Version 1.0.1

January 20, 2004

by Greg Townsend

<mailto:gct2r@virginia.edu >

Introduction

"Synch iPod-iTunes Data" synchronizes select data between your iPod and iTunes. The data that can be synchronized are "Date Last Played", "Play Count", "Rating" and  "Comments". The data can be transferred from iPod to iTunes or the reverse, or can be synchronized between the two. This application is designed for those who manually manage their iPod playlists.

Requirements

iTunes 3.0 or later

iPod

AppleScript

OS X 

Installation

Drag the application to your "Applications" folder (or anywhere else you like).

Usage

To use the application, select the appropriate values as follows:

1. Synch Data: set the data to be transferred between iPod and iTunes
2. iPod Playlist/iTunes Playlist: set the playlists to be used for data transfer
3. Selection: if tracks are selected in one of the designated playlists, you can use either only the selected tracks or all of the playlist's tracks
4. Match criteria: the application will by default match tracks in the source playlist and the destination by track title, artist, and album; in addition, you can match criteria by track time, size, year, and/or bitrate
5. Matching Songs: in the event of multiple matching tracks, you can transfer data to only the the first track found that matches or to all matching tracks
6. Progress Report Interval: as the data collection and synchronization processes can be lengthy, you can set the application to provide a progress report at intervals while collecting or synchronizing data (in number of tracks; set to 0 to forego the progress report)
7. Last Update: set the date of the last data transfer; to reduce the time spent transferring data, the application will examine only those tracks in the source playlist that have been played since the last update
   

When the selections have been made, click one of the buttons representing synchronization modes at the bottom of the application. If you elect to synchronize (rather than perform a one-way transfer), the script will assign the data to tracks in iTunes and iPod as follows:

1. Date Last Played: the most recent date from either iTunes or iPod
2. Play Count: the sum of the play counts from iTunes and iPod
3. Rating: the highest rating assigned in iTunes or iPod
4. Comments: if different, the comments from the destination track will be appended to those of the source track
   

Bugs and Limitations

There is no way to match a track in iPod with the exact track from which it was derived in iTunes. The script collects the iPod or iTunes song's match criteria, and finds tracks in the destination playlist or iPod with matching information; with a large library you may have more than one matching track.

I realize that there are track data other than the ones I have chosen to synchronize that could be used, but I didn't think there would be much use for synchronizing the other data. I am, however, willing to consider requests.

Version History

Version 1.0.1 (January 20, 2003)

Version 1.0 (January 4, 2003)

• Original release

The Fine Print

I made this for fun, and you're getting it for free. That means that in the unlikely event that your computer crashes and burns while you're using it, you can't get anything out of me other than a heartfelt apology and an earnest effort to help you figure out what went wrong. You are free to give this away, but you cannot sell it; please include this Read Me with the package if you do distribute it to others.

Please feel free to send reports of bugs or feature requests to me at < gct2r@virginia.edu >. As I mostly hear from disgruntled customers, I'm not sure how well this is working for most people, so I would welcome a brief note if it works well for you.