It is actually very simple. Editing tags is very easy using mp3Tag. In a single step you can change the genre tag of all files in a folder, set the album tag to the same value for all files in a folder, or set the title tag to the filename for all files in a folder. When you have then in the order you want, then you can have mp3Tag autonumber them.
As for having playlists of podcasts and having the same podcast in several lists, I don’t see a need for that, but if you must do that, then you need to trat the podcasts like songs, and make due with having them in the song database.
“1. Why are “Podcast” files not able to be treated both as bookmarkable “Podcast” files as well as “Music” files capabable of being listed in a standard Playlist?”
That would mean that they would be in the song database and would play when you shuffle your songs. People don’t want podcasts to play when they shuffle their songs.
“2. Having to rename the Album field to create a series would make me lose out on information I desire to keep about the files.”
What information? Why can’t you use the artist tag or genre tag for that(a file with any genre tag will still be considered by the player to be a podcast if it is in the podcasts folder).
" 2. It is great that the Sansa Clip can keep track of play within a Podcast series, but can it do this across multiple series at once? For example, can I have a “Music”, “News”, Audio Book" series and randomly switch between them, picking up each one where I left off within it?"
Yes, as long as the player treats them as podcasts(they need to either be in the podcasts folder or have the genre podcast. All files in the series need to have the same album tag.
“3. If the Sansa software is able to keep track of play location within a Podcast series, why can’t it be updated to do the same with standard playlists?”
It wasn’t designed to do that. The designers decided that resuming mid song for music files was not necessary. It takes space to store the resume points. The player isn’t perfect.
