[Macworld]

Post your comments for Syncing large music libraries here

[polymnia]

I have a very large library (26k songs and well over 250GB with TV shows, Podcasts & movies included) and I use star ratings to help me keep things under control
I use a 16GB iPhone 3G for an iPod. I create 5 smart playlists corresponding to each of the 5 star ratings. I automatically sync 4 & 5 star playlists to the iPhone since they are relatively small in size. The 3 star smart playlist wont fit, so I make another 'iPhone 3 Star' smart playlist that randomly picks X number of GBs of songs from my '3 Star' smart playlist. I then sync that. That gives my my favorite music as selected my me on my iPhone at all times.
I have only given star ratings to approx 40% of my collection, so I reserve space for yet another playlist I call 'iPhone unrated' which is a smart playlist designed to select X GBs of music with no star rating yet at random. I can listen to this at work and assign star ratings which sync back to my iTunes library. I find new music I want to add to my star playlists, which automatically makes them permanent residents on my iPhone.
The only downside is the occasional tweaking to the GB size of the various smart playlists to handle the ever-expanding starred smart playlists
My girlfriend laughs at this OCD nerdiness with my iTunes library, but she does admit that a random shuffle of my 3 star and above playlist is a pretty good mix of music!

[jschaffe]

Maybe I'm a crazy person, but I use Play Count as my fundamental strategy: a smart playlist "Standard" where play count is less than my current maximum (at the moment, that's anything less than 2 plays) and playlist size is limited to 20 GB gives me about 1,100 mostly lossless tracks.
I recently beefed that up by adding a second playlist "New" that only selects music that's less than 2 plays, not added in the last 6 months, not played in the last 6 months, and not in Standard. That boosts the rate at which I listen to new music.
Finally, I have a folder "All" that contains those two playlists, and I defined 4 other smart play lists that select from "All" by genre: Rock, Jazz, World, and New Age.
Those are the only play lists set to sync with my iPod. Whenever I sync again, songs played either on iTunes or the iPod are removed from the iPod, and new qualifying songs are added.
I have a similar set up of playlists that I use only in iTunes, but there's no size limit involved.
When I've played everything twice, I'll have to edit the smart playlists to look for play counts less than 3.

[jschaffe]

I also have smart playlists based on ratings:

Laureates - *
Leaders -
Legions - *
Laggards -
Losers - *

Mostly I use Losers to uncheck tracks so I never listen to them again without losing the integrity of albums. I also use one-star ratings to bring a track to my attention: add to my wife's list, missing a cover, etc.

[dzanre]

I do as polymnia does, except that I have my Mac set to allow for 1/2 stars so I have more playlists to work with. I also then have a comment inclusion that says "full-album" for things that just should never be separated :) and I have a playlist that has all music added in the last month, etc. So everything 3-1/2 stars and better gets put on the iPhone, plus "new" things to rate and get to know better, and then albums that I want to have in their entirety.

[polymnia]

haha! And I thought my system was nerdy. My hat's off to you and your alliterative star playlist nomenclature.

[polymnia]

I like the 'full-album' comment idea. I have thought that certain Radiohead records or Sonic Youth's daydream nation have songs that are weak on their own but work well in the album context. You do, of course, have to manually add the 'full-album' comment to each song on the record. What about the Album ratings in iTunes? I've never used them much. Could that be used for the same purpose instead of a comment? That could also give a convenient rating to use to cut down the 'full-album' syncs if you start to get too many 'full-album' matches on your iPhone.

[bigbadvoo]

I have 37k songs (20k rated so far), and only a 2 GB Nano. I also make use of 1/2 stars, so here's my only-the-best but rotating smart playlist:
Playlist is: 4½-5 Star
Grouping does not contain: DTS audio
Kind does not contain: video
Last played is not in the last: 4 days
Last skipped is not in the last: 10 days
Limit to 1600 MB selected by random
I do the same with my 4-star and better playlist if I know I'll be using the Nano for a few days in a row.
My hat's off with polymnia, jschaffe! Great titles!

[jschaffe]

;-)
I started with "Losers" just to filter out Amazon freebies I didn't like. "Leaders" came next, then I had to chew on the others for a while. I think "Legions" is the weakest, but it's the best I could come up with.

I didn't know about the 1/2 star setting. I'll have to look into that!

[bigbadvoo]

A terminal command to set 1/2 stars directly in iTunes: http://www.macosxhin...unes%2Bterminal
And a nice script (which I set as a key-shortcut): http://dougscripts.c...=assignhalfstar
Great for those gems that are either tired of being 5 star, or 4 stars that almost made it to 5. Enjoy!

[kirkmc]

Let me put in a plug for an article my son wrote, about using AppleScript to add stuff to comments (his example was using a sixth star, but you can use it for anything): http://www.macworld....es_ratings.html
Kirk

[PhillyCheeze]

These are all good tips. Our library is almost a terabyte (I'll be expanding to a 2TB drive soon). I just load different iPods by genre. One is used for jazz (60GB), another alternative and rock (160GB), and another for country music (30GB). I'll use my Nano to listen to whatever in the car or gym. Unfortunately, you can't take it all with you!!

[polymnia]

Does anyone have anymore insight on how Album Ratings work? I know I asked earlier, but haven't gotten any responses...

[ceej]

Rating the Album sets all of the tracks in that album to the selected rating, but, the stars are, well, "hollow?", for lack of a better term. When you rate the actual track, the star is "filled in" distinguishing between those that you rated individually versus those that have adopted the Album level rating. If you create a Smart Playlist which searches on "Rating", the "hollow" ratings are treated the same as the "filled in" ratings. Smart playlists can search on "Album Rating" and "Rating" (ie track level rating.)
The easiest way I know to set Album ratings is to enable the Artwork Column (View: Show Artwork Column). The Album art (or blank album icon) will appear in the far left column with the rating stars available below Album and Artist name. Another cool thing I just discovered while verifying how this works is that if you don't rate the album, but rate a track on the album, the album will take that rating, but use the "hollow" star. Cooler still is that if you rate more than one track, the album rating will use an average. For instance, I gave one track a 4 star rating and another track a 2 star rating. The album rating changed to 3 "hollow" stars. If you set the album rating after you've already rated some tracks, the track ratings you already set are preserved. Same if you set track ratings after setting the album rating. If you remove a rating (by clicking on a star and dragging all the way to the left) the rating will revert to the "hollow" star as appropriate.