Refreshing your Smart Playlists....

Question

Quite new to iTunes and really enjoying the power of the playlist and the way it changes how I listen to music. But...
Being new I'm still playing and experimenting with Smart Playlists which means I'm making lots of changes - e.g. you change the conditions of a playlist (say add a previously excluded Genre or lower the rating required for entry) OR you change some tags in your main library which would make previously excluded songs eligible. If your playlists are 'bounded' in anyway (I limit some of mine to 1.5 hours to fit the journey time to work), the playlists just seem to ignore the new possibilities and don't refresh?
If the changed conditions affect what CAN be included it works OK but if you open up more possibilities for what COULD be picked then nothing happens? I find myself having to remove the 'limit' function, press OK and then go back in and put the limit back on - just to get a refreshed list.
So either that's the only way or I'm about to get a barrage of replies starting "You idiot..."
Thanks..

Answer 1

I do yes - and like I say it works when there's no
'limit' condition or you change a condition that now
excludes certain songs, just not when you give it
more songs to pick from....
Actually, it always works, you're just not understanding the way in which it works.
The "limit" condition places a limit on what songs can appear in the resulting playlist. That limit condition also offers a "sort" method built into it. So you can limit to 50 songs sorted by artist, which means that it takes the result set, sorts by artist, then chops off the top 50 to make the list. Simple, really.
So if you're adding things that make it to the bottom of that sort, then it gets chopped off. If you're adding things to the top of the sort, it will get included.
Now, I suspect you're sorting by "random" which is it's own beast. These random sorts happen only when the content of the playlist itself changes. So when you change the library such that something is removed from the result set, it has to resort and do the limit again, since the playlist must be recalculated. But when you change the library such that something is added, the playlist is not recalculated because the content of the list itself did not change. Nothing was removed. Nothing was added *to the list*. The list still falls within the boundry conditions given for it. Removing a song from it would change the list such that it falls outside the boundries, being short of the limit. But adding new possible songs to choose from doesn't change the list itself, it still works.
So yeah, in that case, you must force it. A simple way to force it to recalculate a "live updating" smart playlist is simply to delete all the contents of the list. Hit CTRL-A and then DEL while looking at the list. This won't remove those songs as possibilities from the list, but it will make the list fall outside of the boundry conditions set for it, which forces the recalculation.
The reason for all this is the "random" sort method. Likely you don't want the playlist contents changing every time you look at the list, or every second, or what have you. So it only changes the list and resorts randomly when it has no other choice. If it doesn't have to do a random sort to make the list work, it won't do it.