iTunes 9: Podcasts in playlist don't show up on iPod?

[JBridges]

I posted this on the Apple support forums, but thought I'd try asking here too. Just installed iTunes 9... went to update my iPod nano 3G... and find that while I still have my smart playlist of All Podcasts, which displays and plays just fine in Itunes, the playlist is empty on the iPod. All of the podcasts have copied over and are accessible through the Podcast menu, but the ability to put them in a playlist seems to have disappeared.

Does anyone else have this happen? Is this maybe a bug, of the iTunes team's idea of some kind of new "feature"? I've scoured all over to see if they have changed a setting, but I can't find anything, which is a shame, as my über-list of podcasts is by far my most used playlist on the iPod.

[Rolow]

I'm having the exact same problem on my 3GS. Hopefully some one here can help.

[JBridges]

Its small consolation that others seem to be having the same problem... but good inasmuch as I am glad to hear it's not just an outdated iPod nano issue and may be something they changed in iTunes 9, either by design or by an odd bug slipping through. It's annoying, but at least maybe we can have a fix if it's something that affects all iPod syncing.

[Code Monkey]

On my 4G nano, with my rules (just matching by album and playcount = 0), the podcast playlists are still working as expected for whatever that's worth to those experiencing problems.

[JBridges]

Whereas my podcast playlist uses only one rule: media type is podcast.

And with a bit more poking around, it's definitely not a bug. If you create a manual playlist and populate it with only podcasts, that playlist will not even show up as one you can sync if you manually choose which playlists. If you add a musical track, it will show up... but only the song will sync. So this definitely seems like some ill-conceived feature. (But why???)

[Rolow]

my smart playlist has two rules media type podcast and exclude video. My goal with my smart playlist was to have all my audio podcasts in order from oldest to newest for work. Before the smart playlist feature i used dumb playlists. So I tried a dumb playlist with itunes 9 and it won't sync either.

[Sparkee]

I think there is a few things happening here. On my 4G nano podcast smartplaylists will appear on it as long as they are not in a folder, so much for organization.

On my 1G touch it looks like any original podcast smart playlist that has either the match all rule or playcount is 0 does not show up. It could also be that these rely on other smartplaylists. I made a new iTunes 9 smartplaylist using both the match all and any rules which do transfer to both the nano and touch. They still will not show up in a folder on the nano though.

So far though it may be a pain the re-write my podcasts smartplaylists but with the new smarter ones in iTunes 9 I can eliminate half of the ones required. It would be nice to organize them into folders.

I have not noticed any issues with my music smartplaylists on either iPod and they are still organized into the folders on the nano. i would like to see the touch support playlist folder someday as well.

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by Sparkee

I think there is a few things happening here. On my 4G nano podcast smartplaylists will appear on it as long as they are not in a folder, so much for organization.

Mine on the 4G nano are organized into folders and work fine, in fact they're down two levels of folders. The folder may be contributing to what you're seeing, but it's not the problem in and of itself. Again, though, all I use is the album name to pull stuff in; I've experienced too many glitches with the iTunes media flags to bother with them on any iPod since they're redundant to other common metadata.

[Sparkee]

Interesting, all podcast smartplaylists will show on my nano till they are put into a folder in iTunes including the newly created ones I'm working on now. I may Restore it sometime this weekend to see if that helps if I can't get it working since it obviously should. I've been able to compress 2 smartlists into one by setting to match all, playcount is 0 then match any, album is podcast 1, album is podcast 2, ect...

I notice while rebuilding playlists there is not longer a rule for "Podcast is True/False" which also may be breaking other's playlists. I never use this rule so it may have been missing for awhile, "Genre is Podcasts" still works which I always found to be a better alternative.

Edit: I finally got a playlist folder to show up on the nano, I had to put a regular playlist in it with one song. Regular podcast playlists will not show up on the nano or my touch if it only contains podcasts. It will not even show in the playlist section in the Music tab of iTunes sync settings. It also appears as though they only sort by the artist name on the iPods.

[Code Monkey]

I believe I've figured it out: on the podcasts tab, there is now a playlist selection check box tree thingee like what has been under the music tab for a while. I noticed in my case that all of my podcast playlists happened to be automatically and correctly sussed out by the update process and put here as if they were special "podcast playlists".

So I did some tests. I made a list with some podcasts and some music, checked it off only under the music tab and there was the missing podcast items like people are describing in this thread. I checked it off under both the music tab and the podcast tab and both the music and podcasts showed up. Then I checked it off on only the podcast tab, and now the music items are missing.

From what I can see, regardless of what you put on the list, if you check it off only under the music tab, that's all that shows up on your iPod, if you check it off only under the podcast tab, that's all that shows up on your iPod, if you check it off under both tabs, everything shows up. I haven't tested it yet, but I assume identical behavior will exist across all iTunes media categories.

See if this what's behind your all's problems.

[JBridges]

Code Monkey, that does seem to be solution. From the Apple Support Discussion forums:

On the Podcast tab
1. Leave 'Sync Podcasts: checked
2. UNCHECK 'Automatically include...'
3. Check the appropriate playlists in 'Include Episodes from Playlists'

And things work again. Hallelujah.

[timbo81]

thats no good eiter, cause now most of my podcast dont show up under podcasts anymore. you have to check them all manually if you want to see them in the podcastmenu too.

this is broken.

ok, let me go into detail here.
i generally sync all my podcasts to the ipod. some of them only have the latest episode, some have a few and some have the whole archive on there.
now, for some shows i created smart playlists, cause that used to let you order them chronologicaly and also made it possible to listen to them after each other, things that arent possible from the podcast menu.

now i can have either or...

[WBird]

Thank you, Code Monkey, that fixed it for me. I still don't understand the logic of the settings, but at least it is working now as I want it to.

[timbo81]

great, got it working again. im from germany and my itunes is in the language of ze fatherland, so this might be a little hard to explain.
check sync podcast
check automaticly sync ALL episodes of THESE SELECTED PODCASTS

that way you get the playlist tree where all playlists are prechecked. but you have to manually check all shows that you want to show up in the podcast menu for them to show up if they dont have any episodes in any playlist.

that means another click for every podcast i add in the future

or a smart playlist that contains absolutely all podcasts, but that i have no other use for.

not the end of the world, but not as smart and easy as im used to from apple and itunes...

[snowdog99]

I just cured having everything missing from my Podcast smart playlist on my CF Mini by changing "Media kind is podcast" to "Genre is Podcast". It was formerly "Podcast it true" but that must have been changed by iTunes 9. The "Media kind" condition must not be recognized by some iPods.