A Tip for Syncing With a Library Larger Than iPod

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craz

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I don't get it, wouldn't it be easier to just make a playlist called for iPod, and put music in there?
 
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Yes, you can do that if you want to manage the content of the playlist manually. This is fine for stuff that you always want on your iPod.

The Smart Playlists, however, can be a better idea if you want to keep the music fresh on your iPod without having to put too much effort into fussing with it.

For example, with a manual playlist, if you add a new album to your library and want it on your iPod, you have to take the extra step of adding that to your "iPod Playlist" after you've imported it into your library. On the other hand, if you sync a "Recently Added" Smart Playlist to your iPod, then all new tracks that you add to your iTunes library will automatically appear on your iPod while they're within the timeframe of that particular playlist. You can then combine that with a "Top Rated" type of playlist to keep those tracks on your iPod that you actually like... After a couple of weeks, the recently added tracks drop off the playlist, but those that you've given high ratings to stay on the iPod,s since they're included in another playlist.

For people with a large music library who like to rotate their iPod's content on a fairly regular basis, this beats manually messing around with standard playlists by far.

On the other hand, if you simply listen to the same music most of the time and are not overly concerned about changing it out very often, a standard playlist is still the simplest solution.
 

wokeupsleeping

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Need some help

Okay, I think I understand that most people are using some sort of smart playlist to manage their music in iTunes rather than their master playlist. But what about those of us who want to use their master playlist? It seems like a simple meter to show me how much music is going to sync compared to how much space is available on my iPod would solve everyone's problem. I have an 80gb iPod and well over 80gb of music. It drives me nuts every time I add new music to my library, I have to guess how much I need to uncheck to get all the new stuff on my iPod. Isn't there an easier way?
 
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Smart Playlists are the best and easiest way, and you can base the Smart Playlist on any number of different criteria that should allow you to build a reasonably dynamic collection.

Keep in mind also that using checkmarks will prevent any UNchecked music from playing back in iTunes itself unless you specifically select those tracks.

However, if you really need to use checkmarks to manage your library, then you can still get an idea of how much music is checked by using a Smart Playlist. Just create an all-inclusive Smart Playlist (critera like "Name is not <blank>" or "Playlist is MUSIC" works well for this), and then choose to include only checked items. Anything you UNcheck will be excluded from this playlist, and of course you can see the size of the playlist down at the bottom of the iTunes window.
 

Revilo

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What I do is-
- 1st off leave all the songs checked and the option under the music tab to sync checked songs unchecked.
-Make smart playlists of most of the major genres limited to 500 mb for each genre and is random. This playlist gets synched to ipod.
-Make a regular playlist called "Featured" that I can add anything I want such as a random album that I might be in the mood for. this playlist gets synced to ipod
-Make regular playlists of my favorite songs from my favorite major bands (Zeppelin, Floyd, Who) that always gets synced.

-I then leave room (about 5GB) for any random playlists I might want to create.

-Finally I make a smart playlist called Master Ipod that contains all of the playlists (smart and regular) from above. This Master Ipod is NOT synced to ipod. This way at anytime I can click on this list without Ipod connected and look at the bottom to see how much space has been used by all the playlists I have synced.
 

indyvipers

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A simple solution.....

Why can't Apple add another column next to the column you check/uncheck songs?

This second column of checked/unchecked boxes would be for which songs are synced to your Ipod thus eliminating this incredibly huge hassle. Is this Apples way of making us go out and by larger/newer iPods?

With the second column for checking/unchecking songs to be synced with your iPod you would have control of what music is checked for your Itunes library and which songs are checked to be synced with your Ipod.

Seems like a simple solution to me.....
 

makeshiftsilo

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a unique problem

Hi, I'm new to this forum and have been scouring the internet for a simple solution to my ipod problem:

I have a 160gb ipod classic with 125 gb of music on it, a portion of my 170gb music collection. Everything was going fine until recently when my ipod, for some unexplained reason (and I'm not the only one for this to have happen to it seems) all the artwork became mismatched with the wrong covers showing up for the wrong albums which is really frustrating to look at. I do let itunes manage my folders but don't synch mainly becase my library is too big. It took me a loooooong time when i first got my ipod to go through my 27,000 songs and pull out the 19,000 i wanted on my ipod. Since the art is intact in Itunes, one way to solve my problem is to manually delete each album on my ipod and and drag it onto the ipod which i tested and this does work, but since my ipod collection is a specific slice of my itunes library, I would love for a way to somehow create a file or playlist of my ipod songs that I can open in itunes and filter my itunes library to match what's on my ipod and then just drag everything over. I'm not concerned about metadata as I lost all that when my internal hard drive crashed. Does anyone have any suggestions, the only thing I was thinking of is to use one of the programs that lets you copy your ipod to your computer and create an xml file of my ipod library, but can anyone help me out or had this problem before?
 

Tim3167

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This may be covered but I wanted to offer my solution.

I have about a 75gb library and was using a 80gb 5.5g until I bough a 16GB Touch.

On the 80gb I listened to music fed to me by a series of smart playlists based on ratings, date addded, and last listened to all to create an out the door playlist of 150 songs that was meant to rotate through my library. I really love this method as it is weighed towards the songs I like more, but also sprinkles in fresher and more obscure oddities from my library.

When I bought the Touch, I had a quandry. Live updating was essential to me to pull new songs in as I listened. With live updating though, my entire library would have to be on the Ipod the way I had the playlist built.

What I did was create a series of smart playlists based on my previous logic but gave these "Pool" playlists a finite number of tracks substantially larger than any of my "Feed" playlists that would pull from it. I combined all the these "pool" playlists with individual logic into a master smart pool that would be about 7 gb.

I then created a standard playlist and titled it dumb pool. I then replicated all the feeder playlists with logic and had one of the conditions be "Is In Dumb Pool" (which is checked to sync to Touch).

Now when I sync my Touch, I simply delete all tracks from "Dumb Pool" then add all tracks from "Smart Pool" back into "Dumb Pool", then sync.

This way I have a sampling of my library that gives me enough to enable some Live Updating if I'm going to be away from home for awhile. It really isn't as complicated as it sounds and is pretty easy when syncing.
 

Dean100

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Ok, This is just crazy. There must be a simple way to do this. I am a relatively new Itunes user and I must say that for as long as Itunes has been out, you would think that it would be much more user friendly.
 

rockmyplimsoul

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All new things are a challenge in the beginning ... with enough time and experience you'll see that "the iTunes way" is really quite powerful and ingenious. It's not perfect, but after using it for awhile it will become 2nd nature (provided that you give it a chance).
 

nmajdan

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I'm toying with the idea of getting an Touch to replace my old 30GB video iPod (which was an Apple replacement for a broken 20GB 4G B/W iPod, so basically, I haven't purchased an iPod since 2004). I really like the idea of having my entire 21GB collection on my iPod, but the 32GB Touch is pretty pricey. So, I'm been experimenting with iTunes to create a playlist that would fit on a 16GB. I think I'm pretty pleased with what I've got and it leaves plenty of room to grow. I update my iPod everyday before work, so I really don't need 20G of music on my iPod (I mean, I only have about 6-7GB of music that wouldn't fit on a 16GB). Here's what I got:

0 Stars: Unrated; not listened in the last month; limited to 1500M by random
2 Stars: 2 stars; not listened in the last 3 months; limited to 200M by random
3 Stars: 3 stars; not listened in the last month; limited to 2500M by random
4 Stars: 4 stars; not listened in the last 4 days; limited to 5000M by least recently played
5 Stars: 5 stars; not listened in the last day; limited to 600M (pretty much all)
Highest Rated Rookies: 4 or 5 stars; not listened in the last 3 days; limited to 100M by least often played
Hand Picked: in a playlist of hand picked music; not listened in the last month; limited to 300M by random
Recently Added: Rating is not 1 or 2 stars; not listened in the last 3 days; added in the last 45 days; limited to 500M by most recently added
Upcoming Show: in a playlist for whatever live show I have coming up next; limited to 200M by least recently played

All this adds up to a main playlist of ~11G which can be the basis for all my other playlists (http://forums.ilounge.com/showpost.php?p=1276787&postcount=175). This leaves plenty of room for more music and using any additional features on the Touch like games, apps and video. I may put this on my regular iPod and see how that goes for a few weeks.
 
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king nero

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ctrl-click - won't work?

Following the steps as described in the very first post of this topic, but it doesn't work for me?

Please explain where/what I'm doing wrong...

On the iTunes screen wheren all the album covers can be seen on top, I cannot select a specific artist or album.
I highlight all the songs from one album using shift or ctrl (in order to select some songs), and when my selection is highlighted, I ctrl+click a checkbox in the highlighted zone.
Now, all checkboxes from all the songs in iTunes become unselected, next ctrl+click they are all selected again.

How do you do this? I tried several times, but couldn't succeed...

All help greatly appreciated.


I'm using Win XP SP2, iTunes 9.2.1.5 and an iPod Touch 16 GB 2nd Gen.
 
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First, make sure you're in the List view, and not the Grid or Cover Flow views. You can choose View, As List from the iTunes menu to get back to list view.

Once you've done this, enable the Column Browser by pressing CTRL+B or selecting View, Column Browser, Show Column Browser from the iTunes menu. This should bring up a section either at the top of the screen or on the left-hand side of the screen that should allow you to filter the list by genre, artist or album. You can also change which columns are available on the View, Column Browser menu, as well as choosing whether you want it displayed on the top or on the left side of the screen.

Once you have that setup, you can select an artist or album to filter the list view to only that specific area, at which point CTRL+CLICK should work to check/uncheck the visible items.

Note that with iTunes 10 you can also select several items in any view by highlighting them (using SHIFT or CTRL to select multiple items as you normally would), and then right-click and choose Check or Uncheck Selection from the context menu, as appropriate.
 
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