Do the smart playlist and ratings work the same way on an Ipod Touch? I have a Classic, but gave the hubbie the free Touch when I bought my new Macbook last month and I haven’t been able to teach him much because the touch seems so different without the wheel.
Love this thread- thanks Solai!
Damn you kids with your threadjacking and your shiny iPhones and hippie Macs!
<shakesfist>
You can count the posts that this went from an Ipod/Itunes thread to Mac v PC and iPhone.
Technically I know iPhone is on topic…oh well.
Okay. Here’s an iPod question.
Let’s say I wanted to back up everything that’s on my iPod. And let’s assume I had a nearly 30 GB hard disk space to do so. Can it be done?
Here’s my concern: On my iPod I have 1000s of songs–mostly ones that I imported from Music CDs (that I own of course). But once I sync something to put on my iPod, I always delete it from my PC (if I saved it all it would take up waaay too much space).
But I’m thinking someday it’s inevitable that my iPod will die on me. And when it does, I really don’t want to got througth the time and effort of import all my music from CDs on to my PC and them move them from my PC to the iPod.
What should I do? Or is there’s nothing I can do? Once it’s on my iPod you can’t move it back to some other storage medium?
I need you to clarify this point, because I am missing something.
What I don’t understand is that if this process were followed the next time you sync’ed the music on your Ipod would be removed as it was deleted from iTunes.
Can you clarify?
There’s is a setting in iTunes —and I don’t have iTunes open at the moment so I don’t know where it is----but there’s a setting that makes it so only things in your iTunes library listing get moved over (synced) to the iPod, and every song I’ve ever put in iTunes, there’s still a listing for it in the iTunes library, even though the actually mp3 file (or whatever) is no longer there.
Understand here that I do not use iTunes for playing music or for anything other than as a means to get stuff to my iPod.
Ok, so my question is: If you click on a song in iTunes that you have deleted, do you get an error message or does it play? I think I understand what is going on, but want to confirm this point.
If I click on a song in iTunes that has been deleted, it will not play. (and songs that have been deleted have a little “!” tag on their listing to indicate that the file for the song isn’t on the PC.)
Good. Now I know exactly your situation. I apologize for the multiple questions, but from years of consulting I have learned that it is necessary to ensure we are on the same page.
The simple answer is yes, we can take care of you. If you were to research this question you would be told you are SOL. However, you got us and we will see that all turns out well. There are two tricks you will need to employ in order to be successful:
I won’t document the step by step process here but will outline the high-level process for reference. When you are ready to do this I can walk you through step by step.
High level process:
That is basically it. You have basically superhacked iTunes by importing the cd, syncing and then deleting the source file. This may lead to issues down the road. I highly recommend picking up a new hard drive…they are really cheap nowadays. This has inspired me to go start a new thread regarding computer setup and backup…but short version, go get a new additional hard drive to store your data on…it can even be external.
Excellent!!! Thanks so much Solai!! I’m generally computer saavy enough that I can probably do this without needed your detailed help, although thanks the offer. I can probably take it from here based on your high level steps. If I run into trouble I will ping you. I probably won’t get to this until next week. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I do have a couple back up drives—both 100 GB, but one is mostly filled up already.
There are also several other programs out there for managing your Ipod. My favorite is Yamipod, it is free and it works on all three platforms. It doesn’t use all of the copy protection that Itunes does so you can use it to import the mp3 back to your computer. Solai’s answer is great but this could probably help some of the less technical. I still use Itunes as my Ipod manager, this is just something nice to have when you still have a music file you want back.
Also, I keep a copy of all my music and audiobooks on the computer. Hard drives are cheap now and it doesn’t hurt to have a copy. Even if the cd’s are still around it would stink to have to re-encode again, unless you upgrade to a higher bit rate or file format.
There is no way I’m re-ripping all of my cd’s! Do you know how long it took to get them the first time. Of course, I ripped them at the best bit rate I could - I asked myself “Self, do you want to spend a month of nights and weekends doing this AGAIN”. “Self” answered in the negative. 
Cool, thanks UD!
After the factory-installed hard drive on my MacBook decided to crash its heads, I had to use Yamipod temporarily on a PC that was attached to a vinyl cutter on the ranch. Yamipod does not play well with 5th generation iPods. In some cases it can screw things up royally. Anything released prior to the 40 gigabyte Classic or the 80 gigabyte Classic should work okay. Any fatty Nano iPods, iPod Touch, and more should not be used with Yamipod yet.
While it can be used for recovery, I would not recommend it for day-to-day use if you have a fairly new iPod.
Thanks for the update Alpaca Herder. It has been a while since I used it last. It only had to happen to me once before I decided to keep enough space for all my files. Like you said, it really is only for recovery and I haven’t scene anything better than Itunes for day to day management.
I leave everything on my iPod and my computer. My computer crashed and my iPod had some important files that I was thankful not to loose. Your iPod can share files with more than one computer. I have 1000 songs and way to many podcasts, books, video, and still have room.
I so love my iPod but I am genre impaired. I generally don’t like default genres. For the longest time I was always fine tuning them until I realized it had become a part time job. Now I am the other extreme. Of 30+gigs about 50% is a custom genre I created called Music. Yup thats right Music. The rest is split between Blues, BluesMix, Jazz and JazzMix and 2 or 3 oddities to sort out… well some oddities.
I couldn’t live without smart playlists, best thing since sliced bread. I use the play count to avoid hearing the same songs more than once, keeps the shuffle fresh. Then periodically I clear it and start again.
Mac users might want to check out http://dougscripts.com/itunes/, some good scripts to be found there.
Indeed! Thanks, SB!
I have become a podcast junky. One thing that drives me crazy is that they are listed differently on my iPod and my Mac. One alphabetized with the word The and one without. Is there a way to get them to be the same? The GWC cast keeps getting “lost”.
Is there any interesting ways to organize the podcasts?
I don’t know of a good way do deal with that but you might find something at Doug’s Scripts. I thought I remember seeing something there at one time that dealt with “The”. But there are lots there specific to managing track info http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts09.php
What I do, and not saying its a good way just what I do… I use playlists, each is a podcast category that is meaningful for me. When I download a podcast I move it to the appropriate playlist. Based on those playlists I then create smart playlists… like When Playlist is BSGPod and playcount is 0. This way I don’t have to worry about title or author or whatever.