INTERACT FORUM

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Can MC force iPod Classic to put podcasts and aa audiobooks under "Genres"?  (Read 1294 times)

lalittle

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3964

Is there any way to get MC to force a 6th gen iPod to NOT put podcasts and aa audiobooks in the iPod's main categories for these file types, and instead put them under "Genres"?  At the moment, 6th gen Classic iPods do not display these items under Genre>Audiobooks or Genre>Podcasts, and therefore do not allow more advanced browsing by Artist (i.e. Author) and Album (i.e. Episode or Book.)  Instead, the iPods "Audiobooks" category is just a single, giant lump of ALL audiobooks (which is a MESS on my iPod), and while the "Podcast" category does offer browsing by "Artist," it still groups all podcasts by the same artist together, and it sorts them in descending order, which prevents continuous listenning from one to the next.

I figured out how to rectify this with mp3 audiobooks, which is to NOT tag them with the Media Sub Type "Audiobook."  This results in them being placed under Genre>Audiobook on the iPod, and allows Artist>Album browsing.  Unfortunately, this doesn't work for aa files, which the iPod Classic always removes from the Genre list.  It also doesn't work for Podcasts, which are removed from the Genre list as long as a feed URL is present (which Podcasts have.)

Now that MC supports bookmarking of ANY file on the iPod, it would be really nice to have audiobooks and podcasts grouped under the "normal" lists so that they show up under "Genres" like they did with 5th gen iPods.

Thanks,

Larry
Logged

lalittle

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3964

Any feedback on this?  I've discovered that making Smartlists or Playlists for all my Podcasts and Audiobooks is a LOT more work than I expected, and I need to do this for each user in order to allow indivdual sync lists.

Thanks again,

Larry
Logged

lalittle

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3964

Might it be possible to use one of the tags -- such as Media Sub Type -- to "override" the iPod and place these items under the normal genre lists?  So far, none of my experiments have been successful, but I'm not all that familiar with some of the "lesser known" tags that may work for this.

Basically, is there a tag I could set in MC that would prevent the iPod from considering any file with a "Feed URL" a podcast, or any "aa" file an audiobook?  It "seems" like this would be possible, but I need one of the JR gurus to help point me in the right direction on this.  My wife just got a 6th gen, and she is VERY annoyed (as am I) by the way it pulls audiobooks and podcasts out of the genre list.

Thanks,

Larry
Logged

lalittle

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3964

I was just looking at some other iPod forums and found that there are actually a LOT of people who strongly dislike the way the iPod handles audiobooks and podcasts.  There are numerous complaints about the way the iPod classic dumps all the "audiobooks" into a single folder, as well as fact that Podcasts displayed in descending order and only have a single subdivision grouping.  Users noted, as I did, that the 5th gen doesn't have these issues -- that it allows browsing of both podcasts and audiobooks via the "genre" list, where you get the "artist/album" structure, and where it sorts in ascending order.  With the Classic, however, this has suddenely become a problem.

I mention this to say that if MC was able offer a way to force podcasts and aa audiobooks into the "genre/artist/album" list, it could pull over some more itunes users to MC.  It often only takes a SINGLE feature to get people to switch to a new program in this sort of situation, and this could very well be "that" feature for some people.

Thanks again,

Larry
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up