[Jason]

Hi there,

I'm curious as to how iTunes deals with tags. For instance, if I have an album that weighs in at 100mb and then some hours later I select all the files for that album. Then change just one ID Tag (say for instance, the disc number or capitalize some words in the album title), when iTunes syncs again with my iPod it seems to use another 100mb. Is this correct? Surely the changes made would be very small. It seems to effectively rewrite the whole thing including the music files.

Does iTunes add another set of music files every time I make even the smallest change?

Regards

[curiousuburb]

Which version of iTunes?

[Jason]

iTunes 9

[curiousuburb]

Not sure about iTunes 9, but altering the album title may cause it to sort differently (if you have the 'organize my music library' option ticked in prefs).

It is also possible that it generates a new checksum with multiple metadata edits which then prompts iTunes to think it's a new file... ergo needs to be synced.

[Jason]

What I mean to say is that even the tiniest change to any of the Metadata Tags after the files have been imported means that the next time it syncs with an iPod it effectively copies all the files again. Surely it should only be making changes to the XML file and not the music files.
This means that if I change the ID Tags on say 5GB of music files, the next time it syncs it adds 5GB of data to the iPod without actually adding any new music.

Hope this makes sense.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Jason Surely it should only be making changes to the XML file and not the music files.

ID3 data is part of the MP3/AAC file itself. If you change any tag on any file, the whole file needs to be copied across.

[Jason]

I'm fine with that but I was under the assumption that any files that were modified and then copied across would simply overwrite the existing ones.
Is that not the case with iTunes?

Regards