I have two kinds of playlists on my iPod. One is music, and I like my music playlists to always shuffle - I hate having it in the same order every time. So I go into settings on the main screen of the iPod and set it to shuffle.
The other kind of playlist is audiobooks. I have these set to “never shuffle” and “remember order”.
The problem is, or so it seems, is I can’t play these books in order unless I turn off shuffle on my iPod. Well - what’s the point, then, of marking them as “never shuffle”?
Basically I want to know if there is a way to get certain playlists to play, in order, without ever shuffling, while retaining the shuffle capabilities of the other tracks. If not, then not, but I thought I should be sure before giving up.
I have complained before about my iPod here and people have given me answers to my complaints, so I figured this time I’d start right out with the question.
I think “never shuffle” (“skip when shuffling” on mine) means “don’t play this track when i listen to a shuffle; only play it if i choose it directly” and “remember order” (“remember playback position”) means “jump back to where i stopped listening (like 01:32) the next time i hear this track”.
Setting those options means that:
You won’t be interrupted by random audiobooks when you’re listening to music
Your audiobooks will start at whatever chapter/paragraph/word you left them at so you don’t have to find your place again. An audiobookmark, in other words.
Both are great, but they’re not what you want. I’m not sure that iTunes can actually do what you’re hoping for. On Windows Media Player, there is a way to make a playlist shuffle itself and only itself every time you sync (so you can leave shuffle off on your iPod), but I can’t seem to find the equivalent feature in iTunes… maybe someone else can.
I’ve actually just started using my iPod for audio (since my Zune went tits up this last week). I haven’t had any problem with playing the audio book files in order. My main issue is that the audio books mess up my music file layout…it just looks ugly. I didn’t have this problem on the Zune, mostly because most of the books I have on the Zune were from audible.com and they put it in a special folder called AudioBooks.
Is there no way to access the file system in the iPod to move the audio books out of the music area?
Just go into Itunes and open the “Info” window for a track. Under “options” there’s a drop down menu to change the media type to “audiobook.” Then it’ll go into a separate Audiobooks directory.
Hm…I checked and it’s already tagged as audiobook, but it’s still in the music section. I’ll see if I can play with it to figure out what I’m doing wrong.
Yes. There is a lot of music on my computer that I don’t necessarily want or need on my iPod, and then sometimes I take music from his computer too, and then when I go downstate, sometimes his brother will give me music from his computer…
suffice it to say it’d never work, with syncing. Besides, I like my playlists different at home than in the car or at work.
When you transfer over a book (I assume in .mp3 format) do you transfer it over as an album (i.e. the entire book) or do you do it one chapter (or file) at a time? Like I said, I just started putting some of my older .mp3 books on the iPod this week, but so far the only trouble I’ve had is that the iPod doesn’t seem to keep my place in the book when I stop listening for any length of time and the fact that it seems so messy with the music and audio albums all together like they are. Other than that it works fine though. When I transferred over the books I had each book in it’s own folder…so I simply selected the folder as an album then transferred over the entire folder and it’s contents, went into info and put in the Author and book title info and then put in an album cover…and that was it. Seemed to work perfectly.
Audiobooks are found under the “Library” heading on the left side of the screen. To make this visible, you may need to go to Edit --> Preferences, and click the Audiobooks check box on the General tab.
You mentioned problems in sorting after you had marked the files…to do this, you need to change the Media Kind to Audiobook on the Options tab (right click the file name and select Info).
You may have to adjust the settings on your iPod (you’re asking about the iPod, not iTunes, right?) From the main menu, select Settings > Music Menu, and make sure there’s a check mark by “Audiobooks”. Alternately, if you’d rather it appeared on the Main Menu, you can do the same by checking “Audiobooks” under Settings > Main Menu.
I’m hope no one takes offense at a further hijack…
A friend called me and asked for help with his ipod (don’t know the model). He’s decided he hates iTunes and just wants to use the ipod as a play with something else to operate it. I told him I would help becuae I know more about computers than he does, but I don’t really know how to handle this.
So, what to I do, just plug it in through a USB and reformat it like it was a floppy disc?
Then what, copy windows media player onto it.
BTW, if this is too much a hijack, please let me know and I’ll start a different thread.
One other item is that I suspect he has lots of AAC Protected Format music. Is he going to lose use of all that if he goes to Media Player? Is there a better choice of software?
AFAIK there is no way to access the iPod without iTunes. Just plugging it into the USB will do nothing for you. What exactly is his problem with iTunes?
There are numerous programs other than iTunes which will allow you to control the music on an Ipod. I personally use winamp. For others googling ipod without itunes pulls up many more.
I use and love dopisp – it lets you sync your iPod with Windows Media Player like any other MP3 player. I don’t think it supports protected iTunes files, unfortunately.
DRM is a bitch. Tell your friend to stick with iTunes Plus or Amazon MP3, both of which give you clean files that can be transferred to other computers and devices without technical limitations.