[Mac+]

Hi all,

The Head of Campus here had the local computer boys install Tiger onto the G5. However, they did not back anything up and he lost in excess of 8000 songs from iTunes. Admittedly, he didn't back anything up before hand either.

Anyway, I suggested Senuti to get them back from his iPod to the Mac. It took ages but it finally populated iTunes.

However, the songs were not locatable for some reason. Well, they were on his HD (in his iTunes Music folder), but iTunes gave the old grey exclamation point and you were prompted to locate the actual file manually. OK, for one song - but for 8000+ songs ... no thanks. Obviously the directory file had not been updated.

He fiddled around with it for a while and discovered that he had to "Add to Library".

Now, I did not use Senuti so my understanding may be flawed here, but why would somebody want to reimport songs into iTunes and not have them be added to the library at the same time? Shouldn't the reimporting of your songs from your iPod automatically update the library file?

Any comments?
TIA.


Also, what is the difference between the "iTunes Library" file (with the iTunes icon) and the iTunes Music Library.xml file (text edit icon)?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Mac+ Also, what is the difference between the "iTunes Library" file (with the iTunes icon) and the iTunes Music Library.xml file (text edit icon)?

The one is a binary representation of the library, whereas the other is an XML export for other applications. Things like iPhoto (for slideshows) or Pages use the XML file in their media browser, whereas iTunes only uses the binary file. Each time the binary file changes, iTunes also exports these changes into the XML file, but, and this is very important, changes in the XML file are not, in turn, imported to the binary file. So you can't edit the XML file and thereby achieve a change of the actual library. It only goes one way.

[Mac+]

Nice one chucker - thanks.

Any idea as to the thinking behind importing the songs, but not having them be added to the Library?

[BlueRabbit]

I'm pretty sure that adding the songs to the library is somewhere in the Senuti preferences. It's weird that the default is to not add to library, though. Maybe they're worried about duplicate songs or something?