Can iTune play music off a flash drive?

[Sunnz]

It is mounted and all the songs appears in iTune, but the play button just doesn't work; until I navigate to the Flash drive in in Finder and drag them into iTunes/library, however, that copies the songs to my hard disk and it NOT desired - I want to play them off the flash drive.

 

[CharlieJ]

drag the songs on the stick over the Library Button

 

[Sunnz]

until I navigate to the Flash drive in in Finder and drag them into iTunes/library, however, that copies the songs to my hard disk and it NOT desired - I want to play them off the flash drive.

Well...

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

iTunes is designed to keep a master "library" of songs that it plays from -- it does not have the ability to "temporarily" play music files from a location other than the master library without first adding them to the library.

Of course, you can always set iTunes' preferences to NOT copy files to the iTunes Music Folder, then simply add the files from the flash drive to iTunes' library. The downside is that the files will still be visible in your library even when the flash drive is not mounted, and attempting to play those files will result in a "file not found" error.

If you wish to temporarily play music files, you may find playing them with QuickTime the easiest route.

 

[Sunnz]

Will QuickTime have a nice list thing?

The reason why I want to do this is that I am actually doing a radio broadcast. (No, not internet radio.) And I get to borrow mp3 players from from different people. Copying all songs each time is going to fill up my macbook's hard disk real soon, especially when there are duplicate copies of same songs from different people.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

No, QuickTime does not support playlists by itself, but I have seen add-on software that gives it playlist-like abilities. The last time that software was updated was in 2004, though, so it may not work with the latest version of QuickTime:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9342

 

[lombarke]

he could use VLC as well, no? that has a playlist built in, although not quite as robust as iTunes.

 

[Sunnz]

Err... I'll just change the directory to the flash drive I guess... I only do broadcasting once a a fortnight anyway; it shouldn't be much of a hassle I guess?

 

[MisterMe]

Try Cellulo. It will make you throw stones at VLC.

 

[Natobasso]

Will QuickTime have a nice list thing?

The reason why I want to do this is that I am actually doing a radio broadcast. (No, not internet radio.) And I get to borrow mp3 players from from different people. Copying all songs each time is going to fill up my macbook's hard disk real soon, especially when there are duplicate copies of same songs from different people.

How about just deleting the song files to save room on your hard drive once you are done with them?

 

[lombarke]

Try Cellulo. It will make you throw stones at VLC.

i'll have to try that out...the only problem is that it's based on quicktime, so for those funky .avi's that won't play sound for one reason or another under quicktime (but VLC plays flawlessly), it will be the same case for cellulo, no?

 

[Satcomer]

i'll have to try that out...the only problem is that it's based on quicktime, so for those funky .avi's that won't play sound for one reason or another under quicktime (but VLC plays flawlessly), it will be the same case for cellulo, no?

DVI on a Mac with QuickTime(OS X)=DivX for Mac. I never had a problem playing DVIs with this codec.