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.)