Is there a way to "mark" all spanned songs to put them in a separate playlist?
I know that I can tell which files have been spanned to my external NAS by going into Tunespan and selecting the location icons, but I was wondering if there is a way to see that, easily, within iTunes itself.
Here's what I would really like to do. I'd like to create a playlist of ALL mp3s in iTunes that are on my MacBook Pro local drives and ANOTHER playlist of ALL mp3s in iTunes that have been spanned - so that I can have access to those playlists without having to open TuneSpan
Is that doable with some sort of smart playlist feature? Or a workaround.
I have a couple of reasons for wanting to do this - but one of them is that I don't want to select to play anything that I've spanned (when I am playing songs on the road and don't have access to my spanned drive).
I've thought of a couple of work arounds like creating a new iTunes folder, just of the items that have been spanned, and then tagging all of them 1BPM (I don't use that info). Then reopen the original iTunes library, mark all items and do a "get info" again (which would read the new 1BPM tag. Then I could create a smart playlist just of the items with 1BPM, etc.
But I was wondering if there was an easier way.
The same question
Thanks for getting in touch. This is a great question.
At this point, there is not really convenient way to view only your spanned, or not spanned tracks in iTunes. There is no easy criteria to make a smart playlist out of since TuneSpan only adjusts to track location. TuneSpan doesn't manipulate any other track attributes.
But, at one point in the past, I was playing around with some built in scripts for TuneSpan that could create these kinds of playlists for you. I had them working, but it was a lot of overhead. It was a cumbersome and time consuming to create the playlists, and they would need to be updated after each span or restore to keep them relevant.
So, I decided not to include the playlist creation code in TuneSpan. One reason is because of the overhead, another is that no one ever really spoke up to say that is something that they would really find useful.
But, you clearly want this functionality, and I agree that it would be very nice to be able to easily view your spanned and not spanned tracks in TuneSpan.
I can't give a timeline or deadline, but I will start playing around with some new playlist creation code and see how efficient I can get it. Ideally, there would be an option to create these playlists, and they would just be automatically updated after each span. But, if it ends up taking a noticeable amount of time to update the playlists, some users may not be satisfied with that.
I'll work on it and get post back here when I have made some substantial progress.
Maybe you would be interested helping to beta test this feature when I have it in a usable state?
But, for now, I can't offer any better solution that something like you mention. I would require some manual manipulation until TuneSpan can use it's own database to split up the tracks appropriately.
Thanks so much for using TuneSpan, and for getting in touch!
Thanks for getting in touch. This is a great question.
At this point, there is not really convenient way to view only your spanned, or not spanned tracks in iTunes. There is no easy criteria to make a smart playlist out of since TuneSpan only adjusts to track location. TuneSpan doesn't manipulate any other track attributes.
But, at one point in the past, I was playing around with some built in scripts for TuneSpan that could create these kinds of playlists for you. I had them working, but it was a lot of overhead. It was a cumbersome and time consuming to create the playlists, and they would need to be updated after each span or restore to keep them relevant.
So, I decided not to include the playlist creation code in TuneSpan. One reason is because of the overhead, another is that no one ever really spoke up to say that is something that they would really find useful.
But, you clearly want this functionality, and I agree that it would be very nice to be able to easily view your spanned and not spanned tracks in TuneSpan.
I can't give a timeline or deadline, but I will start playing around with some new playlist creation code and see how efficient I can get it. Ideally, there would be an option to create these playlists, and they would just be automatically updated after each span. But, if it ends up taking a noticeable amount of time to update the playlists, some users may not be satisfied with that.
I'll work on it and get post back here when I have made some substantial progress.
Maybe you would be interested helping to beta test this feature when I have it in a usable state?
But, for now, I can't offer any better solution that something like you mention. I would require some manual manipulation until TuneSpan can use it's own database to split up the tracks appropriately.
Thanks so much for using TuneSpan, and for getting in touch!
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