[vip_students] ITunes9: Creating a playlist!
- From: "Paul J. Traynor (NCBI)" <paul.traynor@xxxxxxx>
- To: <vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 19:39:05 +0100
Hi All,
I spent a little time today drawing up the below item on creating playlists
in case someone might find it useful.
Here is a short tutorial on how you may create a playlist on your IPod. I am
using ITunes 9 during the time of this writing.
Playlists are very handy for placing all your music into different
categories. As a new user to the IPod, it took me a little time to get the
hang of creating a playlist but I eventually got to grips with it. Note
that some of the ITunes interface does not seem to view very well with
screen readers such as jaws. I used jaws10 and 11 for my experiments and had
varied results. I then used a freeware screen reader called "NVDA" and it
worked great for me. My problems were specific to locating the ITunes
library list. Downloading some custom made scripts from the website,
www.hartgen.org for jaws 11 made a big difference when it came to using
jaws. These scripts are made by Brian Hartgen and are not freeware, you have
to pay for them. You do get a demo time with them but they are what I call
nagware in that every minute or so they remind you that they are not free
and prompt you to pay for them. However it is worth downloading them for
jaws11 and trying them out in order to make it an easier experience for
yourself going through the various features of ITunes.
Now we will get started into what we need to prepare for creating a
playlist. For this I will use jaws 11. I have the scripts installed and I
now open up ITunes.
1. With ITunes opened up, check to see just where you are in the
ITunes screen. Ideally you should be at the top of the ITunes tree. This
tree contains branches as you go down containing items such as "Radio if
your IPod is 5th generation, Podcast branch, Devices branch, Playlists
branch" and perhaps more depending on your use of the ITunes and IPod.
2. How do we get to the top of the tree and what is at the top. At the
top of the ITunes tree we should have "Music". If you are using the jaws11
scripts then using keys, "grave key + letter M" will drop you onto this item
at the top.
Note: The grave key just before the number 1 is considered the jaws scripts
modifier key for the scripts within ITunes.
3. To begin making the playlist do the following; open up the file
menu with alt + F, then down arrow to "new playlist" and press enter.
4. Now you will be prompted for a name, type in a meaningful name for
your new playlist and press enter.
Note: When you press enter after giving the playlist a name, the focus will
be now shifted down the tree and sitting on the name of the new playlist. I
feel it necessary to once again use my "grave key + letter M" to move back
up to the music link at the top of the tree.
5. Now if you allowed your ITunes during the time it installed itself
to check through your computers contents for music etc then the library
should have some material already contained within it. We need to tab over
to the library list and check out what's available there.
So let's now tab over about 6 or 7 times. This may not be accurate but just
tab along till you come to what looks like a list containing music material
such as your favourite singers and so on.
Note: ITunes seems quite messy if you use the default settings when
installing it and this can lead to everything in the line of music being
thrown into the library regardless of any thought to good organization. What
I mean is that along with music and song MP3's you could also find other MP3
files such as radio interviews, podcasts and so on mixed in with the lot.
I usually delete my library contents after the install and then just
gradually add in my own choice of music. You can delete all of the contents
of the library by just using "control + A" when in the library list and then
hitting delete.
6. Here I am going to assume I have nothing yet contained within my
library list. Until there is something in that list you can't add anything
to a playlist. I am going to add some music in the form of an album by Alan
Jackson to my new playlist which I have called "Country"
7. To add the album I need to first go into the file menu of ITunes and
arrow down to "add files". Pressing enter here I am now prompted to direct
ITunes to the album. As I have this album on an external backup disk and my
backup disk is "E:" and the folder where it is contained is called
"Backups\Music" I type into the filename box something like the following;
e:\backups\music and press enter.
8. Now I press "shift + tab key" twice and I am in the window that
contains my music files. Here I arrow down to the Alan Jackson album and
press enter on it. I now press keys, "control + A" to select all of the
tracks within that folder and then press the enter key.
Note: At this point ITunes will begin pulling in the tracks to its library
and when finished will have a single album in there called Alan Jackson
complete with album title. This process usually only takes a few moments and
you'll hear a little twinkle sound to notify you that it has completed.
9. Now that we have some music in our library and have tabbed over to
the library list, arrowed to the newly inserted album we can add it into our
playlist. In my case I will be adding it into my playlist called country.
Once you are on the album in the library, just press the application key on
your keyboard which is the third key out from right side of the spacebar.
10. When the application menu opens up, arrow down till you come to "add to
playlists" and then right arrow as this is a sub menu. The sub menu contains
playlists you have already created including the new playlist.
11. In this sub menu, arrow up or down till you come to the name of the
playlist you created earlier and press enter key. Now the album you have
selected within your library will be added into the new playlist.
Note: If there are no playlists present in ITunes then when you open up the
application menu, you will not find the option to "add to playlists" present
in the menu and you will have to create a new playlist before you can add
to such a playlist.
Note: How you will know if the songs or music have successfully added
themselves into the correct new playlist is that if you return to the tree
which we talked about earlier and arrow down to the playlist, then tabbing
once, we should have a "play button" available. Pressing spacebar on this
button will begin playing the contents of the new playlist.
Now that we have created the playlist and added some music to it, it only
remains for us to sync it into our IPods and make it portable. To do this
just do the following;
Note: Remember to have your IPod correctly attached to your PC at this
point.
1. Go into the file menu of ITunes.
2. Arrow down to "sync" and press enter.
3. Give the syncing process time to complete. When it has finished it
will let off a short twinkle sound to indicate to you it has finished.
4. Now close up ITunes if you are finished with it.
5. Very important, make sure that you disconnect your IPod in the
correct way from the computer by pulling up the list of task tray icons with
jaws key + F11 and arrowing down to the item that says, "safely remove
hardware".
6. Tab once to the right click button and press enter key.
7. Now arrow down to disconnect IPod and press enter. You should get a
message telling you that it has been safely disconnected. Now remove it
physically from your PC and you're done.
Good luck,
Paul.
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