As great a part as music plays in our lives, it deserves a little attention toward optimizing that experience.  I have put a lot of time and effort into doing just that.  I’m not an audiophile, so you won’t hear a discussion of lossless codecs versus mp3 or find recommendations for expensive sound systems here.  Instead, the focus of this article is mastering your mp3 experience on your portable device, computer, and home system.

We’ll kick this discussion off by talking about the software we use to master our mp3’s.  There has probably been more heat than light in the debates over the comparative virtues of iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Center, MediaMonkey, Songbird, and Zune.  That is no surprise.  Remember, music is a medium with a nearly directly emotional bond to the listener.  No doubt, this post will also have some emotional bias, that can’t be helped.  I am attempting, however, to give the reader the information needed to develop their personal plan for digital music mastery.  My focus here is on the many choices available to users of the Windows OS.

Before we introduce our competitors, let us decide what tasks must be successfully accomplished to master our digital music.  Digital music consists of a file that must be stored, found, and then streamed or played to be enjoyed.  A collection of any size becomes a royal pain to keep straight.  Start out on the right foot and the rest of your music-enjoying life will be relatively easy.  Typically music is stored in an Artist-Album-Song directory tree.  Variance from this puts one at odds with some of the software we’ll be using to enjoy the music we organized and stored.  Better software, like iTunes, will take care of this automatically if the user preferences are set to do so.  Some, like Songbird, even let the user choose alternate arrangements and then automatically sort the media.  Unless you want to maintain this directory structure manually, good music software will handle this for you.

Another import part of organizing music is the generation and sharing of playlists.  Every contender allows the user to drag a song, selection of songs, an album, or selection of albums to a playlist to build it.  What separates the best from the rest of the pack is putting a little something extra into the mix (pun intended).  Easy organization and helpful playlist generation are two of the most important features I look for in my choice of music software.

The third feature that carries massive weight with me is what the player looks like when music is playing.  I’m looking for a fullscreen, visually appealing display and a mini-display that allows me to manage my “now playing” music without overwhelming the other windows I may be working with at the time.

A major feature that most of us have to consider is how we sync our playlists with our portable device.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to drag and drop the song folders from one’s computer to one’s Android device, but what about playlists and tracking how often one listens to a specific track?  If you have an Apple device, iTunes is pretty much the way of the non-rebel.

Moving on to the second tier of features (according to my priorities) is discovery.  Traditionally, last.fm, Pandora, and Amazon have been the channels of “if you like this song or artist, you might want to listen to this other song or artist.”  Some players tie into those while others have come up with their own unique way of helping us find (and them sell) artists to whom we might not otherwise be exposed.  Closely, allied with discovery is buying new music.  iTunes and the Microsoft duo, Zune and Windows Media Player, have their own store, while others tie into outside services in a variety of ways.  The most important criteria for judging stores is the size of their selection, freedom from the restrictions of DRM, and easy secure purchases.

I’m not going to give much attention to sharing or streaming because I don’t really care that much about them.

My first player was the Windows Media Player.  In general WMP, is not that impressive.  However, if you want to share your media with other units on your home network, it allows the user to easily configure streaming.  Because of this, I can listen to music (and even watch Recorded TV) on my PS3.  But, as I already mentioned, that isn’t that important to me.  It does auto-organize your media.  Like iTunes and Zune, playlists are stored in a format not used by other players you may have on your computer.  So if you wanted to make playlists in WMP and then listen to them in MediaMonkey there is no direct way of doing this.  The visualization options are lackluster and antiquated.  The mini-display is fine.  However, whatever library and playlists you create in WMP, you can play through Windows Media Center which is one of the most awesome displays available and 7MC can easily be configured to play music concurrently with a slideshow of pictures of your own choosing.  While WMP does have a Media Guide, it isn’t as integrated into the player as one might like.  If you buy your MP3’s through Amazon, you probably don’t care about that.  If you have an Apple device, it cannot be directly synchronized using WMP.  It can be used to sync music with most MP3 players and Android devices but from what I can see it only does one playlist at a time, which is a deficiency.

iTunes rode the back of the iPod to prominence.  Want music on your iPod?  Gotta have iTunes.  Thanks to competition from companies like Amazon, iTunes finally moved away from the sale of their DRM-burdened music.  The user interface for their store is slick and the experience is seamlessly integrated into iTunes.  I really appreciate the iTunes sidebar.   Want to have music recommended (or pitched) as you listen?  Display the sidebar for recommendations.  Just want to enjoy the music you already have?  Hide the sidebar.  For a long time, iTunes owned the display space with their beautiful coverflow full screen display of album art.  iTunes wins the very important category of playlist generation.  Apple’s Genius is genius.  Like Pandora, you pick a song and it will generate a list of songs that sound like the one you picked.  You can save and sync a Genius playlist, too.  The Genius Mix is more of a genre-based mix.  You can sync it to an Apple device but you can’t export it from the iTunes device.  Both versions of Genius result in my listening to my own songs that I might otherwise just ignore.  iTunes DJ can be used as a way to listen to unexpected music and let friends use their Apple portable devices to add songs or reorder the playlist.  iTunes smart playlists make it easy to generate lists of only holiday music that automatically update as your library grows.  Syncing offers a lot of powerful options, but only works with Apple portable devices.  This has been the buggiest of the iTunes feature in my experience.  However, even if syncing needs a little help from an app like iSyncr on one’s Android, it’s strong showings in organization and display coupled with its killer playlist generation make it  a strong contender for everyone.

If you are into picking your platform because their approach is philosophically pure, you might like Songbird.  It is open source, has several plug-ins, and is easily hackable if one is into that.  It certainly lacks the polish the other platforms offer, however.  Recently (anyone know when this happened), Songbird added the ability to handle video as well as audio media.  One of the things I like about Songbird is that it allows the user to choose the structure of the directory tree for auto-organization.  If one happens to own a Nexus One or Droid, Songbird is already integrated into those phones (or several others including these).  Syncing can be performed on these devices at the touch of a button.  7Digital Music is the integrated media store.  If you started out on iTunes and want to switch to Songbird, the library, including playlists, can be imported at startup.  Without additional addins, Songbird does not support ripping a CD into mp3’s.  Songbird allows the user to automatically import and export playlists and songs from iTunes.  This is a nice feature for families with some Apple and other non-Apple users.  Songbird only shares with iTunes however.  The mashTape display is interesting if you are researching the music you are listening to but Songbird offers nothing in the way of full screen displays suited to viewing on TV during a party.  Songbird has taken great strides forward with the release of this latest version.  My only complaints have to do with the display and the fact that I can’t export my playlists anywhere but to iTunes.

MediaMonky can import the library and playback history of WMP or iTunes.  My favorite feature is that music is purchased through Amazon.  It offers a little nicer graphical user interface (GUI) than Songbird in my opinion.  The library view is on a par with iTunes.  However, like Songbird, it offers nothing to compare with iTune’s coverflow.  It does offer animated visualizations.  If you have an Android device, MediaMonkey handles syncing with that device effortlessly.  Like iTunes with an Apple device, it can be configured to sync automatically.  A serious con is that if you want MediaMonkey to auto-organize your library you’ll have to pay for their premium version.  On the plus side, it can be configured to embed the album art as metadata on the song file.  This means that whatever player you use the album art will be there with that song.  The metadata editor is on a par with iTunes.  I think MediaMonkey is the only player that plays WMA protected music other than WMP.  To be petty, the MediaMonkey logo is my favorite.

Until recently, I was unaware that the Zune desktop client could be used without a Zune portable device.  While Zune doesn’t integrate with 7MC like the Windows Media Player nor can it be used to configure streaming, as a player it is everything that WMP should have been but wasn’t it.  Microsoft has everything it needs to make a world beating music package.  It just needs to put Zune’s peanut butter with WMP’s chocolate.  The Zune GUI offers multiple default views.  ‘Quick Play’ has three sections.  Favorites, New , and History each sport thumbnails as shortcuts to get us playing on our music more quickly.  None of the other players offer a similar feature.  The  ‘Collections’ is a more text based view.  The three columns look different depending on whether the user selects ‘Artists’, ‘Genre’, ‘Albums’, or ‘Playlists.’  Manually building playlists in Zune is by far the most convenient.  Drag anything you want to the playlist icon and pick the playlist from the dropdown menu.  The Zune Smart Playlist found at the bottom of the ‘Quick Play’ view is similar to the iTunes Genius Playlist.  The Marketplace is very attractive, but I have never used it to purchase music.  The Zune MarketPlace has reportedly moved to DRM-free MP3 from the Zune DRM WMA files which were distinct from the WMP DRM’d WMA files.  The Zune MarketPlace and XBox Live both offer their shopping using Microsoft Points.  The price works out to be about $0.99 US.  Ridiculous way to shop.  Still, I’m not above window shopping there and buying from Amazon.  While Zune can keep new CD rips or purchases organized it does not offer an easy way to make your old collection consistent with your new one.  Zune playlists are pretty much useless to those who don’t dwell in the Zune ecosystem.  The ZPL files cannot even be played by WMP.  Worse ZPL’s cannot be exported to a more universal format.  In short Zune falls a bit short in the areas of organization, shopping, syncing, and exporting to other players.

Where the Zune just beats the pants off of every other competitor is the Zune full display.  Click on the tiny now playing album icon at the bottom of the screen and behold the wonder.  If it was made by Apple, Steve Jobs would call it magical.  If there is no extra data to go with a song, the album art is displayed over a wall of album covers from my library.  But for many artists, we are treated to fan art as the music plays.  Truly beautiful.  Zune makes me want  to listen to music just so I can enjoy this display.  It starts with Mixview.  The user can also click on the Mixview icon to see the Mixview at any time.  Art spins out of the now playing album cover depicting related artists and music.  At any point, click the ‘i’ icon to go to the Zune MarketPlace or the play icon to listen to a sample.    Mesmerizing.  Zune is by far the prettiest contestant.

The Winamp Media Player is a favorite of geeks.  With its new Android app it can be used to wirelessly sync with Android phones also.  That puts Winamp at the lead in the syncing non-Apple devices category.  Winamp can be used to sync both USB and iPod devices.  Like Songbird, Winamp uses the 7digital store.  The Winamp blog describes Winamp this way, “It’s how you listen, watch and manage music, video, podcasts and internet radio on your desktop and devices. Winamp is for people who like to customize, tinker and tweak: offering the widest range of extensions, skins, and services to add to your experience.”  Like WMP, Winamp can be configured to stream easily to major game consoles.  Watch the defaults on display as Winamp will try to change your web search default away from Google or Bing and sign you up for a “free” subscription.  That’s the kind of trickery that makes me leary of recommending this player to the average consumer.  On the plus side, Winamp sponsors TWIT.TV.  To my knowledge they alone use the M3U playlist format.  Who cares?  Their playlist can be enjoyed on any of the players we just reviewed.

I realize most of my readers fall into the tech savvy group that might find Winamp or Songbird appealing.  Personally, I think that has more to do with our hobby than it does with enjoying our music.

iTunes solidly contends in every criteria I care about.  It organizes our media well and provides the best playlist management.  It looks pretty good while I’m listening to my music as well.  It has the best overall shopping experience and is second only to the Zune in directly exploring new music.  It scrobbles to last.fm which is my primary discovery tool anyway.  If you have an Apple device, syncing can be as simple or customized as you choose.  If you have an Android device, the iSyncr app makes it nearly as easy to sync your Android with iTunes as your iPod.  It just requires an extra click outside of iTunes.  The app is cheap and offers a wireless option as an upgrade.  If I could have only one player, iTunes would be it.

iTunes would also be my recommendation to the average non-geek music lover.  Fortunately, I’m not stuck with only one player.  I appreciate that I can right-click on an iTunes playlist and export it to my music library as an M3U.  That means I can then use that playlist in any other player.  When I want to dress my iTunes library up a bit, I export my playlists and watch them in Zune on my PC or 7MC on my home theater PC (HTPC).  Unless all your friends have iPhones to join in with editing the party mix, I’d play my iTunes music in Zune with that awesome display keeping the big screen interesting during a party.  I already have the playlists exported to M3U so that when I finish watching TV on my 7MC, I can quickly click over to music and do a little work before bed.

All of these players have merits and I enjoy messing around with them, but in the end there can be only one winner.  For me, that is iTunes.  If you disagree, don’t use the comments to tell me I’m an idiot.  Use the comments to tell me why I’m an idiot.

What’s not to like? iTunes once again poses an issue.  Recently syncing the iPad to iTunes we experienced having all of my contacts merged with all of Joy’s contacts in her contact list (but not mine).  We had synchronized her iPad on this same iTunes several times without incident.  Then . . .

You’ve already heard me whine about iTunes shortcomings in the past so I won’t go into that here.  It amazes me that with all of their peripherals riding on the back of iTunes, Apple can’t put a little more effort into making iTunes perform.  The good news is that, under Advanced, there is an option to convert videos into an i-Pad/Pod/Phone/Touch compatible format for syncing.  So folks, back up those contacts and proceed with care.

1 – Produce a Video
The preferred format is an mp4 container with the AVC/H.264 video codec (mpg with the mpeg2 codec is second choice) and MP3 or AAC (needed for surround sound) audio codec.  This minimizes losses in the video conversions that will be done by either your video host or yourself.  The preferred resolution is 1920×1080 (1080p) or 1280×720, but not greater than the resolution of the raw footage used to produce the video.  Apple TV can display H.264 video, up to 5mbps, 1280×720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. Apple TV supports AAC-LC audio up to 320 Kbps. The gating factors for video are bit rate and frame rate.

We’ll go into frame rates below, but minimize changes from the frame rate of your source video.  There is no point (in fact there are losses) in increasing the fps from 15 to 30 if the original footage was at 15 fps.  While the bitrate for audio can go as high as 48 kHz, YouTube prefers 44.1 kHz.

iTunes only accepts .m4a, .mp3, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, and .pdf so the fewer steps to mp4 the better.  The iPod/iPhone/iTouch support 640×480 while the Apple TV supports 1280×720.

2A – With An External Video Host
This means that you show your YouTube, Vimeo, blip.tv, or metacafe video embedded on your website.  It is easy and low risk.  Although typically there will be some host branding, the players tend to be quite attractive.  It also opens your show up to a broader audience that may be searching for videos specifically on those sites.

Upload the video from step one to the video host (YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.TV)

Now, we’re going to juggle two browser windows.  I find this easier (alt-tab) than switching between tabs.  In a new window create a new blog post.

In the old window, customize and copy the embed code from the video host.  Be sure the width of the video will fit comfortably in the space available in your blog.

Alt-tab back to the new window and paste the embed code into the blog post.

If you can access your mp4 or m4v source file on the host site copy the link to that file.  We’ll refer to this as the source video URL.  YouTube has a button to download your mp4 but does not provide a URL.  (It can be had using a tool like Video DownloadHelper but that is beyond the scope of this post.)  blip.tv does provide a link to the mp4 file.

If you can’t access your source file url on the host site upload the file to your blog’s media library.  At the WordPress dashboard go to Media – Add Media to upload the file.

Below your embed code create a hyperlink to download the source video file using its url.  Save the draft.  This generates an enclosure for the source code in the hyperlink.  The enclosure has the URL of the file that the RSS feed passes on to iTunes and other feed readers.  Your audience also has the option to download the file for later use or viewing on an alternative platform.

2B – Self Hosting
Self hosting means that you will control where your files are stored and how they are presented.  After you have produced your video, upload it to your server.  (Wait till after, because it is really hard to upload a video that doesn’t exist, right?)  Upload the file to your blog’s media library.  At the WordPress dashboard go to Media – Add Media to upload the file.

Next go to Media in the dashboard to open the media library.  Select your new video and click ‘edit’.  Copy the link to that file.

When editing one’s post, one can simply scroll down to the custom fields, select enclosure as the custom field name, and paste the URL as the custom field value.  Click the ‘Update’ button.  In this way there is no direct link in the post but iTunes will still provide the source video to subscribers.

3 – Publish

When you post your blog, your RSS2 feed will now include the media in the enclosure.  The blog title will be the podcast title in iTunes.  The video title will be the title of the specific episode.  iTunes captures a screen from the first frame of the video and uses that as a thumbnail.  The blog description will be the podcast description.  The blog post text will be the episode description.

iTunes appears to handle only the first enclosure if there is more than one enclosure per post (to provide both an iPod and HD version, for example).  My intention is to put the iPod version as the first enclosure so that iTunes subscribers can sync the show to their iPods.  blip.tv appears to maintain my 1280×720 resolution (a limitation of my source video) so subscribers who go to the web site can see it in HD.

I don’t know if I can add the podcast image and other metadata  after I register with iTunes or will need to use a plug-in in advance.  Their guidelines only state that one can manually set the language, category, and whether or not the content is explicit.  If not, the image can be added using the Podcast Channels plug-in in WordPress.  The podPress plug-in doesn’t seem to offer additional functionality to Podcast Channels.

To see how your feed looks in iTunes, go to the Advanced menu and select Add Podcast Feed and paste in your feed URL.  If all is well, your podcast should appear in your library.  If not you may want to visit Apple’s itunes specs.

4 – Tweak It
There is little uniformity in the way that your audience receives your video.  Some will watch on a Zune others on an iTouch.  Some will watch it in their browsers others will subscribe through iTunes.  Some will be on a Mac using Safari and others on a PC using Internet Explorer.  Some users have flash enabled and others don’t.  Plus the very language we use, HTML, to create our blog or website is changing.

Let’s assume that our mission is to reach the broadest audience we can as beautifully as we can.  That means that we will need at least four versions of every video.

• Our HD source video (see Step 1).  This is optimal for YouTube and other HD hosts.  It will also allow HD viewing for Macs, Apple TV, and viewers using the Chrome browser without flash.  Those on PCs without flash can download this for HD viewing.  I use the Apple TV upper limit described above.  Apple TV may only be a small part of the audience, but very few viewers of a vodcast will use a screen larger than 32″ so who will see the difference?  Besides that, it is as good as my camera video anyway.

• For the iPod-iPad-iPhone-iTouch audience, as well as SD for Macs, Apple TV, and viewers using the Chrome browser without flash:  The mp4 container with an AVC/H.264 video codec and mp3 or AAC audio codec with a bitrate up to 1500 kbps, a resolution of 640×480, and max frame rate of 30 frames per second.  This is the one that goes in our post’s first enclosure.

• For the flash-capable browser set, we’ll need the flv container.  One may even want an HD and an SD flash video option.  SD is better for bandwidth and HD is prettier when bandwidth is not an issue for your viewer.  Maybe I would go with HD if I could only choose one because most folks have high speed connections.  On the other hand people aren’t very patient about waiting for their video to load.  I think I’ll stick with 720×480.

• For the non-flash users who have Firefox and Opera browsers, we need the ogv container with the Theora video codec and Vorbis audio codec.  I wish all browsers supported Ogg because it is open source and open format with none of the H.264 licensing issues.  I also wish for world peace.

It probably goes without saying but generate each of those files directly from the HD source video, not from one of the other formats, to minimize quality losses.

This raises the issue of how to present these choices.  The four videos above fall into two categories, flash and HTML5 (non-flash).  When someone goes to view your vlog, you want them to see your video, not have to hunt for it.  This can be done by starting with the HTML5 video, which I believe is clearly the wave of the future, and degrading to a flash player.  Or it could be done by starting with the flash player, in wide use today, and degrading to the HTML5 video.  Since today is today, I have opted to default to flash and degrade to HTML5.  Also, HTML5 does not inherently include the ability to bring the video to full screen, something I like about flash.

If you are not hosting your own video, you will place your SD mp4 in the first enclosure as discussed above.  It must, therefore, be the first of any hyperlinks.  Remember iTunes only grabs the first enclosure so it should be the one folks can sync with their handhelds.  But also provide links to the other formats to offer maximum flexibility.  The biggest audience goes straight to the flash player.  Everyone else is only one click away from viewing the video.

Now, here is the special advantage of hosting your own video.  Normally, within your java script there is a link to get a flash player that only appears if the viewer does not have access to flash.  Simply replace that sentence and its hyperlink with links to the other videos.  Now, instead of an error message to the non-flashers, links magically appear allowing them to watch the video in one click.  Check out my post on this for the details.  That post also shows how to put a poster of the video behind the links so that your post page still has visual appeal.  It means that the default flashers just click on the play button and the others just click on their appropriate link.  Easy for everybody.

Well, this is the easy part. Being creative? That’s the challenge. Feel free to share links to your vlogs in the comments.