Syncing: All or Nothing

[phred]

I've been very happy with the available options for selecting what to sync to my 160gb iPod Classic but now that's it's full, I'd like to have a little more control over what to sync.

Currently I can select which playlists to sync, which is great. I can have all of them, or I can choose which ones to sync. But with my music tracks, it's pretty much all or nothing. Well, not really nothing, but it's all or random. I'd like to have an option to sync specific artists. Or specific albums.  Yes, I suppose I can do this by creating a playlist, but then I've got a three step process: create the playlist, sync the playlist, delete the playlist.

I'd like to see an option where I'm presented with a dropdown selection menu showing all the artists (and the directories under them) with check boxes for selecting and including in the sync process. There should also be a "clear all selections" box. What I envision is similar to the dropdown presented when I use File > Scan folders for New Files. This would result in the synchronize music section of the sync window showing "all music" "select artist/album" and "fill device with random selection"

If someone has already figured out how to do this without creating new/temporary playlists or filters, please let me know.

Thanks.

[psychoadept]

I don't know if this will meet your needs or not, but I sync an auto playlist with a rule that tracks must be ticked. So only ticked tracks are synced and I can quickly adjust the list without messing with a playlist. 

[phred]

Hmmm ... that's certainly creative. I just set it up and the first problem I noticed is that all 18k+ tracks are ticked. And there's no way to untick all of them at once.

For the time being, I'm going to try out creating a "sync" playlist to which I'll drag the artists and/or albums and use for syncing.

[psychoadept]

Hmmm ... that's certainly creative. I just set it up and the first problem I noticed is that all 18k+ tracks are ticked. And there's no way to untick all of them at once.

For the time being, I'm going to try out creating a "sync" playlist to which I'll drag the artists and/or albums and use for syncing.

You should be able to untick any number of tracks by using the right click menu: Tick Selection, Untick Selection.  I can do my whole library at once.

[phred]

You should be able to untick any number of tracks by using the right click menu: Tick Selection, Untick Selection.  I can do my whole library at once.

Hmmm ... very nice. I guess never having the need to use the 'tick' field before, I never saw the tick option in the right-click menu. And (of course) didn't think to look for it when testing earlier. So this makes the selection process somewhat easier, but I'd still like to see it as described initially.

Thanks for the tip psychoadept!

[Aevaris]

While it seems a little silly, I use ratings for this purpose (some of the reason because its what I've always done starting 15 years ago when things were less advanced...). I rate songs that I know I want to listen to (i.e. take with me) as 3 stars or better. 3 is maybe, 4 is good, 5 is fantastic. The difference between 4 and 5 is minimal realistically.

I then have an autoplaylist that is rating = 3 and another autoplaylist that is rating >= 4 and a final playlist that is "keep but no play" for anything I want to keep around but don't intend to listen to regularly. I can then always sync these 3 playlists and get everything I want.

[phred]

I then have an autoplaylist that is rating = 3 and another autoplaylist that is rating >= 4 and a final playlist that is "keep but no play" for anything I want to keep around but don't intend to listen to regularly. I can then always sync these 3 playlists and get everything I want.

Thanks. That's another interesting what of doing what I want. But at this point, with 18k+ tracks, I'm not about to start rating them for this purpose.

So far, the drag-drop method of getting albums to the sync playlist works, but is slow when browsing through 4k+ albums.