How do I upload locally stored podcasts to my iPod?

April 28, 2006 10:34 PM

How can upload podcasts stored locally on my computer into my new iPod -- so that the iPod recognizes them as "podcasts" and doesn't mix'em with the music?

Okay ... this is probably a really stoopid question and I'm probably missing a simple piece of info ... but I haven't yet used up my quota of "stupid" for April and the month is fast ending.

I just bought one of the low-end video iPods (30 Gig) and had my few whirl with the iTunes program. I have a podcast that I'm really fond of. I have some dozen already stored on my hard drive. iTunes treats'em like music and uploads them into the iPod accordingly. Thus, I'm faced with the prospect of having part of my collection in one section and the rest in another (Arggghhh!!). Add to that, I can't really enjoy the shuffle music feature, since it will now mix music with those old podcasts.

posted by RavinDave to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: Unfortunately you can't do this directly through iTunes. You need to use a tool called AtomicParsley to set some metadata. Parsley is Atomicly Delicious is a better front end to the tool (Mac only).
posted by nathan_teske at 11:26 PM on April 28, 2006

You should be able to click on the file in iTunes and get a 'properties' type dialog, where you can specify that the file should be skipped in shuffle mode. You can also specify whether its playback position should be remembered, ala an audiobook. I think, anyway.. haven't re-installed iTunes recently
posted by unmake at 11:45 PM on April 28, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for the info -- depressing as it was. On the bright side, the original question wasn't quite as foolish as I had assumed. This really is a drawback in Apple's design. You'd think that custom directory structures would be a no-brainer code-wise.
posted by RavinDave at 1:12 AM on April 29, 2006

To be fair, podcasts became prevalent way after the iPod hit the streets. One way I exclude podcasts is to create a dynamic playlist that includes everything except podcasts.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:10 PM on April 29, 2006

I have the same problem on a Widows machine, and while there is a gui for the above program, it only seems to target mp4 files, and my podcasts are mp3s.
posted by tiamat at 4:39 PM on April 29, 2006