judgejules

Howdy,

I've never used iTunes before as I've been an avid WinAmp user for many, many years. However, having just received a very nice engraved 60gb video iPod for my 30th I think I am forced to take the plunge.

I have around 400 albums (yes, all legit) ripped into artist then album sub-directories. I also have a very large VA (various artists) directory which contains mix albums etc.

I have imported my music into iTunes and am looking through my tunes with the browser. The problem I have is, I'm unable to browse by the playlists that I make in each folder, so I have to view it by Artist. However, because of my large VA folder, I have thousands of "one hit wonders" that have put their input into mixes etc.

Is there any way I can go back to browsing by the playlists that I manage without having hundreds and hundreds of playlists in the left navigation? Or is there a way I can exclude artists from a certain folder (VA) so it doesnt clutter up my selection? Or are there any better solutions to this problem?

Thanks in advance,

Jules

GaryK

What I do is create 'folders' and then put playlists into those folders. So I might have a folder called 'Greatest Hits' and all the greatest hits albums go into their own playlist within this folder. However the iPod doesnt utilise the folders and only deals with playlists so I always prefix the playlist with the artist name so that I can easily find stuff on my iPod, if that makes sense!

An example (in iTunes)

Gary Numan/Tubeway Army (Folder name)
|- Tubeway Army - Replicas (Playlist)
|- Gary Numan - Pleasure Principle (Playlist)
|- Gary Numan - Jagged (Playlist)

You might also want to look at 'smart' playlists this lets you build playlists using a variety of criteria. iTunes is an awesome piece of software (as a developer its also a technically very good piece of software).

Gary

judgejules

Thanks for the info Gary. Doesnt using folders mean you bypass the main "browser" functionality though? Smart playlists look nice, I've created a new folder called Playlists and put a few separate smart playlists in there each specifying their own artist. Sound about right?

I guess I really need to wait for my iPod to come back from service so I can try all this on there. Did I mention that I held off getting an iPod for this long, finally got one and it was dead on arrival , @ apple.

I am also a bit skeptical of iTunes, considering how long its been out, it totally owns your PC when resizing the window (100% cpu), and upon closing it down grabs 100% cpu for around 5-10 seconds while doing something with the xml files. Apparent lack of skinning is bugging me too, and I hate the size/shape of the mini player.

Jules

GaryK

Yes I just use folders because it tidys things up for me.

Dont say that too loud otherwise the anti ipod brigade will be here to slag you off for buying one

Maybe so but the fact you can browse the music store, rip CDs and listen to music all at the same time because it creates threads and prioritises them according to the task means its pretty cool. I'll check the resizing thing out.

Gary

judgejules

Having just clicked on an m3u (playlist) I now have two copies of every tune from that album in iTunes... did I do something against Apple or am I just too techy to use their products? Does that mean every time I play a wav or mp3 outside iTunes, it'll add it to my library without asking me, and then xfer it to my iPod?

Jules

GaryK

Yes I think there is an option in the settings that will either copy or move mp3s depending on what you want to do, I set mine to move the files because I keep all mine on an external 250GB hard drive so I dont use any space on my main drive for MP3s.

Gary

judgejules

Got my iPod back today I bought some new sennheiser in ear headphones while it was away as the 30 seconds of music I played with the standard headphones was a little poor.

Well back on track. I've had a play with iTunes and the iPod and I've finally found what I need, a compilations option! This option is both in iTune and on the iPod and moves albums that are marked as compilations into their own section. This makes it a million times better, as I can now browse by Artist without 10million one hit wonders showing up from my various compilations albums.

I thought I'd share this with you as it saves a bunch of time doing things, and I dont need to go anywhere near custom or smart playlists when adding new albums.

Jules (happy bunny)