Hi Krister, you wrote:
> Hi. A very nice description of the smart list feature. I have a > question though, let's say i want to do a party cd with various > artists from my library. I want to do it so that one artist will only > ever occurr at most twice and limit it to cd length, about one hour. > How would i make such rules? Is it at all possible? > I'll have to think about your question more to see if I can come up with a good answer with smart playlists that saves you steps but I'll give you a couple of quick thoughts about how you might get something quickly that comes close to what you want. One feature in the newer iTunes smart playlist support allows you to make use of playlists organized into folders in your sources table. You create a folder, name it, then use VoiceOver's drag and drop to place playlists in your sources table into the folder. You could have a folder named "iPod playlists", for instance. Smart playlist rules allow you to select folders in the <Playlist> <is> <Playlist Name> rule. The name of folders that contain playlists also show up in the pop up menu of playlist names. This is only a guess, but I think if you selected a folder of playlists for your <Playlist> <is> <Playlist Name> rule, and then used a limit condition like <Limit to> <70> <minutes> "selected by" <random> or <17> <items> "selected by" <random>, and you had a lot of playlists in the folder, you'd probably get one or at most two items from each playlist. The playlists could be set up as albums or genre works by different artists, or anything else. Another point: remember that you can always inspect the results of your smart playlist rules by tabbing or (using VO-right arrow) to the songs outline. You can also check the total number of items and time length by using VO-down arrow from there to get a summary (e.g. "9 songs, 40:01 total time, 39.9 MB). If you're applying a rule to limit selection of items from a larger list, you can always manually delete items in the smart playlist and see whether the new selections are something you like better. If you really like one of the resulting playlists, you can always save it as a regular playlist so it never gets altered -- just select all in the songs table of the smart playlist with Command-A and issue the "New playlist from selection" shortcut key sequence of Command-Shift-N. Finally, you might want to look into PartyShuffle for choosing your music. This is actually a mode to allow you to queue up music that you want to play at a party. Select PartyShuffle in your sources list, then tab or VO-Right arrow to the songs table, and VO-Right arrow past it. You choose a source playlist (could be your entire Music library) in the pop up buttons, along with options to display 5 (or 0 or 10, 15, 20, etc.) recently played songs and 15 (or 0, or 5, or 10, or 20, etc.) upcoming songs. The recently played songs appear dimmed in the list. You can delete some of the upcoming entries, or paste in specific tracks you want that were copied from other playlists. Or, you can press the refresh button and see whether you like the new selections better. You can still VO-Down Arrow from the songs table to get the summary totals of items and time (it just takes a few more steps). Again, you can use this playlist to create a regular playlist that you use to burn to CD, or you can use it interactively to queue up music for a party. HTH Cheers, Esther --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
