Smart Playlist Power with Folders

Keeping your Playlists in folders is a quick way to increase the effectiveness of your Smart Playlists. For example, if you want to make a Smart Playlist that checks several Playlists for some criteria, like the song rating, you could add each of those Playlists to the Smart Playlist. But you have to keep adding rules, setting the criteria, and setting the value.

Instead you could just reference a folder that holds the collection of Playlists you need to query. Dragging a Playlist into a folder is quicker and easier than adding fifteen rules to a Smart Playlist. You wouldn’t keep all your files in the root of your disk in Finder, it makes more sense to use folders. The same logic applies to iTunes. Keep your Playlists in a logical network of folders and you’ll find it’s easier to manage all those lists.

The screencast shows how to quickly make a Smart Folder listing tracks that haven’t been added to any other Playlist. Murphy picked this tip up from an article in Macworld magazine. The article also mentions scripts which can accomplish the same task. Stay tuned, Murphy will cover some iTunes scripts as the week continues.

iTunes Remote Control Made Easy

Apple already lets you play songs on a remote Mac through the Mac you’re sitting at with its Sharing feature. But what if you want to control songs playing on that remote Mac? Maybe the computer in the kitchen controls an Airport Express connected to your stereo. Can you fire up a playlist on the kitchen Mac from your Macbook in the den? You can. And there are a couple of ways to do it. The easy way? Get yourself a copy of Remote Remote.

It lets you skip through songs, select playlists, and even rate your tracks. Remote Remote has a clean interface with well-designed controls. You can even add tracks to a special playlist to mark them for further action later.

Remote Remote requires a user password on your Mac hosting the iTunes library. And you have to enable Remote Apple Events in the System Preferences. But that’s not much to ask.

The iTunes interface doesn’t have built-in keyboard shortcuts for rating your tracks. But Remote Remote does. Murphy hopes to have a rating on every track in his library by 2019. Other features include putting a remote Mac to sleep, starting iTunes on the remote Mac, adding track comments, and controlling the equalizer.

You could use something like VNC to control the remote Mac, but Remote Remote handles the task far more directly. Watch the screencast to see Remote Remote’s features in action. Or download it here and try it out for yourself.

iTunes Windows

First off, thanks to everyone who Dugg this old post. Murphy made it to the front page of Digg on Sunday. Exciting stuff! Now, on to today’s business….

Mondays are for beginners. So yes, chances are you already know about multiple windows in iTunes. But if you don’t, this can help you out. For that one person who doesn’t know about mutliple windows in iTunes, we have a screencast.

Murphy doesn’t like scrolling up and down the tree when he’s going back and forth from the Library to a playlist to his podcasts. So he opens the playlist in a separate window. Then he can hop around in the main window, dragging items to the playlist.

You can also open your Podcasts in a separate window with a double-click. You might find this helpful when you’re snooping around the Music Store subscribing to a bunch of podcasts.

Turn Off the Christmas Tunes

If you’re new to iTunes there might be some things that aren’t so obvious. Like unchecking multiple tracks at a time. By the second week of January it’s time to shut down the Christmas tunes.

Did you know you can uncheck tracks you’re listening to from a shared library too? You can.

Clearing the checkbox is helpful when you have tracks you don’t want to hear for a while. And tracks you don’t want to have on your iPod(s).

iTunes Overcrowding

As you create more and more Playlists it becomes increasingly difficult to find the one you want. Unless you organize your iTunes tree with Folders.

Murphy remembers the days when he was dying for iTunes and iPhoto to include folders. And now we have them.

If you share a single library with someone else, like your husband or girlfriend, you can use folders to separate your playlists from his / hers.

There are lots of ways to use this important feature. So start cleaning up the tree.

Trivia: What version of iTunes and iPhoto featured folders for the first time ?