various and sundry iPod file management/general questions

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I do love my iPod, but I am starting to realize that I should take advantage of the fact that it may^H^H^H is smarter than me. Thus, I have questions which will seem painfully newbie-esque:

1. What's the deal with smart playlists on an iPod? I want to make one which culls (1) random songs added in the past few days and (2) songs rated *** or better, and I want said list to be constantly updating itself (basically, a more refined version of Shuffle). I can put smart playlists on the iPod, but the songs never swap out for new stuff. Is this even possible? The only way I've found to refresh the playlists is to clear all the tracks from it in iTunes (at which point it randomly refreshes) - is this my only option? Is there a way to clear a playlist from the iPod (i.e., sitting at work unconnected to iTunes)?

1a. I was under the impression that marking the playlist as "live updating" would fix this, but it hasn't. Does live updating only work when you have the iPod set to automatically sync? Mine's set to manual sync and I don't want to delete everything just to get this to work.

2. Audiobooks: I have a few as mp3s, but I've read that the only way to take advantage of the iPod's audiobook capabilities is to designate them as such. I have no idea how to do this; the Apple support forums said something about renaming the file to m4b, but as mine are all mp3s that doesn't do much.

3. Is there an intelligent way to manage yr playlists? Right now I just have a gigantic roll of albums - is it possible to subdivide them so that I don't have to scroll through all my stuff to get to Vitalic?

4. iTunes question: Is it possible to join mp3 tracks together in order to get gapless playback? I know you can do it when you import CDs and it makes sense that you'd be able to do it to mp3 files, but I haven't found a way yet.

Any help would be enormously appreciated. My iPod is a Photo and I'm running it through Windows, if that's any help for any reason.

― James.Cobo (jamescobo), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

maybe for 1) try dragging the smart playlist from your itunes back on to the ipod logo whenever you connect it to your computer?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:18 (twenty years ago)

to get the smart playlist to refresh, click live updating in the smart playlist window, it will not delete your library!

― cutty (mcutt), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:18 (twenty years ago)

4) try selecting advanced -> join tracks

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:19 (twenty years ago)

3) i don't understand. are all your albums ALSO playlists?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:19 (twenty years ago)

Check out http://www.smartplaylists.com/ before proceeding.

You didn't specify if you were on Windows or Mac OS X. If you are on OS X, go directly to http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/index.php

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:20 (twenty years ago)

(psst he did! he's on windows!)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:22 (twenty years ago)

here's a question: sometimes when I'm working on a certain playlist (listening to it, updating it etc.) I'd like to be able to have the icon for it in a separate panel from itunes, so that I can add things from my library w.out all the fiddly sidebar scrolling - is there any way to achieve this or is it too idiosyncratic a desire?

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:46 (twenty years ago)

I have often been annoyed by that myself.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 11 March 2005 20:48 (twenty years ago)

cozen if you used Folder Player that would be the main way to do it. yr playlists are just folders in the Finder. when you add something to one of those folders, voila, yr playlist is updated. so rather than dragging stuff onto a little name way down in a scrolling sidebar, you can size/place yr folder(/playlist) windows however and wherever you like. Of course it has zero iTunes integration so Ed I'm not really a heretic, more of a satanist.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 11 March 2005 21:18 (twenty years ago)

just double-click the playlist icon and it becomes a new window! don't listen to tracer!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

Cool, thanks for the help yawl.

"maybe for 1) try dragging the smart playlist from your itunes back on to the ipod logo whenever you connect it to your computer?"

This works - thanks.

"4) try selecting advanced -> join tracks"

This doesn't seem to work with mp3 files. Are there any good freeware programs for joining mp3s?

"3) i don't understand. are all your albums ALSO playlists?"

Yeah - I download the tracks for an album, make the playlist in iTunes, and drag it to the iPod. Is this stupid? I am more than willing to be lectured in Effective iPod Theory.

― James.Cobo (jamescobo), Friday, 11 March 2005 23:10 (twenty years ago)

you can skip the second step--use the "browse" function in your library and just drag the artist or album title from there (or don't use browse, just select the files) to your ipod. no need to make a new playlist!

(HOWEVER, there could be some use for it if you want to solve your problem of not scrolling down to find vitalic--make an ok cowboy playlist and rename it "a vitalic album" so it stays at the top of your playlists list, and access it that way!)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 23:12 (twenty years ago)

i think "join" might only work if you ripped the disc yourself, actually.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 11 March 2005 23:13 (twenty years ago)

"Join" only works on CDs (that are sorted by number). It's kinda sad.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 11 March 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

make an ok cowboy playlist and rename it "a vitalic album" so it stays at the top of your playlists list, and access it that way!)

back to the days of adding aliases to yr apple meni called "_01 Apps" gah

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 11 March 2005 23:32 (twenty years ago)

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