Managing Podcasts
from the keeping-organized dept.
I am subscribed to over forty podcasts. Some of them I am all caught up on, in which case I get an episode here and there. Others, I am backlogged quite a bit, which might be an indication that I'm just not that interested in them and should just delete them.
In order to help organize everything, I have developed a cascade of playlists that keep my iPod full of new content. For example, I have a folder called "Automatic Line-Up" that has every podcast I enjoy listening to. If the podcast has a new episode, the "Automatic Line-Up" playlist is updated with the episode. Then, if I have two or three new episodes to listen to, I only have to play from the lineup, rather than hunt down the new episodes in the iPod menu.
To create an "Automatic Line-Up" smart playlist, I recommend starting with a folder, and adding the name of the artist, like so:
Now, any time a new episode is released, this folder gets updated. Here, it appears I'm behind by 24 episodes of various podcasts. Actually, I'm much more behind than that. One criterion I use for many of these smart playlists is to only list at most one episode at a time. Like so:
What I'm saying here is, show me all of the episodes for this artist, but limit to 1, based on when it was added. I could change the number of items if I decide later I am more interested in catching up on this particular artist. Now, I'm not aware of a way of getting a folder to sync over to your iPod. So it's simple enough to create a smart playlists based on the contents of a folder, like so:
This is the playlist that just mirrors the "Automatic Line-Up" folder for my iPod to sync with. It has one additional requirement: only show episodes I have not yet listened to. This is helpful if I have not yet gotten around to deleting the episode.
So as you can see, this might be a complicated way of getting episodes into your iPod, but it is extremely helpful in keeping things on autopilot for months on end. Enjoy!
Posted: Sunday - May 06, 2007 at 08:28 PM |