Windows To OS X - The Conversion Part III
So now comes the fun part, right? Gotta figure out how to do all the things that I’ve got to do on a Mac that I do in Windows. Well, the snag is, I’m still in preparations mode, as my Mac has yet to arrive. I’ve been researching lots of things to help me in my trasition, and this time, I’ll be writing about moving my iTunes library from Windows XP to OS X.
So here’s the situation. I have a 55-GB music library. I’ve ripped all of my 900 some odd CD’s, and have them as MP3s on my computer for the last 5 years. I have an iPod which I carry around my whole CD collection around on. I don’t currently use it for pictures, videos, contacts, or calanders, but that will change as I move over to OS X. The MP3s currently reside on my computer, ‘The-Doctor’.
Why not just copy over the files to the Mac, and then use iTunes to discover the files I’ve copied over? Well, I spent about 2.5 years rating all my music while traveling to customer sites. I did this so that I could always have ‘my favorite’ songs with me on my 20-GB iPod (which FINALLY died and was replace with an 80-GB model after 3 years of abuse), and so that I could figure out what I like to listen to a little more. So now that I’ve got 7000 songs rated, and some history about play counts and last play dates, I’d like to keep that information (not only that, but I pride myself on having kept all my metadata correct, and have tested this to the nth degree). If I just copied the files over to the Mac, and imported those songs, I would lose the ratings and play dates and times that I’ve been keeping track of.
So in planning my iTunes migration, I backed up the files that make up my iTunes directory on my Windows machine. Not the MP3’s, as those are already backed up, but the ‘iTunes Library.itl’ and ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ files (these files make up the iTunes ‘database’. I moved my ‘iTunes Music’ folder to a different directory so that I could do some importing/exporting with the software and not ‘damage’ my MP3 files and their metadata. After the backup of those core files, which contain all the important data about my MP3 library, I’m ready to explore my options for moving around my MP3 Library. I deleted the files left in my iTunes Music folder, and that gives me a clean iTunes database
So I went into my iTunes preference (found under the Edit pull-down menu in Windows) and looked for some settings to tweak to see if there was anything to help me migrate my data. I found something in the ‘Advanced’ tab’s ‘General’ tab. I do NOT have the ‘Keep iTunes’ Music Folder Organized’ check box ticked. ‘I’ want to keep my folders organized (long story, but being anal retentive, I like to have all my Opeth albums under Opeth, not have some songs under Opeth, and some under Opeth & guest Star…). More importantly and relevant to the discussion, is the 2nd checkbox, ‘Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library’. I put a tick in this checkbox to enable the feature and try it out with a SMALL subset of my data. I import the band 311, and some of my compilations (namely Star Wars Soundtrack, Raiders of the Lost Ark Soundtrack, and Judgement Night Soundtracks) because these compilations have ‘Various Artists’, and mulitple artists in their metadata. I was very happy with the results…it kept all the 311 albums under the 311 band folder…it kept all the soundtracks under the ‘Compilations’ folder and did NOT seperate or break them down by ‘artist’ which could have been a mess. the Judgement Night soundtrack has 11 songs, and they are all co-operative efforts between rap and metal bands, so the ‘artist’ metatag has 2 entries, like Biohazard & Onyx. The problem I had was that I lost ALL of my ratings, and other information that I use in iTunes (but all the metadata was right at least). Time to try another way. I clean out my iTunes directory structure, and try again.
So…under the iTunes ‘Advanced’ pull down menu, I found something interesting…’Consolidate Library’. This is actually what solved my problem…I think…
So before adding music to the fresh and clean library, I cleared the ‘Advanced’ tab’s ‘General’ tab, ‘Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library’ setting. I added the same subset of music. I then went to teh ‘Advanced’ pull down menu, and did a ‘Consolidate Libray’ action. It stated…
‘Consolidating your library will copy all of your music into the iTunes Music folder. This cannot be undone.’
Not being concerned at this point about losing data, I clicked the ‘consolidate’ button.
The result was perfect. It maintained the directory structure I spent so much time creating…with NO issues! This leaves me with some ideas on how to migrate my MP3 data, the metadata, as well as the iTunes database with all its information. I’ve got the plan, so now, to see if it will actually perform in the way I expect it to.
The plan is to do the following…I plan to change the default ‘iTunes Music Folder Location’ to point out to my network share out on ‘Tardis’, do a ‘Consolidate Library’ action, and let all my music copy out to the network share. I’m expecting that when I move the iTunes files (the itl and xml files) over to the Mac after the ‘Consolidation’ to the network drive, that the files and their metadata will be absolutely fine.
Results will be posted…
I plan to keep this up on MY MySpace page as a blog as well, so for those of you interested, click the link above, and check out my page.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment