Manually Managed Ipod - Syncing Play Count with Itunes Library

I know there are third party tools that can recover both media, ratings & playcounts all at the same time. Some are listed in the user tip: Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device. What I don't know is if any can just update the playcounts. You'll have to do some research.

Actually this is a situation that should be amenable to scripting but I've not really explored it myself as I sync all my devices. If you don't mind waiting a day or two I'll see if I can cook something up.

tt2

Definitely the way to go if your iPod contains media that is no longer in your library. Otherwise it actually looks quite easy to achieve. I just need a little free time to sit down and do it. You'll find some of my other scripts here.

tt2

OK, I'm nearly ready to go with this one. What are your thoughts on whether the iPod should always overwrite the library? I'm leaning towards taking the highest play count of the library or the device, and while we're at it, taking the highest skip count, highest rating and most recent played and skipped dates. It would be relatively easy to disable any of these extra features if you didn't want them but they might be neat.

tt2

I've unloaded a script called SyncStats. To make sure it works as you want start by selecting a handful to tracks in the iPod's window when it is connected to iTunes, then double-click on the script to run it. Click No at the first prompt so you can see the difference between the two sets of values that will be updated and can make sure you are happy with how it behaves. Once you're happy you can select all the tracks and let the script process them all automatically by clicking Yes at the first prompt..

tt2

Hmm, that makes the problem harder, though perhaps not insurmountable. How many tracks are we talking about? I'd have to add a phase to the script that effectively catalogues the entire music section of your library before looping through the tracks on the device to see if there is a matching item that can be updated.

May be another few days before I can get something ready.

tt2

It's an interesting challenge. 🙂

tt2

I'm afraid it fell onto the back burner but I'll try to get something together.

tt2

Hi, I finally found some time to sit down and wrap my head around this one. I've uploaded a new build of the SyncStats script which should now be able to find a track in the main library with the same tag properties to sync the stats to.

Matches are detected on tracks having the same (case insensitive) values for Artist, Album, DiscNumber, TrackNumber, Name & Size so if you've made changes to the tags since the tracks were put on the iPod and the tracks have been removed and then later reimported they won't be matched. I've just realized the matching size requirement is unnecessary in this context and removing it will allow matches to tracks that have been reripped. Newer build uploaded!

Let me know how you get on...

tt2

Hmm, not really sure what would trigger that. One way around would be to add a new line 126 after the line that beings StartEvent

On Error Resume Next

This would make the script ignore subsequent errors in that section of code and attempt to keep processing other instructions. It would probably be OK to do this but not as satisfying as understanding the cause of the error and avoiding it. I can't get access to my website at the moment but when it is up again I'll post an updated version of the script.

tt2