At least there's a book on this now

Question

A guy named Alexis Van Hurkman has written an ebook (it could later be published as a real book if enough of us request it of PeachPit Press):
Adobe SpeedGrade: Getting Started, 1/e [Kindle Edition]
You have to read it on a Kindle or download the free Kindle Reader app for whatever OS you're using, so its helpful to have another computer or a second or third monitor to read whilst either doing the exercises which you can download once you've bought the book (go to the back of the book to find the download info), or continue working on your SpeedGrade project while reading the bits of the book that help you do whatever you're doing.
Which is how I"m doing it. And I guess "learning by mistake" is one way to remember stuff, but it sure can be frustrating.
For example...I posted this in the Premiere Pro forum because I initially couldn't find this forum:
I have a long sequence which I now want to grade. I didn't grade the individual clips prior to editing them into a 70 minute timeline. I have tried the following without success:
1. Exporting to SpeedGrade the Premiere timeline: it will do this, but leaves chunks of clips brown, which indicates loss of information in the SG timeline, so if I grade this, I'll have an incomplete graded file to apply back to the Premiere timeline;
2. Importing to SpeedGrade a ProRes 422 file which I then asked SG to divide into clips (the app quit after taking 40 minutes to examine the file, which it did successfully, but when I asked it to make clips, it quit)
3. Exporting from Premiere an EDL which I then apply to the QT ProRes file in SG. This is not accepted because there are certain key commands which SG won't accept, but there's no way to know how to export a "clean" EDL from PP to SG without those commands (I even went into the EDL using TextEdit to see if I could delete certain lines, but that was obviously a losing game)

Answer 1

Grey text when you look at the content and lock symbol at the bottom of the screen simply shows that your iPod is set to "automatically update songs and playlists". . If you want to access your iPod directly, play it through your iTunes, connect it to a second computer etc. you just need to change the update method to "Manually manage songs and Playlists" in the iPod preferences. For more detail see this tutorial: Managing Your Songs Manually
One thing to be aware of with manually updating is that the iPod also has to be manually ejected before the "Do Not Disconnect" message will go away. Safely disconnect iPod
For info: iPod 101
The iPod offers three ways to transfer music from your computer. You can select one of the following update modes from the iPod Preferences menu in iTunes (Edit=>Preferences=>'iPod' tab):
1) Automatically update all songs and playlists. This is the default mode, in which your entire music library, including playlists, is automatically synced to your iPod. If the music library on your computer exceeds the iPod storage capacity, you are prompted to select a different update method.
2) Automatically update selected playlists only. With this option, iTunes automatically copies the playlists you have selected to the iPod when you connect it to the computer.
3) Manually manage songs and playlists. You can also choose to transfer music to the iPod manually. This allows you to drag and drop individual songs and playlists from iTunes to the iPod.