I have the same problem with playlists generated by using field Comment as an additional 'genre' indicator.

I'm using iTunes 4 and 3G 10GB iPod.

Help appreciated, it took me quite a while adding those entries to Comment field!

I tried restoring my ipod and putting all the mp3s back on serveral times but it didn't solve this. This used to solve the problem where the ipod wouldn't recongize the comment feild all the time.

Untill the next firmware upgrade I fear there is no work around for this problem.

Sorry, Justin

Hi,

Yes there seems to be a workaround, although not using fields 'Notes' or 'Group'. I simply used field 'Genre' to input all related information. I had success with the following.

Genres:

'US, Rock'
'US, Rock, Metal'

Playlist:

'Genre contains US'

This transfered nicely to iPod.

I will continue to test this and will let you know if it works with more complicated combinations and if I had any side effects.

/Migao

Hi,

There was no side effects, although for some reason while selecting several tracks, the length of field 'Genre' is restricted to certain number of characters (disclaimer: I'm using iTunes 4.0 for Windows). This problem can be worked around such that you edit a longer Genre field for one track and then use the dropdown menu to select that Genre for the other tracks.

I am happy now with an endless combination of genres and other grouping data to be easily used in playlists and exported to iPod.

/Migao

Other possibility:
Disable the live update option of the in the effected smart playlists... at least till apple fixes the problem.

It looks pretty definitive that this ISN'T the way to use Grouping. I just read this off of the Apple boards:

"Posted by Lowell Stewart on 10:55am Jan 6, 2004 CDT

I was browsing through the iTunes music store, and noticed that the music store is already using the Grouping tag as Mike indicated: Click on the banner ad for the "just added 1000 classical albums", and choose something from Deutsche Grammphon. I looked at Bach's Tocatta and Fugue BWV 565, etc. The track list for the CD shows disclosure triangles according to each track's Grouping tag.

This usage is probably not compatible with those of you trying to use Grouping as a sub-genre classification tool, but I think Comments could be used adequately for that.

The big question for me is, when will iTunes itself support the Grouping tag like the iTunes music store does?? (I was all excited to make my own classical CDs appear like this, but... they don't.)"

Regardless of Apple's "intended use" they should allow users to enter character strings into the "grouping" field and then generate smart playlists based on the content of that field (that will transfer to the iPod). This is extremely frustrating considering that I spent several days transferring all of my "sub-genre" info from the "comments" field to the "grouping" field. Any word from Apple as to when they will rectify this cluster f*ck?

if you turn off live updating you can still use the grouping tag for categorizing, you just have to edit your smartlist twice each time you add new grouping keywords, edit and turn live updating on to rebuild the smartlist, then turn it off again before updating your pod... wak but it works... if apple would fix this and the date uploaded bug all my smartlists would work sweet and I would be forever happy....

I have this probelm when using the Comments field (iTunes 4.0 Mac and brand-new 20 GB iPod)--I would get one or maybe two tracks on my iPod for playlists that relied on Comments data. I turned off live updating and it fixed the problem on the iPod, but...

I copied the songs back OFF the iPod using Unison (like rsync) to my work PC and imported the tracks to iTunes 4.1. When I checked my smart playlists on the PC, they only had the one or two tracks that would appear on the iPod when "live updating" was checked on my Mac! A quick look at the library revealed that somehow the importing routine *stripped* the data right out of the comments field for all but one of my comments categories (and the one or two tracks that did show up). Incidentally, the one that stayed was the only comments category I had created before getting my iPod.

Very weird...definitely sounds like a bug.

mkcheme: actually, the songs aren't being updated to the iPod at all. The bug is that changing the Comment field isn't enough to tell iTunes to send the update to the iPod.

If you keep your complete collection on your computer, just reformat the iPod and reload all your songs; bingo, 20 minutes later, all the comments are correct.

Thanks for the info, TNF. So every time I go through and change Comments in iTunes I have to reformat the iPod to get it to take the changes? Blargh! Is this true for other tags as well (title/album/etc)? I assume it's the problem people are seeing with "grouping."

MKC: It's only Comments and (perhaps) Grouping. The other tags work properly. It is probable that you could edit another tag to get the update to occur properly. My suggestion was just a "quick fix", so that you could start fresh.

I think that this feature is officially half-baked. Maybe it will be completed in iTunes 5.0 and the next round of iPod updates.

Apple has acknowledged the bug. No word on when it will be fixed, though.

Nice catch!