Here are the steps I used to get birdsongs from a CD to an iPod. They worked for me, but I'm not responsible if you follow these directions and cause any problems with your computer or iPod. I'm not even close to being a computer expert. I just bought an iPod and a CD and figured out how to do what I wanted. Don't try this if you don't feel comfortable with any of these steps.
- Buy an iPod.
- Buy a birdsong CD if you don’t already have one.
- Download iTunes and install it on your computer.
- Connect your iPod to your computer and register it.
- Set preferences.
- Import CD to iTunes – single song tracks as AAC compressed files and multi-song tracks as AIFF uncompressed files.
- Split all AIFF files and convert them to AAC files then delete AIFF files.
- Create Playlists.
- Correct typos.
- Synch iPod to iTunes.
- Backup your music library.
We bought a 4 GB iPod nano (Stokes East, and the MDC birds and insect CDs are taking up less than 1 GB). Don’t get an iPod Shuffle – it won’t let you save playlists (it will just randomly play the tracks). You’ll need a birdsong CD.
You can use any or all that you have, I’m starting with the Stokes Field Guide to Birdsongs, East. I’m planning to add Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs, West, and the Missouri Department of Conservation’s CDs for birds, frogs, and insects. The specific directions below are for the Stokes Field Guide to Birdsongs, East 3-CD set, but these instructions will work for any CD you own. Download iTunes from http://www.apple.com/itunes/
A version of Quicktime is part of the download. If you already have an earlier version of Quicktime on your computer (you probably do), go to Start – Control Panel – Add and Remove Programs and remove the current version of Quicktime from your computer. Before doing that, make sure that you exit from Quicktime if it is running in the background (If it is, there will be a blue Q on the status bar (bottom right of your monitor). Right-click the Q and select Exit.) Install iTunes and Quicktime. I saved the iTunes installer to my hard drive and then ran a virus check on that folder before I clicked on it to run the installer. After the virus program ran, I right-clicked and exited all programs including those running in the background (same as I had earlier exited Quicktime – right-click and choose exit for any that you can). Then either open the folder with the iTunes installer and double-click on the icon or Start – Run – select the iTunes installer. Connect the iPod to the computer.
Connect to the internet. Open iTunes. Plug the USB cable that came with the iPod into the iPod and into a USB port on your computer (don’t use a USB port on your keyboard, use one actually on the computer itself). You should see a message that new hardware has been found. You’ll be asked to register your iPod – go ahead and do that. It will ask you to give your iPod a name. iTunes will go to the iTunes store – you can click on the left panel in iTunes on Music (under the grouping of Library) to go to your computer instead of the iTunes store. (Unless you’re like me and once you are at the iTunes store are obsessed with downloading “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol for 99 cents). At some point when you have just installed iTunes, it will ask you if you want it to search your hard drive for any files that it can play. I selected no. Set preferences.
Select Preferences from the Edit drop-down menu. I left the defaults except for a couple. There are several tabs once you are in Preferences. Select Advanced. There are 3 sub-tabs: General, Importing, and Burning. The first option on the General sub-tab is the location for the iTunes Music Folder location. If you only have one hard drive on your computer, you probably should just leave it at the default of My Documents/My Music. We have a small C: drive (a partition, not a physical drive), so I created a folder named iPod on the D: drive where we have a lot more free space. Just click the Change button and navigate to whatever folder you want. Still on the Advanced tab, click the Importing sub-tab. The “On CD insert” option should be set to “Show CD.” Make sure “Import Using” is on AAC Encoder. Also on the Importing sub-tab: “Automatically retrieve CD track names from the internet” and “Create filenames with track number” options should both be checked. Uncheck “Play songs while importing or converting.” (If you really want to listen to the CD while it is downloading, you can leave this checked.) “Use error correction when reading audio CDs” should only be checked if you experience problems – I have it unchecked. Click OK to save your changes. Import the CDs to your hard drive.
Make sure you are still connected to the internet and put the CD in your CD drive. ITunes will automatically go to the Graceland CDDB and find the title of the CD and put bird names in place of track numbers. (You can do this on your computer if you aren’t connected to the internet, but you will have to manually type in all of the bird names to replace the track numbers.) You will see a list of birds appear with length of each track, artist, album and genre (These can all be edited later, if you want). All of the bird names will have a check mark to the left indicating to import that track. While most of the tracks have only a single bird species, some tracks have 2 species because a CD is limited to 99 tracks. You’ll want to separate those into different files. If you don’t, when paging through the list looking for Pine Siskin, you’ll have to remember that it’s the second bird on the Common Redpoll track. Go through and remove the check mark from each of the tracks that have more than 1 species. I made a list of each of those on the Stokes CDs and have the time where the track should be separated noted. At the bottom right of the iTunes window, there are two buttons: one is to import the CD
, the other ejects the CD 
. Click the Import CD button. In the top center of the iTunes window, you can watch the importing process. Also, each bird in the list will have an imported icon appear next to the check mark.
When those files have all been imported, you need to go back and change preferences. Earlier, you made sure “Import Using” was on AAC Encoder. AAC Encoder compresses the files so you don’t take up all of the room on the iPod. But since you are going to split the track and resave the file, you want to start with an uncompressed file for the tracks with two species. Go to Edit – Preferences – Advanced – Importing and change “Import Using” to AIFF Encoder. Click OK to save your changes.
You should still have the list of CD contents up on your screen. (If not click on Device – and the name of the CD on the left side of the screen.) Place a check mark next to all of the tracks that you removed the check mark from earlier because the track had two species in it. Click the Import CD button and the remaining tracks from the CD will be imported in an uncompressed file format.
Click the eject button (either on the botton right or next to Device - name of CD (on the left side of theiTunes window) and the CD will be ejected.
Now you have most of the tracks downloaded as compressed AAC files and the tracks with two birds per track saved as uncompressed AIFF files. You can disconnect from the internet now, if you’d like to.
Break the tracks with two species in half.Go to Edit – Preferences – Advanced – Importing and change “Import Using” to AAC Encoder. The following are my instructions for the Eurasian Collared Dove, White-Winged Dove on Stokes Field Guide to Birds Songs, East CD 2. You’ll need to do this for each track on each CD that has more than one species. If you look at my list of tracks that need to be split, you’ll see: "Eurasian Collared Dove and White-Winged Dove 0:00 – 0:21 - end." I’m going to break this in half at the 21st second of the track. Place your cursor to select that track (it’s the second track, unless they are in alphabetical order). Since it’s easy to remember the start time is 0:00 and hard to remember the stop time is 0:47:44, create the second half of the split first. Right-click and select Get Info. Go to the Options tab. Change the start time from 0:00 to 0:21 and leave the stop time where it is. Click OK. Click on Advanced – Convert Selection to AAC. (If this isn’t an option, you skipped a step: Go to Edit – Preferences – Advanced – Importing and change Import Using to AAC Encoder.) A new file with the same name will appear in the row below. Keep your cursor on the original AIFF track, Right-Click – Get Info – Options. You will see the start time at 0:21 and the stop time at 0:47:44. Change (in this order) the start time to 0:00 and the stop time to 0:21. Click OK. Click on Advanced – Convert Selection to AAC. Now you have 3 files each labeled Eurasian Collared Dove, White-winged Dove. In the time column, the first one is 0:47, the second is 0:26, and the third is 0:21. Delete the first (0:47 second long, uncompressed) file. A pop-up window will ask whether to just remove the file from iTunes or to put the file in the recycle bin. Put it in the recycle bin, you don’t need the uncompressed file once you have broken it into two pieces. Right-click the 0:21 file and select Get Info. Go to the Info tab. Next to name, you will see Eurasian Collared Dove, White-Winged Dove. Delete part of this, leaving only Eurasian Collared Dove. Then repeat those steps to change the 0:47 name from Eurasian Collared Dove, White-winged Dove to White-winged Dove. Repeat this step for each track that needs to be separated. If you’d like to play the tracks to be sure you have them named correctly, double-click the bird name. iTunes will play that track and then continue down the list. On the top left of the iTunes window, you will see buttons with double arrows pointing left and right
. These will jump backwards and forwards among the tracks. The center button toggles between play 
and pause / stop 
. In the center top of the iTunes window, you will see the name of the bird and a timeline as the song is playing. If you decide to put other CDs on your iPod that need to have the track broken into pieces, you can play the track and watch this timeline. This is how I decided where to break the tracks on the Stoke’s CD.
Create Playlists.All of the tracks are ready to put on your iPod, but it works best to create playlists so you can quickly find the songs you want. The same song can appear in multiple playlists. It is faster to search for specific birds if the tracks are in alphabetical order. Go to File –New Playlist. Name the playlist – it will show up in the Playlists listed in the left side of the iTunes window. There are several playlists that come with iTunes; playlists you create will be in alphabetical order below those. I created two playlists that cover all of the birds on the three CDs: StokesEasternSong (all of the songbirds) and StokesEasternOther (everything but songbirds). I also created a playlist that has all of the birds found in central Missouri during the spring. Create whatever playlists you’d like. Select Library – Music on the top left of the iTunes screen, (basically where you’ve been through most of these instructions), select any species you want in that playlist and drag it to the playlist (just like moving files in Windows). It will still be listed in the music library and you can drag it to more than one playlist. This doesn’t copy the file – there is still only one copy of the file, this is just a list of what files to play with each other. Clicking in the header rows changes the sort order. (For example, click in the cell containing “Name” in the top row of songs, the birds will be sorted alphabetically from A-Z; clicking again sorts from Z-A. Click in the cell containing “Album by Year” and the tracks will be sorted by album, with individual tracks sorted in the order in which they appear on the CD (provided that you kept the default preference to create file names with track number (found at Edit-Preferences-Advanced-Importing). Correct typos.
There are a few typos from the Graceland CDDB you may want to fix. You can edit the bird names, artist, album, and genre by selecting a track, right-clicking and selecting Get Info. You can also edit more than one at a time by selecting multiple tracks while holding down the shift key. The database brought in CD 3 with a typo in the CD name: Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern Region (Disc 3) had region misspelled. Clicking in the Album field header changes the sort order from Album, Album by Artist, Album by Year. When all of the tracks from CD 3 are together, click the first and shift-click the last to select all of the tracks from CD 3. Right-click and choose Get Info. Fix the typo under the Album Name. I also changed the CD name of Disc 1 to have a colon instead of a comma for sorting purposes. Each CD came in with a different genre selected. I changed the genre for all 3 of the CDs to Birds by selecting custom and then typing in Birds.
Load all of the playlists and music to your iPod.
You don’t need to be connected to the internet. Open iTunes if it isn’t already open. Have the USB cable plugged into a USB port on your computer (not the keyboard). Plug the other end into the iPod. The screen on the iPod will say “Do not disconnect” and on the left side of the iTunes window, the name you gave your iPod will appear under Device (the same place the CD name showed up earlier.iTunes should automatically copy all of the music in your iTunes library and all of the playlists you have created to your iPod. Leave your iPod connected long enough to charge the battery.
When you are ready to disconnect your iPod from the computer, click the eject button found next to the name of your iPod under Devices on the left side of the iTunes window. Close iTunes. On the status bar at the bottom right of your monitor is a green and gray icon (to check that you have located the correct icon, hold your mouse over it and the words "Safely Remove Hardware" will appear). Click this icon to be certain that your iPod has been disconnected before unplugging the USB cable.
Backup your music library. Always make a cd backup and / or keep all of your music files on your computer. Don’t figure you can erase files because they are on the iPod. If a file is removed from your iTunes library on your computer and you synch the iPod, any music files only on the iPod and not on the computer will disappear. (At least, that’s what I’ve heard, I didn’t try it to find out if it’s true.)