Parent playlist syncs with nested playlist automatically

[jtheelen]

I'm using MM 4.1.13.1801 on Windows 7. I sync playlists to my iPod Nano 7th gen. I may have found a bug described below.

I have a playlist containing podcasts that I still need to listen to. They are in the todo-list. The playlists are nested as described below:

• My Podcasts
  • My Podcasts (done)
  • My Podcasts (todo)

My Podcasts: an AutoPlaylist where Album/Series/Podcast equals the name of the podcast (whatever)
My Podcasts (done): a normal Playlist containing the episodes that I have listened to
My Podcasts (todo): an AutoPlaylist where Playlist is "My Podcast" and Playlist is not "My Podcast (done)"

After listening to a podcast from the todo-list, I drag them to the done-list. The todo-AutoPlaylist makes them disappear from the list because they are in the done-list.

When I sync "My Podcasts (todo)" to my iPod, the parent playlist "My Podcasts" is also synced with all its contents. This is wrong in my opinion.

My solution is to drag "My Podcasts (todo)" to a higher level (thus, in stead of being a child of "My Podcasts", it becomes its sibling), like so:

• My Podcasts
  • My Podcasts (done)
• My Podcasts (todo)

I'm fine with the workaround, but I thought this might be a bug.

[Lowlander]

This is by design (but new).

[jtheelen]

Could you elaborate on this: how is it implemented? From what I can tell, it goes like this: given a nested/contained autoplaylist of which the definition refers to the parent/container autoplaylist, if you sync the nested playlist, you automatically sync the parent playlist with all its contents as well.

If this is it, I consider it counter-intuitive. As a user, you should at least have the option between this and playlists that aren't linked in any way when syncing.

[Lowlander]

If you select a child-playlist for sync its parent-playlist(s) are also synced.

[jtheelen]

I see: if the parent playlist contains music files itself, which it does when it is an autoplaylist, then it is synced alongside the child playlist. If the parent playlist is just a normal playlist, container actually or dummy "folder", for other playlists, it is not synced.

Can this be disabled? I don't get the added value of this implicit linking of child and parent playlists.

[jtheelen]

So I guess it is not a bug. Thanks for the clarification. To end this thread with another use case and my workaround, have a look at this image:



The autoplaylist 'Singles' contains about 5000 songs. My iPod cannot contain them all. In order to sync a selection of years, say 'Singles 2005' only, I add another level as a container, the decades. It's a normal playlist acting as a folder but not containing any songs. This allows me to sync one or several years without syncing them all.

I hope this helps other people who find this feature annoying.

Cheers.

[Peke]

So if I got this correct and if you select only Singles 2005 It will sync structure but not all 5k tracks in Singles Root playlist?

[jtheelen]

That's correct: the decade playlist breaks the "feature" discussed in this thread. Please don't tell me this is a bug?!

Below is the image to prove that the 'Singles 2015' autoplaylist refer to the grandparent autoplaylist 'Singles'.

By the way: I don't know what you mean by 'structure', but the playlist 'Singles 2015' appears on my ipod, and the parent (decade) and grandparent (Singles) do not.

[jtheelen]

One final thought. The more I think about it, the more I consider this feature flawed. After all, you give the user the explicit power to select the playlists to sync to their device by means of a checkbox, in the "Auto-Sync (--> Device)" tab. There are 3 states: checked, unchecked and filled with a rectangle (implicitly checked or whatever it means). Right now, I can check a child playlist and uncheck its parent, but the parent playlist with all its content will be sync anyway. This is wrong.

Remove the feature and give the user the power to decide what is and what is not synced.

[Lowlander]

I'd rather see the old behavior where files only on selected Playlists were synced and not on unselected parent Playlists of a selected child Playlist. It doesn't affect me as my parent Playlists are organizational and thus empty, but it makes sense to me.

[rivorson]

I remember the discussion on this a while ago and the reason that the behaviour was changed to sync parent playlists. When the parent playlist wasn't synced it had to be created in MMA anyway to preserve the structure. If the user then added anything to the empty parent playlist in MMA it would essentially wipe the contents of the parent playlist in MMW on the next sync. Parent playlists are synced to prevent accidentally removing their tracks this way.

I have a similar nest of playlists for tracks that I haven't played yet. The parent contained all unplayed tracks and it had children for unplayed tracks by type (i.e. Unplayed Music, Unplayed Podcasts, etc). My workaround was to empty the parent and create a child for All Unplayed.

[MMFrLife]

Very imformative thread. Thanks.
It doesn't really apply to me currently as I'm using an incompatible with MM device for syncing music.
But according to Lowlander and rivorson, I'm guessing I would be ok in the future since, so far, I've used empty, nominal only parents.
Whenever I'm interested in the catch-all parent concept, I've always done it as a singular or standalone event instead.