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iTunes 9: Podcasts in a playlist won't copy to iPod?

I am not sure if this is a problem/"feature" of iTunes 9 with all iPods, or a quirk with my iPod nano 3G, but I have a playlist with all my podcasts in it no longer copies to the iPod. Well, the holder for the playlist copies, but it does not copy or list any of the actual podcasts. All of the podcasts are on the iPod accessible through the Podcasts menu, but my one-stop playlist for all podcasts on the iPod seems to have been disabled. Have they changed a setting, or have the Gods of iTunes disabled what I consider a pretty useful feature for reasons unknown to me?

MacBook (late-2008), Mac OS X (10.5.7), iPod nano 3G

Posted on Sep 9, 2009 3:56 PM

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65 replies

Sep 9, 2009 4:05 PM in response to turingtest2

I was just going to say the same thing. I have the tab set for all episodes of all podcasts to be copied to the iPod. And it does copy them, just not to the playlist. I don't see anything about playlist management there, nor can I ever remember anything of that sort.

I've done a restore of my iPod so I don't think it's just a quirk with me. Are people with other models of iPod finding the same thing?

Message was edited by: Jim Bridges1

Sep 9, 2009 5:13 PM in response to Jim Bridges1

I've done a bit more poking around... and it leads me to believe this is in fact some kind of ill-conceived feature rather than a bug. If you create just a regular playlist and populate it with only podcasts, that playlist will not even show up as one you can manually select to sync with the iPod. Only if you add a musical track to it does it show up in the list under the Music tab when choosing what to sync. (And then only the song will sync, not the podcasts.)

I can't imagine what problem this change is solving though. (And so it was written: "Podcasts are not to be treated as music." ?)

Sep 9, 2009 5:18 PM in response to Jim Bridges1

I discovered the same thing here.... The problem is that they seem to be treating podcasts in playlists differently between on the computer and on the iPod (in my case a Touch). Which really seems to be a bug (or a really poorly thought out feature) since they specifically have on the podcast sync page the 'include episodes from these playlists' selections. Why have that if podcasts can't be used in playlists on the iPod?

If this doesn't get fixed, I'm going to be reverting to the older iTunes.....

Sep 9, 2009 5:51 PM in response to cfristrom

Make sure you're not using the "Media Kind" rule in the Smart Playlist. Once I took that out, my playlists started populating correctly. The playlists that are populating correctly for me only use one rule: Album contains "something unique to the podcast". Limit is not checked, Match only checked items and Live updating are checked.

This is on a 1st Gen Nano, software version 1.3.1.

Message was edited by: bryankaiser

Sep 9, 2009 5:57 PM in response to bryankaiser

So you're saying that to create a playlist of all my podcasts, I have to NOT use "Media Kind", the one criteria that identifies a podcast file, and instead build a "smart" playlist by album name, using a unique part of the podcast's name? I have over 50 podcasts I subscribe to. While I appreciate the suggestion (and am glad it works for you), this doesn't seem like an ideal workable solution.

Sep 9, 2009 6:10 PM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:
Check the Podcasts tab with your iPod connected - you should find rules for including podcasts in selected playlists along with the principal podcast sync options.

tt2

Modifying those rules seem to be ineffective in my case, too, trying to sync a playlist of podcasts to my 1st gen. 16Gb touch. The podcasts sync successfully; the playlist that organizes them so I can listen to them in sequence does not.

I use a playlist to organize a 20-30 min. sequence of NPR and news podcasts to listen to on my commute. Taking my eyes off the road to futz with my iPod and navigate to the next podcast manually is not only inconvenient, it's an obvious safety hazard. I'll need a quick fix, or I'll be downgrading to iTunes 8 and/or iPod software 3.0, whichever fixes the issue.

Sep 9, 2009 6:18 PM in response to Jim Bridges1

iTunes 9 appears to change the logic for including Podcasts when syncing to the iPod. Previously if a podcast episode was included in a playlist which in turn was synced via the selected playlists area on the music tab then that episode would be available in both the playlist & podcast sections of the iPod.

As I can see it (though not fully tested as yet) iTunes 9 initially excludes podcasts that are only included via a playlist rather than via the options to include, for example, All episdodes of selected podcasts. If you *scroll down* the Podcasts pane (with iPod conneced) however you will find another section with the heading *Include Episodes from Playlists*. I presume selecting relevant playlists in this section will then include the episodes that you want to include via smart playlists rather than podcast selections.

One presumes that this new feature is designed to stop the accidental inclusion of Podcasts, TV Shows etc. into playlists with over-general rules. Can't say I ever noticed anyone complaining about this as a problem though. Most of my smart playlists open with Playlist is Music to narrow them down and I would have thought consistency between the iTunes & iPod version of the same playlist is what most users would wish for.

tt2

Sep 9, 2009 6:20 PM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:
If you scroll down the Podcasts pane (with iPod conneced) however you will find another section with the heading *Include Episodes from Playlists*. I presume selecting relevant playlists in this section will then include the episodes that you want to include via smart playlists rather than podcast selections.


Again, however, let's be clear about the issue: The episodes in question have been syncing to the iPod successfully throughout this discussion. The problem isn't getting the episodes to sync, but getting the playlist to sync, so podcasts can be played in a desired sequence without having to operate the iPod.

Sep 9, 2009 6:27 PM in response to Jim Bridges1

I built a playlist using Genre = Podcast instead of Media Kind... Didn't work.
Changed the Media Kind on one episode one of the podcasts in iTunes.
Sync'd to my Touch (running 3.0 not 3.1).
According to iTunes the only thing on the playlist was the one edited episode, but when I pulled it up on the pod, all of the rest of the playlist showed up corrrectly......

PS. Btw, I also use a playlist to organize my drive-time podcasts... So it's a safety issue for me too...

Sep 9, 2009 6:36 PM in response to Lance VE

Interesting turn of events. Problem may be in how a playlist is determined to be 'empty' and not displayed...

I changed the media kind of my tweaked podcast back to Podacast from Audiobook. I happened to have my podcast playlist open on my pod when I resync'd. When done with the sync, I went back to the Music app, and I got a 'updating library, please wait' screen. After that went away, _*there was my podcast playlist, intact*_. But, when I navigated to the playlist screen, the playlist was no longer visible and I couldn't get back to it anymore...

iTunes 9: Podcasts in a playlist won't copy to iPod?

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