I like new years

I have nothing of special interest to say about the end of one year and the start of another other than to say that I quite like the calendar ticking over that way. Feels like a fresh start, whether you deserve it or not.

Having been through all of my photos and archived and tagged them for future reminiscing a couple of weeks ago, the one last task ahead before work restarts was my music. Initial poor decision making has left me with a music collection where half is in MP3 format and the other half in AAC. AAC is a more efficient file format, it takes up a little less space on your hard-drive, but as I found out when I tried to do some editing a couple of years ago using Windows Movie Maker, AAC format music just will not comply. Try to lay a soundtrack or backing music down for a video and you will find yourself with only the MP3s to choose from. Generally this isn't a problem except that naturally the track you want to put down is one of the AAC format files.

So I've been promising myself for two and a half years (not a word... grrrr) that I would go into iTunes and convert all the AAC files into MP3s on the off chance that I do indeed want to use them for something some day. It's holidays and I set a task for myself, so here I find myself spending new year's day not nursing a hangover but nursing a file transformation procedure that has so far consumed about 6 hours of the day. I'm sure there's an easier way to do this but right now I'm having to go through every single folder of music and see if it's AAC or MP3 then locate it in iTunes, convert the file formats, delete the original AACs in favour of my shiny new MP3s then start the process all over again with the next album or song. Sigh... I should have been doing this years ago...