Podcast playlist not synced to iPhone 3gs, 3.1 iTunes 9

I just purchased a Touch 64. I sync'd the device and all the songs and playlists (smart) are on the Touch. In iTunes, if I select the device and look at the playlists, they are there and the songs in them are there too.

Now, if you go to the Touch, select the playlist, the songs in there are NOT the playlist songs. I did a complete reset and reload, no change. I modified the parameters in the smart list, no fix.

I just sent in an inquiry. I will call in a few days for the results.
I never had this problem with my Classic 120GB.

I have lost control of Podcasts on the iPhone. Cannot delete them, can only add episodes. Likewise, smart playlist of podcasts will not update and cannot be removed. (Music playlists can be removed from the iPhone.) I have tried all suggestions supplied in this thread including turning Sync Podcasts completely off. Another interesting thing is that now after every time I sync the iPhone and start the iPod player, it says "Updating Library ... This may take a few minutes." And it does. Next step, restore iPhone.

iPhone 3G 3.01
iTunes 9.0.1
MBP 10.6.1

Update. When I also turned off Sync iTunes U, then all but one of the Podcasts unsync'd from my iPhone. I had to completely remove that podcast from iTunes in order to get it off of the iPhone.

I have now restored my podcasts but have left iTunes U syncing turned off. My podcast playlist is still incorrect - it is showing the oldest 5 instead of the newest 5. I turned off only sync 5. It refuses to sync the correct order of the playlist even after deleting the playlist and recreating it.

There seems to be a problem with "Media Kind" referencing "Podcast." I found a smart playlist on my iPhone that should not have been there. In defining the playlist, I had said "Media Kind is not Podcast." As soon as I changed it to "Media Kind is Music" the playlist was removed from my iPhone.

"There seems to be a problem with "Media Kind" referencing "Podcast.""

I concur, since iphone 3.1 / itunes 9.0, Smart Playlists do NOT sync Podcasts.

This happened before 3.0. Apple has not even addressed in 3.1.2 or 9.0.1

Not tried but this seems to be a solution

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2152465&tstart=0

Yes it worked. 🙂 The above thread has a valid workaround as follows:

"In iTunes, under the Podcasts tab on your iPod, try UNchecking “Automatically include _ episodes of _,” and check your playlists under “Include Episodes from Playlists:”."

Since iTunes 9.0, podcasts in playlists do not transfer to a mobile device (can you say "bug"?). Until Apple fixes this annoying problem, here is my workaround:

Move your podcasts to a playlist
Select all the podcasts and right click to Get Info
Select Options and change the media type to Audiobook
The files in playlists will now transfer
After listening, change media type back to Podcast and they will return to the appropriate podcast directory

One problem with this approach is that it apparently does NOT show the podcast as played and will eventually (in a few days) cause the podcast to stop updating. Check your podcast library often to those little exclamation marks to restart downloading.

I've just been having loads of fun myself with iTunes and my iPhone. Got to work this morning, and *no music* on my iPhone. Came as a bit of a shock, I can tell you. Anyway, I have found a workaround and an indication of what the issue might be. I have a sort of meta-playlist set up, which contained about five other playlists, a few of which were composed of still more playlists. It seems that if you can only nest playlists two deep now. The good news is you no longer need to nest playlists that deep. Clicking on the ellipses button next to the rules section allows you to add all the rules you need in one. Here's how mine was set up:

My Playlist contained -
Playlist is Shuffle (meta-playlist)
Playlist is not Blacklist (stuff I don't want on my iPhone)
Playlist is not Sh**list (stuff I don't want to hear again, ever)
Last Played is not in the last 1 days (so there's always something different)

Shuffle contained -
Playlist is Favourites (playlist containing 4 & 5 * rating)
Playlist is Most Played
Playlist is Rare (2 & 3 * stuff I haven't heard in a while)
Playlist is Random
Playlist is New (stuff that doesn't yet have a rating)

All the other playlists appear in the Sync menu, apart from the 'My Playlist' one, which is also the only one to be more than two levels up in the hierarchy, as it were. The only reason I had it like that was when I set it up, you didn't have the option of adding another set of All or Any rules like you do now. So, at this point I've just added to the Shuffle playlist the extra rules from my 'My Playlist', and it's all kosher. Keep your nested playlists to no more than two levels, and you should be set.

I had a similar issue, with some music smart playlists not being available in the device selector (iPhone 3G, iPod Nano 3rd). Nearly all other playlists and syncing was working fine, just a particular few did not appear as available to sync. The smart playlist is set up to select music I haven't heard, and has an exclusion of a manual playlist of items I've specifically chosen to listen to. iTunes is 9.0.2.25.

The issue I discovered is from when I downloaded the iTunes Holiday Sampler LP a few weeks ago. That LP comes in the form of a file "...iTunesLP.ITLP". The ITLP file appears to be the compressed file that is uncompressed to show the individual song files, because it is not an option to play it even in iTunes. The ITLP format file got included in the manual playlist that I had, and that manual playlist was an exclusion (Playlist Is Not...) for the smart playlist. Removing the ITLP file from the manual playlist now alows several other smartplaylists to be selectable for syncing to the devices. I can toggle the visibility of the playlists in the device selector on and off by moving the ITLP file in and out of the manual playlist.

So apparently there is at least one file type which may be causing Smart Playlist conflicts in selecting; in my case when referenced to a manual playlist with the odd file. I realize this is different than the issue with podcast items, but you might check all the files that are in the possible selection criteria, and exclusions (whether podcasts, music, or other) and see if any file types are strange or new.