itunes helpful hints

[lauralh]

perich: If you're burning a large playlist as a standard CD (as opposed to an .mp3 CD), iTunes will warn you that it'll take more than one disc to handle. If you proceed, iTunes will merrily burn one disc, then pause and allow you to swap before burning the rest. The problem, however, is that iTunes won't tell you what songs are going on which discs until the drive is already whirring. I discovered this on Friday, when I tried to burn a 45-song set to CD. iTunes would take exactly 44 of those songs on 2 CDs, then tried to ask for a third CD for the very last one. "Screw that noise," I said, having already slogged through four CDs to get this right, and cancelled the process.

I tried to convince him that he was dumb, as the industry standard for CDRs is 80 minutes, but he pointed out that iTunes uses the unhelpful decimal format instead of minute format. Also, they don't use exact calculations. 1.2 hours could really mean 1.11 or 1.19 hours. Or even 1.3 hours. Not really helpful, as he pointed out, when deciding whether or not to include LL Cool J.

So, perich wins on all counts. He's not dumb, AND I've figured out a way to fix this problem using Smart Playlists.

* Create the monster playlist. [Party Time]
* Create a smart playlist with the conditions: Contains 80 minutes of songs from Party Time playlist. [Party A]
* Create a smart playlist with the conditions: Contains 80 minutes of songs from Party Time playlist AND NOT Party A. [Party B]
* Create a smart playlist with the conditions: Contains 80 minutes of songs from Party Time playlist AND NOT Party A AND NOT Party B. [Party C]
* You get the idea.

(Or, you know, don't burn CDs with iTunes.)

Comments

[perich.livejournal.com]

(Or, you know, don't burn CDs with iTunes.)

Tempting.

My other big issue is that I can't do the following - at least, there's no intuitive way to do it.

(1) Create a smart playlist based on certain criteria (e.g., "all songs of genre 'Hip-Hop'").

(2) Pare this list down to a reasonable level manually. Any songs I remove from this playlist are instantly put back on.

Your solution above (very nice, BTW) will help solve that. Create a second, 'dumb' playlist and pick and choose off the smart one. But it's not very elegant. And my sidebar is crowded with playlists as-is.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

well, the original list could have many criteria to pare it down, like "limit to 2 hours" or "limit to 3 stars and up" or "limit to stuff I haven't heard in three months"

[perich.livejournal.com]

I'm very picky with my playlists, when it comes to burning gift CDs or party mixes. I really have to do it item-by-item.

[chris.livejournal.com]

i guess i'm missing why you wouldn't just create 3 different 15 song playlists and burn them seperately. do you add and subtract from party time playlist a lot and burn new cds every so often?

DON'T ASK ME

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

i believe the issue is that itunes doesn't tell you the exact time in minutes of playlists.

from the source

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

The way it worked on Friday was:

(1) I pulled about sixteen songs into a playlist and burned it ("Party Mix #1").

(2) I then started dragging and dropping more songs without really
counting for a second playlist (Party Mix #2).

(3) This playlist was too big for one disc, but not big enough to
justify two. I discovered this when iTunes started burning and
claimed about 20 of the songs, leaving maybe 8 leftover.

(4) I thought, "ah-ha! recombine the first playlist with this new one
and I'll have enough for, maybe, two discs."

(5) And I did, less one.

(6) By the time I figured this out I needed to leave anyway, so I
figured, "Heck, this'll do."

It was a learning experience.