Wow - Gracenote - 200 billion ripped CDs.

Gracenote has now processed its 200 billionth query, and received its one billionth metadata submission, according to data shared Thursday morning by the company.

Apple Synch Notifier Exe is Missing - Solved

Call from a CD ripping client with a problem on their PC (Vista Business). This is the error message -

Apple synch notifier exe is missing

Core file missing.

Did some digging, found a solution - go to Control Panel and you will probably see an entry for Mobile Me. Delete that, seems to solve the issue.

iTunes How To Videos

OK, we're going to blow our own trumpet here. We're a CD ripping company and we want you to get the best out of your music experience. We want happy clients.

So we've produced a set of How to ... videos covering topics such as how to load the music data files we supply, how to create smart playlists, how to move your iTunes music library ... and more.

Take a look at the videos. Hope you like them, if you'd like to see more let us know.

Low Cost CD Ripping

We rip CDs for clients, but mainly in the London / M25 region. Over the years we've had people express a demand for our services from outside our usual collection area.

So we set up a mail based CD ripping service called MP3 by Mail. Hard to believe we're coming up to four years old. But yes, we're still here, ripping CDs for iPod owners, for Sonos lovers and a whole raft of people who simply want to make their music portable. Check out our (other) site.

Apple TV

Just to update an earlier post - the installation with Apple TV running with Windows 7 (which previously stubbornly refused to sync) - has suddenly sprung into life and happily syncing music and photos.

Multiple Tracks in iTunes Library

Had a phone cal from one of our photo scanning clients - can we help them with an iTunes problem?

So on Friday I went over to survey the situation. Looking at their iTunes library was first step, which explained a lot to the client because as a Sonos user that was the way he looked at his music. Immediately you could see he had three copies of each track.

His first question was why? Well, if you set in Preferences / Advanced that you have a tick in the box for copying music into your iTunes library, when you go through the loop of adding to the library (File / Adder Folder) this is what happens. Even if that track is in the folder already, another copy will be made and added to the original folder. You get from one to two copies. Do it again, even if you're not sure what you were hoping to achieve, you'll get another set of tracks - your third.

Second question, how do we correct this? The only way is the tedious one. Hit show duplicates, then grind through the duplicated items and delete them. Took me hours, but eventually done. That's the exciting side of being a cd ripping service.

What's with Apple TV?

Not so long ago Apple described their network to TV bridge device - Apple TV - as a "hobby"device. Rather cruel I thought, even though on the scale of iPads and iPhones this hasn't been a roaring success, at least in sales terms. You have to admit some Apple products are cursed by being ahead of their time and I'm wondering if the time has come for Apple TV.

Many moons ago, when we got married, we inherited an old TV set. I bet the speaker inside cost less than 50p. Dreadful. Have you seen today's TVs? The sound from a new set is brilliant in comparison and many sport multi speaker surround sound systems to compete with cinemas. So what could be more natural than to pump your music via iTunes into your living room via a compact device such as Apple TV. Several of our CD ripping clients use Apple TV for this and are very happy with it. If you think coverflow looks good on your iPod Touch wait till you see it on a top-flight plasma screen.

Our other venture in analogue to digital media conversions, our photo scanning service 1Scan, is also recommending Apple TV. Trust me, your holiday photos or your old family image library will look great blown up on screen. But you also get an automatic facility to turn static images into a rolling slideshow.

The interface that drives Apple TV from your computer is iTunes, a program familiar to so many people now. And it runs faultlessly on Mac and Windows. Apple TV will play nicely with your home wireless network although if you must you can drive it via ethernet. In typical Apple fashion (forgive the pun) it looks cool in its nice white box, makes no noise although I have noticed they can get very hot.

Look great, sounds great, networks nicely and is reasonably priced. What's not to like about Apple TV?

iTunes Live

I love a conspiracy theory, so much so I think I am tempted to make one up. Apple has apparently trademarked the term "iTunes Live". But they haven't explained what Apple Live will be, so let's speculate.

Apple have been supporting live music sessions in their various stores. Perhaps they'll record them and make them available via iTunes. Or ...

It may be functionality to enable web content to be fed to iTunes and / or your iPod or iPhone. A kind of music streaming service, in real time.

Of course it might be the re-emergence of the music streaming service Lala that Apple bought and closed down.

Or you could add your own guess.

Photos on iPods

Maybe I'm blinkered, natural since in running a CD ripping service we spend so much time doing just that. But iPods aren't just for music - indeed we also operate put a lot of time into scanning photos.

So I noticed with interest a heated discussion among professional photographers on the best way to use an iPod as a portable display device. The modern iPods will store not just music but thousands of images in high quality. Of course the larger screen on the iPod touch lends itself better as a display unit.

I have also seen that a software company is launching a service to host photos for professionals, with the added dimension of an iPhone application. This would both help the photographer when in front of potential clients, but would also allow prospects and clients to download their own version so they can access the snappers work. What price the iPad in this environment?

Apple TV Photo Sync Problem Under Windows 7 64bit

One of our earliest CD ripping clients moved on to install an Apple TV unit. He has a B&O TV system with great speakers so the first asset was hearing his music streamed into his lounge area. Next was watching Youtube clips and seeing photos of his lovely family in big screen clarity.

Then the photos wouldn’t sync.

I think the start of the sync problem was when he upgraded his PC to a new unit with Windows 7. So I was called in to fix the issue.

First thing I did was see if iTunes needed to be upgraded, and sure enough an upgrade came down the line. I again configured the photo sync but although the computer thought iTunes was syncing it was clear nothing was happening. I reset the Apple TV, still no improvement. I reset to factory defaults, re-installed Apple TV, updated its software, still no photo sync.

Trying to force things along by opening / closing iTunes I noticed and error message saying Corefoundation.dll was missing. Quick Google search suggested this caused a problem with iTunes sync server program which would be fixed by uninstalling Windows then downloading a fresh version to install.

I did this using the download function on the iTunes page of the Apple website. A few minutes later I got a message saying this version would not install under 64bit Windows 7. I searched Apple’s website and found yes, there is a 64bit version of iTunes so I dug around and found it. This version has 64 in its name, so I downloaded that and the install went ahead OK.

Back to Apple TV - things were worse than when I arrived, Youtube was OK but no music, no photos. Went back to PC (on the otherside of the apartment) checked settings a couple of times and eventually music was syncing and could be heard. But no photo sync.

Three hours after arriving we were no further forward than when I arrived, except for a long list of things that don’t get iTunes on Windows 7 to sync with Apple TV. I’m left with thinking this is an Apple or Microsoft issue, but I’ll keep digging.