Will This Smartlist/Rating Trick Work?

[Stensvaag]

I am new to both the Ipod and MC9, and did search the new and old forums, but apologize if this has been asked and answered. I'm actually using Ephpod right now to transfer all of my music to the Ipod, but I have purchased MC9 and am using it to rip all of my CDs. Eventually I plan to use MC9 to handle all the Ipod transfers.

I will soon have the typical problem of having more ripped CDs than will fit on my Ipod (30GB). I wonder whether this trick will work:

1. Select all songs within MC9 (Select All) and use the Show Properties command to display the rating (currently ?) in the right-hand window. Set all the ratings to two stars.

2. Work through artists and tracks to find those songs that I will probably almost never (well, okay, will never) want to load to the Ipod. Change their settings to a rating of one star.

3. Keep doing Step 2 above until the two-star category will fit comfortably on the Ipod.

4. Create a Smartlist containing only two-star or better songs.

5. Set things up to automatically synch between the Ipod and the PC in MC9 using this Smartlist.

6. I can gradually assign higher rating numbers to may favorite tracks (in fact, some of them have already been given a 5), and can build smartlists based on them.

What do you experts think? The only down-side that I see is that I will have a fairly usely Playlist/Smartlist on the Ipod representing the one that I used to send all two-star or better tracks to the Ipod---i.e., a Playlist that contains every track on the Ipod.

Does this make sense? Do any of you have better ideas? This strikes me as perhaps the easiest way to filter out and never load to the Ipod albums and individual tracks that I really don't like and that I ripped only because I'm anal . . .

Thanks!

John-Mark

[ashawley]

That's a way to do it. It's a little more complex than I do it.

I simply have created a smartlist called "iPod Tunes" and I exclude certain genres from it (like "Holiday Tunes") and then I just go through the smartlist wizard and exclude certain artists. In some cases I want to exclude certain albums from an Artist's set of albums, in that case I leave the Artist on, but then in my Excluded Albums section I get rid of any albums I don't want.

Then I don't have to mess w/rating. Plus I like having complete albums on the iPod, so this works for me.

Doing a smartlist of Rating >2 or whatever works fine, just remember that as you add tunes to your library you'll need to manage the smartlist to keep it's size below the iPod's max capacity.

That's why I like going the Artist/Album route. It's just easy when I add a new Artist I can just go in and add someone to the excluded list and I'm done.

Oh, remember for any other smartlists that you put on your iPod, make sure that all start w/Playlist="ipod Tunes" (or whatever you named your master list). That way you'll never go over the capacity.

Adam

[Stensvaag]

Thanks for the excellent advice. It occurs to me that your approach has the following additional value: if I maintain a complete set of all songs on both a home and office computer, but base my iPod-tune list on ratings, rather than album and artist names, I need to keep the two MC9 databases consistent. Thus, if I make several artists and/or their albums simply one-star on my office computer, my home computer will still think they are two-star, and thus not to be excluded. That would be a mess!

This brings up two related issues:

1. Is there a simple way to transfer the database or index file for MC9 (or whatever it is called) from a home to an office computer and vice versa? Unforunately, all my MP3s are on the F drive at my office and the H drive at home.

2. And is there an easy way to transfer Smartlists from the home to the office computer and vice versa?

I sure appreciate the wisdom of you old-timers . . .