Smart Playlists.com

Extracting Hidden CD Tracks

I love hidden tracks on CDs. With the advent of ripping tracks, I thought it would be a good idea to extract them so that they could stand as tracks in their own right.

1. Take your track (MP3, AAC, whatever) and open it in QuickTime Player (You'll need QuickTime Pro).

2. Scrub up to the point that the hidden track starts. You can do this by listening and also watching the level graph display. Note the time.

3. Move the end position marker to the end.

4. Set the first position marker at the time noted, which is the beginning of the hidden track.

5. Select Cut from the Edit menu.

6. Export the open file in whatever format you want. This becomes the new version of that track. Note that I've preserved the dead space between the two tracks. I like to do this to remain true to the album's structure.

7. Open a new document and paste the cut segment into it.

8. Export it. You can then drag it to iTunes and if you've set your Advanced preferences to copy files to iTunes music folder on adding, it will copy it into the appropriate folder.

9. You'll need to edit the tags for the new file. Don't forget to select all the tracks from that album, get info and increase the total tracks by one.

And there you have it: the hidden track becomes visible, can be selected, jumped to, independently rated and play-count-monitored. And if you didn't like it in the first place, you can chop it off the final track of the album.

by japester on Dec 06 | 7:15 pm

[11] comments (1410 views) | [0] Trackbacks

Exclude 'bind' tracks in random playlists

When you make a playlist that will randomize tracks from different cd's, you may want to exclude some tracks that act as an binding between 2 tracks on a cd. This works fine if you listen to the complete cd in the right sequence, but if you make a random playlist you might want to exclude those.

I do this by setting the following tag in the comments and exclude on that: [NFRP] Not For Random Playlist (yeah I know, what's in a name).

Examples of such a short binding tracks are:

Welcome - Americana - The Offspring
Rooftop Animals - The May Street Project - Shea Seger
Interlude - Absolution - Muse
0.34 - White On Blonde - Texas

by Merg on Dec 05 | 1:52 pm

[4] comments (720 views) | [0] Trackbacks

Rating Point of Reference

With so much music on my iPod, it can be hard to work out what to base a rating on. You might love (5 stars) a song on one album and also love (5 stars) a song on another, but when you compare the two, you find you like the first more than the second. Without resorting to a rating scale of 100, 1000, etc., I've come to the conclusion that it's feasible to consider songs on the basis of albums only. I find it's much easier to take a single album as a point of reference instead of the entire library.

by japester on Dec 04 | 9:34 pm

[9] comments (825 views) | [0] Trackbacks

Getting more specific results

I use words in the Comments field as a way to create very specific playlists. For instance, to create a constantly updating list of songs by my favorite French female pop singers I do this...

Create a Smart Playlist:


Match all the following conditions:
Comment contains Female
Comment contains French
Genre is Pop
Last Played is not in the last 1 days
Limit to 25 songs selected by random
Live updating

Since many artists/songs are cross-genre, this method can be quite useful. Adding multiple genres per artist/song to the Comments field greatly increases control.

by Hitchcock Blonde on Dec 02 | 12:10 am

[1] comments (605 views) | [0] Trackbacks

Adding up your plays

There's a nice little Mac program called Playtime that will scoot through any iTunes playlist, including the full library, and tell you the total number of times you've played tracks and how much time you've spent listening to them. It's at

http://preciousgem.dnsalias.com:90/preciousgem/index.html

I just ran it on my whole library (2479 tracks). "You have played 8740 pieces for a total of 4 weeks, 0 days, 0 hours, 14 minutes, 3 seconds." Imagine!

There are probably others, but I like this one because it's uncomplicated and also free.

by pyramus on Dec 01 | 12:08 pm

[4] comments (751 views) | [0] Trackbacks

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	RB3: You all might find this AppleScript of interest in playlist generation: http: ... Nov 18, 04 \| 2:05 pm A/V Geek: I have a similar system: I have several playlists for artists that I have tons of music from. ... Nov 16, 04 \| 1:21 pm nyorker: nice one lol ... and thanks for the KPOD shout-out! punk plus @+ equals KPMS? >:) ... Nov 16 \| 11:41 am nyorker: <<the FM radio band>> Grif has a free iTrip Station Finder utility that lists the best frequencies for anywhere in USA ... Nov 16 \| 11:36 am RB3: Maybe you live someplace where the FM radio band is too crowded, but may I suggest an FM adapter for ... Nov 15 \| 1:20 pm jjunker: I had read on iPodLounge a while back that the grouping field didn't update. It was probably a problem ... Nov 15, 04 \| 12:04 pm thenightfly42: I have a full list of 'tags' that I put in the comment field, which I'll just add here in ... Nov 15 \| 11:17 am

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