When are smartlists refreshed?
I defined a smartlist that gives me about 2 hours of music for
a long commute that I do in my car. It selects 2 hours of
songs from certain genres and puts them in random order. I then synch my iPod and use the tunes in my car.
My first use of this smartlist on my iPod was fine. Then, some time later when I was going to do the commute again, I synched my iPod and selected this smartlist as one of the playlists to synch. To my surprise, when I played the playlist in my car, it had all of the same songs as before!
I assume that I need to actively go into the playlist section in MC9 and click on each smartlist to force it to rebuild it's contents? I noticed that each time I click on this smartlist, it evaluates the rules and selects a new set of songs. I thought the smartlists rebuilt themselves automatically. Perhaps I did something wrong in this case?
[899 byte] By [
trw7] at [2007-11-9 14:29:50]
# 1 Re: When are smartlists refreshed?
Your assumptions are correct trw7. Each time you sync, the smartlists get refreshed. You do not have to click on the smartlist first to refresh it. The sync will do that automatically.
I'm curious..what build are your using? You really need to be on the new release. You can get it here (http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/download.html).
It's build 9.1.269.
Adam
# 2 Re: When are smartlists refreshed?
I'm running 9.1.256 (I'm downloading 9.1.269 as I write this).
I'll test it again in 256, but simply doing a synch of the playlists resulted in the same songs being in the playlist on the iPod. Maybe I missed a step. I'll let you know if I can reproduce this.
trw7 at 2007-11-15 17:21:16 >
# 3 Re: When are smartlists refreshed?
I did another synch test with my smartlist and I see what's happening. This smartlist is being refreshed at synch and the new smartlist contents are being sent to the iPod when synched, however, they are being appended to the existing playlist on the iPod. So the first 2 hours of this playlist on the iPod remains unchanged, but there is now an additional 2 hours-worth of songs appended onto the playlist (on the iPod only). So when I played the synched playlist, I heard the same music since the new songs were just appended rather than replacing the playlist contents on the iPod. Is there an option I need to set to inform MC9 (or the iPod) that the contents of the existing playlists are to be overwritten with the new ones rather than appended to?
Seems I saw another post about this. Was this a problem that is fixed in 9.1.269?
trw7 at 2007-11-15 17:22:16 >
# 4 Re: When are smartlists refreshed?
Ah...make sure you have the "Delete Files" option checked on the sync dialog. I suggest always keeping this checked. I don't know the rules of your smartlist, but it must have a Limit modifier in it somewhere...
But this will fix the problem.
I always keep all three checkboxes checked as a rule (Update Tags, Delete Files, and Sync iPod Info).
But, now that I think about it, that sounds like undesired behaviour. The new smarlist should always take precedence over the old one. I'll let Steve know about this and see what he thinks, maybe it's a bug.
But I know that checking the Delete Files option will fix it for you.
Adam
# 5 Re: When are smartlists refreshed?
Thanks, Adam. That checkbox has always been unchecked when I've synched. I'll check it and repeat my synch to see if the playlist is updated correctly. It's a bit of an intimidating checkbox to "delete files."
My smartlist does have a limit in it. It is limited to 2 hours of music.
I performed a synch with that checkbox checked and the playlist on the iPod now correctly shows the new song contents only (not appended as before).
Maybe the other behavior is by design?
trw7 at 2007-11-15 17:24:19 >
# 6 Re: When are smartlists refreshed?
Well, I logged the issue over at the JRiver board. While I understand why it's working that way, it doesn't seem intuitively correct to me.
Starting off with a clean iPod with a 10 song smartlist, for example, and sync it w/out Delete Files checked, you should expect to see 10 songs on the iPod and 10 on the smartlist.
Upon subsequent syncs, you should still see 10 songs on the smartlist (new ones) but you should have an additional 10 songs on the iPod.
I personally always leave Delete Files checked, because I want the contents of my Master iPod Smartlist to drive what's on the iPod..I don't like leaving files on there that I don't intend to be on there.
Adam
