When synchronizing with an iPod or iPhone, iTunes offers two key options: ‘x least recent unwatched’ or ‘x most recent unwatched’. Unfortunately for us users, recent is determined, not by sensible things such as air-date or episode number, but by the date items are added to a user’s iTunes library. All works fine when items are purchased from the iTunes Music Store and downloads complete in order. Encounter a few failed downloads or add items manually however and iPod synchronization never again works as one might reasonably expect.
Since we, as users, have suffered this strange behaviour for a good number of iTunes releases, I can only assume that somewhere in Cupertino it’s deemed a feature (although I have yet to work out what it achieves).
Fortunately, for OS X users, AppleScript comes to the rescue:
tell application "iTunes"
if selection is {} then
display dialog "Select some TV Shows..." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 with icon 2 giving up after 15
end if
set sel to selection
repeat with i from 1 to (count sel)
set t to item i of sel
tell t
set my_kind to TV show
set filename to location
set my_state to unplayed
set my_played_count to played count
delete
set my_track to (add filename)
tell my_track
set video kind to TV show
set unplayed to my_state
set played count to my_played_count
end tell
end tell
end repeat
end tellThe above script iterates over the selected items in iTunes, sequentially deleting them and then re-adding them. Assuming this list of TV Shows is in the correct order, this will ensure all ‘added’ times are sequential and iPod and iPhone synchronization should now proceed as expected.
