[phheld]

Folks, I am a PC guy and have my server based on a nice new Vista platform.

In short, I'm considering a swap to get into the world of the Mac. My iTunes libary in Vista is entirely in Apple Lossless.

Simple question: can I load my library onto an external drive, plug it into say a new Mac Mini, and be off to the races? Are the music files completely compatible in this library or am I missing some fundamental issue of conversion to an Apple "file format" that is necessary.

I'm sure this is an obvious question, but I'm completely Mac ingnorant from this perspective. Thanks for your help - Paul.

 

[torjeh]

This is actually a very good question. You will not have any problems moving the Apple Lossless files from Vista to Mac OS or the other way around.

However, I think the library files containing play count and all that stuff are different between the platforms.

So as far as I know, importing the songs into a new Mac-based library will not be a problem. If you want to keep the meta-data (play-count etc) something has to be done. I don't know what or how much.

Hope someone else might give a more fullfilling answer

 

[Lord Chaos]

Importing the files is no problem. I do this routinely, as the CD reader in my PC is better than the one in my Apple laptop. Most of the time the laptop does well, but some discs it won't read. I use the PC for those, then copy them across with a USB flash drive.

Using an offboard hard disk is also no problem, but dealing with the move isn't very obvious. When you run Itunes with your offboard drive connected, go to Preferences>Advanced>Ripping. This is the window where you specify the file type for ripping, so it should be familiar. Set it to use your offboard drive. Itunes on your Mac Mini will read the disk and find the files.

I'm not sure exactly how you'd handle the library file itself, as I've never shared a library between two computers. Make a backup of it before experimenting.

If you started out with "Keep itunes library organized" then stay that way. If you didn't, then you face a choice. If you want to organize your library manually, then NEVER tell Itunes to organize it or you'll have a mess.

 

[phheld]

LC, am I reading you right: you literally copy the library (folders containing my music) to a new USB hard drive, plug that drive into a Mac Mini (or other Mac) and go? Will the Apple recognize any old USB drive or does it have to be particular to Apple format or formatted in some special way to be recognized?

The iTunes part of this makes sense (just sic it onto the new library on the external drive, and it will rebuild it I presume for the Mac)

thanks

 

[Damian]

Hello, I think it is important it's mentioned; Mac OS X isn't fully compatible with other file systems. If the drive isn't formatted as the correct file system, you may have problems doing what you want to do. Apple uses HFS+, which Windows can't access natively (well not without buying software to do it), and Windows uses either FAT or NTFS.

Mac OS X fully supports reading and writing to/from the old Windows FAT32 format, but that file system format has a problem which is that it doesn't support files bigger than 2GB (although for music you wouldn't have anything as large as this surely... So I guess just if you wanted to transfer bigger files).

There are drivers to allow full read/write support to NTFS drives (the file system that Vista uses), but I and many other users have found it a complete waste of time in Leopard (insanely insanely slow and frustrating, to the point of being literally unusable). Although Leopard supports reading NTFS drives by itself without needing drivers, it doesn't support writing to the drive.

A solution to this, if you want to be able to copy more than 2GB (FAT32 limit), access the drive both ways (can't access HFS+ in Windows), and have acceptable read/write speeds (limitation of NTFS), is actually something you wouldn't expect: Using a driver neither OS supports natively... Now let me explain before you think I'm stupid

Linux has a file system called ext2; Now neither Windows or Mac OS X can access this file system by default; But there are very good drivers which once installed allow Mac OS X and Windows to access a ext2 formatted drive as if it was any other drive in it's native format (HFS+ for OSX, NTFS for Vista). It doesn't suffer from the 2GB file limit of FAT32 or the stability and speed issues NTFS has in OSX.

So the best option is to format the drive as ext2 for compatibility between Windows ad OSX.

Hope that information helps you from headaches!

 

[krmathis]

The files are 100% compatible.
But you will most probably need to re-build the iTunes Library. As the old one point to wrong locations

 

[Currawong]

iTunes can share the music over a network, which is probably a more sane option. I'm not sure how it's transmitted and if it's compressed when you do so though.

 

[phheld]

Thanks all...great info...Paul

 

[Bones13]

I recently did this with 150 gigs of ALAC files. I had the music from my vista machine which played them via Foobar.

Setup your iTunes on your Mac, leave most the options alone if you are putting the music on your main OSX drive. Not a bad time to select ALAC as your ripping encoding choice. I chose to have iTunes both copy imported music to the iTunes directory, and to have it keep it organized for me.

Then its just a matter of selecting the entire music directory on your USB hard drive and dragging it into the iTunes window. iTunes does all the rest. If you have a lot of music, it will take awhile. It will then take another while to organize it, and download the album art.

 

[phheld]

Bones, I have done a TON of customizing on this libary, with cover art that wasn't easily found, genres I named for myself and applied, etc. Will all of this be lost when I move to the Mac?

thanks Paul

 

[majid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by phheld /img/forum/go_quote.gif Bones, I have done a TON of customizing on this libary, with cover art that wasn't easily found, genres I named for myself and applied, etc. Will all of this be lost when I move to the Mac?

No, that information is in the audio file itself, and is thus preserved when yu transfer them from PC to Mac (or for that matter from PC to PC or Mac to Mac), assuming you use a sane format that supports metadata like Apple Lossless, MP3 or AAC (WAV and AIFF do not).

Only relatively minor metadata like the play count, or the date the file was imported, are stored in the iTunes database and thus lost if only the files are transferred.

You can test this very easily. Put a few tracks onto a flash drive, go to your local Apple store, plug the USB drive into one of the Macs, and double-click on the files so they are imported into iTunes.