{"id":201,"date":"2007-02-14T10:28:35","date_gmt":"2007-02-14T10:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/sakufu\/2007\/02\/14\/copying_mp3_fil\/"},"modified":"2007-02-14T10:28:35","modified_gmt":"2007-02-14T10:28:35","slug":"copying_mp3_fil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/2007\/02\/14\/copying_mp3_fil\/","title":{"rendered":"Copying MP3 files from iPod Nano to PC with Mp3tag"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t amused when I discovered iTunes doesn’t allow transferring MP3 files from an iPod to a PC, but there are tools out there, both commercial and free, to do so. I tried SharePod<\/a>, but my Japanese-tagged file showed up as question marks in the program’s display. UTF-8, c’est pas<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I noticed my Nano (presumably second generation, since it’s a silver 2GB model) is always enabled as a disk drive, so I poked around the directories through Windows Explorer. I found my MP3 files in some hidden directories, renamed with some random encoded convention.<\/p>\n

So I experimented. I launched the very excellent Mp3Tag<\/a> program and browsed to the music directory on my iPod (\/\/iPod_Control\/Music<\/tt>). Lo and behold! Mp3Tag read all the subdirectories.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mp3Tag is an incredibly robust program. I used to dread tagging MP3 files, but Mp3Tag makes it so easy, it’s actually exacerbated<\/em> my more, ahem, "thorough" tendencies. (Yeah, go ahead and call me anal retentive.)<\/p>\n

Leveraging the power of Mp3Tag, I managed to transfer a full album’s worth of MP3s to my PC with little effort. Here’s how:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I reordered the columns by album name, and highlighted all the tracks for a particular album.\n
  2. I clicked the Copy to<\/strong> icon on the toolbar, and when prompted, I created a new folder for the album in my iTunes Music Library folder and selected it.\n
  3. I hit OK, and the files were copied over.\n
  4. I changed directories in Mp3Tag to the newly copied files on my machine.\n
  5. I selected all the files, and hit the Tag – Filename<\/strong> icon on the toolbar. After determining the convention of my file names (usually $num(%track%,2) - %artist% - %title%<\/tt>), I hit OK, and the files are renamed to something legible. <\/ol>\n

    That it.<\/p>\n

    I didn’t have to download and evaluate a new tool. And I could easily read my Japanese-tagged files.<\/p>\n

    I’m not sure whether this method can work with a previous generation Nano. And it certainly won’t work with iTunes-purchased music. At least, I’m assuming it won’t — I don’t have any iTunes-purchased music to test.<\/p>\n

    Maybe at some point in the future I’ll want a more robust tool to handle the other PDA functions in my iPod, but for a quick grab of my music files, Mp3Tag is pretty convenient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Leveraging the power of Mp3Tag, I managed to transfer a full album’s worth of MP3s to my PC with little effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technophilia-aural"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkjq-3f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}