The Big Post! - How to install, run and quick-fix some errors

[Bobly]

Acknowledgements: First of all, congratulations to the developers of this amazing piece of software.

Introduction: Welcome to The Big Post, which hopefully will help you install, run, and optimise this program to make use of it in the best way I found possible .

Installation:

1) Download the program. Currently [26/11/07] the newest version can be found here:
http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/mroth/tunes/ourTunes1-7c.jar

1.bis) If you haven't already got the Java Runtime Environment installed, install it Hopefully you've already got this, if not you should be able to find an up to date link to the latest version on the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JRE

That's it, normally there shouldn't be any more to the installation, if you double-click it it will run . However if like me it wouldn't run, here's what I did :

2) Place it in a folder, whether it be "My Music" or "Program Files\OurTunes" it doesn't matter .

3) In that same folder create a new .txt file and call it OurTunes.txt

4) Insert the following text in the file:

@title OurTunes 1.7c
@cd C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_03\bin\
@java -jar ourTunes1-7c.jar

Make sure to change the path of the java runtime files to whichever version you are currently using as well as the filename of the OurTunes jar file.

5) Rename OurTunes.txt to OurTunes.bat

Now you should be able to launch the application by double clicking the .bat file .

Using OurTunes:

1) Launch OurTunes, notice how the console shows the shared libraries on the network which are also in the GUI.

2) Click the Options menu and select "Download Directory" to set the location for your downloads.

3) Select the shared library you want to save some songs from.

4) Launch iTunes.

5) Notice that in your shared libraries the one you previously selected in OurTunes is now duplicated, connect to the second one.

6) Any song you play will now be saved to your download directory.

7) You can speed up the download by pausing the stream.

Tips & Solutions:

Problem: How to quickly and efficiently download a full album.
Answer: To download a full album, enable "Browse" view in iTunes (clicking the eye icon in the bottom right hand corner) and limit the songs viewed to the artist and album you wish to download. At this point you can Play, wait for the stream to start, pause it, wait for the download to finish, and then move on to the next song. By doing this you should be able to go through approx 15 songs in 5 minutes.

Problem: The files don't rename so you end up with a lot of random numbered mp3 files.
Answer: For this I highly suggest using http://www.mediamonkey.com/. Launch it and import mp3's to the MediaMonkey library. Use this opportunity to fix any tags that need fixing. Once you're all done, select all the files you wish to rename and select "Auto-Organise Files". Personally I use the following:

.\Renamed\<Artist>\<Year> - <Album>\<Track#> - <Title>

That will not only rename the files, but also place them in a folder called Renamed, classed in folders by artist, and then album . I've done this because this is how my music library is set up, I can just stick these in there afterwards, but you should adapt this to your situation .

Problem: The files saved by ourTunes are all between 0 and 200kbs and obviously not big enough to be the full songs.
Answer: The solution to this problem is actually quite simple, simply close ourTunes and the "empty" songs will magically be replaced by the proper files .

That's it for now, feedback or extra tips would be much appreciated, I'll edit this post to add any extra feedback .

Suggestions: I was originally going to make another post for this but it's not insanely late and I'm just going to stick this here. I would like to suggest a way to automate the way ourTunes works. To do so I would look into the way that Firefox Extensions are used to control iTunes, if ourTunes was able to do the same then it could stream a song, pause it, and then when it had finished downloading it, it could automatically move on to the next. That's all for tonight Thanks again for this amazing app.

[flug_m]

Do you have java on your system?   Does the version you're using match the text you've placed in the batch file?

[Bobly]

I wrote this guide a couple of months ago, you have to adapt it for your current situation.

You'll need to change the path "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_03\bin\" to where your current installation of java is and also make sure you change "ourTunes1-7c.jar" to reflect the name of the version of ourTunes you're using

[bubblepop]

is there a more current version of OT than 1.3.3?
Perhaps with my company's firewall, its just not going to happen.
OT shows the networked sharers in there, just connection to them fails.

[flug_m]

OT 1.3.3 cannot connect to iTunes 7 or later.  ourTunes1-7d is the latest version, and pending some free time I can finish the darn thing...

[bubblepop]

thanks for your help. I started from scratch and re-installed.  Ourtunes comes up!  Now the only problem is that non of the folks networked in iTunes show up in ourtunes.
I've waited and restarted... nothing.
found and re-installed version d. and no users listed.
user appear in the old our tunes, just the connection to them fails. Theres something in the .jar file that is not networking into users.
ideas?

[flug_m]

hmm... I can only say keep trying until I update ourtunes.  with 4 tests this week + 1 programming project next week, it won't happen anytime soon...

[mintyfreshrob]

when I launch ourTunes 1.7e, none of the other libraries in my network show up other than mine, though they do show up in iTunes. What should I do to fix this so I can download their music?

[flug_m]

wait a minute and try again.  These daap services announce themselves on the network randomly, and sometimes they announce at the same time.  What happens is that the GUI is redrawing itself AND being updated with another announcement at the same time which causes this problem.  I can do a little to help this problem, but it's more or less depended on the Java Virtual Machine.

[SeBiG]

Here's a problem I have with ourTunes:

Installs & runs fine so far. I am working in a large network environment, many iTunes-Users with shared libraries around.

After the tunnel is set up, downloading files from other user's libraries works very quickly - we have a fast ethernet-network setup - but the mp3s play chunky, with clicks and breaks in between. And even more astonishing: downloaded MP3s play crappy as well!

Since I do not believe, that any person around here except me has no proper music files on their machines, this problem must happen during download - how is that possible?

Won't the mp3-files download "as are" - are they "re-rendered" or "re-compiled" somehow during transfer?


  = SeBiG

[flug_m]

No, ourTunes does not modify the data passing on the network.  the MP3s are downloaded "as-are" so to speak.

First of all, connect to the same libraries without ourTunes and see if the problem is still present.  In either case, I can't point out any specific factor causing your problem.  There is similar problem mentioned on the front page of the website, but I don't know how much relation it has to your problem.  School projects get in my way of working on ourTunes.