Autofill does not completely fill Shuffle -- my solution

[pillsbur]

Hi,

My 1GB Shuffle will usually not be completely filled by the Autofill feature when filling from a smart playlist. The first time may work, but subsequent trips back to the Autofill station only result in the same songs being loaded as before, or else a set of songs that doesn't fill the Shuffle. Filling from the Library works correctly, but switching back to a smart playlist still fails.

Quitting and restarting iTunes seems to "clear" something, and after relaunching iTunes my Shuffle is filled properly with the smart playlist I selected.

YMMV.

Glenn

[shravis]

do you have the boxes checked that say "replace songs when autofilling" and "choose songs randomly"? If not, then everytime you hit autofill, it will keep your current songs and only add more tracks if there is space available, and in the exact order of the playlist you autofill from. If you check both of those boxes, then your shuffle playlist will start from scratch and now randomly choose as many songs that can fit. I hope this helps. I've never used a smart playlist for my shuffle, but I don't think it makes a difference. take care.

[pillsbur]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I have both the "replace" and "randomly" boxes selected, and that's why the problem is so frustrating -- I'm doing everything correctly as far as I know. You're right that the Autofill *should* reset itself each time the button is clicked, but many times it doesn't do that. The first sign of trouble is when the Autofill function doesn't choose enough songs to fill the Shuffle. Then, subsequent presses of the Autofill button do nothing to reset whatever internal randomized song list was created.

I've only seen this problem reported a few other places, but I've had it consistently since I got my Shuffle a few months ago.

Glenn

[shravis]

You seem to be doing everything right so I'm stumped too. I tested your situation by using autofill with a few different smart playlists, but they all worked out - they reset the playlist and selected random tracks. One thing to note is that my smart playlists are rather simple and only follow one to two rules. Maybe if yours are more complex they are confusing iTunes? I'm not sure. As for not choosing enough songs to fill the shuffle, maybe your more data/more songs slider is further than you'd like, preventing some songs from uploading.

One option you could try is to create a new playlist (not a smart one) and then drag the smart playlist's content into that list. Now select this playlist as the one to autofill from. This may help out by eleminating the rules of the smart playlist and simply creating just a list of songs. It's definitely only a temporary solution, but it may just work out. Keep in touch and good luck