Hi Scott,
It's simple to get a timed playlist of music if you're playing content
that's in your own iTunes library, but if you're working with an
external radio stream you'd probably have to set this up via an
AppleScript, Automator action, or shell script that that uses a timer
or runs a cron job. If you're using a third party program to stream
content it might come with some pre-made AppleScripts.
However, here's the simple way to do this with your own music in
iTunes: create a smart playlist with a checkbox that is set to "Limit
to 45 minutes".
For example, let's say that you have a long playlist of good workout
music named "Workout Music", and you want to make a smart playlist in
iTunes that will play 45 minutes worth of this. Create the selection
rule: "<Playlist> <is> <Workout Music>" then limit the playlist by
time, according to your preferred selection method. Limits can be set
in time (minutes or hours), size (MB or GB), or number of items.
1. Command-Option-N (keyboard shortcut for new smart playlist)
2. VO-right arrow to rules section and interact (VO-Shift-Down Arrow)
3. VO-space on first popup button; press "P" then down arrow to
"Playlist" and return to change the popup button from its default
setting of "Artist" to "Playlist"
4. VO-right arrow to the next popup button which is set to "contains",
press it (VO-space), then press "i" and return to change this to "is".
5. VO-right arrow to the last popup button which is set to "Music",
press it (VO-space), the type in the first few letters of your
playlist name (e.g. "W-O") until the name of your selected playlist
appears and press return.
6. Stop interacting (VO-Shift-Up arrow) and VO-right arrow out of the
rules section to the limit conditions
7. VO-space where you hear "Limit to, unchecked checkbox) to check
this box
8. VO-right arrow and type in "45"
9. VO-right to the popup button, press it (VO-space), and press "M-I"
and return to select "minutes"
10. VO-right arrow past "selected by" to the popup button set to
"random". You can change this (VO-space and arrow up or down) to
criteria like Artist, Album, Genre, highest or lowest rating, most or
least recently played, most or least recently added to library, or
most or least frequently played.
11. Once you're done, return to commit your choices (or navigate to
the "Cancel" or "OK" buttons and press your selections with VO-space),
then type in a name for your smart playlist in response to the prompt
from the dialogue box.
You can add additional rules to your playlist -- like a specific
Artist or Genre -- by pressing the button to add another rule at the
end of your first rule, and setting up other rules like "<Rating> <is
greater than> <3 stars>" or "<Genre> <is> <Rock>".
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Esther
P.S. When you set up more than one rule, you have the option of apply
either ANY of the rules or ALL of the rules. When you stop
interacting with the rules section VO left arrow to the start of the
smart playlist, which will say "Match all <popup button> of the
following rules" and change the popup button to "any" if you want a
smart playlist that matches any of your rules.
On Nov 7, 2008, at 12:34 PM, Scott Rutkowski wrote:
Hi all.
Does anyone know of a way in iTunes that would allow one to say play
a radio stream for 30 minutes then iTunes could turn off the stream?
If not available directly in iTunes is there a third party add on or
pluggin that would allow this?
I need this feature so i know after being on the treadmill for 45
minutes the current music in iTunes would stop playing.
If anyone knows anything about the above, could you let us all know?
Thanks all.
