Hi Simon and Others,
Just to add to Simon's comments, I have (at least sometimes) heard the
system sound that indicates I've reached the edged of the scroll
region when I arrow up and down the list of playlists I can check to
be transferred to the iPod Nano 4G. If you hear these alerts when you
VO-right arrow, VO-left arrow, VO-up arrow or VO-down arrow through
the table of playlists on the iPod Nano 4G's Music tab, just follow
Simon's recommendation to interact with the Scroll bar (VO-Shift-S)
and use your down (or up) arrow to scroll down (or up) the table. On
my MacBook I find that I get the alert when I've reached the 8th item
in the Playlist table,, so
using 7 (or 8) presses (up or down) works fine to advance in scrolling.
The other tip is that you can organize your playlists into folders,
and create folders in the Sources table using the "New Playlist
Folder" option in the iTunes File menu on your menu bar. Playlists in
the "Selected Playlists" Table on your iPod Nano 4G's music tab will
be listed as first, (all) Audiobook, then (all) Purchased content from
the iTunes Store, then playlists in alphabetical order. However,
Folders will be listed before Smart Playlists, which are listed before
regular playlists. If you put playlists into a folder (by creating
the folder and then using VoiceOver drag and drop to move playlists
into the folder). they will appear first (alphabetically within the
folder) in the table. They will also appear first in the "Add to
Playlist" submenu lists in the context menus of your Songs Table.
HTH and thanks to Simon for giving this Alert.
One small correction in the terms used for the subject line of this
post: when you check playlists and let the iPod sync and transfer
your checked playlists this is actually called a semi-automatic sync
rather than a manual transfer. It's how you will want to transfer
content to get spoken menus.
Here are the distinctions:
Manual transfer:
1. Content is moved to an iPod with drag and drop of playlists or of
individual tracks
2. iPod updates its database using the file headers of the transferred
tracks -- no spoken menu titles are generated
3. Content can be moved to the iPod from any attached library
(however, content with DRM will only play on the device of an
authorized user)
(Full) Automatic Sync:
1. Everything in the user's iTunes library (with the exception of
podcasts, unless they are contained in playlists) gets transferred to
the iPod. Transfer of iPod content is handled by the user's selected
rules (e.g., all episodes, all unplayed episodes, most recent 3
episodes, etc.)
2. iPod updates its database using the iTunes database for the sync'd
library and spoken menu titles are generated for all tracks by iTunes
on the user's computer.
3. Only one iTunes library is designated as the library the iPod
"syncs" to, although other content can be "manually" added.
Semi-Automatic Sync:
1. All checked playlists, podcasts, etc. in the user's iTunes library
get transferred to the iPod upon connection, but ONLY the checked
items. As in the case of a full sync, the boxes for "Sync Music",
"Sync Movies", "Sync TV Shows", are checked, However, you then
indicate with a radio button that only "Selected" tracks will be
sync'd and check the desired entries in a table. Podcast content is
again handled by separate rules, but additionally these can be applied
to just checked podcasts.
2. iPod updates its database using the iTunes database for the sync'd
library and spoken menu titles are generated for all selected tracks
by iTunes on the user's computer.
3. Only one iTunes library is designated as the library the iPod
"syncs" to, although other content can be "manually" added.
Summary:
1. Use Semi-Automatic sync for the iPod Nano 4G, since spoken menus
are only generated when tracks are "sync'd" rather than manually
transferred. (You can add tracks manually by drag and drop, but they
won't have spoken titles.)
2. You do not need to create (or check) separate multiple playlists
for music by album, artist, etc. Remember that under the iPod nano
4G's spoken menus your music can be browsed and played by album,
artist, etc. whether or not you have created and transferred such
playlists, so you only need to transfer playlists that truly customize
your listening -- e.g. when you want to listen to your music tracks in
a specific order (not as they appear in an album) or skip some
content, or listen to a group of podcast episodes continuously played
in sequence (otherwise play will stop after each episode).
3. If you take this route (having a master transfer playlist), you
only need to check one playlist to be sync'd on the Music tab plus
whatever playlists you create for customized listening. Incidentally,
all playlists get listed and checked on the music tab --- even if
these are playlists of Movies, TV Shows, etc.
4. You don't want to use manual transfers (drag and drop) because they
won't generate spoken titles. That does mean that any content with
spoken titles need to be in your iTunes library so it can be sync'd
from your library.
Tip on creating a master transfer list (only one playlist to check
instead of many!)
You may choose to simplify transfer of material from your iTunes
library by just creating a master transfer playlist. This could be
created as a Smart Playlist (Command-Option-N) where you keep adding
rules like: Playlist is <Name of Playlist>. Then, when you've added
a number of such playlist names, stop interacting with the rules
section, and VO-left arrow to the first line that says, "Match <all>
of the following rules" and change the pop up button from "all" to
"any". You can also check the box below the rules section to limit
the content of the playlist by size (e.g., "Limit to 6 GB" selected by
"most recently added").
I don't usually set limits for this size. Instead, what I might do is
construct a playlist and then check its total size. (Save the
playlist, stop interacting with the sources table, and VO-right twice
to the Songs Table, then VO-down to get the summary of time and space
utilization. You'll hear something like "40 songs, 2:20;22 total time,
129.8 MB", for example). Then you can VO-up and VO-left twice back to
the Sources Table, interact, and edit the smart playlist to adjust
its size. A few other tips: using the context menu (VO-Shift-M) will
let you choose "Edit Smart Playlist", but if you have "Mouse Cursor
tracks Voice Over Cursor" turned on so that your Mouse cursor is at
the smart playlist, you can also use "Option-Click" (where you press
the Option key and then click with your trackpad button, mouse key or
by pressing the "5" key on your Number Pad if you are using a regular
keyboard with Numpad Commander enabled)/ This shortcut automatically
opens the smart playlist for editing.
Hope these tips help.
Cheers,
Esther
On Sep 19, 2008, at 12:23 PM, Simon Cavendish wrote:
Hello,
You may find this redundant but in case somebody on the list has
been struggling, this is what I have found trying to manually sync
my Ipod Nano with the playlists in Itunes.
You will probably have found out by now that when choosing to sync
your playlists with your ipod, you are presented with the table of
all your playlists. Now, you have to interact with your playlists to
start with in order to cheque or uncheque individual playlists. For
quite some time, I would get into trouble in the way that I would
cheque a playlist with Vo+spacebar but what would get chequed would
be quite another list. I couldn't work out why it was happening
until I had read a message from Esther one day.
Now, if you have quite a list of playlist in Itunes, what seems to
be happening when you go down the list with vo+down arrow, is that
you get to the bottom of what is being displayed but you actually
don't know that because you don't get a feedback from Voiceover that
would tell you that you got to the end of what had been displayed.
(Esther has already mentioned the unreliability of the focus
tracking Voiceover in Leopard.)
Now, I have worked out that as soon as I get down some reasonable
distance down the list of my playlists in Itunes, I have to press vo
+shift+s to start scrolling. By using down or up arrows, I can move
the table list up or down and Voiceover tells me the direction of my
movement. Once I think I have moved down or up enough, I press
escape to stop scrolling. I find that I can then successfully cheque
and uncheque the playlist ietems I wish accurately for the transfer
into my Ipod.
I hope others will find this helpful.
I wonder hwether it is important to make Apple aware that there is a
focus problem in Leopard? Has anyone already written to them about it?
With best wishes
Simon
