It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an iTunes tip here, so I thought I would share something that recently came up for me.

As I’ve said many times before, I listen to lots of photography related podcasts, and I usually listen to them on my iPod Touch. But I was recently trying to catch up on a series of video shows so I had the iTunes Mini Player up on my computer (it’s really not a great idea to watch them while driving your vehicle!).

As always I was trying to get other some work done at the same time and the iTunes Video window kept disappearing behind the window I was working in. This made it very difficult to see the show I was watching! No problem, I’ll just go into the preferences menu and click the box to keep the video window on top. But I couldn’t find it!

I knew that this option had to be there, so I kept looking for it. After searching for way too long, I finally figured out that the option was available, but it was not in the “Playback” tab of the preferences window; instead it was on the “Advanced” tab.

If you want to set iTunes to keep the Video or Mini Player playback window on top of all your other windows, try changing your Advanced Preferences as follows:

1. Click “Edit“, “Preferences…“
2. Choose the “Advanced” tab
3. Ensure the checkbox for the “Keep Mini Player on top of all other windows” is checked
4. Ensure the checkbox for the “Keep Movie Window on top of all other windows” is checked

Keep iTunes Playback Window on Top

There are many resources on the internet that help new and experienced photographers alike to learn more about their craft. These range from websites, to blogs, to iPhone apps, and to online training services. While some of these resources do cost money, many of them are relatively inexpensive, or even free. And the simple truth is that the cost may have no bearing on the quality. Some of the most expensive resources aren’t as well produced or as useful as some others that are free.

Because I spend so much time in my car, my favorite class of learning resource is the Podcast. If you aren’t familiar with podcasts you owe it to yourself to check them out. Basically podcasts are audio or video files that are released in a series of episodes similar to syndicated radio or TV programming. They are generally (always?) free and they often command huge audiences.

Over the last several years I have been a regular listener of many photography related podcasts. As I mentioned above these are great resources for learning about technology, art, business, marketing, and just about any other aspect of photography you could think of.

These shows come and go, so the list of podcasts is always changing, but here is my current list of favorites. Most of these are weekly, but some are produced biweekly, monthly, or even randomly:

1. This Week in Photography – Audio
2. PhotoNetCast – Audio
3. Camera Dojo – Audio
4. The Pro Photography Show – Audio
5. The Digital Story – Audio
6. The Image Doctors (Nikonians) – Audio
7. LightSource – Audio
8. Exif and Beyond – Audio
9. Photoshop User TV (NAPP) – Video
10. D-Town TV (NAPP) – Video

NOTE – I shoot Canon but the Nikonians are still very interesting. They do occasionally talk about very specific Nikon topics, but most of their shows contain broadly photography related information and even the Nikon stuff can generally be applied to everyone else…

All of these shows have their own website, to which I have linked above, but they can also be subscribed to in an RSS reader or in iTunes. There are many other photography podcasts out there in addition to these. A quick search of Podcast Alley, iTunes, or even Google will surely help you find more if this list doesn’t have enough good stuff for you!

I’d love to know about any other really great podcasts that I should be listening to. What are your favorite shows? Please drop me a comment down below to let me know what you’re listening to.

Apple’s iTunes media player makes it very easy to sync your media content from your computer to your iPod or your Apple TV. It also allows you access to the iTunes online store to access additional content that you can buy or download for free, including TV Shows, Movies, Music, and iPod Apps. The software isn’t perfect, but it works pretty well most of the time and it is a very convenient way to manage your media library between your various devices.

Apple has instituted some pretty unfortunate policies with iTunes (it only works with Apple Devices for one) including a requirement that you “Authorize” each computer you use the software with if you want to access or play content purchased from the iTunes Store using your Apple Account. This is a form of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and it is required even if you access only free content.

One potential issue users face with this policy is that Apple will only allow you to authorize up to 5 computers at any given time. If your computer dies, you sell it, or you make major changes to it, then you would have to use up an additional 1 of your 5 allowable authorizations on a new or upgraded computer.

You can “Deauthorize” an individual computer, or once in any 12 month time period you can “Deauthorize All” of your computers at once. You must be able to access iTunes from one of your previously authorized computers, so be sure to do this prior making any major changes to it, having it serviced, or before you sell it or give it away.

To Deauthorize iTunes from ONE of your computers:

1. Open iTunes.
2. Choose Store > Deauthorize Computer (In earlier versions of iTunes, access this option from the Advanced menu).
3. Select “Deauthorize Computer for Apple Account” and enter your Apple ID and password and Click OK.
4. A message should appear saying that “This computer has been successfully deauthorized.”

Note that in some cases one computer may be taking up more than one of your Authorizations. If you suspect this to be the case, simply repeat the above steps until you see a message saying that “This computer was not authorized. To authorize this computer, play a song or video you have purchased using this account.”

To Deauthorize iTunes from ALL of your computers:

1. Open iTunes.
2. Click iTunes Store in the menu on the left side of iTunes.
3. If you’re not signed in to the store, click the Account button, then enter your account name and password.
4. Click the Account button again (your ID appears on the button), enter your password, and then click View Account.
5. In the Account Information window, click Deauthorize All.

You are now free to Authorize additional computers to work with the iTunes Store!

Remember that you can only “Deauthorize All” once in any 12 month period, so use this feature carefully. You would be better to Deauthorize individual computers rather than blowing away them all at once.

I recently posted about a trick in iTunes to fix an issue where the sort order chosen for a playlist in iTunes doesn’t get copied over to the iPod unless you right click on the playlist in iTunes and choose “Copy to Sort Order” before syncing.

In a strange twist of fate this trick stopped working for the Smart Playlist I use to listen to Podcasts on my iPod Touch within days of posting the tutorial. It seems that a new bug appeared in either the iPod OS 3.1.x, or perhaps in iTunes itself, and so far there is no official fix.

The issue is that certain combinations of settings for Smart Playlists result in the sort order selected in iTunes not being synced onto the iPod, regardless of whether “Copy to Sort Order” is selected. Note that the sort order appears to transfer if you look at the iPod version of the playlist within iTunes, but not when you look on the iPod itself.

There are various combinations of settings for the Smart Playlist that will resolve this problem (including turning off “Live Updating”, but that defeats the purpose of using a Smart Playlist for Podcasts in the first place), and certainly multiple combinations for which the error occurs. I haven’t even begun to look for all of them, but I have found one that works very well and gets my Podcast Playlist working perfectly.

If you want iTunes to be able to update your Smart Playlist for Podcasts correctly with the sort order you selected in iTunes, try setting up your playlist as follows:

1. Checked: Match ALL of the following rules:
2. Playlist IS NOT Music
3. Media Kind IS Podcast
4. Checked: Match only checked items
5. Checked: Live updating

Most likely the only change is the addition of item 2 above. The other settings are all defaults for Smart Playlists and will only be different if you intentionally changed them for some reason.

NOTE – You will still have to use the “Copy to Sort Order” trick I previously posted (because that’s how iTunes was designed). Today’s fix merely gets you back to the point where that trick actually works…

I have submitted this as a bug to Apple, but similar bugs have existed for ages so I’m not holding my breath that they’re going to fix this one anytime soon.

I listen to lots of Podcasts on my iPod Touch and I prefer to listen to them in the order that they are released. Podcasts are much like radio or TV shows in that the information presented is often timely, or at least referential to prior episodes, and so it generally makes more sense to listen to shows in the order they are released so that related and timely information is heard around about the same time.

The included “Podcasts” view in iTunes and on my iPod Touch groups different episodes of the same show together with no option to see all episodes of all shows in one big list. This makes it easy to listen to all the episodes of one show in the order they were released, but virtually impossible to listen to all episodes of all shows in the order they were released.

I got around that by creating a Smart Playlist that searches my iTunes Library for Podcasts. My preferred sort order for that playlist, naturally, is by date. That sort order gets transferred over to the iPod initially, and as new shows are added (as they automatically get downloaded by iTunes) they get added to the end of the list in the order they are downloaded. This works extremely well for me most of the time.

Unfortunately every once in awhile the sort order on my iPod gets out of whack (seemingly at random, and in a totally random order), and there is no way on the iPod to reorganize playlists. /They can be reorganized in many different ways in iTunes (by artist, by date, alphabetically, etc.), but I couldn’t figure out how to sync those changes back to my iPod. No matter what I changed in iTunes, the sort order on my iPod stayed scrambled.

Finally I noticed a cryptic command on the right-click menu for the playlist called “Copy to Play Order“. I still have no idea what the name of this command is supposed to mean, because it doesn’t do anything to the playlist in iTunes, but after choosing this option and syncing the iPod to iTunes, the sort order for my playlist magically matches with that in iTunes. Yay!

I don’t understand why I would have to take this extra step as it seems obvious to me that if I can’t sort my playlists directly on the iPod, but I can in iTunes, then I probably want the sort order on my iPod to match what I choose in iTunes. Is that so much of a stretch??