Some Smartplaylists wouldn't live update on iPod: solved

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studogvetmed

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Greetings,

If we all remember the snaffu in 2005 where smart playlists wouldn't live update on some iPods, I was happy it was fixed supposedly when I upgraded from my lovely 3g iPod (the 3G iPod was not affected during that time).

To my dismay, though I noticed out of my few six smart playlists that have a true live update, I noticed that only one was live updating. The playlist in question that actually worked was one based off of two separate playlists and set to select 84 mintues by least recently played.

After trying to hunt down the "limit to" button as the possible culprit, I narrowed down the common link as a single statement: "Playlist is not "exclude"".

So, I thought that perhaps there was an issue with smart playlists built on a "not" playlist exclusion. However it went deeper. My exclude playlist was built on positive statements for audiobooks (genre is), my videos (one each for video kind is), and podcasts (podcast is true). After reading an issue about the term "podcast is true/false" breaking smart playlist I changed this condition to genre is podcast instead.

Still broken. So I got rid of video kind condition and made one condition. "kind does not contain video".

Works.

So final conclusion. The conditions Podcast is and Video kind in smart playlist break live updating on the iPod. They update fine upon sync to iTunes, but do not live update on the iPod.

It appears that smart playlist based on other playlists do live update as long as the required playlists are available on the iPod (I had heard a report that this didn't work).

Hope this may help a frustrated smart playlist lover.
 

jmahone

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This is an awesome post! I'm not sure it answers my question, but it leads me to believe that at the very least, I'm not crazy. I too have had smart playlist live updating issues with podcast and video kind specs.

Here it is:
Genre is Podcast
Play Count is 0
Kind does not contain video
Kind does not contain movie

Limit to 100 items selected by random
Live updating

This SP is so that I can just listen to random audio podcasts with just one playlist. I have accumulated too many podcast episodes on too many subscriptions, and I think if I have a nice, concise playlist to help me listen one after another without messing with hopping between subscriptions or multiple playlists, I'll be able to work through the backlog quicker.

I have a separate SP to do the same thing, but for video/movie podcasts. It's not working yet, but I care less about this one than the audio podcast playlist.

Problem: plays great on iTunes, doesn't on iPod. Just plays 1 of 1, then back to the menu.

I don't believe I have Stuart's "Podcast is" and "Video kind" in my specs, but I wonder if the similar "Genre is Podcast" and "Kind does not contain video" is also a problem?

TIA,
Jerry
 

jmahone

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Resolved

I went back over my searches in the forum on this issue, and decided my problem really was the same "skip when shuffle" and podcast issue many others have had. Originally, I had convinced myself that this was a new issue I was experiencing, but a closer look indicates that I never really listened to my random podcast playlists since the change in the "skip when shuffle" behavior from Apple changed. I remember well when this changed thinking I should take a look at how/if this affected me, and I guess I never did.

At any rate, changing the podcasts to NOT skip when shuffling resolved this, of course.
 

porieux

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So, does Live Updating work on the Classic? I just got mine but so far the 'recently played' playlist does not seem to be updating on the device as I listen to songs.
 

eclipxe

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When you have an exclude list, do you need to sync that to the iPod as well?
 

studogvetmed

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Any playlist that relies on another playlist must have that playlist also synced for live updating to work, other wise it "breaks"

I don't have a classic to confirm that it works the same way as previous iPods.
 

studogvetmed

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porieux said:
So, does Live Updating work on the Classic? I just got mine but so far the 'recently played' playlist does not seem to be updating on the device as I listen to songs.
I just remembered that people are suggesting that there is a bug that the play count is not being incremented on the iPod Classic. This would prevent a playlist like recently played from working... Not sure if 1.0.1 firmware fixed this.
 

brittreid

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Reposting this question here:

OK, so I've read through the posts on the Smart Playlist problems, and I don't think this is addressed anywhere.

I've got music only on my Classic 160gb, no videos, no podcasts, no playlists involving either.

I've got a couple of playlists that depend on playcount that aren't live updating at all except when I hook up to the computer and then manually manage them.

Here's the settings:

My most-played favorites
Playlist is: My favorites (dumb) playlist
Sort by: Most played
Limited to 100 songs
Live updating checked

My most-played
Playlist is: My top-rated (smart playlist sorted by my rating, no other sorts)
Sort by: Most played
Limited to 200 songs
Live updating checked

Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong? Do I still need to uncheck playlists or videos?
 

brittreid

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Recently played seems to be working on mine, as does any playlist that involves a "0" (unplayed) playcount. But anything that involves any higher-number playcount does not seem to be updating.
 

studogvetmed

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brittreid said:
Here's the settings:

My most-played favorites
Playlist is: My favorites (dumb) playlist
Sort by: Most played
Limited to 100 songs
Live updating checked

My most-played
Playlist is: My top-rated (smart playlist sorted by my rating, no other sorts)
Sort by: Most played
Limited to 200 songs
Live updating checked

Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong? Do I still need to uncheck playlists or videos?
Are the playlists that these playlists depend on being synced to the iPod?
 

brittreid

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No, all these are self-contained playlists in the iPod. I don't sync anything with iTunes.

And rereading these and other threads, I guess the difficulty is not so much that it's not live updating, per se, but that the new play counts are not being reflected in the order of the songs on the iPod's playlist.

So, for example, if I have the most played playlist and the playcount changes, the song won't move up or down on the list until I plug in, go to iTunes, and re-sort by play count. It seems to me that my 5G with 1.2.1 would do this, but I see other posts by folks who say theirs wouldn't or couldn't do it. I do remember it being a glitch with the 4Gs and 1.2.1 firmware...
 

1138

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brittreid said:
No, all these are self-contained playlists in the iPod. I don't sync anything with iTunes.

And rereading these and other threads, I guess the difficulty is not so much that it's not live updating, per se, but that the new play counts are not being reflected in the order of the songs on the iPod's playlist.

So, for example, if I have the most played playlist and the playcount changes, the song won't move up or down on the list until I plug in, go to iTunes, and re-sort by play count. It seems to me that my 5G with 1.2.1 would do this, but I see other posts by folks who say theirs wouldn't or couldn't do it. I do remember it being a glitch with the 4Gs and 1.2.1 firmware...
I had that same problem with my 1st gen nano and now with my 3rd gen nano for the Top 25 Most Played. Songs already on the list won't move up and down, while songs that aren't on the list get slotted into a spot according to their playcount, but won't move up or down after that.

Same thing with Most Recently Played. In iTunes, songs are grouped from top to bottom in order of the most recently played. On the iPod, it's arranged by artist and sometimes "resets" itself to form another list within the list starting with artists that begin with the letter A all over again.

The fact that those seem to be a problem in the classic shows that I didn't get unlucky and that it seems to be a widespread problem that annoys the hell out of me.
 

porieux

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I'm still not seeing my 'recently played' update on the iPod Classic. The smart playlist couldn't be simpler, all it looks at is the 'last played' date.
 

Code Monkey

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porieux said:
I'm still not seeing my 'recently played' update on the iPod Classic. The smart playlist couldn't be simpler, all it looks at is the 'last played' date.
Troubleshot this one in another thread: you actually will need to create a rule, not just the {select X songs by most recently played} selection criteria. Give it something like {bitrate is greater than 1 kbps} or something and it will work.
 

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Code Monkey said:
Troubleshot this one in another thread: you actually will need to create a rule, not just the {select X songs by most recently played} selection criteria. Give it something like {bitrate is greater than 1 kbps} or something and it will work.
But will it update just like it does in iTunes, with the most recently played at the top? Say you synced the actual "Recently Played" playlist that's in iTunes by default. Would it update correctly? Because it never has until I've synced it with iTunes and it just copies whatever order is in iTunes, but won't update like that until the next sync.
 

rockmyplimsoul

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I don't have a Classic or Nano, but on my 5G video here's what I always see:

When songs "enter" a smart playlist on the iPod, they do so at the bottom of the playlist, regardless of how the playlist is sorted. Once you connect to iTunes the playlist will re-sort itself, but between syncs any new additions to a smart playlist seem to get added to the bottom of the list.
 

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rockmyplimsoul said:
I don't have a Classic or Nano, but on my 5G video here's what I always see:

When songs "enter" a smart playlist on the iPod, they do so at the bottom of the playlist, regardless of how the playlist is sorted. Once you connect to iTunes the playlist will re-sort itself, but between syncs any new additions to a smart playlist seem to get added to the bottom of the list.
That's sometime the case for me, but say I was looking at the recently played playlist. New songs that weren't on the list before will appear at the bottom, but then would sort out by artist. Songs that were already on the list wouldn't stay at the same spot they were previously.
 
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