I have appx 1800 cd's ripped to my Windows XP computer hard drive saved in WMA Lossless format. I use this computer as my stereo's "CD" player. A few years ago I got a 160 gig iPod Classic and started with iTunes. At that time I used the "add folder" option to copy the appx 1200 ripped cd's to iTunes. At that time iTunes automatically, (somehow), converted all of the music to AAC format (or MPEG-4 or m4a). When it did the conversion, (after prompting me that it needed to be done), all of the files showed up in iTunes with all of the album, year, song, artist, composer, etc. information correctly in the iTunes library grid format.
I have since had a computer crash and had to re-rip all of the previously saved WMA lossless media files/cd's onto a new hard drive. I did back up the iTunes library as it existed before the crash so I still have all of those files and their info intact in iTunes and its library. Now for the problem.
For some reason iTunes is not converting the folders or files I try to add to the iTunes library and they all show up as unknown album, unknown artist, and the songs are listed in the library grid format as the WMA files show in their respective folders, (01 song name artist name album) and this makes for an unusable, unsearchable word salad mix of an iTunes library. Essentially the library will show all of the songs 01 ... and then all 02... etc. Every album, every artist, every song shows up in this numerical order and not related to any album.
Question: Is there a way to add the folders to the library in iTunes and make iTunes convert the files and add them to the library in a useable fashion or, is there a way to convert the WMA files, like a save as (in bulk, by large folder), into the file type iTunes needs to keep the information straight in the library so it can be added in bulk? My other option is to re-re-rip cd's, at least the 600 or so not in iTunes currently, as an "import" process within iTunes and add them to my (luckily backed up) existing saved library.
I tried going back to the iTunes version I originally used and that didn't work, unless I'm missing a step I accidentally did back then.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Dave