At one time, this menu option affected only music files. As of iTunes 9, however, it consolidates all types of media files–at least, it does if you’re using the new iTunes Media folder structure. There’s a little gotcha in this menu item, though: if you want to keep your large video files on another drive, but choose the Organize Library menu item to copy some newly-added music into the iTunes Music folder, iTunes will also copy all of your video files. this is probably not what you want, given you went through the trouble of setting up another drive for those files.

Thankfully, there’s a workaround. iTunes 9 includes a consolidation feature on the contextual menu. Select all of the tracks you’d like to copy into the iTunes Music folder, Control-click on one of them, and select Consolidate Tracks from the contextual menu. used in this manner, iTunes will only consolidate the selected tracks.

With this option in the contextual menu, you can avoid the top-level consolidation option entirely, unless you want to merge everything together, of course. thanks to Mac OS X Hints reader sig eigei for this one.

Contextual consolidation in iTunes 9

Contextual consolidation in iTunes 9 is a post from: tzumii

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And that’s great news for those services which haven’t yet seen the rush of popularity that Netflix has enjoyed over the past several years. but Apple COO Tim Cook noted in an earnings call last year that iTunes movie rentals were a surprisingly strong part of the store and were helping drive Apple TV sales. People seem to like the idea of renting movies over iTunes, they just needed an incentive to do it more. This is it.

Sure, for a lot of people, a 28 day wait after waiting months for a movie to be released isn’t the end of the world. but a solid 30% of Netflix’s business is still people who rabidly want new releases when they come out. With Netflix no longer offering that option, they will turn elsewhere ? and I don’t mean buying these movies. if they’re opposed to piracy (which will go up as a result of this window if all the studios get on board), they’ll turn to one of Netflix’s rivals in rentals. And with these companies’ living room hardware getting upgrades this year (Xbox in talks to get ESPN content, Apple TV likely to see a major upgrade, etc), there could be very enticing options. Not to mention a certain new Apple device likely getting unveiled next week that will probably support movie rental playback as well.

I understand why Netflix felt the need to cut this deal: on one hand, Hollywood was strong-arming them in a futile attempt stop their own DVD sales bleed. on the other, they want to secure what they believe is their future: streaming. but they’ve given their rivals a real opportunity with this 28-day window. hopefully, one of them will take advantage of it.

[photo: flickr/snowkei]

Netflix Just Gave iTunes A Big Fat Kiss

Netflix Just Gave iTunes A Big Fat Kiss is a post from: tzumii

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