I may have answered my own question...

As background, I normally sync my ipod with selected artists (I put checkmarks beside all of the artists/albums I want in mediamonkey).

I was concerned that if I ALSO chose a playlist (i.e. a MM autoplaylist) to sync with the ipod that redundant files would be added... I realize now, that MM will be smart about this and NOT add redundant files.

So if you sync a playlist you will create that playlist in the ipod, but you will also sync every song within one of those playlists. So I had to exclude some artists or albums from syncing because my ipod would get full (i have too much music on my computer), but if those omitted artists/tracks are in a playlist that I try to sync, then MM will add them to the ipod.

One small complaint about this: It would be nice to have a playlist on the ipod that is an autoplaylist of "tracks not rated" or "tracks not played". The problem then becomes that MM will add those unpopular tracks to the ipod through the playlist, even though I don't really want them there.

A potential solution would be to have an option to EXCLUDE albums/artists from syncing, as opposed to including them, and have this also apply to playlists... I wonder how others approach this issue?

The only way I can figure out how to do this is to use itunes... I don't allow itunes to sync with my ipod, just mediamonkey.

I have a 5g/video and would prefer to use MM exclusively, but I still have to use itunes to add videos and sync photos... and also, apparently, to create playlists.

Using itunes, I select my ipod. Then I go to the top menu and select "File->new (smart)playlist" depending on what type of playlist is desired. That's it--DON'T allow itunes to try to sync with your ipod (and make sure the option to do this automatically is turned off in itunes before you plug in your ipod)

The only problem, and a significant one at that, is that when I sync again with Mediamonkey my playlists (created with itunes) are lost. At least this is true for the autoplaylists I have created with itunes. This gets pretty annoying. I think that if I told mediamonkey to not delete files from the ipod this could perhaps be corrected, but that creates other problems. Mediamonkey allows specification of which directories on ipod to not delete files from, but I don't know where itunes places my autoplaylists (i have not been able to find them on the ipod).

Somebody must have a better explanation for how to work around this issue? It seems like a problem that a lot of people must be having, but I can't find a solution in the forum so far.
Thanks.

How do I create a playlist on the iPod? I can create a playlist under "Playlists" in the library but not under "iPod".

Thanks.