Ipod nano - cover flow sort order nano 5th gen

hi community,
i'm using different ipods (3rd gen, 4th gen, 5th gen, nano) and i love tagging my mp3s (artist, album, _but not_ album artist)
the sorting in cover flow for my ipod (3rd, 4th gen, touch, _but not 5th gen_) is fine for me: first regular albums then compilations.
with the nano 5th generation sorting is as follows: regular album + compilations mixed - base is artist name ( not fine for me ).
what i want is: first regular albums, than compilations (analogue ipod nano 4th). workaround for this should be: setting of album artist.
my question: do i have to setup my album artist for the desired sort order in nano 5th, and how will be the sort order in cover flow for the future? (e.g. nano 6th gen., + followers (because i don't want to reset my tags weeks later once again ....)
thanks for your reply.
best regards
itunes_gef

Hi Damon et al:
I agree with you that you shouldn't have to screw around with the file names. The iPod should allow you to sort in a variety of ways (e.g. any of the fields in the MP3 metadata, and in forward or reverse order). I'm going to keep checking back on this thread to see if more information comes out of it, but it looks to me like a flaw in the iPod OS, not a user-education issue.
Cheers,
bkengland
P.S. One would hope that the Apple program managers look at these threads for RFE ideas!
iPod Nano Other OS

Similar Messages

Need help please: cover flow sort order logic

hi community,
is there a official document / specification from apple where the sort order and the settings of the corresponding tags (album, album artist, compilation on/off) of the cover flow is described?
AA)
i use diffent ipods. earlier versions diplayed in coverflow:
1) sorted by artist for compilation = off, following
2) sorted by album for compilation = on
this was fine for me.
BB)
now on my nano 5g order is as following:
- only 1 list: sorted by artist with all compilations listed in
does anybody know how i can set up the nano to display the cover flow like AA)?
best regards
gef_audio

s there a official document / specification from apple
If there is, it would be in Apple's Knowledge Base or iPod nano (5th generation) - User Guide.

Is there a way of making my iPod's "cover flow" sort in the same way the software can . Artist -- Album by Year . It only seems to do Artist -- by Alphabetical Album . I want it look like it does on the PC .

Is there a way to make the "cover flow" on the iPod match the sort style that I use on the software . I go with Artist -- Album by Release Year . But the ipod seems to only do Artist -- Alphabetical by Album , and then there are a handful of albums oddly out of place . Can it be done ?

Ottonomy, here's what to do.
Connect your iPhone to your computer and open the iPhone's playlist in an iTunes window. Copy/Paste the entire playlist into a new(!) playlist in iTunes, not on your iPhone. Then resort the playlist. After you sort it, Copy/Paste it to a new(!) playlist on your iPhone. Now delete the old playlist on your iPhone and rename the new playlist the name you want it to be (probably the same name as the old playlist).
The downside to this method is that you have to do it every time you add a song to the playlist. Unfortunately, I don't think there's another way.

Can you get the cover flow interface on a 5th gen classic Ipod?

any way to do this?

No there's not. As an example, when the Late 2006 version of the 5th Generation iPod was introduced it had a new search feature, this was not added retrospectively to the earlier model. The changes made to the iPod Classic and the other models are much more extensive than that one and no official firmware was ever released to update previous models.

Cover Flow sorting is wacky (not a compilations issue).

I just purchased a 120GB Classic with the hope that I'd be able to browse my collection of music by album artist. After all but giving up hope, it looks like Cover Flow is almost doing it (on purpose or not, I don't know).
Here's the issue: I tag my .mp3s so that on tracks with multiple artists, they're separated by a "/" -- so, for example, on my Aesop Rock album, "None Shall Pass", track 6 has an artist field of, "Aesop Rock/Breeze Brewin/Cage". I always include the artist in the artist field before I put any of the guest artists.
When I sync this to my iPod, the Cover Flow only shows this as one album (there are four tracks scattered throughout the album with different artists). If Cover Flow was sorting purely by artist, it would have multiple covers. So I'm thinking that I figured out a way to get what I want.
Except the iPod seems to randomly decide which albums it wants to treat this way -- some, such as the Kid Rock album "Cocky" (the one with "Picture" with Sheryl Crow"), are shown as two separate albums in Cover Flow. This doesn't make any sense to me.
All the "sort" fields are blank for all the files, so that can't be what's doing it. If I go under the Artist menu, it shows all the artists just as they're written in the tags.
So what's the deal here? How does Cover Flow really work?
[EDIT] Nevermind, I figured it out. Apparently when you sort by artist, it will give me all the songs with just the artist, and then give me the songs with that artist and any other artist (the slash comes after all the letters alphabetically). So if the artist has more than one album, it doesn't group them together by album.
I guess the "sort field" is the only way to fix it for now.
Message was edited by: Psyact

Using the sort field to try to force things together doesn't quite work, and certainly not when the album artist has more than one album with guests. I think you'll also find there are some enumeration issues in the album menu which may cause the wrong cover to be displayed as you progress through the library. See my recent post on Grouping Tracks Into Albums for a somewhat long, but hopefully comprehensive, exposition of the issues.
tt2

Send your feedback to Apple if you want Cover Flow sorted by Album

I know this is a hot topic, but I really would prefer to have Cover Flow sorted per Album rather than per Artist. I don't buy the same album for each artist so I think Cover Flow should be per Album, it just makes sense.
As there's no real way around it and if you agree send your feedback to Apple so at least they know it's something people want and maybe they'll work on a way to fix it for us.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

I would support an option to sort by album or artist but if it were only 1 way, i'd like it to be by artist. Assuming the fix the compilation problem, I want the coverflow to work like going to a 'record' store so that i can easily go artist by artist and each artists albums are sorted together. compilations would either be grouped together at the end or under various artists ( but each album would appear once). I know my collection way better by artist than i do by album name.

What's wrong with my iPod's Cover Flow??

I have an iPod Touch 3rd Gen, 32Gb, and recently updated to IOS 5.
Since then, the iPod's cover flow feature is extremely slow, doesn't flow smoothly, and crashes after a few (15-20) seconds.
Today I noted something else: some album covers appear pixelated and blurry, even though HD. Those covers looked just fine until now.
As a side note, I have in use 30 of the 32 Gb (that's a lot of music, I know). Could this be related? I never had those problems before IOS 5, though.
What's wrong with my iPod?
Thanks for your help!

so as I see it people with this problem have 3 options
- Make all of your album art a maximum of 500X500 pixels
- Wait for an IOS update that fixes the problem
- Scrap ipods and buy another brand of music player
Using photoshop to do it with, it took me about an hour to resize, change, and resync all of my 1400 songs(86 albums)

Cover flow - Sort by Album/Year?

I love the cover flow feature on my iPhone but I am disappointed that it sorts based on Artist name. Is there a setting to make Cover flow - Sort by Album/Year?

Sorry, no such setting.

Nano Cover Flow Crash, no more clicking?!

My brandnew Nano (3G) showed distorted (lots of strange colored pixels) album pictures in Cover Flow. After a reset, everything worked fine again, except for the "clicking" sound in Cover Flow, that was gone.
Thus:
In the common ipod menus, operating the scrollwheel makes a clicking sound. After selecting the Cover Flow menu, the scrollwheel-clicking sound is gone. The menu, play, next, prev buttons do have a click sound..
I tried:
-Several resets
-Restore in iTunes
-Restore software in iTunes
Who's got a clue?
Thanks in advance..!
Message was edited by: Maunano

I don't get your problem on my iPod nano 4th gen. Are you actually setting the compilation checkbox for each song? Do you have Group Compilations when Browsing set in iTunes' Advanced preferences?

Cover Flow Sort Problem To Do With Compilations?

Hi,
I just had a thought. Do you think the problem we're having with Cover Flow on the iPod Nano is to do with "Part of a compilation" not being ticked in iTunes?
If you bought one movie soundtrack Album that has a different Artist for each track, should "Part of a compilation" be ticked in iTunes, even if you've set the Album Artist to "Various Artists"?

No. does not help. The Compilations-Checkmark brings the files in a folder and not one level up. So the iTunes folder is a little cleaned up.
mk

Cover Flow Album Order

My 4th Gen iPod orders albums in Cover Flow by artist name, which I don't like to begin with, so firstly I'd like to know how to change this to by album title.
Also, even when it does order by artist name, it somehow works fine and then randomly puts a Simon and Garfunkel album right at the end, after 'Various Artists', meaning that particular album isn't even with the others I have by the same artists. This surely completely defeats the point of the artist name order, which I already don't want!
So even if there's no way to change the artist name order thing, I'd like some ideas on why it doesn't work with that one album please!
Can anyone help me?

I had this issue but managed to sort it...
Cover Flow was putting albums to the "back" of the list. All of the albums that were being put at the back were being classed by iTunes as compilations.
Even if the album is not in reality a compilation it will be listed as such by iTunes if it has any tracks with "artist 1 Feat. artist 2".
e.g.
Sting's album "Sacred Love" has a track with "Sting Feat. Mary J. Blige"
This meant iTunes classed the album as a compilation... (even if you change the artist details to remove the "Feat. artist" iTunes still classes it as a compilation... very frustrating!)
_To resolve the issue_
You will need to do this for each album individually (i.e. each album that is being sent to the back of the list) and it needs to be done in the main music library NOT in the playlists that you are syncing...
Highlight the album (all the tracks on that one album)
Go to "get info" (under "File" for any newbies :))
Select "NO" in the "compilations" box.
This should solve the problem

Cover Flow Sorting

Is there any way to change the cover flow from sorting by artist to sorting by album? Sorting by artist, in my opinion, is pointless in cover flow.

Frisbey wrote:
Is there any way to change the cover flow from sorting by artist to sorting by album? Sorting by artist, in my opinion, is pointless in cover flow.
Really? That's how my CDs & vinyl are ordered. The iPod Cover Flow order is Album by Artist - there are no options to change this. If you want a pure alphabetical album order just use the album menu.
tt2

IPod Classic Cover Flow

How can I get the cover flow on my iPod Classic to show albums only once in album artist order the same as it does in iTunes. Albums with a number of artist such as those by Jools Holland with a guest artists appear a number of times on my iPod. I want them to appear only once in cover flow like compilations.

mini x wrote:
You need to fill in one "album-artist“ (in „sort-by") for all titles of album.
That approach doesn't really work...
See http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for solutions.
tt2

Cover Flow Sorting Issue - Workaround

Here is a temporary solution to the Cover Flow view & the Album Art Grouping view.
As many of you know the sorting by 'Album' or 'Album by Artist' or 'Album by Year' in the above mentioned views is not correctly prioritized.
The issue stems from the fact that the sort algorithm prioritized 'Artist' over the expected logic implied by grouping by the sort field name. So if a single album contains tracks all by different artists, you will get a Album Cover for each artist NOT each album.
To get around this (until Apple fixes it) use the 'Album Artist' field (which is usually, but not always, empty) and set this field to a common value for an entire album — such as 'Various Artists.' When doing so, the logic will still sort on the Artist Name first, but will group the entire album together.
If Sorting by "Album by Year" then the only hitch to this method is if you have two or more albums with the same & progressive title (see example below.) Then the album will sort in order of the Artist name of the 1st track of the album. — This probably will affect nearly zero of the the iTunes population though.
e.g. The album sort order will be:
Album: "Music 02" 1st track Artist: "Astro"
Album: "Music 03" 1st track Artist: "Terra"
Album: "Music 01" 1st track Artist: "Viggio"
Once again just set each album with a common "Album Artist" descriptor. I use "Various Artists"
-Alan
Note: Also there is a new field in the info tags for each song called 'Album Artist.'
AlBook, TiBook, iMac, iBook Mac OS X (10.4.5) Corporate / mixed environment / multiple networks.

Hi,
just change the switch Compilation to true for all songs in the album and it works too.

IPod Classic Cover Flow Customization

Cover flow on my ipod classic is arranged alphabetically by artist/album, can it be customized to be arranged in another way? Specifically I want to manually arrange my albums, based on new purchases (i suposse that means: date modified or date added, in computer terminology). I want to see the lastest album I bought first and continuing in that order. Thoughts?

BOSKMD wrote:
I would just be happy if when in cover flow, it showed each album individually, and not the same album cover for each artist thats on the same album. Its very irritating that in itunes, its set correctly, but does not transpire to my ipod.
See http://www.samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp for solutions.
tt2

Ipod nano - cover flow sort order nano 5th gen

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