Caty’s Blog

I am playing with my iPod Touch for a while and notice that I cannot add videos to a playlist as what it can be done on music. When I do a search in google and found that it is rather a known problem. iPod Touch users will understand the frustration that every time it finishes playing a video, you have to manually click to the next one to play, no continuous play option, no grouping of a favorites list…

Well, I decided not to give up and try to find an alternative to add a video playlist again. And after much effort of trying, including accidentally deleted my whole iPod contents, I manage to add video playlists successfully from now onwards. Below are the detail steps of how to do it, well, quite some works but I guess it does pay off when come to enjoy the continuous video playing(or even shuffle)on my iPod Touch later.

One very important info pointed out by commenter Mikmor: all the steps below are referring to iPod software version 2 or higher, btw, the 1st snapshot has shown clearly of my software version, if anyone would notice.

Step 1: you need to set up iTunes to automatically sync with the iPod. In my case, I still wish to have some control over the “Fully automatic sync”, hence under the main option page, I tick the checkbox of “Sync only checked songs and videos. See snapshot below.

Caution: Make sure you have already backup all your music and videos in your computer before you attempt this! This is for those who have manually manage your iPod like what I did previously, I need to un-tick “Manually manage music and videos”. Once this option is un-checked, iTunes will prompt a message saying all content on iPod will be replaced by content in existing iTunes library. When I did that, hmm… all my entire 3.5G of music and video on my iPod were wiped off completely.

Well, previously I stored my videos in another folder outside the iTunes folder, it is understood that all video content will be wiped off; the strange part is, it even wiped off my music and other music playlists which were already in iTunes Music folder. There is basically no other option to safe-guard this before I un-checked the “Manually manage..” option. So do it at your own risk, Well, the worst situation(in my case) is just to transfer back all my videos and music from my computer back to iPod. Therefore, if you don’t have any backup of your iPod contents on your computer, find a way to back it up first, search in google and you will find tons of utilities out there but this is out of the topic here.

After you have setup above option correctly, the Music and Movies option are setup automatically like following snapshots.

Step 2: Add your videos(if you have not done that previously) into the iTunes Library, all videos will be automatically grouped under the “Movies” folder like this:

Step 3: Right-click on the movie and click on “Get Info”. Then select the 3rd tab “Video”. By default videos added here will be tagged as “Movie”, change the video kind to “Music Video”(see picture below). Click Next to do the same thing to the rest of the videos, once you finish tagging all to music video, click OK and all the videos will disappear from this Movie Library section. Don’t panic, they are all added inside the Playlist of Music Video now.

Note: For iPod software version 2.1, the video kind can be changed under the “Option” tab inside “Get Info” window.

Step 4: Refer to picture above: You should be able to see all your videos under the “Music Video” playlist now. Now, click on to the lower left most “+” button of iTunes windows to add in your custom playlist, you can also use File->New playlist to add it.

Step 5: Open up “Music Video” playlist now, select the videos that you would like to group them under your new playlist. Right-click on a video, scroll down to “Add to Playlist” and select your custom playlist that you have just created on the fly out window as shown as picture below(I trimmed off all other videos just to give a clearer view).

Step 6: Click on to “Devices” and start the Sync now. Voila, you should be able to see the video playlist that you have just created in your iPod after the sync is completed.

Hope this post will help many iPod Touch fans out there who are lost and clueless of how to create a video playlist. Cheers!

Article Tags: iPod touch, music video, playlist, video playlist