iTunes is a little funny in how it manages your music. When I first began making audio flashcards, I found that they became increasingly difficult to organize. A thousand mp3 files on your iPod really messes with your music experience, and I found it disconcerting when my Duke Ellington was interrupted by a question on foveal telangiectasia.
I quickly learned to create playlists to separate out my regular “music” from my “flashcards.” You can read more about creating playlists in our playlist article.
A bigger problem for me, was that I began to get duplicate files on my player and the 5-star ratings I created on my handheld iPod wasn’t transferring back to my iTunes upon syncing. This was very annoying … and I finally discovered the reason. I had my iPod nano set to sync “manually.”
Turns out you can set up your iPod to synchronize in one of two modes:
1. Manually Sync Music: You drag songs from iTunes directly onto the player icon. This is the most intuitive method of file transfer, and how I normally have my own players set. However, as I mentioned above, it doesn’t work well with audio flashcards because this method doesn’t allow you to sync your song ratings (star ratings are very useful) and this mode also limits your playlist management.
2. Automatically Synch your Music: This method seems more complicated at first, but works best with large file collections and particularly with this flashcard system. With every synch, your computer looks at the playlists you’ve created in iTunes (such as “my favorite songs” or “music for running” or “Cornea Flashcards”) and makes sure they synch up into the corresponding folder on your player.
I recommend using the “auto synch” feature as this will allow you to rate using the star system on your portable mp3 player. For example, you can mark all the difficult questions as 5-star and the easy ones as 1-star. These star ratings will sync back to iTunes the next time you connect through USB. This star system is great for organizing your lists (click here to read more about the benefits of the star rating system).
How to change the sync mode:
You can switch your player settings by plugging in your iPod via USB, clicking on the iPOD icon in the left-hand panel, and choosing the “main tab”
Check on “sync manually.” Keep in mind that the music currently on your device will likely delete, forcing you to rebuild your music playlists. Then, you can choose which playlists you want to always synch (such as those flashcard lists) and check the ones you want!
That’s pretty much all there is to it! Now your flashcards and ratings will remain synched between your player and your computer, and you can study from either and have everything backed up properly.
To get the most out of the flashcards, you may want to learn more about creating playlists, smartlists, and ultimately using the star rating system.
Comments and Feedback
3 Comments
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My iPod was set to auto synch, but that did not stop me getting duplicates of some songs (always the same ones).
Comment by Julian — February 21, 2008 @ 2:04 am
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I would like to auto sync on my ipod. I already 9000 plus songs but I want to add more news. I just don’t want to auto sync and the same songs that’s currently on their get duplicated. I would like to know if I use auto sync will it only sync the new materials and not duplicate the other songs that are currently on there
Comment by haqim — April 13, 2009 @ 11:50 am
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Have several ipods… two classic 4th gen 20gig and one iTouch . . . can only MANUALLY sync songs - although contacts seem to get downloaded automatically. I hve all my songs in C:\Bob\My Music . . . I even erased and reloaded itunes in hopes it would find needed files/folders - - - WHAT files do I need for the apple to auto sync - where are these files supposed to be located?
Comment by Bob — May 8, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
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