Hacking iPod + iTunes: iTunes 4.8 and iPod filenames

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Thursday, May 19, 2005

iTunes 4.8 and iPod filenames

You probably already know that last week Apple released iTunes 4.8. When you use iTunes 4.8 to sync with your iPod, an interesting thing happens: the filenames of your music files get squished into incomprehensibility on the iPod (they're not changed on your computer).

It's been well documented that your iPod holds music in invisible folders named iPod_Control/Music/F00, F01, F02, and so on. Until iTunes 4.8, files didn't change their names when copied to the iPod: Judith.mp3 on your computer was Judith.mp3 on your iPod. But when you sync with iTunes 4.8, it becomes something like BLDN.mp3. All other files are similarly renamed: every filename consists of four upper-case characters followed by the extension. Apple probably did this to make iPod file handling a bit more efficient, because every little bit of efficiency helps.

So what are the drawbacks for iPod users? Basically, none. You can no longer scan or search your iPod's invisible folders looking for a particular song, but that's pretty minor. The iPod utilities such as PodWorks still work, because they rely on the iTunes/iPod database, not the filenames. And, if you're running Mac OS X Tiger, you can use Spotlight to find songs on the iPod -- all the metadata, including song and artist name, is still there. If Spotlight doesn't seem able to find stuff on your iPod, go to Terminal and use mdimport to ask Spotlight to index the iPod. You can also use mdls with a particular file to see its metadata (and so figure out which song is in that file).

07:06 AM | Permalink

Comments

Of late, using mdls yields no ID3-like metadata for me. I mdls'd a protected AAC from the ITMS that was purchased a few months ago...Result? 2+ screenfulls of USEFUL md - Song, Author/Artist, Album, etc.

Next, I tried the same with a song purchased yesterday...Result? Barely 10 md elements - no Song, Author, Album info whatsoever.

Can you validate this behavior too? Workaround? Are the ITMS/iTunes people finally talking to the Spotlight people?

Someone needs to write a perl script that uses the ID3::whatever module, extracts ID3 tags from a file and then writes those tags back to the file as metadata (e.g. maps Artist/ID3 Tag to "kMDItemAuthors", etc...).

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Hacking iPod + iTunes

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Thursday, May 19, 2005

iTunes 4.8 and iPod filenames

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