FlavioB wrote:
Any other suggestions?
Well, since you ask...
Possibly, the best way to deal with a library that's too large to fit on an iPod, is to use Smart Playlists. In fact, use a combination of Regular Playlists and Smart Playlists to limit the size of the stuff to go onto your iPod and Sync just those Playlists.
By creating Playlists, it's possible to use automatically control what is on your iPod. Smart Playlists can be designed to automatically add and remove songs according to rules that you set. For example, it's possible to make a Smart Playlist that includes songs until they have been played. Then, they are removed from the Playlist and excluded from it for however long you want. So every time you Sync the iPod with iTunes, rather than you manually removing songs to make way for other songs, iTunes does it for you.
You can still keep the songs you choose on the iPod all the time, but since you are currently having to leave some songs off, why not let iTunes do the donkey work for you? If you want to be really clever, keep the Recently Played Playlist on the iPod too. That way, songs that have been "recently played" stay on the iPod even if they drop out of other Playlists. So if you keep playing a song, it will stay on the iPod (as "recently played"). But once you stop repeatedly playing it, and it drops out of Recently Played and all other playlists, the next Sync will remove it from your iPod, thereby freeing up space. Then, it will come back onto the iPod when it gets back into a Playlist.
Say for instance that you have some songs that you want on the iPod all the time, no matter what. Simply include that album, or artist, or even the Playlist containing those songs, in the stuff to be Synced. But one of your Smart Playlists excludes other songs for three months. Yet another playlist excludes songs for six months, and so on.
You may be familiar with this screen when you Sync:
but have you ever looked at the choices you have if you select Selected Playlists, artists, albums and genres? You simply select enough to fill, but not overfill, your iPod.
The trick is the Ultimate Playlist. By getting this one Ultimate Playlist to look at other Playlists, it will be forever changing, thereby giving you a wide selection of music, which is just small enough to fit on your iPod.
My ultimate playlist looks at several other lists. My 4 & 5 star rated songs, once played, are excluded from the Playlist for four months. 3 star rated songs are excluded for five months and 2 star rated are excluded for 13 months. It also includes just 50 songs that I have not rated or recently played and 80 songs that I have never played. (Once I have played all of them, that particular list gets modified to "songs played once only".) My complete iTunes Library is currently 109GB. But my Ultimate Playlist is just 4.04GB and could fit onto an 8GB iPod. It will play for two days, one hour and five minutes. 626 songs. Include my Recently Played (2 weeks) as well; that's 2.2GB and will play for one day, one hour and fifty-three minutes. 342 songs.
Your head may well be spinning by now, which is why I haven't supplied any detail about creating the lists. But if you want to give it a try, but need help, let me know. It might take a few days to set up, but unless you try it, you won't know what it can do for you.