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Author Topic: Frustrated with Media Center and lack of proper Apple Lossless support...  (Read 3176 times)

Health Nut

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I am most frustrated with Lack of a proper pluggin for Apple Lossless.  I'm still converting all of my APE files to WMA Lossless and then having iTUNES import the WMA Lossless files and convert them to Apple Lossless.  Except lately when iTUNES imports the WMA files, it doesn't have the RATING tag info anymore.  I don't feel like retagging 2,200 songs....  I don't know why this is happening...
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Doof

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Out of curiosity... why are you doing this? What is it you want that only Apple Lossless can give you?
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Health Nut

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Look, I'm no fan of APPLE, but the iPOD is a nice piece of equipment.  I'm very found of the nano 4GB and the 60GB iPod.  I use the 60GB iPOD for lossless storage.  Unfortunately the iPOD only will recognize Apple Lossless.

(I'm not interested in debating lossless, etc... )

Why on earth can't we have Apple lossless as a plugin?  This is making my life very difficult, very.

 I tried somebody's workaround without success.
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LonWar

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Check out the RockBox formware for the ipod.

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SoundCodecs#Current_status

It will play FLAC... Maybe that is an option for you
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jgreen

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What about WAV files?  Although larger than ALAC, the xfer process would be a whole lot easier.  I ran WAV files in my 2G ipod until I realized I couldn't tell the difference in ipod playback between the WAVs and MP3s.
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Alex B

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Except lately when iTUNES imports the WMA files, it doesn't have the RATING tag info anymore.

Unfortunately iTunes does not support rating tags in the files. It does not read or write any kind of rating tags. I just tried this with all audio formats that iTunes supports.
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The Cosmic Bird - a triple merger of galaxies: http://eso.org/public/news/eso0755

Health Nut

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Quote
Unfortunately iTunes does not support rating tags in the files. It does not read or write any kind of rating tags. I just tried this with all audio formats that iTunes supports.

I'm not 100% certian about this.  I will call Apple Care about this garbage product called iTUNES.  I think the newer version has a bug.  I imported 1500 songs 2 months ago and it had the track rating info.  I know because now I am totally stumped and have to rate 2000 songs manually which is complete BS!!!

My 4 and 5 star music fits on a 60 GB iPOD using LOSSLESS with 1.7 GB to spare....  NO!! WAV IS NOT AN OPTION.

Why on earth can't we get APPLE LOSSLESS as a pluggin.  Then I never have to keep going thru this BS with iTUNES.  Please, I need a good reason why there is no ALAC support/ pluggin for J RIVERS!!!
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BartMan01

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Why on earth can't we get APPLE LOSSLESS as a pluggin.  Then I never have to keep going thru this BS with iTUNES.  Please, I need a good reason why there is no ALAC support/ pluggin for J RIVERS!!!

Plug-ins are just that - externally written code that 'plugs-in' to the program.  The reason why there is no ALAC plug-in for MC is because there isn't any interest by anybody to write/debug/maintain one.   You can always use an external encoder like iTunesEncode.

Sorry if this sounds ugly, but YOU chose to use an iPod, YOU have some need/desire to use Apple lossless, APPLE chose to make their format and player fairly closed and proprietary, and now here you are DEMANDING that SOMEBODY ELSE fix all of your problems.

You have two choices if you really want help with this.

1)  Learn how to code and write the plug-in yourself.  Good luck getting the info from apple though, the only external from iTunes converter that I am aware of is iTunesEncode and it calls the iTunes API (that means that while it is 'external', it still uses iTunes to do the encoding).

2)  Post a polite explanation of what is/isn't working and ask for help.

Here is a suggestion:  search this board for 'iTunesEncode'.  Follow the instructions that you find.  If it doesn't work, start another post explaining in detail what you have done and what is happening.  I am guessing that you will have issues due to the .m4a extension.  You might also do a search on .m4a to see if there are any know workarounds to get these files on to the iPod as audio files.
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hit_ny

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Apple likes ALAC

M$ likes WMA

JRiver likes APE

Open Source folks like FLAC

Each is pushing their own since there is no de facto standard yet for lossless.

..i wasn't having any of this and did not fancy waiting for one to establish itself so settled on mp3.

But you don't like mp3

So you are in no man's land atm :(
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BartMan01

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Addendum to earlier post:

Following the instructions already given to you in another thread I set up iTunesEncode as my external encoder, disabled iTunesHelper from startup, and successfully put a file on my iPod as Apple Lossless directly from within MC.  I had no issues with my 4G iPod in getting the m4a files to sync.

Perhaps if you gave some details of what you have tried and what is happening (instead of 'I tried some workaround and it didn't work'), someone can help you.
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Doof

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Wow. Ask a question while trying to ascertain what you're trying to do, and look at the attitude.

Well, that's cool. I can do attitude.

If you want an Apple Lossless plugin, go write one. I'm certainly not willing to spend any more of my time trying to help somebody who's stomping their feet like a spoiled child.
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joshhuggins

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Look, I'm no fan of APPLE, but the iPOD is a nice piece of equipment.  I'm very found of the nano 4GB and the 60GB iPod.  I use the 60GB iPOD for lossless storage.  Unfortunately the iPOD only will recognize Apple Lossless.

(I'm not interested in debating lossless, etc... )

Why on earth can't we have Apple lossless as a plugin?  This is making my life very difficult, very.

 I tried somebody's workaround without success.

IPods are not really designed for lossless use, so Apple thru in their proprietary solution, which is fine for most, cause most are using Itunes and most eat cheese sandwhiches. ;D Most people are using IPods for listening to music on the go, or hooked up to smaller systems, and do not have them hooked up to a audio system where a lossless format can really perform properly. What type of system will you be listening to your music on? If your looking for good reproduction on a higher end audio system, you probably don't want to be using an IPod as your player, and would be better off having a lossless format on your Media Center with a good signal out to your audio system and sync to your IPod using a high bitrate conversion to another format. If that doesn't work for you and you have to use a portable device as the player, maybe an IPod is not the best way to go for you. Hope you fine what your looking for  ;)
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Thanks!

sapnho

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Oh yeah, I'd also love to see MC support for Apple lossless. That would enable me to create a seamless world with Apple and Windows computers.

Of course, the other (much better) alternative would be to port MC to OS X (can't be that difficult with Intel chips now, can it?). There doesn't seem to be a single real alternative to iTunes out there and iTunes is so limited in terms of functionality, it makes it almost useless for someone used to MC.
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Marc

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...the other (much better) alternative would be to port MC to OS X (can't be that difficult with Intel chips now, can it?). There doesn't seem to be a single real alternative to iTunes out there and iTunes is so limited in terms of functionality, it makes it almost useless for someone used to MC.
X2
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THAT's what I'm talking about.
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