[Kool_Aid_Man]

Ok Apple just got me a replacement iPod for my old one and I was thinking I want to do the Automatic syncing thing where you make a playlist and have the iPod draw songs from that playlist and only that playlist.

Now, I wanted to know, if I rate a song on the iPod will it bring the rating back to the computer? Meaning if I rate "Lithium by Nirvana" on the iPod 5 stars, when I sync it to the computer will it put 5 stars to "Lithium" on the computer?

Also, if I change the album art for an album on my computer, will it update on the iPod? And if so, will it overwrite the iPod file thus taking out the rating?

[icruise]

If you have it set to automatically sync, it copy of your ratings to and from your iPod. I'm not positive what would happen if you rated a song and then -- before syncing -- changed the album art on your computer. My guess is that it would look at the date of the change (in this case, the album art was changed last) and use that version of the file, so the rating might be lost. But that scenario isn't very common, I would think.

[parsec_kadets]

The star rating is not saved as part of the music file, it's stored as part of your library. You can see this yourself by copying the file to the library of another computer. The album art will remain (or at least it used to before iTunes 7, not I'm not sure), along with all the artist/genre info, but the rating will be blank.