Re: Songbird...

T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[..]
There are of course pros and cons for either system.

Of course. One pro for me is not having to have any extra software to
do the collation bit. These means I'm not reliant on anything to keen
my data in order. That means it's also very portable. So, say I had
all my music and photos on one external drive I could plug it into
anyone's computer, running XP, OSX or Linux and as long as they had
the basic tools to look / play the files that's what I could do. I
don't have to install anything extra to manage them because I don't
rely on anything normally. (Incidentally that's sort of what I do
here. My PC has 2 x 250G HD's, both on removable trays. OS on the 1st,
data on the second. If I replace the OS drive with <anything else> I
can still see and access my data (hence why there is little under 'My
Documents' on my normal XP drive). If I was to allow my data system
not to be easily 'Man readable' it wouldn't be so easy for me to do
the above (without installing and configuring iTunes / whatever on all
systems etc).

Fair enough. FWIW, my photos are also stored on an external drive (320GB
in this case), and I actually keep them in both an iPhoto library, and a
duplicate set in a Finder folder system, which is just a backup, and for
eventualities as you suggest. However, if you really need to, you *can*
still get to the files stored in the iPhoto library without iPhoto.

However, my feeling is that if I want to take photos to another machine,
I will choose and export the ones I want to take. But then with 90GB of
photos, it becomes impractical to work with the entire collection all
the time.

If you want to listen to your Quo collection, type "Quo" and all your
Quo tracks will be listed. If you want to filter furter start typing
the album name....

Ok. (and I'm not trying to be akward here) but I haven't listened to a
whole album since I was a kid [1] and even then it was a rare moment.
In fact I rarely listen to a complete track unless it really catches
me or is on the radio while I'm driving etc.

That's what the playlists are for.

I'm sure they are. No point in this case though (can a playlist
contain two tracls. It would be just as easy for me to choose 'Play
All') ;-)

A playlist can contain no tracks, or all of them if you wish.

For sure, a bit of effort is required to start with, but once you have a
well thought out set of playlists, it becomes very easy.

Ah, 'well though out' ... too much effort in for the tiny use out for
me.

Indeed. I'm just trying to show that the benefits are there for those
that do need them.

For example, in my iTunes I have nearly 4000 items, amounting to 12 full
days of listening. I have these structured in nested playlists in the
left pane under genre and album.

Structured and nested by you (and your time)?

Yes, although no much time, and I've been developing the structure over
many years.

I found this a little more reliable
than the 'Browser' feature, as that sometimes breaks albums where it may
have been compiled from different original albums.

Ok ..

I cannot possibly see any way that doing this another way could be
easier. Certainly using the Finder system would mean having to select
tracks for playing every time I wanted too. With a media manager
(ignoring platform dependence for now), such as iTunes, you gain the
benefits of search criteria you can get elsewhere.

Understood, if you have anything resembling 'a collection' and you
want to access said often and in a particular way (or ways).

Yes, I actually still prefer to listen to albums, but I use the
'shuffle' button most times. It's just that I find my mood for music at
a given time often means I want to listen to a single artist at that
time.

I also have some 16000 photos, and I did start off with a Finder folder
structure, but it soon became clear that finding a particular image was
getting harder as the collection grew. Using a media manager, such as
iPhoto, is really the only way to manage any size of collections.

Ok. I only have half your collection but aren't having any issues
(yet). ;-)

It's just the way I use my collections really, they are used a lot in
many different ways. I also use Raw photos, which take up a lot of
space, and using iPhoto is actually the most economical way of working
with them (both in time, and hard drive space).

But then I really do use many of the features of iPhoto and MobileMe. In
iPhoto I can manage my web galleries, and organise my media used in
other apps, such as iWeb and Pages.

Ok, well I don't have any of that so probably also why it would be
overkill and less flexible for me.

Indeed. But you're only really just getting started ;-). And this isn't
your primary system anyway is it?

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
.

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