Hello all. Love the site…
I know about Automator but was wondering if there is an application that I can create custom scripts and commands. What I am trying to accomplish is:
I have a USB drive connected to my Linksys N Router where I keep my music. THe USB drive goes to sleep every so often and so iTunes loses song locations in my library. I open iTunes and notice an exclamation mark next to all of my songs and I have thousands. So I have to ‘Get Info’ on each songs for iTunes to connect to the song and remove the exclamation point.
So my action is:
1: Open iTunes
2: Click on Music in the left hand pane
3: Right click on the first song in right hand pane
4: Click on Get Info
5 Either click Next or hold down Command N
6: Do this for over a long time to re-establish connection to my songs
I would like either Automator or a program to follow that procedure for me so I can start the script and let the Mac sit for a while.
Thanks,
Bob
— Bob Bahador
Automator would be the program to use for this sort of thing.
But I'm not sur you need to do all of this. Once you reconnect the sleeping drive, you shouldn't need to get info on each song. Have you tried just restarting iTunes? Something like that?
Hello Gary,
Yes even when I restart iTunes it doesn't reset the exclamation. I guess iTunes doesn't change the status unless an action is performed like Get Info.
Back in the day, there was a VB program for Windows that allowed the user to create custom scripts by 'recording' the mouse movements and keyboard strokes. That is what I was thinking for this. A program that would send a command to launch iTunes, click on Music on the left, and then right click the first song and select Get Info. Pause for a few seconds to allow the window to appear and then input Command N. I could have that script run until I stop the process. I don't think Automator can get that specific. Do you have any suggestions??
BTW, this is an absolutely great site and love the videos and podcast. Keep up the great work.
Thanks,
Bob
Automator has a record function. Probably best to figure out a keyboard sequence rather than mouse clicks, though. But I still don't think you need to do it that way.
There is also the ability to add scripts to iTunes. There are a lot of scripts floating around the web specifically for iTunes. I would search to see if you can find one that "touches" all of your songs in some way.
There should be a feature in iTunes that re-scans the file locations of all songs. That would solve this problem.