Membranophonist’s Ramblings

When selecting multiple items to be sent via e-mail or IM or copied to another volume, it is helpful to know the total size of the items; many e-mail servers restrict attachment sizes and CDs and DVDs only hold so much.

The Finder provides this running total through the Inspector (Command-Option-I), which is both fairly hidden and changes based on the active view. The only method I know of for getting similar information in iTunes is to use the File menu’s “New Playlist from Selection” command (Command-Shift-N), then looking at the status bar. Status bars that display the sum of the selected items’ filesize (and length for linear media) can provide this information more conveniently.

Finder

1. Single file selected



2. Two files selected



3. Three files selected

iTunes

1. Single song selected



2. Two songs selected



3. Three songs selected

Somewhere between 7.0 and the current 7.1.1 release, left and right arrow key navigation of the iTunes browser columns (Genre, Artist, Album) was added. Much better.

I like listening to artists’ recordings in chronological order to follow the evolution of their sound. The ID3 (v2) specification supports the input of precise recording dates (and times, but even I’m not that particular), data which I’ve added to some MP3s using the only application I know of that supports extensive ID3 tags with a somewhat understandable interface, ID3-TagIt for Windows. Unfortunately, iTunes does not take the day and month into consideration when sorting albums by Year.

How iTunes sorts Grant Green’s albums by year and when they were actually recorded:

An artist’s sound can change significantly over a handful of months, a process I’d like to be able to follow. I know this is not of interest to a majority of music listeners, whose favorite artists usually release an album every year or two.