Complex Smart Playlist Queries

Is it possible to have a complex query for your smart playlist? Such as: (Genre contains "New Age" or Genre Contains "Environmental") and not (Artist contains "Manheim Steam" or Artist contains "George Winston") Currently your rule is either "All" or "Any", WinAmp has this ability in an advanced tab. I really like iTunes for sound quality but WinAmp has it beat hands down on the queries.
Thanks
Roy

You can't combine ANY and ALL in the same smart playlist. There is a workaround though, you can have a playlist in a query. So...
Playlist1 do your ANY conditions.
Playlist2 - IN Playlist1 AND other ALL conditions.
If this makes sense.
E.g.
Playlist1 genre IS rock OR genre IS pop
Playlist2 playlist IS Playlist1 AND date BETWEEN ...

Similar Messages

Do Auto-Updating Smart Playlists really work?

I followed the old thread about auto-updating smart playlists not updating automatically on the iPod. Apparently the 2006-1-10 update fixes it, but some smart playlists still aren't updating for me. The simple rating-based playlists work (they update), but more complex smart playlists such as this don't work:
Match All Following Rules:
Podcast is true
Playcount is 0
Time is less than 11:00
Kind contains audio
According to this support document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301910 smart playlists should update based on any criteria, but I'm not seeing that. Am I doing something wrong? What types of smart playlists have people gotten to work?
Thanks.

I've posted a better version of this thread in the "Using the iPod with color display" forum.
APPLE DISCUSSION ADMINS: Please delete this thread. Thanks!

Why do some Smart Playlists Auto-Update while some don't?

I followed the old thread about auto-updating smart playlists not updating automatically on the iPod. Apparently the 2006-1-10 update fixes it, but some smart playlists still aren't updating for me. The simple rating-based playlists work (they update), but more complex smart playlists such as this do not work:
Match All Following Rules:
Podcast is true
Playcount is 0
Time is less than 11:00
Kind contains audio
According to this support document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301910 smart playlists should update based on any criteria, but I'm not seeing that. Am I doing something wrong? What types of smart playlists have people gotten to work?
Thanks.

Thank you for keeping this discussion alive, and for the continued troubleshooting and evaluation.
I have yet to hear back from Level 2 Support regarding the Podcast-Smart Playlist issue, but in the meanwhile, http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1514307#1514307 remains active if people would like it to, and the most recently update from Level 2 is here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1683550 (30 Jan).
Kind regards,
Gopha.

The 10.4 upgrade smart playlist editing has removed the ellipse as the 3rd button option along side the adding or removing a parameter. Why? And can we get it back?

I just did the iTunes update to 10.4 (80) from 10.3 on a MacPro OS X 10.6.8 . I am extremely nervous and saddened by a subtle change to the smart playlist editing features. I have 178.26gb of music, and a very extensive array of playlists and smart playlists taking full advantage of all the wonderful features and complexity someone has taken the time to develop. I have taken years of time developing my library, and this one little change will set me back substantially. The change? Removing the ellipse as the 3rd button option along side the adding or removing a parameter. The button allowed one to create levels or groups of parameters within the dialogue window that could act independently within one smart playlist. For example, songs from artist "A" needs at least 2 stars to be included, while songs from artist "B" need three stars, and they both can be in the same smart playlist which has its first level of complexity. I have lists that go dozens of layers beyond. And dozens more that cross reference. Is there any way we can get the hierarchy back, ie. Reintroduce the ellipse button? Or is there something new I do not know about? Thanks!

I would like to second this.
This subtle yet life-changing removal is a total loss for advanced users that (used to) take full advantage of "logical and hierarchical" playlists. It tremendously impairs the "smartness" of the feature, effectively removing the possibility of mixing "and" & "if" parameters—which was the real beauty of the whole concept of "smart playlists" à la iTunes.
Here's a simple example. I would like to create a playlist combining two genres (rock and electronic) with only songs that have a rating higher than 3. I cannot do that anymore. I need to create two playlists:
a first playlist (A) that displays [Rock] OR [Electronic] (note that this playlist will never be played, it's an intermediary step required for B)
then a second playlist (B) that displays [songs from playlist "A"] AND [with a rating higher than 3].
It's a pain. And it clutters up browsing lists on my iPad/iPhone a lot.
Smart playlists should get the ellipse button back!
Moreover, the possibility of creating / editing smart playlists on iOS via a nice menu would be just… awesome. I would have thought Apple was going in that "smart" direction with iTunes. In hoping it's just a delay… until iOS 5 maybe?

Smart playlists; no longer smart in version 3 how to tell Apple?

Since iphone and ipod version 3 & itunes 9 smart playlists will not sync onto ipod. Several posts relate to this. Apple has posted a complex set of solutions, including to disable live updating. The later works but eliminates the value and purpose of smart playlists as a means to manage subscriptions and updates.
The final solution is to create a second smart playlist with the rule "playlist is (name of first playlist)". That works but is far too complicated for the average user, and has made my playlist panel into double the size with half the convenience.
If anyone knows how to contact Apple with a request for an acknowledgment that they need to fix this problem I would appreciate it. Two updates later, no fix, not even a promise to try to fix.

Anna:
Yes, I am fully updated. The last update did not resolve the smart playlist jumbling.
The solutions mentioned in my post were in fact published by Apple at this link http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3044
That would be fine but it tends to suggest that the user is doing something wrong that has to be "changed" when in fact the problem arose with the latest software versions, and the user workaround is clumsy and unsatisfactory.
I will try using the feedback form

Please help! Ipod not dynamically updating smart playlists!

I have quite a complex system of smart playlists on my 4G color ipod but I can't get any of them to update dynamically away from the computer. I have a total of 6 and here are their preferences:
SPL 1:
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 4-5 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 day
4) Playcount is less than 5
limit to 100 by most recently added
SPL 2:
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 0-3 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 day
4) Playcount is less than 4
limit to 55 songs by most recently added
SPL 3:
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 3-5 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 day
4) Playcount is greater than 5
limit to 30 songs by random
SPL 4:
match ALL
1) Last played is not in the last 1 day
2, 3, 4) Playlist is not SPL 1, SPL 2, or SPL 3
limit to 15 songs by random
Unwanted:
match ANY
1) Time is greater than 15 minutes
2) Genre is Comedy
The active playlist that I use to listen to:
match ANY
1-4) Playlist is SPL 1, SPL 2, SPL 3, or SPL 4
5) Playlist is not Unwanted
So here's the problem. When I sync with my computer, the playlists work great, everything updates as expected and I get a pretty diverse playlist every time I sync which I want. The problem is that while I'm listening to my music on the ipod away from the computer, my playlists don't dynamically update. After I listen to a song, the song's supposed to remove itself from the playlist which doesn't happen, as well as when I skip songs. Even when I rate songs that aren't rated they don't appear in any playlist. This is really frustrating and I can't find a solution anywhere and yes, I do have Live Updating selected. I also have "Match only checked items" selected on all playlists as well. If anyone has any ideas for how to fix this, I would love to know. Thanks!

I was searching this forum and found someone who says that 4th gen ipods have problems live updating smart playlists if the criteria "last skipped" is on the playlist. I took this off of all of my playlists but they still don't work. Then I tried making a playlist that is just "rating is equal to 5 stars" and it WORKS!!! But that doesn't help me out much for my other playlists so maybe it's some other criteria that's causing the problem. Any ideas?

Is this a bug in Smart Playlist creation?

I am a huge fan of smart playlists. I have some pretty complex/clever playlists that I use to determine syncing.
While editing my playlists I stumbled upon a situation that leaves you unable to move your rules around.
I made a new playlist to demonstrate:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042716/iTunesBug.tiff
If you only have "All/Any of the following are true" with some sub-rules, it is impossible to make a new rule outside of this group. Go make a playlist just like in the picture, and try to make a rule be on the same level with the "Any/All of the following are true" instead of under it. Maybe I just can't figure out how to do it, but I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to managing iTunes Smart Playlists.
I had a playlist with tons of rules that I was editing, and I had to recreate the whole thing because I deleted all of the rules on the same leve with "Any/All of the following are true" and wanted to make another rule on the same level. Of course I could have hacked together a solution using more rules, but I wanted it to be right.
FYI to make this specific rule you have to press Option on your keyboard, then the "+" button changes to "..." and this button adds the rule with a blank sub-rule.

Why was this moved to "Using iPhone" ??
It is a question about Safari for iOS - not iPhone/iPod usage.

Smart playlists not updating live after 3.1.1 upgrade

Same discussion started back in February about the 3.0 update (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9937797)
I thought for sure live updating would work properly with such an update from 3.0 -> 3.1.1, but no luck! I guess it takes more than 7 months to fix this.
As a refresher -- if you have a smart playlist that includes a "not played in the last xx days" condition, the old OS (2.2.1) would automatically remove a played song from the smart playlist on the iPod so your playlist is always valid. However, in 3.0 and 3.1.1, the iPod does not automatically recalculate the smart playlist and you have to sync with iTunes to get the song to be removed.

I have discovered a workaround for this issue. As with most workarounds, it's not too pretty, but it gets you there.
Knowing that live updating smart playlists that refer to other playlists won't properly update on the iPod, and taking advantage of the fact that iTunes 9 now allows for nested logic in smart playlists, we can make a complex nested logic smart playlist that live updates on the iPod as long as it doesn't refer to another playlist. In place of referring to another playlist, refer to some metadata instead. The cleanest metadata tag in my opinion is "Category." It is metadata that does not by default display in playlist view (you can enable it under the View menu), and is not visible when selecting Get Info on a track. You can use the excellent "Enter Category Text for Selected v1.1" script to enter Category tags, available at http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=entercategorytext . Just enter the name of the playlist the track is contained in for the Category tag.
I'll give an example of how this works. Let's say you have a long playlist named "day" containing certain tracks you like to listen to when the sun is out. You want to create an intelligent and self-updating megamix playlist of tracks only from the "day" playlist that will play songs you haven't heard, as well as songs you've heard and have rated. As an added smartness, you want to hear the tracks you've rated higher more often than the tracks with a lower rating. You want this new "day mix" playlist to live update properly on your iPod touch.
First you'll need to tag all your "day" playlist songs. Download and install the "Enter Category Text for Selected v1.1" script mentioned above. Select all the songs in the "day" playlist, run the script, and enter "day" for the Category.
Now you can make the smart playlist. In iTunes 9, create a new Smart Playlist. Using the new nested logic in iTunes 9 smart playlists, select the following conditions:
) Match any of the following rules:
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Playcount is 0
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is *
) Last Played is not in the last 6 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is **
) Last Played is not in the last 5 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is *
) Last Played is not in the last 4 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is **
) Last Played is not in the last 3 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is ***
) Last Played is not in the last 2 months
) Live updating
You should find that the new "day mix" smart playlist properly live updates on your iPod touch.
As with any workaround, there are troubling aspects. One is that you'll need to constantly update your metadata tag of choice (Category, in my example) each time you add new tracks to a source regular playlist on your iPod. I'm also unsure about overloading the metadata with a number of tags in the case where tracks co-exist on multiple playlists. Also be aware that smart playlists like this tend to hang the iPod for several minutes with the "Updating Library" screen, so be prepared to be patient.
I hope this is of use to someone. Please post any streamlining suggestions for this workaround.

After 3 years, tried live updating of smart playlist again. Still broken.

I mean that lists like "Music I haven't listend to recently" do not remove songs on the fly when I listen songs. Last time some special rules were a problem, like "album rating", or "skipped" or "is/not podcast". It worked if I avoided those rules. I did not research the details this time. Although all my rules are really old, so they should have been fixed by now. (Old, but a complex set of ten smart playlists, all live updating and the "main" list built from the others.)
Here is my speculation from 2009:
Generally any RECENT iTunes smart playlist RULE TYPES that Apple has introduced in iTunes, but failed to update to iOS Music Player seem to be the problem. The iOS device can not understand a new iTunes rule unless somebody hard codes it to a new iOS version which is then updated to your iPod. And the live update is disabled, if iOS does not recognize a rule that iTunes has.
Why, oh, why don't they just define a scripting language to implement the smart lists, with primitives that can read any meta-data fields on a media file, and compare strings, numbers and dates? Then a new rule type would just mean a different script synced to iPhone, not re-programming the Music Player?
Or what gives, tell me?

FYI, I've found that Live Updating can SORT OF work. It seems if you only have two rules, live upating works (IE, I have one that is a Rating must be 3-5*'s and last played cannot be within the last 8 weeks). Once the song is played it disapears off the playlist. BUT, as soon as I try to add a third rule, it doesn't work anymore! This is unfortunate because two rules really limits the ability of the playlist...
Cheers,

Some smart playlists empty.

I have been happily using an old iPod Touch as my car's music source. I've had playlists defined that have been working fine on the Touch. The playlists are somewhat complex, like
Match all:
Rating is greater than ...
Media Kind is ..
Genre contains ...
any
   Last Played is not in the last ...
   Last Skipped is not int the last ...
   Date Added is in the last ...
(live updating)
I recently updated the iOS on my Touch (the old version was old) and now some of these smart lists are empty on the iPod. In iTunes, the lists are full of songs, as they always have been. I've reset the iPod, resynced. Nothing seems to help. Has there been some change in the newest iOS versions that limit the capability of older Touches when it comes to complex smartlists?
Mac OS is 10.6.7, Touch iOS is 3.1.3

Could there be a limit on the number of songs for a smart list, beyond which the list displays nothing? I have a number of smart playlists that use the rules above, for Jazz, Pop, Rock and others. It's the two Rock lists that stay empry (one for ratings above 3 stars, the other for ratings above 2), the others work as they should. The only differences between any of these is the number of stars and the genre. For genre, I used "Rock", same as the genre in "get info" for any of my rock music.
Like I said earlier, iTunes does display all the music in every one of my smart playlists. And my iPod Touch did the same thing until I updated the iOS yesterday.
It's a mystery!

Smart Playlists with Implied Criteria

Discovered a cool feature in iTunes last night. The basic idea is that when you rate a track [1-5 stars], a "ghost" rating appears for the whole album that contains that track. You can then create a smart playlist which queries for that "implied criteria." So you can, for example, create a smart playlist that includes all music you have not yet heard AND that does not include any tracks that belong to any album that has another track that received a low rating.
Wrote a little blog post about this:
http://birdhouse.org/blog/2014/02/03/how-to-create-itunes-smart-playlists-with-i mplied-criteria/

So I went through technical support because I had this exactly some problem. Smart playlist shows up in iTunes on my iMAC, as well as via Apple TV (both via iCloud and Home Sharing options.) It also fully populates those smart playlists.
For my pre-existing Smart Playlists (that only have criteria for the GROUPING field) show up, have songs, but are quite a few songs short. I then created a brand new play list with brand new tracks... and its empty on iPhone 4S and iPAD2. Apple TV and IMAC are fine.
So technical support provided me with this response: For smart playlists to work on iOS devices, the songs must be downloaded to the device.
My feedback was this: So this is chicken and the egg. You create the playlist to easily locate and download those songs to your device, but you cant because they have to be on your device before they will show in the playlist.
I suppose the only work around is to create the smart playlist w/ your filters. THEN create a regular playlist and copy everything in the SMART Playlist into the regular playlist.
I have not used Apple products for very long... approaching 2 years. I moved everything to Apple. Computers, laptops, portable devices, etc... I have been VERY impressed. HOWEVER, this makes the point of Smart Playlists completely manual when it comes to your iOS device.
I will for sure be launching a compliant to www.apple.com/feedback.

Smart Playlist - iPod Compatible Video

Hello,
I have an AppleTV so most of my movies are encoded for that. Now I have an iPod Touch and I want to make a Smart Playlist that shows me all of the videos that are not compatible with the iPod Touch. Is there any way to do that?
Thanks!

Short of attempting to copy them to an iPod I'm not aware of a foolproof method for determing which will & which won't If you're prepared to do it manually then you might be able to compare the details on the "Get Info" Summary tab with the following spec.
Support for 480p and 576p component TV out
H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
tt2

Is there a way to make a smart "playlist" of specific books in my iTunes library, and copy ONLY THOSE books to an iOS device? I own an iPad and an iPhone but I want different books on different devices.

Is there a way to make a smart "playlist" of specific books in my iTunes library, and copy ONLY THOSE books to an iOS device? I own an iPad and an iPhone but I want different books on each different device. When I've tried this, the iOS devices don't seem to respond.

There is no playlist for iBooks, butther eis nothing to preent you from choosing to download specific titles from itunes, or syncing just specific titles to an individual device.

IPod no longer updates smart playlists after upgrade to 1.3

After upgrading my 5th Gen 30GB iPod to 1.3 I noticed immediately that the smart playlists on my iPod aren't updating any longer. Until 3 days ago my iPod had firmware version 1.2.1 and all smart playlists worked as expected.
I have many smart playlists that I have been happily using everyday for the past 2 years to play only new podcasts, shuffle my favorite tunes based on when they have been played last, and move songs in and out of My Top rated tunes based on their ratings. These no longer work on my iPod, but when I sync with iTunes they update fine. I didn't make any changes to my smart playlists before or immediately after upgrading, at least until I noticed the problem.
For the last couple of days since upgrading I have tried deleting all my smart playlists and recreating them, that didn't help. I have also tried restoring my iPod, which also didn't help. I have also tried creating a very basic smart playlist i.e.
Match all of the following rules - checked
Rating is ***
Live updating - checked
Sync'd that to my iPod and started playing a tune and changed it's rating to 5 stars. I then entered a static playlist, played a song from that and when it was done entered the new 5 star rating smart playlist and it wasn't updated.
I'm don't know what else to try, I've repeated the same test as above on my wife's 2nd Gen nano and it worked as expected. Has anyone else noticed smart playlists failing to update since the upgrade? I have searched here and on google, but only found reference to much older firmwares.

I'm having the same problem, once I've listened to a song in my 0 plays list, go out to a new menu, then back in, all the songs that have been played are still there, when a few weeks ago they were taken off and only unplayed songs were still there. Now if I switch to another playlist and back, I have to scroll all the way back to the point I was when I changed which didn't happen earlier.

Multiple Artist, Genre... Separator (Semi-Colon) instead of Smart Playlists

In my opinion, one of the greatest features of ID3 tags is the ability to use semi-colons to differentiate between multiple artists, genres, albums, etc... for any given field. This feature has been available since ID3 tags for MP3's were first implemented over a decade ago.
With Windows Media Player 10, it's database was finally able to parse the information separated by semi-colons correctly. What this means is that if I have a song like "Picture" by Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock, in the ID3 tag, I type "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock", and in WMP, if I click on Artist | Sheryl Crow, "Picture" appears. And if I click on Artist | Kid Rock, "Picture" appears. In fact, when I rip songs using WMP, it places semi-colons in numerous ID3 fields from the album description.
In iTunes, however, when I import a song with a semi-colon in an ID3 tag field, the database reads the artist as "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock", or essentially, it treats "Sheryl Crow; Kid Rock" as a THIRD artist. The same is true if I have a song that I feel crosses two genres--like "Picture". In WMP, if I put in the Genre field "Pop; Country", when I choose Genres | Pop, "Picture" appears, and when I choose Genres | Country, "Picture" appears.
Does anyone know if a bug fix for this is in the works for iTunes? It seems Apple and iTunes have been trying to push Smart Playlists for this kind of organization, but that's the poor man's way of organizing songs and not nearly as efficient. I don't want to have to create Smart Playlist for all songs with "Sheryl Crow" in the artist field. It should be inherent based on the semi-colon.
Does anyone know if anything smarter than Smart Playlists is in the works that matches the intuitiveness of Windows Media Player's database?
Thanks,
Bill

Whereas in WMP & the ID3 spec. you would use a semi-colon to separate items you will find that iTunes & the Music store use a slash instead. However as you so rightly say iTunes takes the information and construes a new artist entity rather than two artists connected to the same track. (WMP might also respond to slash - I recall AC/DC always presenting issues so they exist as AC-DC in my library.)
If you'd like to make feature request go to: iTunes Feedback.
Working on the assumption that such ideas are unlikely to implemented any time soon however you might like to see my post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums which covers workarounds for this & other quirks.
tt2

Complex Smart Playlist Queries

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