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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods Apps
I have a 10 GB (3rd gen) iPod, but more than 10 GB of music on my iBook. I've been thinking about how to swap out what music I'd like to listen to. I don't like manually copying songs; it's too clunky, and I've got to unmount the iPod manually.

What I ended up doing was setting iTunes to copy only checked songs to the iPod, then creating a smart playlist to match any song over one second in length (because there needs to be some sort of condition to match), which is also checked. I select or deselect whatever songs I want, then check that playlist to make sure they total less than 10 GB. Plug the iPod in, autosync, all done.
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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods | 21 comments | Create New Account
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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: MacDork on Aug 15, '03 10:52:14AM

I used to use smart playlists by genre that only contain songs rated greater than 2 stars -- this kept a lot of junk off of my iPod. Then I chose the "automatically sync these playlists" option.

Then I bought a bigger iPod. :)



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: leenoble_uk on Aug 15, '03 11:03:49AM

"No-one will ever need more than 10Gb of music"



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: david-bo on Aug 16, '03 06:30:55PM

Why do you save junk music on your computer? The less-than-3-stars-rating is quite pointless IMO since I see no poing in keeping music I don't like, but maybe someone with a lot of music from Big 5 can explain why you store music on your harddrive you don't like ?

---
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%22Authored+by%3A+david-bo%22&num=10&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: kupietz on Jun 05, '04 04:17:41AM

To annoy you, clearly. :-)



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: gerwitz on Aug 15, '03 11:15:32AM

Who says this only applies to small iPods? I use this to keep 1-star rated tracks and Christmas music off my 30GB, which is maxed out. I usually listen to the "Rate me" playlist so my collection is being rated quickly enough that 1-stars free up enough room for the occasional new stuff.



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Random Albums
Authored by: Diggory on Aug 15, '03 12:20:47PM

I wrote the following for someone on the MacNN board who wanted it - someone else might want it too so here goes:

{what it does: alter an existing playlist called "randomAlbums" so that it contains enough whole albums picked at random to fit an iPod. To use it set up your iPod to only sync with the playlist "randomAlbums"}

n.b. alter the size of iPodCapacity to match your iPod.

tell application "iTunes"

set iPodCapacity to 9.25 -- In Gigabytes
set iPodCapacityInBytes to (iPodCapacity * 1024 * 1024 * 1024)
set ipodPlaylist to playlist named "randomAlbums"
set addedAlbumsList to {}

tell ipodPlaylist
delete tracks
end tell

repeat while ((size of ipodPlaylist) tell library playlist named "Library"
set randomAlbumName to album of some file track
repeat while (addedAlbumsList contains randomAlbumName)
set randomAlbumName to album of some file track
end repeat

copy randomAlbumName to the end of addedAlbumsList

-- log addedAlbumsList
set randomAlbum to location of file tracks whose album is randomAlbumName
end tell
add randomAlbum to ipodPlaylist
end repeat

update iPod

end tell


---
*****
monkeyfood software - http://www.monkeyfood.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

Random Albums
Authored by: reinhart on Aug 16, '03 11:22:01AM

I can't get this script to run:
I get the following error:

expected "," found "tell"

any ideas?



[ Reply to This | # ]
Whoops, copy & paste error
Authored by: Diggory on Aug 16, '03 11:30:50AM
the part that reads: repeat while ((size of ipodPlaylist) tell library playlist named "Library" set randomAlbumName to album of some file track repeat while (addedAlbumsList contains randomAlbumName) set randomAlbumName to album of some file track end repeat

should read:

repeat while ((size of ipodPlaylist)) tell library playlist named "Library" set randomAlbumName to album of some file track repeat while (addedAlbumsList contains randomAlbumName) set randomAlbumName to album of some file track end repeat

---
*****
monkeyfood software - http://www.monkeyfood.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: joestalin on Aug 15, '03 12:36:03PM

Another option you might explore is to create a set of 10-GB playlists using the "create random playlists" script:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts06.shtml#createrandom

It's very flexibile--I've used it to split one massive playlist into several smaller ones I could burn to audio CDs.

Another smart-playlist approach is to create one with the condition "play count < 2" or whatever, plus your size limit, so you can re-expose yourself to the dusties in your collection--speaking of which: does playing a track on an iPod add into the playcount as show in iTunes when you sync?



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: safed_chuha on Aug 15, '03 04:36:59PM

The number of times played and last played onyour iPod show up in iTunes if and only if you sync your iPod. If you do it manually as I do, then you can see all this information on your iPod from within iTunes, but the librarys of the two remain distinct. This is only bad for me since I use a "rarely played" smart playlist. This list is "all songs whose last played is less than 90 days (about how long it took me to go through 3000 songs). Well, if I remove a song from the iPod to make room for a new one and then add it back, I may have just heard it, but that statistic is gone.

rjz



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: unteins on Mar 03, '04 07:30:18PM

I want to synch my iPod so that IT matches my iTunes. I listen to a lot of music on iTunes and little on iPod. Ideally I'd like to ADD the numbers together and then zero out one or the other and do this when it synchs (uh since this is the only intelligent way to do it anyway, what the heck good is a playcount that only counts some of the times you've played a song)



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: iGav on Aug 15, '03 02:43:31PM

I had a similar situation to the hint above, except that I have so many songs that I tend to forget to listen to most of them.

I have set up a series of smart playlists, such as <em>rarely listened to </em>, which checks for songs that I haven't listened to for more than a week and selects 200 songs at random.

I also do the same sort of thing for artists that I have a lot of albums for so that I have a constantly updating compilation list.

there are though lots of albums I want with me all the time - I set up a manual playlist and just dragged them all in there - tht way any album I am likely to want on a semi-regular basis is likely to be there.

One thing that would be good though would be if Apple included an OR function in the smart list criteria so that one could create a smart playlist for one artist or another, for instance



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: jakacmar on Aug 15, '03 03:49:40PM

You can already do this. In the dialog box that let's you set up a new Smart Playlist. Add an additional Artist field to the conditions and a pull down menu will appear in the top line of the dialog which says "Match 'all' the following conditions:" Change the 'all' to 'any' and then you can have a smart playlist with 2 (or more) Artists.



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: kyngchaos on Aug 15, '03 04:08:04PM

except that it's either ALL OR or ALL AND. You can't do something like:

rating at least 3 stars AND (one artist OR other artist)



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: jakacmar on Aug 15, '03 04:11:26PM

True, but in the "Limit" section you can have songs selected based on highest rating, as opposed to at random. Not a full solution but usable.



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: ianmead on Aug 15, '03 06:17:11PM

Another, not entirely satisfactory, solution would be to combine the idea suggested by lavar78. Add a common keyword to an unused field for both the artists you want, then create a smart playlist that looks for 3star AND keyword to achieve 'at least 3 stars AND (one artist OR other artist)'



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: lavar78 on Aug 15, '03 04:20:11PM

My solution: since I don't use the composer field, I add a keyword ("NoPod") to every track I don't want on the iPod. Then I add "Composer is not NoPod" to all of my smart playlists -- that way I only pick from my iPod songs. It's not for everyone, but it works well for me. I've been thinking about changing the system to use the useless (to me) BPM field instead.



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Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: c_shotton on Aug 15, '03 09:37:38PM

Another technique for small iPods (I have one of the original 5 gig models) is to use a much smaller file format. I have plenty of hard disk space on my desktop for storing music, so I made it a point to keep 2 copies of each music file -- one at a high bit rate in MP3 format and one in AAC format at 80 kbits. Given the way I listen to my iPod (headphones on a plane or playing through the car stereo), 80kb AAC files are indistinguishable from the higher bit rate MP3s in quality for the most part and you can fit at least 30% to 40% more on the iPod. Just make sure you have a smart playlist that syncs the 80 kbit files to the iPod and another playlist for desktop listening to the higher bit rate files.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: Hes Nikke on Aug 16, '03 01:36:47AM
i have a different solution for my Car CD's and Clié (sorry, can't afford an iPod…) i have a Smart playlist to be the following: All 5 star songs format is not AAC (i should probably change it to format is MP3, since thats the only format that both my players support) i then set the limit to X MB (how ever many MiB i need, if it is my car it's 700) sorted by most often played. this gives me the best of the best, in my eyes - i like it enough to be 5 stars, and i listen to it enough to be in my top... 143. :) the next step is to burn a new "Personal Countdown" CD on the 1st of every month (reverse sorted before i click burn) - and then play that at random. some times i'll make a dumb playlist based on this smart playlist and stick freshly ripped albums at the top (ensuring that they get burned, and cutting off the last few songs from the disk) the only place that my system breaks down is that i usually listen to my library at random and iTunes seems to like only about 300 of my 6000 songs. my work around to that problem is that if i am listening on random, i am listening to a playlist of all the songs i haven't played in the last 21 days. (about half my library, maybe i should reduce that to 14?) although this does remove some of the randomness from my car CDs, but it also insures my sanity when listening at home. when (if!) i get an iPod, i'll use a similar system, but i'll probably only need to weed out the 1, 2, and 3 star songs... there is also the matter of rating my songs.... i have a KeySpan DMR and a JVC Remote with my 1-5 keys bind to a variation of this apple script: property userRating : 5 -- enter the number of stars you want to rate the current song here tell application "iTunes" set currVolume to sound volume if currVolume > 50 then set sound volume to currVolume / 3 else set sound volume to currVolume / 2 end if say "now setting " & name of current track & " to a rating of " & userRating & " stars." set the rating of the current track to userRating * 20 set sound volume to currVolume end tell and to make things complete i also have the following buttons so that i can listen to my music in bed or while i sleep: Stop: tell application "iTunes" try set thename to (name of current track) set theartist to (artist of current track) if theartist = "" then else set theartist to ", by " & theartist end if on error set thename to "" end try if thename is not "" then set currVolume to sound volume if currVolume > 50 then set sound volume to currVolume / 3 else set sound volume to currVolume / 2 end if say "This is " & thename & theartist set sound volume to currVolume end if end tell pause: (bonus!) tell application "iTunes" set theRating to (rating of the current track) / 20 set currVolume to sound volume if currVolume > 50 then set sound volume to currVolume / 3 else set sound volume to currVolume / 2 end if if theRating = 1 then say "this is " & name of current track & ", and you rated it " & theRating & " star." else if theRating = 0 then say "this is " & name of current track & ", and you haven't rated it" else say "this is " & name of current track & ", and you rated it " & theRating & " stars." end if set sound volume to currVolume end tell channel up: (the DMR ignores the volume buttons...) tell application "iTunes" set currVolume to sound volume set newVolume to currVolume + 5 set sound volume to newVolume end telltell application "iTunes" set currVolume to sound volume if currVolume ? 14 then -- we don't want it to be TOOO quiet :) set newVolume to currVolume - 5 else set newVolume to 10 end if set sound volume to newVolume end tell and my simple ones - Play: tell application "iTunes" playpause end tell FF: tell application "iTunes" next track end tell REW: tell application "iTunes" previous track end tell

---
vacuums do not suck. they merely provide an absence that allows other objects to take the place of what becomes absent.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Smart iTunes Playlist use for small iPods
Authored by: Hes Nikke on Aug 16, '03 01:39:30AM
hmmm

let me make that more readable (what happened to HTML formatted being formatted not literal?! >_<)


i have a different solution for my Car CD's and Clié (sorry, can't afford an iPod…)

i have a Smart playlist to be the following:
All 5 star songs
format is not AAC (i should probably change it to format is MP3, since thats the only format that both my players support)

i then set the limit to X MB (how ever many MiB i need, if it is my car it's 700) sorted by most often played. this gives me the best of the best, in my eyes - i like it enough to be 5 stars, and i listen to it enough to be in my top... 143. :)

the next step is to burn a new "Personal Countdown" CD on the 1st of every month (reverse sorted before i click burn) - and then play that at random.

some times i'll make a dumb playlist based on this smart playlist and stick freshly ripped albums at the top (ensuring that they get burned, and cutting off the last few songs from the disk)

the only place that my system breaks down is that i usually listen to my library at random and iTunes seems to like only about 300 of my 6000 songs. my work around to that problem is that if i am listening on random, i am listening to a playlist of all the songs i haven't played in the last 21 days. (about half my library, maybe i should reduce that to 14?) although this does remove some of the randomness from my car CDs, but it also insures my sanity when listening at home.

when (if!) i get an iPod, i'll use a similar system, but i'll probably only need to weed out the 1, 2, and 3 star songs...

there is also the matter of rating my songs....
i have a KeySpan DMR and a JVC Remote with my 1-5 keys bind to a variation of this apple script:
property userRating : 5 -- enter the number of stars you want to rate the current song here

tell application "iTunes"
set currVolume to sound volume
if currVolume > 50 then
set sound volume to currVolume / 3
else
set sound volume to currVolume / 2
end if
say "now setting " & name of current track & " to a rating of " & userRating & " stars."
set the rating of the current track to userRating * 20

set sound volume to currVolume
end tell


and to make things complete i also have the following buttons so that i can listen to my music in bed or while i sleep:

Stop:
tell application "iTunes"
try
set thename to (name of current track)
set theartist to (artist of current track)

if theartist = "" then
else
set theartist to ", by " & theartist
end if

on error
set thename to ""
end try

if thename is not "" then

set currVolume to sound volume
if currVolume > 50 then
set sound volume to currVolume / 3
else
set sound volume to currVolume / 2
end if

say "This is " & thename & theartist

set sound volume to currVolume
end if
end tell


pause: (bonus!)
tell application "iTunes"

set theRating to (rating of the current track) / 20

set currVolume to sound volume
if currVolume > 50 then
set sound volume to currVolume / 3
else
set sound volume to currVolume / 2
end if

if theRating = 1 then
say "this is " & name of current track & ", and you rated it " & theRating & " star."
else if theRating = 0 then
say "this is " & name of current track & ", and you haven't rated it"
else
say "this is " & name of current track & ", and you rated it " & theRating & " stars."
end if

set sound volume to currVolume
end tell


channel up: (the DMR ignores the volume buttons...)
tell application "iTunes"
set currVolume to sound volume
set newVolume to currVolume + 5
set sound volume to newVolume
end tell
channel down:
tell application "iTunes"
set currVolume to sound volume
if currVolume ? 14 then -- we don't want it to be TOOO quiet :)
set newVolume to currVolume - 5
else
set newVolume to 10
end if
set sound volume to newVolume
end tell


and my simple ones -

Play:
tell application "iTunes"
playpause
end tell


FF:
tell application "iTunes"
next track
end tell


REW:
tell application "iTunes"
previous track
end tell

---
vacuums do not suck. they merely provide an absence that allows other objects to take the place of what becomes absent.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Last Played
Authored by: irregardless on Feb 27, '06 10:31:58AM

My iTunes lib is much larger than my ipod. I keep an ever-rotating selection of songs in a single smart playlist which include a "Last Played" condition. For example, "Last Played is not is the last 12 weeks" When the iPod is updated, recently played songs will no longer be eligible to be on the list and are replaced by new songs.

Alternately, you can set the condition "Playlist is not Recently Played" (the default smart playlist) and get a similar effect.



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