Sync question

Unfortuately, you cannot - it is either all or nothing.

Poo. Are there any disadvantages to manually managing music other than not having iTunes do all the work for you?

Yes, you lose the ability to maintain playcounts and ratings for smart playlists, which is the entire point of using itunes.

While this is true in a sense, it bares some clarification. What is lost is the ability to sync BACK playcount and ratings information from the iPod back to iTunes. The iPod will still keep track of this information and smartplaylists based on such information will still work. You can make smartplaylists directly on the iPod or just drag them to the iPod.

Another downside to manual management is that the iPod doesn't know when you have made changes to iTunes. If you change tag information in iTunes and decide to copy the music file to the iPod, it won't replace the old copy, you'll end up with a dupe.

To get around this you either need to make the changes directly to the iPod while it's connected or first delete the file from the iPod and then transfer the new changed file over.

Mac has some apple scripts to transfer some of this information (playcount/ratings) back to iTunes, but I'm not sure about windows.

Perhaps I should have clarified better - if you have a large music library that exceeds what your ipod will hold, it will make it very hard to manage and maintain consistent playcounts, ratings, tagging, etc. if you are not syncing.

The whole not being able to manage videos manually while syncing music drives me batty, to the point where I am keeping video on a completely different version of itunes with its own harddrive on another computer - so that I can sync my muisc and manually update my videos. Crazy much?:rolleyes:

You can manage your iPod set to auto-sync. Transfer all your music and videos to your iPod while it is set to auto-sync. Then browse to where your video is on your computer using Windows Explorer or Mac's Finder and delete it there. Do not delete it from iTunes and leave the entry there even though it will display an exclamation point complaining it can't find the video. The video will still be maintained on the iPod even if set to auto-sync till you delete it's entry out of iTunes.

Remember to back up the video on DVD's or an external drive since the iPod is not a good place to keep your only copy of anything.

You can manage your iPod set to auto-sync. Transfer all your music and videos to your iPod while it is set to auto-sync. Then browse to where your video is on your computer using Windows Explorer or Mac's Finder and delete it there. Do not delete it from iTunes and leave the entry there even though it will display an exclamation point complaining it can't find the video. The video will still be maintained on the iPod even if set to auto-sync till you delete it's entry out of iTunes.

Remember to back up the video on DVD's or an external drive since the iPod is not a good place to keep your only copy of anything.

Good Reminder Sparkee. I forgot about this trick.

Jon,
You can't make changes to songs on the iPod outside of iTunes. You can make changes to songs on the iPod IN iTunes by click on the arrow next to your iPod, it will open up the contents below and you can make changes to the files there.