Smart playlist and podcasts

Question

I have a 160gb iPod classic. I would like to listen to my podcasts like I do my music, one right after another. I made a smart playlist for my podcasts,right clicked it to copy to play order and synced my iPod. The smart playlist is in iTunes, nowhere to be found on my iPod.
Anybody have any suggestions?

Answer 1

@woodp Interesting approach. I guess I never noticed a Podcasts Smart Playlist as you describe it.
In my testing when I had the Automatically include option selected, none of the selected playlists from the Include Episodes from Playlists section synced, while all of the episodes from the Automatically include option did. It may be that the rules of your Netcast Smart Playlist were transferred and your iPod is evaluating those rules on the content that was transferred from the Automatically include option.
As I've always seen it, Smart Playlists provide much more control over the content that I sync with my iPod. First I have way more podcast episodes than will fit on my iPod, or any iPod available. There are some combinations available from the Automatically include, but not enough for my tastes.
As an example, I want the most recently added unplayed episodes for some podcasts, like news podcasts. At the same time I want the least recently unplayed episodes of other podcasts, like audio dramas I'm trying to catch up on. Some times I want a playlist of episodes 5 minutes long or less when I'm likely to be interrupted. Smart Playlists allow me to include all of these, and manage the space they take up on my iPod with greater control than previously available from the Podcasts tab of my iPod.
To get around the limitations of the Podcasts tab in iTunes 8, I like most of the people posting here created playlists and synced them through the Music tab. Apple has taken care of this work around and now I manage Music from the Music tab and Podcasts from the Podcasts tab.
I guess the thing that would have made this transition less frustrating would have been if they had taken a couple extra minutes during the demonstration of iTunes 9.0 at the Keynote to show how podcast syncing was improved. Still Steve Jobs did say the day was going to be about Music, and it was.