This goes out to the lazyweb as I seem to be unable to find it via google. I just realized how useful the manual synching of an iPod is. As i have most of my music on my Desktop machine but also some stuff (like podcasts) on my iBook I wanted some way to synch the ipod to both machines - which was not possible with smart playlists etc. Now that I do it manually this is cool - but somehow I do not get my playcounts (hitcounts) and last played info back onto the iTunes library. Is there any way to do this?
Or possibly an easy way to combine manual synching with playlist synching?
Hi. Found you via the Lazyweb. Alas, with the ipod you can only have it one way or the other: manual sync (which also lets you use the ipod on multiple computers) or full sync (which syncs all the good stuff you mention, plus ratings and on-the-go playlists).
There might be 3rd party software to sync stuff back to iTunes, but I don’t know of any.
Yeah, it sucks. I went to manual sync for a short time because I wanted to be able to use my iPod on both my desktop and laptop computers (I have music on my desktop but podcasts on my laptop) But without playcounts and rating sync I just couldn’t stand it and went back. Bah.
I was wondering about this myself earlier this week. iTunes uses XML to store its music library database information, but the iPod uses a binary format (I think it’s located at /iPod_Control/iTunes/Play Counts). If you could somehow decipher this, you could create an application that would do what you want.