Apple mac, iTunes, Zumo & mp3's

[Dale]

Hopefully one of the resident mac experts can help ... (i'm pretty new to Mac, so explanations in small words please

The problem is like this ...

I have purchased some music from itunes - this arrives in m4a format (i think) and the zumo will not play it. So ... itunes has an option to convert mp4 to mp3 and itunes then puts the mp3 in the same folder as the m4a .... all simple thus far.

Now, if I want to transfer the new mp3's to the zumo, I go to the finder, copy the folder for that artist to the zumo's sd card. the zumo then sees the mp3 and will play it happily. it just ignores the m4a version.

there are two problems with this setup:
1. together with the mp3, there is also a m4a that has been copied across to the zumo and is taking up space.
2. I end up with 2 versions of each song in itunes and this takes up space on the ipod!

Is there an easier way to do this? Getting the zumo to play m4a's would be first prize of course ...

TIA
Dale

 

[Decster]

Is there an easier way to do this?

TIA
Dale

Create a folder in iTunes for your Zumo and drag the mp3 tunes you want to load on the gps into that folder then load then across from that folder, no doubling up and taking space.

might be an easier way.....

 

[ianf]

Create a smart playlist or two.

Set 'Kind' contains, and whatever the type you want for each. (Add the Kind field to the itunes browser while testing.)

Then you can sync only the m4a kind playlist to the ipod. They're AAC files so better than mp3's - you don't want to convert from one lossy codec to another really, but you have to as the lowest denominator is the Zumo as you say.

For the Zumo, it looks like you can then click the mp3 kind playlist, select all in itunes and drag out onto the disk that the zumo mounts as.

What *will* break is the folder structure, as the smart play *list* is just a list.