Ditch iTunes!!

Hello, I was wondering how I could transition from using iTunes for all of my Music, Movies and TV Shows to a program that's a bit more open.

I would like to:

1) Convert all of my music to MP3 format
2) Convert all of my Movies to a standard format (any suggestions?)
3) Convert all of my TV Shows to a standard format (any suggestions?)

Find a program that has good iPhone support, I think iPhone Explorer isn't too shabby.

Then, and finally COMPLETELY remove iTunes from my computer.


Any luck?

Thanks!!

Not sure about the first few questions you asked, but I believe the Songbird application is good at recognizing iPhones/iPods

For your music iTunes allows you to create MP3s. Just go to the Advanced menu section and select Create MP3 Version. As for videos you can use a video convertor to convert all your videos to a format you want but that will take awhile to do.

VideoLan should be able to play all Apple video file formats though so if you just want an alternative to iTunes for videos then you can just use it rather than spending all that time converting videos. It will also play iTunes' ACC music files but it doesn't have all the nice playlist features like iTunes does so you might want to look for something else as your alternative music app.

Do you simply not like using iTunes or the file formats because other software can open them. You don't have to use iTunes. The only time I have to convert something is to MP3 because some of my older audio electronics can't use ACC.

Well, I'm probably going to switch to a PC, and I think that overall, iTunes is a locked format anyway, so I want to switch to something much more open, even though iTunes will work on a PC...

Yeah, I've got my MP3s good actually, videos seem like a problem though.. Do you have a good video converter? By the way, would the standard format be .mp4?

Handbrake will handle the video I believe.

handbrake! I forgot I even had that xD

Uh so .mp4 being the standard then?

Visual Hub? Probably the best ever, but outdated now, and no longer under development. it still does the job, only without the very latest video formats.

OK, I'll probably take HandBrake over Visual Hub, just because of the newer formats, but I'll try both to be sure.

No one seems to want to answer this question but:

Is .mp4 the most standard video format that I should save all of my Movies, TV Shows, and Music Videos???

That's because the standard changes depending on whom you ask, what platform you're using, what hardware you're using and what your ultimate goal is with the media in question.

Even with specific answers to all the above, you're likely to get varied opinions on what the "best" format would be for that particular use.

The best answer is to educate yourself regarding all the existing and emerging formats along with the hardware and software you intend to use and make an educated decision for yourself.

No matter which format you decide to go with, no one knows which formats will still be around much less have the ability to be used with the OSs and hardware of 10 years from now.

I'd suggest that the most widely-used, general purpose format is .avi. Is it the best? I don't know, it depends on those factors outlined by bobtomay.

bobtomay said:

That's because the standard changes depending on whom you ask, what platform you're using, what hardware you're using and what your ultimate goal is with the media in question.

Even with specific answers to all the above, you're likely to get varied opinions on what the "best" format would be for that particular use.

The best answer is to educate yourself regarding all the existing and emerging formats along with the hardware and software you intend to use and make an educated decision for yourself.

No matter which format you decide to go with, no one knows which formats will still be around much less have the ability to be used with the OSs and hardware of 10 years from now.

Click to expand...

OK, thanks for the response, pardon my ignorance.

And hughvane, yeah, I'll go either with .avi or .mp4


And

I'm not clear as to why you think the formats that iTunes already supports aren't "open". If anything, iTunes is more severely limited in the formats that it will support than most other software. AAC (the audio component for MP4, which is "open") is widely considered superior to MP3 (MP4 is the successor to MP3) and is playable on any platform with most readily available software. Ditto for... well... everything that iTunes supports. Converting from one format to another will only result in reduced quality, unless you are re-encoding directly from the original source material (i.e. Audio CD, DVD, etc).

Also keep in mind - if these are videos you purchased thru iTunes, chances are that DRM is attached to those files (unlike audio with iTunes Plus files that no longer have DRM) - so just "copying" or converting them may not be possible so you may need to use iTunes for those files.

Yes, the idea that iTunes is a "locked format" is pretty ... well, odd. It's not locked at all, particularly when compared to its main competition (Microsoft, which would much prefer you go with its locked, proprietary and DRM'd "wma" format).

The OP's quest is, IMHO, a fool's errand.

If you want to add media to your ipod without itunes then I recommend Floola.

Floola

Hello. This looks like the place to ask, so...

I have some of my files in ogg/FLAC format, and playing them on with itunes makes my computer extremely slow, so I want to change.

How do I stop itunes from launching when I press the forward/back/play/pause keys? I use VLC now and it's annoying to have iTunes launching (so, short of removing iTunes, since I still use it for podcasts and the odd sync, what should I do?)

I use vlc as I said, but I also use it to watch videos. But sometimes, I want to have an mp3 playing and at the same time as the video. I dislike quicktime - a lot (no video on top feature that I could find).

Any free (that aren't songbird) alternatives for music files that are intelligent enough to ignore playlist files and not duplicate my music?