iLounge

Q: What are the best speakers to use with my iPod? (15, 76-79, and 90-92)

Q: What are the best headphones to use with my iPod? (10, 72-75, and 90-92)

Q: I really want to get a nice case for my iPod. Do you have any suggestions? (36-37, 54-67, and 90-92)

Q: How can I connect my iPod to my car stereo? (14, 32-35, 68-71, and 90-92)

Q: Are there any batteries that I can use to extend my iPod's battery life? (82-83 and 90-92)

A: Answers to these and many other questions can be found in two places. Our Free iPod Book 3.3 provides a complete report card to all of the iPod accessories we've reviewed as of summer 2007, as well as over 125 iTunes and iPod tips & tricks. Further, our new 2008 iPod & iPhone Buyers' Guide has accessory tutorials at the page numbers listed in parentheses above. These and other publications in our Library are free downloads, developed by the editors of iLounge!

Each week we receive numerous inquiries asking the same very common questions such as “How Do I Copy Music From My iPod Back to My Computer? and “How Do I Put DVDs on my iPod video?”

Although we have had tutorials on these subjects for some time, over the past few days we’ve been updating and revising these tutorials to ensure that we have included all of the current tips and tricks and the various software tools that are available.

If you’re looking to copy content from your iPod back to your computer, including music, movies, and even games and photos, be sure to check out:

For converting DVDs, web video, TV shows and home movies to your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV, we now have a three-part series outlining the best formats, settings, and various tools to use for converting all types of video content for use on these devices.

Q: I am a professional entertainer and am using a 60G Photo iPod with only music loaded as backing tracks in a live situation and require it to stop after every song. I have read other forum ideas on this situation and as most answers are up to 2 years old, has anyone solved this problem recently? I feel there must be some way of doing this without physically having the hassle of pausing after it every song.  Can you help?

- Darryl

A: With the newer iPods, there is a workaround that can be used to facilitate this:  Simply enable “Skip when Shuffling” for any tracks that you put in that particular playlist, and then run the iPod with the Shuffle setting enabled (set to either “Albums” or “Songs").  As of the v1.2 firmware for the fifth-generation iPod and the second-generation iPod nano, the “Skip When Shuffling” setting now prevents tracks from being played automatically when shuffle is enabled on the iPod, so if all of the tracks in your playlist have the “Skip when Shuffling” setting enabled, selecting any individual track will simply play that track only, and then stop.

Unfortunately, as you’re using an older-model fourth-generation iPod, this feature has not been updated, and tracks marked as “Skip when Shuffling” will still play through regardless of the setting on the iPod. Older-generation iPods only used the “Skip when Shuffling” setting for the main-menu “Shuffle Songs” feature, which plays all the tracks stored on your iPod, skipping those that have “Skip when Shuffling” enabled.

If you’re not planning to upgrade your iPod to a newer model, there are a couple of other solutions that might work, however.  The key thing is to remember that any model of iPod will only play the tracks selected in the current playlist or from the current album/artist/genre selection before stopping.  One obvious solution would therefore be to create a separate playlist for each individual track, and then select the appropriate playlist for the appropriate track that you wish to play.  The iPod will play that one track and then stop.  Similarly, if an artist or album only has a single track listed, selecting that particular track through the Artists or Albums menus will also queue up only that one track.  You could therefore either use separate playlists, or change the tags within the tracks themselves so that each track has a distinct album entry.

Another option would be to use the On-The-Go playlist feature.  Individual tracks can be added to the On-The-Go playlist, and then you can play back that particular playlist with only a single track in it.  The iPod will play that track and then stop.  You could then clear that track out of the OTG playlist and add another one, repeating the process.  Unfortunately, this can be a very cumbersome process if you’re frequently switching between tracks.

Q: Is there a “Sleep Timer” on the iPhone like there is for the normal iPod?  I can’t seem to find anything under the iPod settings…

- Lianne

A: On the iPod, the Sleep Timer is actually found under Extras, Clocks, and therefore it has been placed similarly on the iPhone.  Although perhaps less intuitive, you can find the Sleep Timer feature under the iPhone’s Clock application. 

Select Clock, and then Timer from the list of options at the bottom. You can then set the length of time you would like the iPhone to play, and then tap When Timer Ends and choose Sleep iPod from the list of available alarm/ringtone sounds, and tap the “Set” button:

Once you’ve done this, tap “Start” to start the actual countdown timer.

You can set the timer either while you’re already playing a track, or you can set the timer first and then go to the iPod application and start playing a track.

Unfortunately, unlike the iPod, the iPhone does not provide any visual feedback on the “Now Playing” screen to let you know that a sleep timer has been set.  If you want to keep track of how much time is remaining, you will simply need to return to the “Clock” application to display the countdown timer.

There is also a small oddity that we have noted in the v1.0.2 firmware: If you exit the clock application and return to it, the When Timer Ends will show an alarm sound such as “Marimba” instead of the “Sleep iPod” option.  The good news is that this is visual only and does not affect the behavior of the running timer, in fact even if you manually change this setting to something else, the “Sleep iPod” behavior will still be executed when the timer reaches zero.  Further, the reverse is also true: You cannot change an existing alarm-based countdown timer to “Sleep iPod” instead.  In short, if you want to set the sleep timer, always ensure that you stop the timer, change the setting, and then restart the timer.

Q: When I loaded my iTunes onto my computer, it added a bunch of songs that I did not want. Now I am in iTunes editing, how do I get the songs off of my iPod? I also changed the genres, how can I change them on my iPod?

- Renee

A: How to go about this depends largely on whether you’re using automatic synchronization or manually managing your iPod content. This is normally determined by whether you selected the “automatic” settings when you first setup your iPod and iTunes, but can also be changed later via the iPod settings in iTunes.  To access these settings, simply connect your iPod and select it from the left-hand source list where it appears in iTunes. The settings for synchronization and what content you are automatically transferring to your iPod can be controlled from the various tabs that appear in the main window. 

To check whether you’re using automatic synchronization or managing your content manually, look for the checkbox labelled Manually manage my music and videos on the Summary tab.  You can also change this setting by clicking on the checkbox and then clicking the “Apply” button in the bottom-right corner of the iTunes window.

If you’re using automatic synchronization, removing the songs from your iTunes library will also remove them from the iPod automatically the next time you connect the iPod. Likewise, any other changes made to track information such as genre will be automatically synchronized to the iPod in much the same way.  This is the main benefit of automatic synchronization.

Further, if there are songs you want to keep in your iTunes library but do not want on your iPod, this can be accomplished by choosing to synchronize only selected playlists from the Music tab (again in your iPod settings within iTunes). Any tracks that are not in the selected playlists will not be transferred to the iPod, and in fact will be removed from the iPod if they are not in one of your selected playlists.

Basically, the important thing to remember about automatic synchronization is that the content of the iPod will always mirror what is in your iTunes library, or within your selected playlists.  If you remove something from your iTunes library (or one of the selected playlists), it will automatically be removed from your iPod during the next synchronization.

On the other hand, if you have chosen to manage the content on your iPod manually, you will need to add and remove content from your iPod yourself.  To delete tracks from the iPod, simply connect your iPod, and then click the small triangle that appears next to it in the right-hand source list to expand the list of categories and playlists for the content that is on the iPod:

From there, you can simply manage the content in much the same way as you would within your iTunes library.  Select a category (such as “Music") or playlist, and then simply edit and/or delete tracks as you otherwise would.

Note that if you’re making changes to track information like “Genre” within the main iTunes library and want those changes reflected on your iPod, you will either have to switch to automatic synchronization mode (which will automatically update the information), or remove the tracks from the iPod and re-add them manually (via drag-and-drop).  Simply re-adding a track manually to the iPod after changing the tags will frequently result in duplicate tracks.  Alternatively, you could of course just make the same changes to the tracks individually in both the main library and on the iPod.

Q: I have added some TV shows to my iPod. They are listed as TV Shows and when the iPod is connected to iTunes there is a folder called TV Shows where they appear.  However, when I disconnect the iPod and look in the Video menu there is no TV Show folder in there, only Movies and Music Videos. I have created a Smart playlist for them but I would prefer it if there was a TV Show folder like there is Movies and Music videos. Is there anyway of creating these main folders on your iPod? I hope you know what I mean and any help would be great.

- Matt

A: The most common cause of this problem is that the TV Shows have not been properly tagged.  In order for a TV Show to appear on the iPod as a TV Show, the Video Kind tag must be set to “TV Show” and it must have a “Show Name” filled in.  This problem commonly occurs when ripping your own TV Shows, since any new video files added to iTunes come in with a video kind of “Movie” by default.

For a TV Show, the actual track name refers to the episode title of the individual show (ie, “Trash of the Titans"), whereas the Show Name field refers to the name of the TV Series itself (ie, “The Simpsons").  Since the iPod indexes TV Shows based on their Show name, episodes with a blank show name are not available on the iPod.  Further, if there are NO TV episodes with the show name filled in, the iPod will simply omit the “TV Shows” menu option from under the “Videos” menu, since there’s nothing to display in it (as far as the iPod is concerned).

Video files can be properly tagged via the File Info dialog box in iTunes under the Video tab - simply select the track that you would like to modify in iTunes, and choose File, Get Info. 

For more information on tagging and video management in iTunes, be sure and check out our Complete Guide to Managing iTunes Videos

Q: I’m making a playlist to be played at a wedding. Is there a way to order the songs in the playlist other than sorting on specific fields like Song Name, Artist Name, etc. I want to control the order of the songs.

- Anonymous

A: Certainly. As you’ve noted, you can sort on specific fields, but you can also change the playlist order manually. To do this, first simply click on the blank column at the very left-hand side of the columns list to return the playlist to its “natural” sort order:

By default, this sorts the tracks in the order in which they were added to the playlist, but once you are in this mode, you can simply select a track, and just drag it up and down within the playlist to change it’s position.  Whichever changes you make to the order of tracks will become the new natural sort order, and you can always return to this sort order simply by clicking on the blank column heading again.

Note that you also need to ensure that you do not have “Shuffle” enabled within iTunes.  You can confirm this by looking at the “Shuffle” button in the bottom-left corner of the iTunes window, or looking at the “Shuffle” menu option under the Controls menu (a checkmark will appear beside the menu option is the current playlist is set to shuffle).

Further, if you want to start with a different sort order, or shuffle up the playlist and modify it from there, you can sort your playlist by a specific column heading such as “Artist” or “Last Played” or simply enable “Shuffle” and then copy that order back to the default “natural” sort order by right-clicking on the playlist and choosing Copy to Play Order:

This will make the selected sort order the new default arrangement, and you can then click on the left-hand blank column heading again to manually adjust the track order from there.  This can be a good way to start with a preferred sort order, or to permanently shuffle up the playlist sort order.  Either way, the displayed order becomes stored as the default manual sort.

To ensure that the tracks are transferred to your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV in this order, make sure you leave the left-hand column selected.

Q: I’m trying to burn some playlists to an audio CD, and some them will not burn the entire playlist.  For instance, I have one playlist which contains 18 songs in MP3 format at various bit-rates totaling 89MB which burns a complete CD with no problems.  On the other hand, I have another playlist with only 15 MP3 tracks at various bit-rates totaling 79MB and iTunes will not burn this entire playlist, insisting that I remove at least 3-5 tracks before it will burn properly. I have tried deleting and recreating the playlist with the same tracks and I’m still having the same problem, even on different user accounts and different machines.  Any help would be appreciated.

- Laurie

A: The key point to consider when burning tracks to an Audio CD is not the size of the selected tracks, but rather the total duration of the playlist.

Tracks that are burned to an audio CD are converted back to a standard uncompressed WAV format, and are therefore constrained by the length of a standard audio CD.  The problem with basing this on the file size, particularly when working with files at different bit-rates, is that the relationship between the size and length (or duration) of a given track is entirely dependent upon it’s bit-rate.  For example, if you were burning a playlist composed entirely of 128kbps files, you would be able to fit approximately 73MB worth of MP3 files.  On the other hand, the same tracks at 192kbps would take up approximately 108MB.  Conversely, 73MB of 96kbps tracks would run at 106 minutes in duration—far too much to fit on any standard audio CD.

Since the file size-to-duration ratio can vary widely with different bit-rates, the only reliable way to get a determination as to whether your tracks will fit on an audio CD is to look at the “total time” shown at the bottom of the playlist, rather than the total size:

Modern CD-Rs generally offer 80 minutes of recording time, although some media still uses the older 74-minute standard.  You can check the CD-R packaging to confirm which type you’re using.  You also need to keep in mind that if you’re placing a two-second gap between tracks (which is the default in iTunes), this extra time needs to be factored into your calculations.  Therefore, your total time shown at the bottom of the playlist should be 1:20:00 minus the number of tracks in your playlist multiplied by the “Gap Between Songs” setting in iTunes’ “Burning” preferences.  Since the gap between tracks generally only accounts for a few seconds, it’s seldom particularly relevant unless you’re burning tracks very close to the maximum capacity, or unless you have a very large number of tracks.

Q: My car has an auxiliary input jack, which accepts a “plug” the same size as the headphone jack. I have a cable that has a headphone jack-sized plug on each end, and can connect my iPod from its headphone jack to the AUX plug in the car. However, I’m wondering if there is a cable or device that would connect my iPod through the bottom iPod connector to the AUX input in my car? I assume the quality of sound from the iPod to the AUX input would be better through the Dock Connector, but is that right?

- Patrick

A: The main advantage of using the Dock Connector is that it is an un-amplified “line-out” signal, rather than passing through the iPod’s internal headphone amplifier.  This means that you do get a theoretically cleaner sound, and the iPod volume control itself has no effect on the audio output—rather the audio is sent via the Dock Connector at a standard level.

There are a few solutions that can be used to provide line-out capability via the Dock Connector.  The most basic solution is one of the SendStation PocketDock products, such as the PocketDock Line Out USB (iLounge rating: A- or the SendStation PocketDock AV (iLounge rating: NR), which provides both audio and video output.

The SendStation PocketDock solutions also have the advantage of being ultra-portable, and can therefore be used in many places other than your car.

For car-specific accessories, there are numerous very sophisticated car-kit solutions for the iPod, and you can find many options in our Car Power Chargers, Kits and Adapters reviews.  However, one of our preferred solutions for basic portable car use is the Belkin Auto Kit (iLounge rating: B+). Although this has been on the market for some time, it works with all generations of iPod and still remains one of the best solutions for both charging your iPod from your car power and providing a line-out connection via the same cable, without having to get into any sophisticated car integration work.

Ask iLounge Archives:

5-16-08: Using the iPhone with integrated in-car Bluetooth, Problems with iPods and depleted batteries, Transferring content to a new iPod, iPod displays audio but no video, Removing photos and album artwork from iTunes, Overdrive Media and iPods

5-9-08: About iPod battery life and charging, Using Apple FM Radio remote on older iPod models, Scan and Fix dialog using iPod on Windows Vista, Preserving iTunes metadata when reinstalling Windows, Importing multiple tracks into iTunes, About iTunes and ID3 tags

5-2-08: Transferring digital camera movies to iPod, Reordering and shuffling playlists, Transferring playlists between iTunes libraries, Importing audiobooks, Correcting tags on CD import, Burning CDs with longer gaps

4-25-08: Finding Duplicates in iTunes, Setting files to open in iTunes automatically, Resetting authorizations, 1G iPod nano and voice recording, Syncing a library larger than your iPod capacity, Grouping multi-disc albums

4-17-08: Ripping CDs to external hard drive, Zeppelin speakers and USB port, Bluetooth stereo on iPhone, Converting TV shows to iPod, Audio recording on iPod touch, Wireless security on iPod touch

See the rest of the Archives...