Q: My iPod would freeze sometimes after I tried to advance to the next song. This problem was usually solved by letting my iPod die out and recharge it. Today when I went to re-charge my iPod, I turned it on, and ALL of my music was gone. This wouldn’t be so tragic if it wasn’t for the fact that my hard drive recently crashed and my iPod was my only source of music. I was actually about to sign on line to figure out how to transfer the music from my iPod to my computer when tragedy struck! The version of number of my iPod is 3.1.1 Model: M9282LL. PLEASE HELP!

- Shya

A: Depending on what actually happened to your iPod, there is a chance that the music files are still in fact there, particularly if you’re still seeing the normal iPod menus with no actual content (as opposed to some other error condition).

The iPod indexes your music using a database, and when you browse the content on your iPod, either from the iPod screen or even via iTunes, you’re actually looking at this database, rather than browsing through the files themselves.

Naturally, if this database gets erased or corrupted, it may show that there is nothing on the iPod, even though the underlying music files are actually all still there.

You can check this by looking at the About menu item on your iPod (it’s normally found under the Settings menu), and see how much space your iPod says is available. If there’s still space being taken up, chances are it’s your music files that are occupying that space.

In this case, you should be able to connect your iPod to your computer without letting iTunes synchronize anything, and then recover your music by browsing to the hidden “iPod_Control” directory on your iPod via Windows Explorer or Finder.

For more detailed instructions on how to do this, check out our article on Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer—specifically the section near the beginning on the “Brute Force Approach.”

Q: I recently (accidentally) deleted the “recently added” playlist. How do I reinstate this list?

- Steve

A: The pre-configured playlists that appear when you create a new iTunes library are actually just standard Smart Playlists. There’s nothing particularly special about them, and you can recreate them in the same way as any other Smart Playlist.

To do this, simply select File, New Smart Playlist from the iTunes menu, and you will be presented with a dialog box asking you to fill in the criteria for the Smart Playlist. The default “Recently Added” playlist simply has a criteria of “Date Added” is in the last two weeks:

Simply fill in this criteria and click OK to save the playlist. The playlist will appear on the left-hand side of your iTunes window with the name highlighted for editing:

Name the playlist “Recently Added” and press enter.

Of course, you can also specify any additional criteria that you like when re-creating this playlist. So, for example, if you wanted your “Recently Added” playlist to contain only tracks added in the last week, you could specify a different interval. You could also limit the maximum number of tracks that are selected, choose only tracks from certain genres, limit the scope of the smart playlist to only include audio files, and so forth. You can also edit the existing pre-defined smart playlists simply by highlighting the playlist and choosing File, Get Info.

Q: Can I manually manage my games so I can have one game from one computer and another from another computer?

- Sean

A: Unfortunately, iPod Games are one type of content that is always managed automatically. This means that you will normally only be able to synchronize games onto your iPod from a single iTunes library.

Note that the “Transfer Purchases” option in iTunes does transfer Games games back to another authorized computer, however. This method can be used to consolidate your iPod Games onto a single computer which you could then automatically synchronize them all from.

To use the “Transfer Purchases” option, simply connect your iPod to your computer, select the iPod in the source list on the left-hand side, and choose File, Transfer Purchases from iPod:

iTunes will scan through your iPod, and any purchased content that is authorized to be played on the current iTunes computer will be transferred back, including any songs, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, and iPod Games.

Note that your computer must be authorized for the account that was originally used to purchase that particular content, or iTunes will not transfer it back. If you are using different iTunes accounts on different computers, you can simply ensure that your “main” computer is authorized for both by choosing Store, Authorize Computer and entering your iTunes Store credentials when prompted.

Keep in mind also that “Transfer Purchases” will bring back everything that is authorized to play on a given computer. If you have a lot of purchased content on your iPod, you will want to ensure that you have sufficient disk space for this.

Once all of the Games are in a single iTunes library, you can then simply automatically sync the games with that library and exclude them from synchronization with any other libraries that you connect your iPod to.

Q: I just bought a new iPod 8GB Nano (video). I’ve transferred or “synced” my music library up to it just fine, and I’ve even converted and transferred a couple of videos from youtube.com. However, when I went to transfer a few different TV shows that I PURCHASED from iTunes, I couldn’t. I received a message that—“TV Show” was not copied to the iPod “HG Nano” because it cannot be played on this iPod. I thought all iTunes purchased videos were supposed to be compatible with the new iPods. What do I need to do?

- Heather

A: As a rule, any video content purchased from the iTunes Store via the iTunes application should play on all video-capable iPods and the iPhone, so this is not a specific compatibility issue with the iPod nano (video) in this case. Note that podcasts are a different matter, however, as these are not created by Apple, but rather by third parties and the iTunes Store simply maintains a catalog of available podcast content. Many podcasts are not released in an iPod-compatible format.

There are a couple of things that could be causing this problem, however.

Firstly, if you have never played back purchased video content on your computer prior to this, your computer, and therefore your iPod itself may not actually be authorized to play that content. iTunes will not transfer content to an iPod unless iTunes itself is also authorized to play that content back. Although this will usually result in a more specific error (that your iPod is not authorized to play that content), this is not always the case.

You can ensure that your computer is authorized by selecting Store, Authorize Computer from the iTunes menu and entering your iTunes Store user id and password. Also try to play back the video content in iTunes itself to see if it plays properly on your computer.

You should also check to ensure that your iPod is running the latest firmware. As of this writing, that would be version v1.1 for the iPod nano. Although with the exception of video rentals we are not aware of any incompatibilities with video formats and older firmware versions, it is certainly possible that there may be a limitation with certain types of content, or even simply a bug in an older firmware version preventing this from working properly.

You can check your firmware on the iPod “Summary” tab that appears in iTunes when your iPod is connected and highlighted in the left-hand source panel. The “Check for Updates” button will allow you to download a new firmware update (if one is available) and install it onto your iPod.

If the above steps still fail to resolve the problem, it’s also possible that you received a bad download. In thi scase, you can contact iTunes Store Customer Service, who can assist you further and allow you to re-download the TV show in question.

Q: I have tested renting movies from iTunes and playing them on a TV from my 80 GB iPod classic using the newer cable with dock connection on the iPod. The problem I am having is getting the movie to fit my screen. I have tried setting the TV from Widescreen, 4:3, etc...but I am still losing content on the left and right side of the screen during playback. Is there a way to format the movie to fit the screen properly?

- Edwin

A: This is going to depend upon a number of factors, including the aspect ratio of the original movie itself and the type of TV that you are actually using.

The iPod classic and iPod nano (video) have options for controlling how your output video will be displayed on the iPod screen or on an external TV. These options can be found under Video, Settings:

The key options for controlling the output format are the TV Screen and Fit to Screen options.

The TV Screen option has two settings: Standard and Widescreen and should be set to match whichever type of TV you’re using. An incorrect setting here will result in an output video that looks distorted—either stretched in height on a standard TV or stretched in width on a widescreen TV.

The second option, Fit to Screen determines whether the iPod will “zoom” in on the image to fit the full width and height of the TV screen. When this option is “off” videos are presented in their normal aspect ratio, which means widescreen content on a standard TV will be shown “letterboxed” (with black bars at the top and bottom) but the full width of the picture will be shown:

With this option turned “on” the image is basically “zoomed in” to remove the black bars, which also results in the left and right sides of the image being cropped off as well:

Note that even on a widescreen TV, if you are watching a “Cinemascope” movie with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, you will still get some letterboxing or cropping (depending upon the setting of the Fit to Screen option), since a widescreen TV uses a lower aspect ratio of 1.78:1.

More information and some more visual examples can be found in our Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats.