by Sometimes the iTunes Guy gets questions where the only answer is, “sorry, you can’t”. This week’s column covers a couple of questions with no solutions, along with some that do have answers. Learn about finding missing podcast playlists, replacing converted songs in their playlists, and more.
Q: I have a lot of songs in MP3 format, and have started converting them to AAC format to save space on my computer. When doing so, iTunes creates a duplicate version of the song in AAC format, leaving behind the MP3 file. When I delete the MP3 from within iTunes, it removes the songs from all my playlists. I would like to simply convert the song to AAC format, replacing the old MP3 format so that the playlists now reference the AAC version of the song and not the MP3. Is this possible?
Putting aside the fact that I don’t usually suggest converting from one lossy audio file type to another, no, iTunes considers each file to be unique. When you convert a file, you then have two files, and it wouldn’t make sense to add the new files to a playlist, in case you wanted to keep them both. (Because you most likely wouldn’t want two copies of the songs in the playlists.)
You can use the Comments tag to find songs and put them back in their original playlists.
This can be a problem, especially if you’ve created playlists with lots of songs. What I would do is this: Select all the songs in a playlist then, in the Comments field, enter the name of the playlist. Convert the songs, and delete the originals. Next, create a new smart playlist, where Comments is (playlist name), or the name of the playlist you just added. Copy the songs from the smart playlist to the original playlist, then delete the smart playlist.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
