[lokie]

Is there a way to designate songs for a playlist when using an Iphone?
I started tinkering around with the stars. Anybody use the stars to create playlist? Will those stars migrate with the songs back to itunes?

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

[srb]

Older iPods (iPhones?) had an "On The Go" playlist feature where playing songs could be added to this specific playlist but unfortunately the feature was removed.  There are a couple playlist scenarios you could use.  The first one is largely unworkable due to having to scroll through the entire library of songs to add songs, but the second one can take advantage of the star ratings to tag any playing song.

1.  You can create a playlist on the iPhone (Playlists > Add Playlist), label it and choose songs from the song list.  The problem is that when you add the songs either when first creating the playlist or later editing it, the songs are in alphabetical order with no provision to add by album or artist and there isn't even an alphabet quickbar on the side as in the Songs mode, nor can you add a playing song.

2.  You can create a Smart Playlist in iTunes on your computer, add a rule "Rating is *****"  (5 stars) and label it something like "On The Go".  Then when a song is playing on the iPhone you can assign 5 stars to it and it will appear in the Smart Playlist and will sync back to iTunes.

If you've previously assigned ratings to songs you may want to first clear them all in iTunes by going the Library (in iTunes 11, "Songs" if sidebar is hidden and "Library > Music" if sidebar is visible), selecting them all, right-clicking and choosing Get Info and setting the Rating to no stars.

If you want to later convert the contents to a regular static Playlist, after you've synched the iPhone back to iTunes you can create a a static Playlist and drag the songs from the Smart Playlist to the new static Playlist.  Then you may want to clear all of the ratings again to start over.

Steve

[lokie]

Steve,

Thanks for your thoughtful answer.

I'll start tinkering with your suggestions, but I think it will work for my purposes. the main thing is to "mark" a song while I'm on the go and then work with  the songs when I get in front of itunes on the computer.

Here's a wrinkle, I need to work around. I synch my Itunes on my work computer (PC). I keep my main music library (2TB) on my "dedicated music server" Mac Mini located at the Big Rig. I will occasionally migrate (approx) 30 gigs of music (via HD) over to my work computer and then download to my Iphone. I'll listen to that 30 gigs of music for a 3 or 4 months and then I'll delete that library repeat the process. The idea is to rediscover music I don't typically listen to, and "mark" a few songs for playlist designation back to the main music data base. So, I'm not sure how to do that elegantly. Maybe get 3 big HD's and keep them all synched; one for the palyback one the Mini, one for playback and Iphone synching on the work pc and one for back up. Although this will be a good solution to cover all music management (although an expensive one) I don't think the "start designations"  will migrate from one Itunes to the other.

The last time I played with Home Sharing I had problems. My take was that it wasn't  designed to move around such large catalogs, so I turned it off. Maybe I need to revisit it? 

[srb]

You are correct that the Rating value is not a file metadata tag, but instead stored in the iTunes library database so any songs that are imported from a hard drive into another iTunes library database will no longer have the Rating info.

Home Sharing is designed to share libraries and enable dragging and dropping content to become a permanent part of another computer's iTunes library.  Although that will preserve proprietary iTunes database info, Home Sharing is generally used on a local network within the same subnet and won't work across the Internet without a lot of additional configuration.

It is possible to use Home Sharing over a VPN, but the Windows VPN client doesn't support routing of the Bonjour service required for Home Sharing.  There are workarounds for this and here are a few links describing the process:

iTunes library sharing over a VPN

How To Play Your iTunes Library Remotely Over a VPN

I thought briefly about Apple's $25/year iTunes Match cloud service in lieu of Home Sharing, but I think it maintains its own ratings, play count, etc. and does not sync that info from your library.

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Edit:  I assumed that your work PC was at a different physical location than your main rig computer, but re-reading your post, they may actually both be at home on the same local network and one is just called a "work" PC?  If that's the case, Home Sharing only requires that each computer or iOS device be logged into the same iTunes account.  You are permitted up to 5 computers (not including iOS devices).

However if you copy newly tagged songs to another iTunes computer with Home Sharing, it will create duplicates if the songs already exist.  The playlists themselves can't be dragged and copied between them, but you can create them with the same name (and rules for Smart Playlists) on the other computer.

You could always drag the newly tagged songs to the new iTunes library, then Show Duplicates and delete the older ones to keep the libraries in synch.

I'm not 100% sure of your exact needs, but I'm sure there is a methodology and routine to make it work.  Maybe you could verify if the two computers are on your local network or not.

Steve

[lokie]

Sorry for the lack of explanation. My work PC is a laptop that I schlep around for travel, office and at home.

My work/PC doesn't need to have access to all that 2TB of music (located at the big rig), except for convenience of the song ratings and ease of Iphone/music synching. 

I've noticed the plugging in and plugging out of the network and external HD's has caused issues, but I can remember exactly what they are. Which also is the reason I try to keep it simple.