As with any other program, iTunes windows can be re-sized by dragging the bottom right corner, and also minimized - hidden from view but still active and accessible via the Dock (on a Mac) or Taskbar (in PC). This is done in the normal way: on a Mac, click the small yellow button in the top left hand corner of the window, or press Apple+M; on a PC, click the minimize button on the window's top right corner, or press M while holding down the Windows key.
This is all standard stuff, but, unlike most other programs, iTunes also provides a halfway house between a window being open and minimized: a miniaturized unit that offers access to the essential player control and, if desired, the status display.
This is great if you want to keep an eye on what's playing, skip tracks you don't like, and so on, while working in another program. To transform iTunes into a miniaturized player, click the small green button in the top left of the window (Mac) or press Ctrl+M (PC). The mini player that pops up can be further shrunk by dragging its corner.
Start/stop times
If you've long been bugged by something at the beginning or end of a track - an extended fade, a concert recording applause, a snippet of indulgent band banter, or whatever - now is your chance to excise it. Whether you've ripped the track from CD or downloaded it, it can be topped and tailed in iTunes. Let's take, for example, The Beatles' "Good Morning, Good Morning", which opens with the crow of a cockerel. If you listened to the song and kept an eye on the iTunes status area, you'd see that the cockerel's moment of glory lasts a good two seconds, and the band don't start playing until the display reads "Elapsed time: 0.03".
To erase the offending bird, we first need to select the track in the Song List and select Get Info from the File menu. Under the Options panel in the box that pops up, there are boxes for the song's current Start Time (which, as you might expect, is 0:00) and Stop Time. Now we can simply highlight the start time and type a new value - in this example, 0:03 seconds. Then we can click OK and listen back to the song to see if the new setting is accurate enough. If not, we can go back into the Options pane and tweak the time - entering fractions of a second after a colon, if necessary (eg, 0:03:50).
Trimming the end works in just the same way. And whichever end you're changing, you're not harming the song file, only the way iTunes plays it, so none of this is permanent. If you felt bad about the cockerel, say, you could simply return to the Options panel and reinstate him.
This is all standard stuff, but, unlike most other programs, iTunes also provides a halfway house between a window being open and minimized: a miniaturized unit that offers access to the essential player control and, if desired, the status display.
This is great if you want to keep an eye on what's playing, skip tracks you don't like, and so on, while working in another program. To transform iTunes into a miniaturized player, click the small green button in the top left of the window (Mac) or press Ctrl+M (PC). The mini player that pops up can be further shrunk by dragging its corner.
Start/stop times
If you've long been bugged by something at the beginning or end of a track - an extended fade, a concert recording applause, a snippet of indulgent band banter, or whatever - now is your chance to excise it. Whether you've ripped the track from CD or downloaded it, it can be topped and tailed in iTunes. Let's take, for example, The Beatles' "Good Morning, Good Morning", which opens with the crow of a cockerel. If you listened to the song and kept an eye on the iTunes status area, you'd see that the cockerel's moment of glory lasts a good two seconds, and the band don't start playing until the display reads "Elapsed time: 0.03".
To erase the offending bird, we first need to select the track in the Song List and select Get Info from the File menu. Under the Options panel in the box that pops up, there are boxes for the song's current Start Time (which, as you might expect, is 0:00) and Stop Time. Now we can simply highlight the start time and type a new value - in this example, 0:03 seconds. Then we can click OK and listen back to the song to see if the new setting is accurate enough. If not, we can go back into the Options pane and tweak the time - entering fractions of a second after a colon, if necessary (eg, 0:03:50).
Trimming the end works in just the same way. And whichever end you're changing, you're not harming the song file, only the way iTunes plays it, so none of this is permanent. If you felt bad about the cockerel, say, you could simply return to the Options panel and reinstate him.
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By Simon Dawson
