Q: I like to use my iPod at the gym, where the treadmills have recently been upgraded with video screens with inputs. I can leave my iPod in the tray, and watch its video on a much larger screen! The problem is, my video podcasts, TV shows, and music videos only play one at a time, and it’s a huge pain to restart the videos while I’m jogging. Is there a way to keep them playing continuously?
– Anonymous
A: You’ve discovered a major difference between the iPod’s “Music” and “Videos” main menu items. In “Music”, no matter how you access your content, the playback is automatically continous and sequential. In the “Videos” section, playback is only continuous in the “Video Playlists” menu item.
Therefore, to enable sequential playback of videos, you’ll need to first create a playlist containing these videos, just as you would for music. Then, access this playlist from the iPod’s “Video Playlists” menu, and the videos will play together without any intervention required. In fact, you can also mix and match music and video in these playlists, and the iPod will play back all content in order, regardless of its type.
You can use this technique with certain smart playlists to make management of your video content easier. For example, although all of your video podcasts are already automatically collected under one menu, you can collect them into a playlist automatically so they can play automatically:
Similar playlists can be used to collect Music Videos, TV Shows, and other video content for continuous playback.