iPod Question I've wondered about the last few years

[Mandias]

When I used another mp3 player, I used to use scripts to automatically rename each file based on creation date, and the player would play them sequentially.

At the time that I went to an iPhone, I happened to have about 16 months of podcasts backlog (about 10 hours of shows a week), so I wanted to use the double speed playing capability to be able to catch up to real time. 16 months of podcasts was also a huge amount of data , so I could only transfer chunks to the iPhone. I started by setting it to never sync any podcasts.

At first, it really sucked, since iTunes, etc can't seem to deal with things based on filename, so I had to do a lot of manual playlist ordering. But as I started using itunes to suck down new podcasts, I could use a smart list and Release Date to order new ones.

To get them onto the device, since I don't sync any podcasts, I take the next chunk of them to fit onto the iPhone, and change their type to Audiobook, which I do sync. (I also routinely manually set all podcasts to Remember playback position and Skip when shuffling).

Doing this lets me use the audiobook's 2x play speed on podcasts, which is why I have caught up to within a couple of weeks over the past year.

I still think iTunes is the devil.

[DudeEMETIB]

Originally Posted by trippy503

i will also digress from your original question as many others have chosen to do. is there any way to take music off of your ipod to put onto itunes, or is it a one way street?

It never occurred to me to try this, since I keep all my music on an external hard-drive, but I know a million times back in the day I've wanted to be able to do what you're asking.

So since I love MediaMonkey, after reading your question I decided to try to see if I can do something with it...and there's now one more reason I like MediaMonkey over iTunes...

When your iPod is connected and you're looking at your iPod library with MediaMonkey you can just click and drag whatever songs you want and put them...well wherever you want them. If you want them in a folder...then you can put em there. You can't put them in your MediaMonkey main library just by clicking and dragging them there....but you can put the songs in a folder, and from the folder put them on your main library....and if you have both programs open, MediaMonkey and iTunes (if for some reason you really want to keep iTunes) you can use MediaMonkey just as the tool to extract iPod songs and click and drag straight from MediaMonkey (via your iPod) to your iTunes playlist.