Section 48. Use a Large iTunes Library with a Small iPod


48. Use a Large iTunes Library with a Small iPod

Before You Begin

See Also

Connect Your iPod for the First Time

Autofill Your iPod Shuffle or iTunes Phone

Transfer Your Music and Videos to Your iPod

Transfer Only Preferred Music to the iPod

 

Carry and View Your Mac or PC's Digital Photos and Slideshows on an iPod


Your iTunes Library increases in size as you acquire more music, videos, and other media; your iPod, however, is a fixed size and can hold only a certain amount of data. There might come a time, either because your iPod is an older model or because you have a truly vast collection of music and TV shows, that you won't be able to fit all the media you own onto the iPod using the automatic, zero-effort sync process. Perhaps that day is today.

You have several options for dealing with a situation in which your iTunes Library has outgrown your iPod. One is to do it all manuallyinstead of iTunes synchronizing all your music by itself, it shows the iPod as another item in the Source pane to which you can drag choice tracks from the Library, just as though the iPod were a playlist. Another, more versatile method is to choose certain playlists that you want to synchronize. With the clever use of Smart Playlists, you can fill up the iPod with just enough automatically chosen music to suit your tastes.

Additionally, because videos and podcasts are two kinds of media that potentially take up a lot of disk space, iTunes gives you several further options for ensuring that only the items you want to have with you are transferred to the iPod.

Note

This task is intended for owners of iPods with built-in displays. If you have an iPod shuffle, skip to Autofill Your iPod Shuffle or iTunes Phone.


Use a Large iTunes Library with a Small iPod


Connect the iPod

For iPods that have a Dock connector (3G and later models), place the iPod into the Dock's slot until you hear the soft chime that indicates the iPod has awakened and is ready to synchronize. If you don't have a Dock, or if your iPod is a 1G or 2G model, plug in the FireWire or USB cable directly to the iPod.

Open the iPod Preferences

Instead of automatically copying your music, iTunes displays a dialog box warning you that the iPod is too small for your entire Library to fit. Dismiss this message and open the iTunes Preferences window. (Choose iTunes, Preferences on the Mac, or Edit, Preferences in Windows.) Click the iPod tab, and then click the Music subtab.

Choose a Method for Updating Music

There are three option buttons describing the ways that iTunes can synchronize its music with your iPod. If your iPod is too small for your Library, the first optionAutomatically update all songs and playlistsis unavailable. You must pick one of the two remaining options.

If you like having a lot of control over the music on your iPod, choose the third option (Manually manage songs and playlists). With this option selected, the iPod appears as a mounted external hard disk on your computer. Within iTunes, you can drag exactly the music and video you want onto the iPod and remove music and video from the iPod to make room for other media. When it's time to disconnect the iPod and go, you must first eject (or unmount) the iPod from the computer, using your operating system's "eject" command or the Eject button next to the iPod's icon in the Source pane.

Note

When you're in manual mode, the "lock" icon that normally appears in the "Used/Free" readout at the bottom of the iPod's song listing (when you select the iPod in the Source pane) disappears. This indicates that the iPod's contents are no longer "locked" for use only by iTunes' synchronization process. You can alter them at will by dragging files to the iPod's icon.


A more versatile and less painstaking way to fill your iPod is to pick the second option, Automatically update selected playlists only. This option lets you select from among the playlists you've created to define which tracks are transferred to the iPod. Because this list includes Smart Playlists, you can combine some of iTunes' best features to ensure that your iPod is always full of music without the everyday sync process being any more complicated than what's described in Transfer Your Music and Videos to Your iPod.

Select Playlists to Synchronize

Choose the second option. From the list box below it, enable the check boxes for the playlists whose contents you want to transfer to your iPod. Any music that is not in any of the selected playlists is not copied to the iPod, and iTunes deletes any music from the iPod that you don't say should be there, clearing off room for only the selected playlists' music. Remember that the iPod's primary navigation method is the same as the Browse lists of iTunes; the playlists are only logical groupings of tracks that might appear in more than one playlist. Regardless of how many playlists a song appears in, no track is copied to the iPod more than once.

See Transfer Only Preferred Music to the iPod for an example of how to use Smart Playlists to efficiently fill your iPod with choice selections.

Note

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't show you how much space each playlist takes up, which would allow you to calculate the total space a given selection of playlists consumes. You have to go by trial and error until you've filled up the iPod and no more playlists will fit.


Configure Video Updating Settings

Normally, iTunes synchronizes all your accumulated video files and podcasts with your iPod. Because these files can take up a lot of your iPod's precious disk space, you might want to customize which videos and podcast episodes are copied to the iPod each time you synchronize it: namely, only those videos and podcast episodes that you're likely to want to have with you at all times.

Select the Videos subtab of the iPod Preferences window. This section has three option buttons similar to the ones in the Music subtab: Automatically update all videos, Automatically update selected playlists only, and Do not update videos. The first two options work like their counterparts in the Music subtab; either all the videos in your iTunes Library are placed on the iPod, or only the videos that appear in certain specified playlists. (Remember that playlists can contain videos in addition to music tracks.) The third option, Do not update videos, prevents iTunes from copying any videos to the iPod.

One way to take advantage of this feature is to create a Smart Playlist (see Create a Smart Playlist) that contains only video files that you have not yet viewed (the Play Count is 0), and direct iTunes to update only the video files in that playlist. Another Smart Playlist you could choose to update would contain only the episodes from a specific TV show, or only music videos that you have rated four stars or higher.

Configure Podcast Updating Settings

Click the Podcasts subtab to access the settings for your subscribed podcasts and the way iTunes should synchronize them to the iPod.

By default, iTunes copies all episodes of all your subscribed podcasts to the iPod. However, particularly if you subscribe to numerous long podcasts (such as radio shows), these episodes can use up a lot of disk space on the iPod. You don't necessarily want to have all your podcast episodes available to you at all times; it can be a lot more sensible to have only a dynamically selected subset of your podcasts copied to your iPod at any time.

First, choose whether you want to exclude certain podcasts from being copied to the iPod. If you select the Automatically update selected Podcasts only option, the box below it displaying all your subscribed podcasts becomes activated. Just as with playlists in the Music and Videos subtabs, enable the check boxes next to the podcasts that you want to copy to the iPod.

A third option, below the box with the check boxes, is Manually manage Podcasts. Selecting this option allows you to drag individual podcast episodes (or whole podcasts) to the iPod entry in the Source pane to copy them to the iPod. This option works only if you have selected Manually manage songs and playlists in the Music subtab, which disengages the iPod's automatic sync process and allows you to manage its contents manually.

Finally, you can fine-tune which episodes of your desired podcasts are copied to the iPod each time you synchronize it. By default, All episodes are transferred to the iPod; instead, you might choose Only most recent episode or Only unplayed episodes, both useful options that ensure that the most current content is available on your iPod at all times, and old episodes that you've heard already are removed from the iPod when you synchronize it. For complete manual control, you can choose Only checked episodes; with this option selected, you can use the check boxes next to individual episodes of your podcasts in the Podcasts section of iTunes to specify which episodes you want to transfer to the iPod.

Tip

Remember that just as with regular songs, a podcast episode is marked "played" only when you listen through it all the way to the end. If you don't want a certain episode to keep showing up as "unplayed," but you don't want to listen to it all the way through, right-click (or Control+click) it and choose Mark as Played from the context menu that appears.


Synchronize Using the New Settings

Click OK to save the new settings for your iPod. If you chose to synchronize selected playlists, iTunes begins transferring the music in these playlists over the USB or FireWire connection (or tells you that your selected playlists take up too much space, if you went over the limit).

If you chose to manually update your songs and playlists, the iPod's icon becomes fixed in the Source pane (for as long as it's connected); it's now mounted on your computer as an external hard disk. Select Library and navigate to the music you want to copy to your iPod. You can drag individual tracks, or you can select items from the Genre, Artist, or Album lists and drag them to the iPod's icon. You can also drag playlists from their positions in the Source pane to the iPod's icon also in the Source pane; click the triangle next to the iPod's icon to see the playlists that have already been copied to the iPod. Click the iPod in the Source pane to view its current contents, which now appear in black text just like any other playlist. If you chose to manually manage podcasts, they, too, can be dragged to the iPod's icon.

Select any song or group of songs in the iPod's listing and press Delete or Del to remove them from the iPod. Similarly, you can select and delete playlists from below the iPod's icon if you want to remove them from the iPod. The readout at the bottom of the screen indicates how much space is left on the iPod's internal disk.

Tip

Because no track is copied to the iPod more than once, don't worry if you can't remember whether you already copied a track; just try copying it again. iTunes ignores any tracks that it has already transferred.


When you're ready to disconnect the iPod, be sure to click the Eject icon next to the iPod's name in the Source pane; this action disconnects the iPod as an external hard drive from your computer and prevents data corruption or loss. You can now unplug the iPod or remove it from the Dock.

As you experiment with configuration options, iTunes can become confused about whether the iPod is connected (mounted). If its icon appears in the Source pane and you've configured iTunes to synchronize automatically, try ejecting it by clicking the Eject icon next to the iPod's name or by quitting and restarting iTunes. Make sure that the Enable disk use option is not selected in the Music subtab of the iPod tab in the iTunes Preferences window; that option prevents the iPod from being unmounted after synchronization.




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 150
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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