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[Mr Swordfish]

Can someone give a brief explanation of the difference between simply clicking "Import from iTunes" and "Import from iTunes database"?

I understand that you need to first export an XML file to use the second option, but does it do anything different than the plain version?

I just used the plain version and while it worked, some things are not quite perfect, e.g. missing artwork, compilation albums are imported as a bunch of single-track albums, the "sort by" field for artists didn't come over (I sort artists lastname, firstname but probably won't bother to fix them all up if it doesn't import - no big deal)

It's early enough to just start over and use the XML import method if that does something for me.  Thanks.


Thanks.

[JimH]

The missing artwork is probably because the art wasn't embedded in the audio files.  You can have MC fill it in.  The wiki has a topic.  If it's external on the Apple side, you might be able to transfer it to the computer where you have MC installed, set the cover art directory and then right click, choose cover art, then Quick Find.  But start at the wiki.

[Mr Swordfish]

I couldn't find anything in the wiki about this, so I went ahead and gave it a try. Uninstalled Music Center, re-installed it, and used the "Import from iTunes database" option.

The differences seem to be:

• It didn't have a long period of non-responsive behavior. It still took a while to import the ~75,000 audio files, but the program was usable right away.
• It seems to have done a better job of finding the artwork.  Still a lot missing, but doesn't seem to be as many.
• Compilations were imported as albums instead of what I thought was a bunch of one-track albums, but this might have been due to my mis-interpreting the UI
• The playlists were imported with the same tree structure as they exist in iTunes instead of everything in one folder

So, this seems to be the better way to do the import.  I did not import the "sort by" data and I can't find a sort by field that would allow artists to be sorted lastname, firstname instead of the default ascii sorting.  Probably not going to spend a lot of time on this, but after all those years as a radio DJ where the library was always sorted by lastname, the usual way most people do it seems weird to me.