Some iTunes questions

[Howard Brazee]

1. I press the Shuffle button on the bottom left and don't know whether I turned shuffle on or off. How do I tell?

2. I can't sort music in my iPod. My daughter can't sort hers either - but her sort order is different from mine. We can sort outside of the iPod by selecting Name, Album, etc. Why are these column headers greyed out?

4. Why is there a playlist with my e-mail address?

5 It seems that 90s music has everything. I suppose it looks at when the CD was made. Kind of useless if so.

6. iTunes uploaded some .mpgs that I wanted in a separate playlist. So I deleted them (accidentally, I just wanted to remove it from the "music" playlist), created a playlist and moved them there. But they are still in the "music" playlist, and still get played when I run my shuffle. I have played with the sync by playlist - but "music" is not one of those options.

7. I can't get my pictures to show up in subfolders and sub-subfolders.

8. Movies don't seem to copy videos to my iPod - I have them listed if I want to synchronize them by checking them - but I have "All movies" checked.

 

[mkrishnan]

1. If the arrows in the icon are blue, it's on. If they're grey, it's off.

2. I think how the music is sorted on the iPod is a mix of how it was sorted in iTunes and defaults. The by Artists, by Genre, and by Album views are always alphabetical. The Playlists are also sorted alphabetically. The songs in playlists should be organized the way they are in iTunes. If you can explain more about what is sorted differently, I might be able to help more.

3. Apparently not a good number for you.

4. I have no idea... I haven't seen that before. But your e-mail address is probably your iTunes account name also... I don't know if that helps explain. I don't have a playlist like that.

5. Erm...not if you listen to non-90s music. You can edit or delete any smart playlist (the violet ones), though. Right click it and select the edit option or click it and select Edit Smart Playlist from the file menu.

6. Ditto...you can edit the rules of that playlist to generate what you want.

7. I don't know anything about this one.

8. Do you have an iPod that plays movies?

 

[decksnap]

2. Confused by what you mean... on the iPod, you either browse to a playlist, or browse to Music, then artists, then album... there's no sorting.

Edit: Oh, you must mean while your iPod is plugged in and you are browsing it through iTunes? Probably because you don't need to browse your iPod through iTunes, since all your music is already in iTunes.

5. The 90s music smart playlist is just a sample to show you how to use smart playlists. It pulls the tag from the 'genre' of the songs. I would recommend you spend some time editing and managing your track tags, and learning the awesome power of smart playlists.

6... 'Music' is not a playlist, it is a list of all your music. You can't have anything in iTunes without it being in 'music'. If you want to shuffle stuff without it playing your movies, either uncheck them in the main list, or make a playlist or smart playlist that does not contain them, then shuffle that instead.

8. Your movies might not be the right format for iPod playback. Many movies will play in iTunes that aren't formatted correctly for the iPod.

 

[Howard Brazee]

2. Confused by what you mean... on the iPod, you either browse to a playlist, or browse to Music, then artists, then album... there's no sorting.

Edit: Oh, you must mean while your iPod is plugged in and you are browsing it through iTunes? Probably because you don't need to browse your iPod through iTunes, since all your music is already in iTunes.

I'm trying to find music on my iPod. I'm trying to debug why I get some music in my scrambled iPod selection which I want in a different playlist for special use only. I click on the header to sort by album, and it won't sort. The order that my iPod is in is different from what my computer's iTunes are in - and it's different from what my daughter's iPod is in.

5. The 90s music smart playlist is just a sample to show you how to use smart playlists. It pulls the tag from the 'genre' of the songs. I would recommend you spend some time editing and managing your track tags, and learning the awesome power of smart playlists.

I created a smart playlist to include all of the songs that I have not yet rated.

6... 'Music' is not a playlist, it is a list of all your music. You can't have anything in iTunes without it being in 'music'. If you want to shuffle stuff without it playing your movies, either uncheck them in the main list, or make a playlist or smart playlist that does not contain them, then shuffle that instead.

This is the part I haven't figured out yet. I keep playing with settings for this, but nothing so far has worked.

8. Your movies might not be the right format for iPod playback. Many movies will play in iTunes that aren't formatted correctly for the iPod.

These are small movies created by digital cameras. They do play in iTunes.

 

[mkrishnan]

(6) This is the part I haven't figured out yet. I keep playing with settings for this, but nothing so far has worked.

Make a new smart playlist. Make the criteria "kind" "contains" "audio". Uncheck all the options related to limiting the size of the playlist. See if that works. It should create a smart playlist containing all audio files and no video files.

(8) These are small movies created by digital cameras. They do play in iTunes.

iTunes can play some video formats that iPods cannot. iPods are very specific -- they only play H.264 and MPEG-4 at certain video sizes. Download the program iSquint. When you use it, check the two buttons at the top for H.264 and importing into iTunes (actually, you don't need to do either of these, and there are definitely no other settings you have to mess with). Then drag the video files into iSquint. When it's done, there will be iPod compatible copies of the videos back in iTunes.

 

[Howard Brazee]

1. If the arrows in the icon are blue, it's on. If they're grey, it's off.

I click it and it stays gray.

2. I think how the music is sorted on the iPod is a mix of how it was sorted in iTunes and defaults. The by Artists, by Genre, and by Album views are always alphabetical. The Playlists are also sorted alphabetically. The songs in playlists should be organized the way they are in iTunes. If you can explain more about what is sorted differently, I might be able to help more.

I'm wanting to hit a heading and look at my iPod by, album or artist or whatever - the same way as I can with my computer iTunes.

5. Erm...not if you listen to non-90s music. You can edit or delete any smart playlist (the violet ones), though. Right click it and select the edit option or click it and select Edit Smart Playlist from the file menu.

I'll get rid of it. iTunes put music from all eras in there.

8. Do you have an iPod that plays movies?

Yes. I downloaded a shareware program and was able to pull off a couple of shorts and a feature from DVDs. This shareware put in a trial watermark, but I saw I could do it. I failed though with the movie A Hard Day's Night though. My wife got an iMac this weekend, so I will try free software on it and try converting them there instead.

Currently, my photos take much more space than my albums or the movie I copied. And they are compressed (and hard to browse through without subfolders).

 

[mkrishnan]

I click it and it stays gray.

Mmmm, that's strange. What do you have selected as your view when you are trying to turn Shuffle on?

I'm wanting to hit a heading and look at my iPod by, album or artist or whatever - the same way as I can with my computer iTunes.

Okay, the way you do this is by Music -> Artists, Music -> Genre, etc, from the iPod. That's the *only* way to do this on an iPod. You can move the Artists, Genre, Album, etc, to the top level menu via the settings on the iPod if you want. As far as I know, there is no way to change the way these lists are organized, however -- they're always alphabetical. But you can only do this from the top level -- as far as I know, there's no way to take a specific playlist and view the playlist from the iPod by artist, by album, etc. The playlist can only have the fixed order that it was in in iTunes when you synced, or be shuffled. Does that make sense?