I'd like to be able to make a playlist that is all recently released podcasts.
Unfortunately release date is not a field available for selection in a smart playlist in iTunes.
Similar-ish dates like date added and modified date won't be close to release date when downloading the back-catalogue of newly added podcast.
The best solution I've come up with is to close itunes, truncate the iTunes Library.itl file, copy the release date field values in the iTunes Music Library.xml file into the date added field, and then relaunch iTunes, and letting it rebuild the itl file from the xml file.
However, my library file is large enough that the rebuild takes 20-30 min, and even with no hacking of the xml, fails more often than not.
Is there a method for me to either or both of:
- hack the itl file to set the date added to the release date?
- be able to select the release date either in rules for a smart playlist or the "limit to… selected by" dropdown of a smart playlist?
Best Answer
I'm not much of an AppleScripter, so this is modified from some scripts at Doug's AppleScripts website, but it's GPLed, so derivative works are allowed as long as they're also GPLed.
My idea was to make a script that could take the release date, which can't be used in smart playlists, and store it in the last skipped date, which can be used in smart playlists. If you just want to do this for podcasts (not for songs, for which you might actually use the last skipped field), just select your podcasts before running this script.
Once you do that, you can create a smart playlist selected on the "Last skipped" field to get the recently released podcasts.
So here we go: