Section 54. Transfer Only Preferred Music to the iPod


54. Transfer Only Preferred Music to the iPod

Before You Begin

See Also

Use a Large iTunes Library with a Small iPod

Rate Your Music in iTunes

Create a Smart Playlist

Rate Your Music on the iPod


Now that you know how to use a few of iTunes' more intricate featuresSmart Playlists, the My Rating field, and iPod synchronization by playlistyou can put them all together to help you use even a small-capacity iPod to its fullest potential. By using a Smart Playlist defined on the basis of the star ratings you've set on all the music in your Library, you can fill the iPod to bursting with music that's defined automatically to be culled from among your favorite tunes, ensuring that although you might not have every piece of music you own in your pocket at all times, at least you'll always have the good stuff.

Transfer Only Preferred Music to the iPod


Connect the iPod

Connect the iPod to your computer using the Dock or the included cable, as described in Transfer Your Music and Videos to Your iPod. Wait for the synchronization process to complete.

Determine Your iPod's Actual Capacity

With the iPod selected in the Source pane of the iTunes window, use the capacity readout at the bottom of the song listing area to tell you what your iPod's practical disk capacity is. Add up the Used and Free numbers to get this figure. Don't just use the capacity printed on the back of your iPodthis latter number can be an inaccurate reflection of the actual formatted capacity of the iPod's disk. For instance, if you have a 30GB iPod, the actual capacity is about 27.9GB, or 28,559MB. (1GB is equal to 1024MB.)

Create a Smart Playlist to Fill Your iPod

Create the Smart Playlist as described in Create a Smart Playlist. Specify criteria according to your taste. You might want to choose only music rated three stars or higher, opt for music from another Smart Playlist that contains only certain genres, or allow the playlist to include music from your entire Library. The important part is the Limit to option.

Enable the Limit to check box. Then, using the text input field and dropdown menu, specify the capacity of your iPod in megabytes (MB) rather than gigabytes (GB). This approach allows you to define a playlist that's just a little bit less than the capacity of your iPod, which allows for some leeway in case you want to add a couple of other playlists. For example, if you have a 30GB iPod (whose physical capacity is 27.9GB or 28,559MB), set up your Smart Playlist to be limited to 28,000MB to ensure that there's extra space for other playlists of cool songs you want to make sure are always available on the iPodas well as for any photos, videos, or podcasts you want to synchronize. (Adjust these numbers according to your tastes and needs.)

Tip

You can avoid putting songs on the iPod that you've deemed unworthy of listening by disabling the check boxes next to their names in the iTunes Library and then using one of two methods to exclude them. The first way is by enabling the Only update checked songs option in the iTunes Preferences window, on the Music page of the iPod tab. When you're defining a Smart Playlist as in this step, the second way to avoid songs you don't like is to enable the Match only checked songs check box in the Smart Playlist's definition. See Eliminate Duplicate Tracks for a further application of this technique.


Finally, choose an appropriate policy from the selected by drop-down menu. You might choose to select songs with the highest rating, or that are the most often played or the least recently played. If you choose random, you get a broad cross-section of the music defined by the Smart Playlist's other criteria.

If you're selecting music by the random method and you want to get a different randomized selection of music, first lower the Smart Playlist's size to almost nothing (enter 1 in the text input field) and save the Smart Playlist. Then edit it again to return it to its former size. This approach forces iTunes to rebuild the playlist from new random selections.

Click OK to save the Smart Playlist. Give it a name such as Fill My iPod.

Open the iPod Preferences

Open the iTunes Preferences window. (Choose iTunes, Preferences on the Mac, or Edit, Preferences in Windows.) Click the iPod tab, and click the Music subtab.

Select the Newly Created Playlist

In the box that appears under the second synchronization option (Automatically update selected playlists only), select the Smart Playlist you created in Step 3 (Fill My iPod in this example) as one of the playlists to synchronize to your iPod. You can select other playlists, too, as long as their contents overlap the new Smart Playlist's; any songs they contain that aren't in the Fill My iPod playlist will take up additional space on the iPod, and you'll have to adjust your playlist's settings accordingly.

Fill Your iPod with Preferred Music

Click OK to save the settings. iTunes synchronizes with your iPod, transferring onto it all the music that you defined in the Smart Playlist. If you calculated the size of the Smart Playlist correctly, it should fill the iPod almost to its full capacity with music selected on the basis of your criteria. If you went over the limit, iTunes tells you so in an error dialog box. If that case, edit the Smart Playlist and lower its Limit size slightly. Then repeat Steps 4 and 5.

As you use the iPod, you can still navigate your music using the Artists, Albums, Genres, and other grouping options. The iPod just won't have all the songs that are in your iTunes Libraryit will be missing songs that didn't match your criteria (for example, by not having a high enough rating). Thus, you can select and play an entire album straight through on the iPod without having to listen to the songs you don't likethey won't be on the iPod in the first place!




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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