get CD Track Names.)

I'll try when I get home - I couldn't figure out how to manually trigger it...

> What happens when you enter the data for a CD manually - does it remember?

Yes.

> Is iTunes cleared for both incoming and outgoing traffic in ZoneAlarm?

Yes.

[aegidian]

From your first answer to purplerabbits above—

Have you checked the permissions on wherever iTunes is storing the music library? And on the files?

If the priv's are right, you might want to look at the version of ID3 tags used by the files and convert them to v2.4 or whatever's most current (Advanced menu - Convert ID3 tags). This has cleared up problems for me in the past where some tags weren't being written succesfully.