The Power of iTunes
Everybody knows iTunes by now thanks to the popularity of the iconic Apple iPod. Everyone who owns an iPod MUST use the iTunes software to manage their music for their iPod. Several years ago prior to the iPod and iTunes, I started to RIP all of my CD collection onto my computer so I could listen to music while I worked. When it came to listening to music on my expensive sound system in the living room, CD's still ruled.
Music
Fast forward several years, where mass storage is far more affordable, Apple Mac's are much smaller and cheaper, and iTunes exists - with capabilities far beyond beyond a simple music player. Today my expensive sound system has no CD player in it at all, it has been replaced by a Mac Pro with a 2TB internal RAID. All of my over 1100 CD's are ripped to the RAID in Apple Lossless Format.
iTunes with Coverflow
Your first question would
be about sound quality out of a Mac Pro right? Not an
issue! The Mac Pro as a Toslink Optical
Digital Audio output and I feed this digital
signal straight into my high end DAC to get the best sound quality I
can from my music collection.
Next I added CD covers into iTunes so that I could
still 'see' my CD collection. With the latest version
of iTunes they incorporated the brilliant 'Coverflow'
application which Apple bought from the original
genius who came up with the idea. It basically allows
you to scroll left to right through your CD covers,
not unlike you do when looking through CD's at a
music store. You can get many of the covers from
sites like Amazon, but the quality is only just OK in
my view, and most Australian music is not available
there so you have to scour the local online music
stores who have even worse quality. So I took the
next logical step - I scanned in all of my Australian
music CD covers which took a long time but was well
worth the effort!
So what have I done to my CD collection? Firstly, I
have to say the worse thing about owning 1100 plus
CD's is the space they take up and I have spent years
carting the things from house to house, it is a real
pain. So, I have thrown away all of the the plastic
cases and bought cases that each hold 500 CD’s,
and have stored them all away as my 'backup' should
anything happen to my RAID.
So do I still buy CD's or download from iTunes music
store? Well, until they make downloadable music
uncompressed and DRM (Digital Rights Management)
free, I will continue to buy CD's. I do not like to
pay for low quality compressed versions of the songs
I like, so I am happy to buy the CD because it gives
me the choice of how I compress it and I have a
backup.
Movies
No I am NOT talking about the movies
you can buy from the iTunes music store, I am talking
about your DVD collection and your home movies. I
like most people thought that iTunes could only store
and playback video files formatted in size to suit
the iPod, ie: 640x480. Wrong!
You can add full res movies which are 720x576 for
PAL, right through to high resolution videos
including 1920x1080. Just drag the files to the
iTunes window and they are added to the library. And
speaking of Library, notice how iTunes now has
Library as the top item in the left menu list, with
three sub categories below: Music, Movies and TV
Shows. This is the key to iTunes being THE media
server!
Anyway, back to movies - once you have the movies in
your iTunes Library, you can start to add DVD covers,
just like you did with your CD collection. Selecting
a movie to watch is as simple as it is with CD's, hit
the enter key and the movie opens in full screen
mode, when it is finished, it closes to show the
iTunes interface once again, perfect!
Movies in iTunes with Coverflow
Now, the fine print - you
can not simply put your DVD into your Mac and get
iTunes to RIP it into your library - yet. I do
believe it will come however. So for now you have to
use a third party application to do the ripping for
you - I would suggest Handbrake as it works very well.
There are of course other choices.
TV Shows
Our final option in the library is TV
Shows. How do you use this? Well let's say you have a
PVR (Personal Video Recorder) which allows you to
download the recorded shows to your computer, such as
the Topfield 5000 Masterpiece. What do you do with
them once you have them on the Mac? Well you RIP them
using MPEG Streamclip, into a format that iTunes can
read (ie: MP4) and add them to your Library, just as
you did with your Movies and CD's.
Just like with CD's and Movies, you can add 'covers' to the TV Shows as well, making for a visual delight when browsing your colleciton of favourite TV Shows. You can of course display the covers just like the Movies and CD's using the Coverflow option, or you can display them by season and episode, as shown below.
TV Shows by Season and Episode
Music Videos
One other option relating to music
which must be mentioned, is the ability to categorise
a movie file as a Music Video. When you select this
option for a movie file it is automatically added to
your Music Library, not your Movie Library.
This is great as iTunes can shuffle your music
library and throw in the odd Music Video from time to
time, sweet! So start transferring all your old VHS
tapes of 70's and 80's music videos into iTunes and
your next party is set to rock!
Playlists
One of the greatest features of iTunes
is the ability to create playlists. You can create
standard playlists which you manage the content of
manually by adding songs to the playlist yourself.
The best option however is the Smart Playlist option,
which allows you to set a number of paramaters and
iTunes adds content on the fly when content is added
to your library that meets the criteria you have set
for the Smart Playlist.
The really cool thing is you can create playlists for movie files as well. So if you are at home on the couch not feeling to well, what better way to spend the time than watching Top Gear all day right? Simply create a playlist and add several Top Gear episodes to the playlist, and press play. iTunes will play all episodes one after the other. You can even do the same thing for your music videos, which is great for parties.
As you can see from this brief outline, iTunes is a powerful media manager and not just a music player as many believe it to be, so get into it and start enjoying all the media you have!