Hi Chris,
I'm not sure I understand everything that's been going on, but here's
a suggestion: create a smart playlist with the rule that it contain
the playlist you manually created and see whether this shows up when
you connect your iPod Nano. This is basically "<Playlist> <is>
<Transfers>" or <Steve's iPod> if your playlist has a different name.
1. In iTunes press Command-Option-N (shortcut keys for "New Smart
Playlist")
2. VO-right arrow to "Rules Section" and interact (VO-Shift-Down Arrow)
3. VO-Space on the popup button (first item in the rules section --
will be set to "Artist" and you want to change this to "Playlist")
4. Navigate to "Playlist" by pressing "p" then down arrow (you'll hear
"Playlist"), then return
5. VO-right past the popup button for "is" to the popup button that
will be set to "Music" and VO-space to reset this.
6. Navigate to "Transfers" by pressing "t-r" or using your arrow keys
until you hear "Transfers", then return
7. Press return to get out of smart playlist entry dialog. (You can
stop interacting and VO-right through the rest of the smart playlist
input menu until you reach the "Cancel" or "OK" buttons if you want to
explore other options, but I'm just trying you get you sorted.)
8. You'll be prompted to type in a name for your smart playlist.
Please choose something unique to make diagnosing easier -- i.e.,
don't make the name "Transfers" or "Steve's iPod" or "Dad's iPod" or
anything else with a similar name. It's not that you couldn't assign
such a name, but it would make troubleshooting horribly confusing!
Also, you might put a hyphen at the front of the playlist name. Since
the playlists appear in alphabetical order, that's a trick that will
make your playlist appear first, since the hyphen comes before any
letter or number in sort order.
Now connect one of your iPods, navigate to the Music tab, and check
whether the smart playlist appears and can be checked.
There are some other things that I might try, but this seems the most
direct and simplest thing to do that might actually also solve your
problem. You say that all the other smart playlists show up for your
Nano. Fine, we'll make a smart playlist.
You realize that there's a scroll bar on the table on the iPod Nano
4G's Music tab where you check your selected playlists, don't you?
That's one reason I suggested both making this into a smart playlist
and putting a hyphen at the start of the name. Smart playlists appear
before regular playlists in the table. Another thing I do is create a
folder in the source list of playlists that I might want to be
specially created for the iPod. Folders appear before smart
playlists. You can also expand or collapse folders with VO-
backslash. This does require using VoiceOver drag and drop to put
playlists in the folders, though.
Try this first and let us know what happens.
Cheers,
Esther
On Nov 3, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Chris Gilland wrote:
OK? now this! is really really really! really really weird.
I got my dad an IPod 8gb Nano 4th Gen Blue for his birthday. I!
have an IPod 8gb Nano 4th Gen Yellow. I currently have just over
75gb of music in my library which resides on an external Firewire
300gb drive. I am running the latest build of ITunes 8.0.1 with the
latest Macintosh based IPod Nano Firmware. Basicly, because of the
fact that I have so much music, there is no way! I'm gonna fit all
that on my IPod, nor! on my dad's, and frankly, neither do either of
us, wanna! do that. So, what I thus did, was, I have mine set up
under the summary page, open ITunes when this IPod is connected is
checked. Sync only checked songs and playlists is unchecked.
Enable spoken menus is checked. By the way, this is how it is set
on my IPod, let's not talk about my dad's quite yet. I wanna give
yall a good thorough background of how mine's! set first. You'll
see why here in justa sec. So, obviously, I have used this IPod
under Windows XP SP2 in the past, never SP3. but, I restored the
IPod so I could use it on Leopard. Well, what I basicly did, is
went to the sources list, and hit command+N to create a new
playlist. I called it Transfers. I then went to the music tab of
my IPod. I made sure that sync Music was checked. It was. I then
did a vo down arrow, from that check box, and then hit vo right
arrow once to get to the radio button to sync only selected
playlists. I hit vo+Space on that. OK, great! Then I did vo right
and interacted with the table. Super! Transfers was there, so I hit
vo space on it and checked it. Then I quit interacting, and did vo
+shift+End, to get to the Apply button, and hit vo space. So
awesome! My IPod was set.
Now, all I had to do was go to the music library, tab over to the
search box, put say... Beatles... Then tab to the songs list. once
there I simply would interact with the songs table, then would
select what ever tracks I wanted. Then I did vo shift m, and then
would hit the letter A, which then said add to Party Shuffle. Well,
if I then down arrowed twice, I'd be on add to playlist. I then
would right arrow, as it was a sub menu, then I'd go down to
transfers, and hit return. Boom! those tracks were added, and upon
my next sync, they'd be put on my Nano. Well, the problem arose
last Saturday afternoon. I went to Best Buy, and got my dad an 8 gb
4th Gen Nano Blue. I got it home, opened it up, took my! USB cord
instead a his, since they essentially are identically the same,
plugged his in, registered it, yoddie yodda, named it Steve's Nano,
etc. I then went to the music tab of his IPod, made sure sync music
was checked. It was. I then went to sync only selected playlists
and vo spaced on that radio button. It was then, that I realized:
Awe! Crap! I forgot to make a playlist for his IPod. Dammit!
Whoops? So, without clicking Apply, I then went to the source list,
and went back up to music. Now, I mean music in my library, not
music underneath his IPod. Be aware. I mean music under library,
right at the very toppa the source list. I then did command N, and
named the playlist Dad's IPod. I wrote it just? like, that. Dad's?
with a capital D and an apostrophy s, IPod new word capital I and
capital P.
So: cap D A D appostraaphy S, space, Cap I cat P o d.
I then copied a 10 disc set into that playlist with the method
discussed above. So now, that playlist had 119 tracks in it and was
just over 600MB. All the tracks were mp3's.
I now went back to Steve's Nano, which is what I named his IPod for
the mountpoint. I went back to the music tab, and noticed that the
radio button still was checked for sync only selected playlists.
So, awesome! I went over and interacted with the table of
playlists. Well guess what! Not only! did I not see Dad's IPod in
there, I neither! saw any other playlist I manually created. O
Sure, it's got CD Burning, which I created manually, for burnin
CD's, and it has all the preinstalled smart playlists like 90's
Music, my top rated, Most recently played, and all that jazz, but no
transfers! No? Arobics! No Bedtime! No Dad's IPod! None a that!
Over in the sources list, they show up, and have things in 'em, and
o yeah, they play all right. They're not in the table though of
lists I can manually sync.
I always can set the thing to manually manage, then just drag and
drop things onto the IPod, which now is the only way I'm seeing to
do this. I created another playlist, it did no good. I renamed a
few playlists, no good. The odd thing's why? does it see CDE
burning, when I created that one, by hand, yet... not see! any?
others! I'm totally perplexed! I restored the IPod multiple times
with no luck, I even went as far as to check for updates. All
updates were current. Yup? ITunes 8.0.1. The very? latest. All's
good there. Now when I plug my? IPod Nano in, I have the same
problem. I don't see any of my playlists, and all a sudden, I
neither with mine now see even CD burning, let alone any others.
I deleted the itunes library database as well as backing up the
ITunes music library.xml file from my home direftory/music/ITunes.
I then restarted ITunes, and BTW, ITunes wasn't running when I
deleted those. I'm not that stupid. LOL! Then under ITunes, I
went >>File>>Library>>Import database, I think it says. I then went
back to that xml file, and reimported my database.
I then closed and reopened ITunes again. The playlists were back
now in the sources list with all my other music, but, again:
neither with his nor my IPod, can we see those playlists under the
music tab. When I used JAWS 10, and looked under Windows XP, I
tried creating the same senario. It worked! All my playlists showed
up under the music tab, including! my transfers playlist. I was
able to use the jaws cursor, click it, then move the jaws cursor
down, click apply, then sync with just that playlist. This
problem's only on my Mac. I created another user account, and set
up a whole new ITunes library. That neither worked. Again, they
were not there. They're sure in the sources list though! I spent
about 3 hours literally? speaking! on the line with an Apple Product
Specialist today, and they even! are stumped beyond human recognition!
Do any a you have? a, slightest? clue? This! is Bazaar!
Chris.
