Tag hierarchy -- I am SOOO confused!

I only listen to podcasts (on my blue, red, and new black 8-GB  Clips! YIPPEE!).  However, I cannot figure out the (@+%+*^@+) tagging thing.  I spent {sigh} HOURS in MP3Tag changing all the “genre” fields to podcast.  I figured if I just told the Clip to play anything marked with the podcast genre, I’d finally be able to get through the pods one after the other till I got through them all. No such luck.  Some of the pods are there, some of them are under album, some under artist, some under unknown – they’re just spread all over.  (Theyr’e all actually IN the Music folder, but “Play ALL” won’t play them all either.

I want the Clip to just play one after the other (in ANY order – just so long as I’m not having to go look for one here under artist, two there under genre, five here under album – and oh, two of those five it turns out I already played, because they were ALSO sorted into the artist tag set.) 

I searched and read throughout this forum – and I cannot find anywhere where it shows how I might get all the pods to appear in ONE place so I can just play them sequentially from first to last.I tried to figure out how to do playlists – but I can’t quit figure out how WMP10 works… If I HAVE to learn WMP10 to play them all, I will work on it till I figure it out… however, since I move 20-30 pods onto the Clip, listen all the way through, and then delete them all, I’d rather not have to fuss with playlists…) (And I listen while driving – I can’t afford to spend two minutes focused on searching through the option menu to find the next 2-3 pods to play!)

Am I missing something somewhere – or do I have to  keep changing every darned one by hand (and then WHAT do I change WHICH field to, in order to get them all to play?!?)

What field will let me play to ALL the pods without having to search and search through all the options?

(+@&)^$#% it, Sansa!  Why are you using such a stupid arcane idiotic useless “ordering” system?! It can’t be THAT hard to let users pick the way they want things to play!)

Any help out there?

Elenor

If it took you hours to change the genre field on all your podcasts to ‘podcast’, I have to believe you’re doing it wrong.  It should have been a 5 minute job, at most, considering the rewrite time for the tags.

You do know you can select multiple directories, or select one directory recursively, and tag everything in that directory, (and all it’s subs), at the same time, right?  

As far as how to tag them for listening in the correct order, I can’t help you.  Hopefully I’ve saved you at least some time.

Something else you could do, in place of tagging:  drop your podcasts into the podcasts folder on the Clip, and audiobooks into that folder, and the Clip will group them into the podcasts and audiobooks genre categories automatically (this is with newer firmware; if you have older, update).

@tenzip wrote:

 

You do know you can select multiple directories, or select one directory recursively, and tag everything in that directory, (and all it’s subs), at the same time, right?  

 

 

Thanks! I DID finally figure that out…

@miikerman wrote:
Something else you could do, in place of tagging:  drop your podcasts into the podcasts folder on the Clip, and audiobooks into that folder, and the Clip will group them into the podcasts and audiobooks genre categories automatically (this is with newer firmware; if you have older, update).

Yeah, I tried that – when I put all the podcasts IN the podcast directory?  It STILL doesn’t just play them all one after the other – somehow it seems as if it still “sorts them” into different areas and I have to keeplooking through the different menu options to find them. 

I have firmware 16A on them, I’ll go see if there’s something newer still.  

(I just looked: on the blue one-- ALL the files are in the Music folder, but the System Info screen shows 19 podcasts and 36 “songs.”  The red one:  Songs 11, podcasts 4, voice recordings 1 (at least the voice recording is identified correctly! {eye roll})

So there must be something in the tagging that the Clip uses to “decide” where stuff goes/what stuff is?  But without knowig what’s the ‘highest rank’ – I can’t tag them to work right.

Yep, you need to upgrade your firmware to get the latest Podcast/Audiobook capability–it came out with version 29 of the software.  See the sticky thread at the top of the forum for upgrade instructions.