[ideasculptor]

I've got about 100GB of audio files in my library, so I've always used my ipod in exactly the same mode that Autofill provides for the shuffle. I have about 60 gigs of tunes that are marked as for various types of listening with keywords in the comments field. I then have smart playlists that breaks the library up into appropriate uses. If I'm heading out on the motorcycle for a week, I want 'moto-tunes.' If its monday and I'm going to be working all week, I sync up from the 'work-tunes,' etc. However, many of those playlists are larger than the ipod in question, and I often want music from multiple playlists. This was easy enough with my shuffle, since I could create a combined playlist and then autofill, but I still had to manually move files onto my 40GB and 4GB ipods. Using the 'select 40GB randomly' option in the smart playlist, was worthless, as there was no way to get it to ever re-randomize.

So I wrote an automator action. You feed it a list of iTunes songs, and it spits out a list of iTunes songs which are selected randomly and limited to the size (in Megabytes) that are specified in the action. So I use the 'Find Ipod Items' action to grab all the songs in a single playlist, feed that to my action, set up for 3800 MB, and feed the output of that to 'Add Songs to Ipod.' As of yet, there is no 'delete all songs from ipod' action that I can put in the chain, so I have to manually delete the old tracks, although I'll probably write one eventually.

Would folks around here be interested in my 'aufofill' action, or is there some better way to do this. I didn't really look around the net, as I wanted to learn how to write automator actions, anyway.

Incidentally, I also have an action which will append a new keyword to the comment field of a list of iTunes songs. Just highlight a bunch of tracks and click the workflow and all 20 comment fields are updated, no matter what they used to contain. The new keyword is just appended to the old comment, with a comma or other separator, as needed. I use it to bulk update tracks with a new keyword without deleting whatever keywords were already in the comment field.

I can make both available if folks are interested.

--sam

[Randman]

You don't need Automator to do that. A Smart Playlist is more than powerful (and flexible) enough.

[ideasculptor]

Originally Posted by Randman

You don't need Automator to do that. A Smart Playlist is more than powerful (and flexible) enough.

Explain, please. I could find no way to force a smart playlist that was "limited to 4GB selected randomly" to ever update its song selection, unless I added a rule which would disqualify a song after it had been in the playlist for a while. Similarly, if I allow my small ipod to sync with the entire library, iTunes will warn that it doesn't fit and put a random selection in a regular playlist. However, if I set up the ipod to automatically sync a single playlist which is bigger than the ipod, it just refuses to sync at all, so I still can't get a random subset of the playlist I want to listen to through any means offered by iTunes. I'd love to hear how I can...

--sam

[Randman]

The key to a Smart Playlist is setting the "random pattern". You have to enable certain criteria to make it "random" but once you create it, you can go back in and edit the settings from time to time. For example, it took less than a minute to create the one below...




And, as you see, there's also the setting to choose songs randomly.

[ideasculptor]

Sure, you can choose songs 'randomly' but it only randomizes once. If I create a playlist that contains all songs where 'comment contains motorcycle,' then limit it to 3800 MB selected by random, then I get a playlist with a random selection. But that playlist NEVER changes. I have to put bogus conditions on the playlist like 'playcount is less than x' or 'last played s not in the last x weeks' in order to force some items to expire out of the playlist in order to allow new ones in.

Also, if I never play the songs in iTunes, but only on my ipod, even those conditions never change (I don't listen to my computer at home, I only listen when away from home. When I'm at home, I use CDs, through a sound system that actually sounds good). So I am stuck with a single random subset that never changes. Even if I delete the playlist and re-create it, I get the same songs in the same order. There is absolutely no way to just grab a totally random subset of songs, and then update with a new subset on demand, except, of course, for autofill on a shuffle, which does exactly that. I can't imagine why apple would think that that feature would only be attractive to someone with a shuffle. Stupid oversight, if you ask me. You can, kind of/sort of, emulate the behaviour with a complicated smart playlist like your example, but only if your usage pattern would actually make those conditions do anything, which mine don't. I want to get a random 4 gigs and then walk away from my computer for 4 days. Then I want to get a DIFFERENT random 4 gigs. Your playlist will not do that.



--sam

[Randman]

If you autosync, what's played on the iPod will carry over to iTunes. The example I gave above was just one way to do it. If you want totally random, you can do that as well without using Automator. If anything, using a Smart Playlists reduces the number of steps needed to achieve what you suggested in your original post.

[willed]

I think I know the problem you're talking about Sam - I'm not quite sure if Randman's got it (no offense). The best way I found to refresh smart playlists is simply to select their contents and delete them. iTunes asks you if you're sure you want to remove them from the playlist. You press yes, it removes them and comes up with a new set that meets your criteria. Crucially, while this removes them from that version of the playlist, it doesn't disqualify them from being picked again some other time. So basically deleting all the tracks in the smart playlist acts as a 'refresh' command.

Hope this helps.

[B Gallagher]

Exactly what willed said. Make a randomised playlist, select all the songs in it, hit delete, and it'll refill the playlist with another lot of random songs! Easy!