Transferring iTunes Video Content to New Computer?

[ctreelmom]

My dd will turn 16 on Saturday and her gift is going to be a MacBook (shhhhhhhh!) She probably has a pretty good idea it's coming, as it's the ONLY thing she would like--no party or anything. I went through the hassle of transferring my iTunes music from one computer to the next when I got my laptop by copying the music onto CDs, but she has TV Shows, movies and music videos in addition to music on hers and our desktop computer does not have a DVD burner. Will she be able to transfer this content to her new laptop somehow? I have read here that there is software available that will let you transfer content from the iPod to iTunes, but my dd is under the impression that it's not considered legal.

I'm a writer, so am very sensitive to copyright issues, and don't want her doing anything that could be construed as illegal, but I don't understand why the same person can't have their iTunes on different computers. How is this different from buying a CD or DVD and listening to/watching it on two different players located in different rooms in your home? She's still using it for her "own private, noncommercial use."

 

[Liz Wolf-Spada]

When we bought a new Mac, we had some problems, anything we had purchased from Itunes was supposed to be a direct transfer, but there were still a few things that had problems. I don't know of a way to transfer your whole Itunes library. I'll check with my son and brother, their more experienced with Mac and Itunes than we are.
Liz

 

[Icarus]

Is this a transfer from PC to Mac?

I'm sure you can find the answer yourself here. (hint: use your network or an external hard drive to do it.)

http://www.google.com/search?q=tran...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

-David

 

[Gerie]

I don't know if the situation is the same, but when I purchased my new iMac the Apple store folks transferred ALL my stuff from my old dead iMac for free. Is that an option?

 

[ctreelmom]

Thanks for your replies. Sorry I haven't been back online to respond--been running around with last-minute Christmas stuff.

Yes, it would be a PC to Mac transfer.

Liz if you have the time to post any additional tips, that would be great.

David I will investigate that link, thanks.

 

[Liz Wolf-Spada]

I looked at David's link, just wish I had had that when our computer, a Mac died and we needed to replace it. I really have no other suggestions, I think David's link is the best.
Liz

 

[Icarus]

The link I posted was just a google search for "transfer itunes library from pc to mac". But that search provided some good articles on the topic.

The easiest way to do it is to use your network to do it, or to get an external hard drive, and copy everything to the external hard drive on the PC, then connect it to the new computer and import all the music in itunes on the new Mac. There's specific instructions for some of the steps in some of those articles.

One of the articles mentions a program called senuti for the Mac, which will let you get all your music off the ipod and onto the new Mac. I don't think it's illegal to copy your own ripped music for your own purposes from one computer to another, even if you do it by using a program like senuti. It's only illegal if you give it away to somebody else.

One of the articles had instructions on how to avoid having the Mac re-format the ipod when you plug it into the Mac for the first time. Apparently you can leave it in pc-format and it will work fine on the Mac as long as you use the "Manage my own music" setting in itunes.

-David

 

[ctreelmom]

Thanks for the additional details. This will transfer her TV Shows and Videos, too, right?

 

[Icarus]

Yeah, if you follow the directions, which includes consolidating the itunes library on the old computer first.

-David

 

[Gerie]

Perhaps this will be helpful. I copied it directly from the apple website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1408?viewlocale=en_US

Summary
Learn how to move data (files) from a Windows PC to Macintosh computer.

There are many ways to transfer data (files) from a PC to a Mac, including:

using the "PC Data Transfer Service" at Apple Retail Stores & Apple Specialists
using Move2Mac
using a portable hard drive or storage device
using a CD or DVD burner
using other portable media
using a shared file server
using email
using a .Mac iDisk
using a direct Ethernet connection
installing the PC's hard drive in the Mac

The website then goes on with further explanation for each method.

I should add that when they transferred data from my old dead (power supply) Mac to my new Mac it was exactly it had been.

 

[maddaug]

www.ilounge.com

They have some great tutorials on everything Ipod.
Good luck. DD is getting an external hard drive for Christmas because she is worried if our pc crashes she would loose everthing. I use an external hard drive to manage my itunes as my laptop is basically just for surfing the web.

Here's a link. Hope this helps.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/tutorials

Update: found this on Ilounge. Here's the link, scroll halfway down to see this.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/


Moving Between Operating Systems
Although the iTunes database format is the same for both the Windows and Mac OS X versions of iTunes, moving your iTunes library from Windows to Mac OS X or vice-versa is complicated by one other issue: The file systems between these two operating systems are completely different, so even though iTunes will be able to read the library database itself from the other operating system, it will not be able to make much sense of the paths stored in its library database. For example, where Windows uses drive letters, Mac OS X uses drive names, so there’s no way for Mac OS X to figure out what to do with a path like “D:\Music.”

Fortunately, however, since iTunes will default to looking for any missing files in its normal iTunes Music folder, you can leverage this behavior when migrating your library to a different operating system.

To make this work, you must first ensure that iTunes has organized all of the files according to its default naming standard. This way, when you move the files onto the new operating system platform, iTunes will be able to find them in their default locations.

To do this, first visit your iTunes Advanced preferences.




If the “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” option is enabled, deselect it and click OK. Then, go back into your Advanced preferences and RE-select this option and again click OK.

This will tell iTunes to go through your iTunes Music folder and ensure that all music files are named according to its defaults. You will be shown a progress indicator while this is happening.




Once this has completed, next select File, Library, Consolidate Library from within iTunes to bring in any referenced tracks that may exist outside of your iTunes Music folder.

Following these steps, your iTunes Music folder should be properly organized in the way that iTunes itself would expect to find it. You can then simply copy your entire iTunes folder and iTunes Music folder over to the new computer and operating system in the same way that you would transfer any other set of files. When iTunes starts, it won’t be able to find the music files by their specific location, but it will automatically and transparently “fall back” to looking in the default location where it would expect those files to be—in the iTunes Music folder. iTunes does this in the background transparently, so you won’t even notice it happening—things should just work.


Note: In some cases, automatically downloaded artwork may not appear properly when moving your iTunes library from Windows to Mac OS X or vice-versa. This issue should only affect automatically downloaded artwork, and can be easily resolved simply by asking iTunes to get the artwork again.

 

[ctreelmom]

Just wanted to let you all know that I forwarded this thread to dd via email and as far as I know, she's been able to transfer everything to the new laptop without a hitch, using, I guess, her USB drive.

We actually gave her the laptop a couple of days early, as her big Christmas gift was an iPod Touch. She tried to use it with our windows PC and needed to download the newest version of iTunes (I guess the older version doesn't work with the Touch?) and got a message saying the desktop didn't have enough memory to download the new version. I felt bad that she was thinking she couldn't use her new gadget, so dh and I decided to give her the bday present early. She was thrilled.

Thanks for all your help and Happy New Year!