Purchased, mp3 and Podcasts won't sync to 160 gig classic

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Level 1

14 points

Purchased, mp3 and Podcasts won't sync to 160 gig classic

I have a six-month-old iPod Classic 160 gig, with about 90 gig of music and 10 gig of video on it. In the last two weeks, though, iTunes tells me that 109 tracks won't sync, with the error message "because they cannot be played on this iPod." Some of them, homegrown movies, I understand, but others are either podcasts downloaded through the iTunes store, purchased music (Sheryl Crow's new album) or recently ripped tracks that I did through iTunes using either 128 AAC or Apple Lossless. Most of the ones I've noticed to date were imported in the last 2-3 weeks, and play fine on iTunes, just not the iPod.

I've tried restoring the iPod and deauthorizing then reauthorizing the computer. Neither works. The next step, I think, would be to rebuild my library, but I have tons of playlists I don't want to recreate (or export/import one-by-one, which is how it looks like have to do it).

I can't help but wonder if this is something related to the latest updates to iTunes, seeing as how it's a such a new phenomenon, and there seem to be several similar posts (although not exactly my situation) in discussions.

I welcome any and all suggestions!

- Paul

iMac 20" G5, 2gigRam, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Apr 11, 2008 4:18 PM

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Answer 1

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the fiend

Level 7

22,446 points

Apr 12, 2008 9:15 AM in response to Paulza

Paulza wrote:
... iTunes tells me that 109 tracks won't sync, with the error message "because they cannot be played on this iPod." Some of them ... are ... podcasts downloaded through the iTunes store

Podcasts are completely independent of Apple and iTunes, they're not from iTunes itself. All iTunes does is list the podcast and tell iTunes where to go and find it if you ask to download it. There are other (non-iTunes) Podcast catchers which do the same thing for other MP3 players. So I think that when listing podcasts on iTunes, Apple/iTunes does not consider it's playablity - because it's a podcast and that's the way of Podcasts! Also, the podcaster has probably not produced these podcasts specifically for the iPod and so has not realised that they don't work on our iPods as you and I expect them to.

You could try sending feedback to the podcast creator, explaining that their Podcasts don't play on the iPod itself. They may +_or may not_+ do something about it.

I've had this problem with both audio and video Podcasts. There is an option to convert selections for the iPod which I have tried for the videos, (click on the top menu and *Advanced/Convert selection for iPod/iPhone*. However, this process takes forever and I gave up trying it. I simply watch them in iTunes. I cannot actually remember what I did for the audio Podcasts, but if I right-click (in Windows that is..) on an audio Podcast, I see the option to *convert selection to AAC*. I don't promise that it will work, but you could give it a try.

As for the Sheryl Crow album , if it was purchased from iTunes, I would expect it to play on the iPod without converting it. The same goes for tracks ripped using iTunes on your PC. I can't explain that, perhaps someone else can?

Regards,

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Answer 2

Paulza Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 13, 2008 9:42 PM in response to the fiend

A few more notes of clarification. The podcast is an audio one--"MacBreak Weekly"--and it's synced in the past (and in fact, a couple of them have). And on the Sheryl Crow, I should note that in the past the whole album has synced, but now it's dropped to five tracks.

Thanks for your response!

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Answer 3

Paulza Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 28, 2008 9:40 AM in response to Paulza

This weekend I took the big leap and recreated my music library. Nice to know, it didn't delete any of the playlists, which was my worry, and now everything is syncing nicely.

The instructions to do it were here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

I did have to rebuild my Podcasts library afterward, too, following the instructions linked to at the bottom of that page.

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone!

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Answer 4

Apr 28, 2008 4:18 PM in response to Paulza

Not sure about the audio. That should work as long as it is a compatible format/size/kind within the ipod guidelines. As far as video podcasts, I have had major issues with some podcasts that download fine, play great in iTunes, but do not sync with ipods. It turns out that since podcasts do not come directly from Apple, it is up to the podcast broadcaster (company/individual/etc.) to make sure that the file types are compatible. Many video podcasts are in the "MOV" format and with this situation, you will always see the same "Cannot be played on this ipod" message. You can format them for ipod/iphone, but then simply become video files and lose their association with podcasts (being able to have that "podcast" tag for easy searching/organizing)... Hope this helps.

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