Just when I thought I knew everything about iTunes, I caught this cool hint on MacOSXhints-
The iTunes search allows search by star ratings. Simply add *'s to your search with or without other keywords. The more astericks you add, the higher the rating.
This makes it possible to find songs by the Beatles with three stars without having to resort to a Smart Playlist. Very cool!
To get the most out of smart playlists, you really need to have complete tag information. Some of my favorite third-party tools are:
iEatBrainz - This free program examines songs in your library and then creates an auditory fingerprint of the sound of each song to match it with the correct information maintained in the MusicBrainz Database.
Jaikoz - This commercial software (£15 GDP or about $30 US), also uses MusicBrainz as well as Acoustic Ids provided by MusicIP.
Remember that no identification system is 100% accurate so make sure to double check the results no matter which tool you use.
Creating a new Smart Playlist or editing an existing playlist with the criteria of "Video Kind" will result in no matches from your iTunes Library because the rule for the Smart Playlist will not be saved.
If you try to edit the Smart Playlist, the "Match the following rule" field will be blank or empty after you click OK. Any additional criteria that is part of the Smart Playlist will remain, but they will produce results from the entire library, not just videos.
Note: Any Smart Playlists that were created prior to updating to iTunes 7.5 will continue to work as long as you don't try to edit the Smart Playlist.
Products affected:
iTunes 7.5
Mac OS X
Solution:
Use Software Update to update to iTunes 7.6 or later to resolve this issue.
Here's how to create a list of movies to rent from the iTunes Store from karlfranz on MacOSXHints.
- Go to the Power Search feature of the iTunes store.
- Select movies from the first category dropdown list.
- Click the checkbox "Search movies that are available for Rental".
- Leave all other search fields blank.
- Click the Search button.
You will get a list of all movies that can be rented.
Now, for your list of movies to rent, just:
- Create a playlist within iTunes called Rental Wishlist or whatever.
- Select the movie you are interested in renting from the list view in the Search results above and drag it into the playlist.
- When you want to rent something, go to your wishlist playlist, select the item and click on the arrow next to its name. It will take you to the page on the iTune Store for that movie.
kurly: This is a question relating to dynamic updating of SPL’s using the following criteria (as an example):
•Grouping Contains: .p/a.
•Grouping Contains: ...
