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iPod Newbie Q: creating smart playlists without syncing their content?

E

exscape

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 29, 2008
57
0
First off: I'll be getting my (first) iPod in two days, so I can't really try this out for myself at the moment.

Anyway, I've got a pretty easy scenario - at least I hope it is.
Like many others, I have a music library that's too big to fit on the iPod. However, I want to have a wide variety of smart playlists available on it; for instance: "Genre is A OR Genre is B OR Genre is C). Such playlists would, in total, encompass every song I have - which leads to the problem: I want to sync, say, the "3.5+ stars" playlist and a few others with all their tracks, but I also want the playlists above without syncing all matching tracks (as I said, that would be my entire library).

Is this doable? Easily? I don't quite know how the iTunes/iPod interface works, so... I'm hoping I can create playlists directly on the iPod (in iTunes, that is) rather than in my computer library, or something to that effect.
 
I'm not sure if I entirely understand your question. You'll be able to sync certain smart playlists and not sync the genre specific ones if you just want those for on your computer.

Or you could sync the ratings playlist fully over then tell it to sync the genre playlists and you'd probably get a message saying "can't fit it all on, do you want iTunes to choose a selection?" and you'd get a random bunch, enough to fill up your iPod. If there's certain artists whose entire discography you NEED to have at all time you can choose to sync everything by an individual artist too.

You can't make smart playlists on your iPod however.
 
instaxgirl said:
I'm not sure if I entirely understand your question. You'll be able to sync certain smart playlists and not sync the genre specific ones if you just want those for on your computer.

Or you could sync the ratings playlist fully over then tell it to sync the genre playlists and you'd probably get a message saying "can't fit it all on, do you want iTunes to choose a selection?" and you'd get a random bunch, enough to fill up your iPod. If there's certain artists whose entire discography you NEED to have at all time you can choose to sync everything by an individual artist too.

You can't make smart playlists on your iPod however.
Click to expand...
Sounds like I'm screwed...
Basically, I want two types of playlists (both "smart"):
One kind that contains all the songs I want on my iPod, automatically, every time I rate a long 3.5+ stars, plus some other stuff.
One kind that acts as a filter on the iPod, so that I can choose to listen only to music of genre A or genre B that I haven't heard in at least a month, without having the entire contents of the playlist synced. Kind of like browsing by genre, but a bit more advanced.
 
I have a vague idea what you're trying to do.

On your Mac you want to listen to the e.g. "Funk" playlist. But you want only the best Funk songs to be synced to your iPod, right?

I'd try it that way, but I'm not sure it will work:

In addition to the Funk playlist, set up a smart playlist with "playlist is Funk" and "rating is 3+". Then choose to sync only the smart playlist. Does that work?

Mind that this way, the new unrated songs won't be synced to the iPod at all.
 
Cinematographer said:
I have a vague idea what you're trying to do.

On your Mac you want to listen to the e.g. "Funk" playlist. But you want only the best Funk songs to be synced to your iPod, right?
[...]
Mind that this way, the new unrated songs won't be synced to the iPod at all.
Click to expand...
Correct, if you replace "Mac" with "iPod". I want only the high-rated songs to be synced, but some full albums will also be synced via a static playlist.

I then want playlists on the iPod, such as "heavy" (with criteria such as "Genre contains X OR genre contains Y"), or "calm" (with the same kind of criteria, but genres Z and A instead), plus a few variations (say, "Playlist is heavy, rating is 3+").

However, if I choose to sync these heavy and calm playlists, they will drag ALL tracks of all those genres in, which won't fit.
Thus I want them only on the iPod (as a "filter" - "these are the tracks I want to play now that they exist on the iPod" rather than as a "these are the tracks I want to sync/copy to the iPod"), so that I can sync exactly what I choose (my current plan is all high-rated tracks, a playlist with static stuff, "rate this"), and then play everything of genre X or Y on the iPod, regardless of how it got there or its rating.

Damnit, it's really simple, but still ends up hard to explain.
 
OK, I'll try another example.
Let's say I have these playlists:

Good music
Criteria: 3+ stars; nothing else. Everything in here should be synced to the iPod.

Always with me
Criteria: Static playlist, with tracks I always want with me. Everything in here should be synced to the iPod.

New music
Criteria: Play count less than 5. Contents should NOT be copied to the iPod, but the playlist itself should be present, so that I can listen to all the "new music" the iPod contains from copying the contents of the above two.

If everything in the "new music" playlist is copied to the iPod, it will fill up, and I'll have to limit it to x GB chosen randomly, which I really don't want to do.

On the other hand, if everything in the first two is synced, that will fit just fine... but I can't listen to the "new music" that got synced from the first two.

In short, I want the third playlist, as a filter ("only play new tracks that already exist on this iPod"), but I don't want iTunes to copy everything that matches that playlist on the Mac (atm. that is 44GB) to the iPod.
 
How about setting up a smart playlist like that:

Playlist is New music AND (Always with me OR Good music) and sync this one.

Does it work?
 
Cinematographer said:
How about setting up a smart playlist like that:

Playlist is New music AND (Always with me OR Good music) and sync this one.

Does it work?
Click to expand...
That might just do it, if my boolean logic brain functions are working properly. :D
I'll report back when I can try (hopefully tomorrow afternoon, i.e. 24-30 hours).
 
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