Playlists on iTunes

[indy4 152]

If I've got a playlist I can organize it however I want on iTunes, but as soon as it goes on my iPod it is organized by Album. Anyway to change this?

[Trent Hoyt 13]

I don't really use playlists on my iPod. I mainly use shuffle.

[Datameister 1,394]

That shouldn't happen...my iPod preserves the order of my playlists just fine. Then again, my iPod is pretty old.

[Diego 21]

I think that it puts them in whatever order you have on iTunes, if you leave it by name, by album, etc, it'll appear that way on the iPod. To put them in the order you want them you have to click at the top of the first column (the one with an arrow) and if the playlist is ordered that way on iTunes, it should be the same on the iPod.

[Koray Savas 2,095]

What Diego said.

[indy4 152]

Sweet, thanks!

Another question: If I've downloaded something on RealPlayer, is there any way I can convert it to go on my iPod?

[Wojo 2,442]

If I've downloaded something on RealPlayer, is there any way I can convert it to go on my iPod?

Yes. FormatFactory will do it.

Here are the RealMedia formats: RealAudio (*.ra, *.rm), RealVideo (*.rv, *.rm, *.rmvb), RealPix (*.rp), RealText (*.rt), RealMedia Shortcut (*.ram, *.rmm)

I proved this by downloading a 5:05 long 68 kilobyte .ram file to my desktop. FormatFactory converted it into a tagged 11.6 MB MP3 file at 320 kbps in a matter of seconds. Certainly that much music information is not stored inside the 68 kb file itself, so it quickly streamed the audio straight from the source and converted it.

That's probably why all the soundtrack labels now just have abridged MP3 files as samples, rather than RealPlayer formats, but any online streaming audio file is subject to be recorded in real-time anyways.

I don't have any other RealPlayer files to mess with, but I assume they'd work the same way.

[Wojo 2,442]

My turn to ask for help. Who uses the DiscNumber tag to support multi-disc albums? I had The Boys of Brazil, FSM's Superman, Superman IV, and Home Alone 2 set up properly on my iPod the other day, so that they shared the same album name and used 1/2 and 2/2 as their DiscNumber tags. The tracks used to be in this order:

disc 1, track 1

disc 1, track 2

disc 2, track 1

disc 2, track 2

I plugged my iPod into a computer that lacks iTunes, so that I could charge it, and it looks like that knocked the files out of order. Now I get:

disc 1, track 1

disc 2, track 1

disc 1, track 2

disc 2, track 2

I know this happened because yesterday, Jeremy's Theme was track 7 of 41. Now it's track 13 of 41.

Do you guys use the DiscNumber tag?

Do you label your albums as Superman d1 / Superman d2?

Or do you just number the tags so that if the last track on disc 1 is track 13, the first track of disc 2 is 14?

[Erik Woods 384]

If I've got a playlist I can organize it however I want on iTunes, but as soon as it goes on my iPod it is organized by Album. Anyway to change this?

Once you are finished organizing the playlist RIGHT CLICK the name of the playlist and select COPY TO PLAY ORDER. That will tell iTunes and the iPod that the order you see the moment you select COPY TO PLAY ORDER is the order you want the tracks to be played. To check this, sort the playlist by selecting the first column to the left of the NAME column (the column with the right triangle arrow thing.) And make sure SHUFFLE is turned off! That should do the trick!

-Erik-

[Ollie 859]

My turn to ask for help. Who uses the DiscNumber tag to support multi-disc albums? I had The Boys of Brazil, FSM's Superman, Superman IV, and Home Alone 2 set up properly on my iPod the other day, so that they shared the same album name and used 1/2 and 2/2 as their DiscNumber tags. The tracks used to be in this order:

disc 1, track 1

disc 1, track 2

disc 2, track 1

disc 2, track 2

I plugged my iPod into a computer that lacks iTunes, so that I could charge it, and it looks like that knocked the files out of order. Now I get:

disc 1, track 1

disc 2, track 1

disc 1, track 2

disc 2, track 2

I know this happened because yesterday, Jeremy's Theme was track 7 of 41. Now it's track 13 of 41.

Do you guys use the DiscNumber tag?

Do you label your albums as Superman d1 / Superman d2?

Or do you just number the tags so that if the last track on disc 1 is track 13, the first track of disc 2 is 14?

No, I've changed most of my multiple disc scores into one long album each on iTunes. So now I have albums like a 90 track Ben Hur score.

But there are some collections that I keep as multiple discs, example as to how my iTunes might look:

1st Disc:

I'll list the disc as Amazing Stores Vol I (Disc 1)

I list the disc as Disc 1 of 2

And I'll have the tracks as 1 thru ....

Same for Disc 2

Amazing Stories Vol I (Disc 2)

Disc 2 of 2

Tracks 1 thru .....

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,476]

I have the Indiana Jones set labeled as, for instance in the case of ROTLA: "Indiana Jones: The Soundtracks Collection (Disc 1: Raiders of the Lost Ark)"

That way I keep the 5 discs from that set together in the album menu and the 1995 ROTLA is kept separate, labeled as simply ROTLA. Same thing with the SW Anthology discs (titles as the SW Anthology with each disc labeled for the corresponding movie and the additional music). However I don't understand why you can't have them labeled for each individual movie and retain the order. It just sees them all as separate albums rather than part of a set since they have different titles. Lame.

Edit: nvm figured it out. Just label with the actual disc numbers instead of spelling them out.

[Wojo 2,442]

Thanks Mark. I thought about that on the way home as I found one-disc albums to listen to. I'll probably do just that, i.e. make each album consist of all tracks that make up the album and disregard the physical audio CD structure.

This new iPod creates two necessary paradigm shifts to let go of:

1) recognize that a meticulously crafted folder structure on a computer means nothing to an iPod if the tag system does not support it;

2) realize that audio CDs exist only to hold 74 minute chunks of music. It's a primitive convention that means nothing to an iPod, which holds as many hours of storage as I am comfortable compressing into lesser bitrates.

Which means that breaks in disc numbers only serve as bookmarks for those of us who are used to changing discs or jumping to the next "folder" on more primitive systems. So I'll make a 53-track Return of the King Complete Recordings album, rather than four 13 track albums. What I may do is put "(d2)" and so on into the title of each file that had been Track 1 of a disc, so that the "bookmark" effect is still in place. Some tracks I just know as "the third song on disc 2" rather than its track title.

I'd imagine that the move from LP to CD was just as paradigm-shattering. Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" was originally four sides (two LPs), then two CDs, while it now fits onto a single CD.

[Charlie Brigden 5]

I have the Indiana Jones set labeled as, for instance in the case of ROTLA: "Indiana Jones: The Soundtracks Collection (Disc 1: Raiders of the Lost Ark)"

That way I keep the 5 discs from that set together in the album menu and the 1995 ROTLA is kept separate, labeled as simply ROTLA. Same thing with the SW Anthology discs (titles as the SW Anthology with each disc labeled for the corresponding movie and the additional music). However I don't understand why you can't have them labeled for each individual movie and retain the order. It just sees them all as separate albums rather than part of a set since they have different titles. Lame.

Edit: nvm figured it out. Just label with the actual disc numbers instead of spelling them out.

I do the same. All my Indy soundtracks are labelled as 'Indiana Jones Anthology I: Raiders of the Lost Ark' and so on, the same with the SW anthology.

[Wojo 2,442]

Regarding your point about the Indy films, I would probably make the album names "Indy 1: Raiders of the Lost Ark,", "Indy 2: Temple of Doom," etc. I "know" that ROTLA should not get the Indy prefix, but I don't want Raiders to come many albums after the other three. The "Soundtracks Collection" information is an afterthought and be tacked onto the end, so that I don't come across four albums that at first glance look the same. I have that already with disc 1, disc 2, etc of multi-disc albums.

It's the same thing with the Star Wars Blue Box. In order, I currently have, in order:

Superman (1988 animated series) (FSM TBB d7)

Superman II (FSM TBB d3)

Superman III (FSM TBB d4)

Superman IV: TQFP (FSM TBB d5 & 6)

Superman: The Movie (FSM TBB d1 & 2)

You can see I've got a bit more thinking to do about that album order. Roman numerals are probably bad to use in such situations because they're not numbers to any operating system, they are words.

When I put my Harry Potter albums onto my iPod, I plan to name them as "Harry Potter 1 and the Sorcerer's Stone," and so on, just to keep some semblance of chronological order within a local alphabetical neighborhood of albums. That to me is far more valuable than straight up alphabetical order.

All my rock albums have the year preceding the album name to keep the Windows folders in chronological order, but that doesn't translate into tags, so the iPod would not know about my pickiness.

[indy4 152]

Thanks everyone!

[Datameister 1,394]

You can use Sort Album to change the order of albums, I believe - you want Get Info > Sorting, and then you can change the "Sort Album" field. I haven't used this yet, though.