Hi,
Since Ryan summarized one of the points (potential problems checking
playlists in a scrolling table) I made in my first reply to Chris on
the topic of transferring playlists to his 4G Nano, I'll expand on
this, and also add a few tips for working with iPod playlists. These
cover dealing with the scrolling table of playlists, how playlists are
ordered, how to rename playlists and create folders of playlists, how
to find the total time/size of tracks in a playlist, and how to
override sync when you connect your iPod to iTunes (on a Mac, hold
down the Command and Option keys when you connect your iPod and keep
holding them down for at least 15 or 20 seconds; on a Windows machine,
hold down the Shift and Control keys to override the sync; this was
previously posted to the list under the subject "Overriding autosync
when connecting an iPod").
1. (Ryan's point) When your iPod is connected, the table of playlists
to check on each tab (e.g., "Music" or "Movies" or "Podcasts") of the
iPod device is a scrollable table. There appear to be issues when you
try to check items that are outside of the visible scrolling regions,
although VoiceOver can report on content outside this region. This
can result in your checking items other than the ones you want. This
has been discussed on list before by Simon and others. If you
interact with the table and VO-down sometimes you will be able to hear
when your reach the visible boundary -- generally I hear this after
arrowing down 8 or 9 steps, but it can be 13 steps for podcasts. (I
haven't used the tables for photos, contacts or games). However, I
don't always hear the "Boundary reached" sound.
To work with the scrolling table of playlists:
a. Interact with the playlists table then arrow down up to 7 key
presses, checking or unchecking playlists with VO-space
b. VO-Shift-S to start scrolling
c. Arrow down 7 or 8 key presses to scroll the visible region of the
table down (I usually use VO-down arrow or up arrow here, but this
works without the VO-keys)
d. Press escape to stop scrolling
e. Continue to VO-down arrow through the list, checking or unchecking
playlists
If you forget the scroll command (VO-Shift-S), just bring up the
VoiceOver menu (VO-F7) and press "C" then return to display the
"Commands" menu. The scroll command is listed there. Incidentally,
if you scroll part way down through a scrollable table, then stop
(because you don't want to check any more playlists), remember that
the visible area of the table will also be left in the middle for the
rest of the time until you eject your device, should you decide to
come back and check other playlists.
2. Playlist order reflects their order in the source table: On the
Music tab this will be Library entries (Audiobooks), followed by
iTunes Store entries (Purchased), then Smart Playlists and Regular
Playlists, each in sorted (alphabetical) order. If you create folders
in the Source Table, they will appear (in sorted order) BEFORE the
smart playlists. If you have downloaded some iTunes U content from
the iTunes Store you'll probaly see such folders, and they'll appear
in alphabetical order.
a. If you want your Playlist to appear first in the list, add a
character like a hyphen before the name:
"-Transfer" or "-iPodlist" will appear before playlists whose names
start with numbers or letters because the hyphen will precede those
characters in sort order. (This won't make a regular playlist appear
before a smart playlist, however -- it will just move it to the head
of the list of regular playlists.)
b. To rename a playlist or folder in the Source Table, double-click on
your selection and type a new name. (For a laptop user, double-
clicking generally will mean holding down the VO-Shift keys and
tapping the spacebar key twice. Someone with a full keyboard with
NumPad Commander activated could press the "5" key on the numeric
keypad twice. You can also press the trackpad on a laptop or a button
on a physical mouse twice quickly in succession and then type in a new
name, but that's more awkward for VoiceOver use.) Just press return
after you've typed the new name or escape if you decide you don't want
to change the name.
c. To create playlist folders (or sub-folders), from the Source Table:
1) Navigate to the File menu of the iTunes menu bar (VO-M then press
"F")
2) Arrow down to "New Playlist Folder" and return
3) Type in a name in response to the "Enter a name for the playlist
folder" prompt in the dialogue window and return, or press escape to
cancel the action. (There are also buttons for "Cancel" and "OK" that
you can navigate to and press (VO-space)).
Folders can be useful to organize your playlist content. If I create a
folder for the playlists I wish to transfer to an iPod, this can also
mean that all the playlists I want to check will appear first in the
scrollable table on the Music tab of my iPod device, and so I may
never have to scroll down in the table to access these correctly.
More generally, if I want to manually transfer content to an iPod that
is not synced to my iTunes library, such as another user's iPod
Classic or an earlier generation iPod nano, I can do this by using
VoiceOver's drag and drop to drag and drop a playlist onto that device
in the Source table. Having the playlists in a folder means that I
only need to VO-up arrow 3 or 4 key presses to move the playlist onto
the iPod with drag and drop, because folders and their contents are
ordered before regular playlists and smart playlists, so the playlist
in question is much closer to the device.
I'm not going to go over instructions for using Leopard's VoiceOver
drag and drop to move a playlist onto an iPod (or other MP3 Player in
the source table), since that's been posted to the list before, and
users can also check the instructions at Lioncourt.com:
http://www.lioncourt.com/guides-tutorials/drag-and-drop-with-voiceover/
You can also check out the NumPadPlus Blog Mac entries for an audio
mp3 file on how to drag and drop:
http://numpadplus.com/blog/?cat=30
Note that material transferred this way onto a 4G Nano will not be
spoken in the menus since there will not be a "sync" action to
generate the soundclips. The files will be on the device; you just
won't hear anything spoken at these menu entries for artist, song,
podcast, etc. The drag and drop is a general way to get content onto
MP3 players that you don't "sync" -- like adding non-DRM content to
someone else's iPod, or adding tracks to a Creative player that may
show up as a device in the iTunes source list, but which doesn't "sync".
Creating a folder and moving a playlist there is a good way to check
that you can use Leopard's VoiceOver drag and drop successfully before
you try dragging and dropping a playlist onto an iPod or other device
to transfer music. Once you have dropped a playlist into a folder,
you can add items to the playlist from the contextual menu of the
songs table, just as usual. You don't need to worry about using drag
and drop if you are using the playlist in this folder to "sync" your
selected playlists.
d. To check the time and size corresponding to any playlist, select
the playlist in the source table, then stop interacting and navigate
to the songs table. VO-Down Arrow from the songs table to the summary
line that will tell you the number of items, total time, and size,
e.g. "6 items, 18.2 hours, 265.7 MB". You can set the total time to
give a more detailed time accounting if you click on this summary. (If
you do not have your cursors tracking so that Mouse Cursor follows
VoiceOver cursor, first route your Mouse cursor to your VoiceOver
cursor with VO-Command-F5, then click with VO-Shift-Space or by other
means such as pressing the "5" key on a Numeric keypad with NumPad
Commander.) Now when you move to the summary line you will hear "6
items, 18:16:46 total time, 265.7 MB", and future summaries will be
given in similar detail. Click again on the summary line if you want
to change back to the less detailed time accounting.
3. To override automatic sync, hold down the Command and Option keys
as you connect your iPod (and keep holding them for at least 15
seconds -- time depends on iPod model with older iPods taking
longer). If you autosync your iPod (e.g., you have an iPod Classic
and want to put on every track in your Library), but want to change
this over to manual sync (e.g., you suddenly added lots of video
tracks which will overrrun the capacity), this command lets you
override the sync and change your settings.
On a Windows iTunes installation, hold down the Control and Shift keys
as you connect your iPod to override the sync.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Esther
On Nov 3, 2008, at 8:11 PM, Ryan Dour wrote:
One more thought for you:
I have noticed very strange behavior of those lists under the tabs
in the iPod pane. A sighted user sees it as a small scrollable list.
We see it as a table, and interact with it using VOiceover. It seems
that Voiceover is able to move through the list, without the list
visually scrolling at the same time. When this happens, you may
actually miss content, as it doesn't update properly in the table.
This may be a bug in the Mac version of iTunes. The bug shows itself
off the most when you see check boxes you swear you checked, but the
actual action activated a totally different selection you didn't
want to use. This has lead to my iPod sometimes syncing playlists I
did not intend on syncing. The solution is to scroll up and down the
list by using the scroll command, maybe 6 presses at a time down,
then move Voiceover down after finishing the scroll action. This
seems to keep the visual on screen, and Voiceover is able to
properly interact with the desired objects in the list without
missing items or activating the wrong items when activated with VO-
Space.
Again, try it out and let us know.
Ryan
