Creating standardized playlists and maintaining coherency

1. In a media environment having playlists, each said playlist having a plurality of media files, said playlists being automatically generated from a plurality of media files stored on a computer-readable medium, a method for updating the playlists comprising:

identifying a content edit, said content edit indicating media content to be added to or deleted from the plurality of media files, said media content having metadata associated therewith;

in response to said identifying a content edit, determining, as a function of the metadata associated with the media content, one or more of the playlists inconsistent with the identified content edit;

in response to said determining, setting an inconsistency flag associated with each of the playlists inconsistent with the identified content edit, said set inconsistency flag indicating that the playlist is inconsistent with the identified content edit;

in response to said setting, identifying to a user each of the playlists having the inconsistency flag associated therewith that is set, wherein identifying to the user the playlists having the set inconsistency flag associated therewith comprises shading a name associated with each of said playlists having the inconsistency flag associated therewith that is set thereby indicating to the user that the shaded playlist is inconsistent with the media content to be added to or deleted from the plurality of media files; and

in response to said identify playlists having the inconsistency flag, updating the playlists identified to the user per the received content edit so that the playlist has been fixed and is consistent with the identified content edit, wherein said determining, said setting of the inconsistency flag, and said updating occur automatically in response to said identifying the content edit.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the one or more playlists comprises identifying playlists having a predefined playlist type, said predefined playlist type corresponding to the metadata.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the playlist type comprises an 8-bit value.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the 8-bit value represents an integer.

5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

rendering the media content from one of the updated playlists;

determining a string name associated with said one of the updated playlists as a function of the predefined playlist type; and

displaying the determined string name to a user.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identified content edit indicates that the media content is to be added to the computer-readable medium, and wherein updating the determined playlists includes reauthoring the determined playlists with the media content.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the identified content edit indicates that the media content is to be deleted from the computer-readable medium, and wherein updating the determined playlists includes reauthoring the determined playlists without the media content.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

automatically selecting one or more of the plurality of media files as a function of an item of the metadata;

creating a playlist with the selected media content, said created playlist including a playlist header;

determining a playlist type to be associated with the created playlist, said determined playlist type corresponding to the item of the metadata; and

adding the determined playlist type to the playlist header.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving a list of user selected content;

creating a playlist with the received list of user selected content; and

adding a playlist type to the created playlist, wherein the playlist type identifies the playlist as being user created.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein one or more computer-readable media have computer-executable instructions for performing the method recited in claim 1 .

11. In a media environment having playlists, each said playlist having a plurality of media files, said playlists being automatically generated from a plurality of media files stored on a computer-readable storage medium, one or more computer-readable storage media having computer-executable components for updating the playlists, said components comprising:

an interface component for identifying a content edit, said content edit indicating media content to be added to or deleted from the plurality of media files, said media content having metadata associated therewith;

a table component for determining, as a function of the metadata associated with the media content, one or more of the playlists affected by the content edit identified by the interface component and setting an inconsistency flag associated with each of the playlists affected by the content edit, wherein the interface component further identifies to a user each of the playlists having the inconsistency flag associated therewith that is set, wherein the interface component identifies to the user the playlists having the set inconsistency flag associated therewith comprises shading a name associated with each of said playlists having the inconsistency flag associated therewith that is set thereby indicating to the user that the shaded playlist is inconsistent with the media content to be added to or deleted from the plurality of media files; and

an author component for updating the playlists determined by the table component and identified to the user per the received content edit, wherein the table component and the author component execute automatically in response to execution of the interface component.

12. The computer-readable storage media of claim 11 , wherein the table component determines the one or more playlists by identifying playlists having a predefined playlist type.

13. The computer-readable storage media of claim 11 , wherein the content edit identified by the interface component indicates that the media content is to be added to the computer-readable medium, and wherein the author component updates the playlists determined by the table component by reauthoring the playlists identified by the table component with the media content.

14. The computer-readable storage media of claim 11 , wherein each of the playlists has an inconsistency flag associated therewith, and wherein the author component updates each of the playlists having an inconsistency flag that is set.

15. A system comprising:

a computer readable medium for storing:

a plurality of media files; and

a plurality of data structures each representing a playlist having a plurality of media files, each of said data structures storing a list of media files representing the playlist, said list of media files being selected from the plurality of media files, each of said data structures having a playlist type field storing a value identifying the playlist as a user-created playlist or an automatically generated playlist, each of said data structures further having an inconsistency field storing a value indicating whether the playlist is out-of-date with respect to the plurality of media files; and

a media device configured to execute computer-executable instructions for:

identifying a content edit, said content edit indicating media content to be added to or deleted from the plurality of media files stored on the computer-readable medium, said media content having metadata associated therewith;

determining, as a function of the metadata associated with the media content, one or more of the data structures affected by the identified content edit;

setting the value in the inconsistency field for each of the determined data structures; and

identifying to a user of the media device each of the determined data structures having the value set in the inconsistency field, wherein identifying to the user the data structures having the value set in the inconsistency field comprises shading a name associated with each of said data structures having the inconsistency field associated therewith that is set thereby indicating to the user that the shaded playlist is inconsistent with the media content to be added to or deleted from the plurality of media files.

16. The system of claim 15 , further comprising means for identifying the content edit.

17. The system of claim 15 , further comprising means for determining the data structures affected by the identified content edit.

18. The system of claim 15 , wherein the media device comprises a media player, and the media player identifies each of the determined data structures having the value set in the inconsistency field to the user by shading a name associated with the data structure and displayed to the user by the media device.

19. The system of claim 15 , wherein one or more of the following stored on the computer readable medium are compressed: the plurality of media files and the plurality of data structures.

20. The system of claim 15 , wherein the media device is further configured to execute computer-executable instructions for updating each of the determined data structures with the identified content edit.