So I was assembling a CD of music by Arvo Pärt, which I've been thinking about doing for, oh, a couple years now. First I tried creating a "Smart Playlist" in iTunes, which pulls up EVERYTHING on my computer with Arvo Pärt's name. Turns out I had several duplicates of several tracks, downloaded or imported over the past couple of years.
Tried changing some of the duplicates to "Prt" to get them off the list. That worked.
But there were still some tracks that appeared on the playlist but would not burn to disc -- they were greyed out. I tried everything I could think of last week to get them to burn, without success. In frustration I put aside this project for another day.... again.
Today I decided to bypass the playlist, and look at the original files. Bingo! They were "unchecked." Once I checked them they showed up on the playlist in black and can be burned.
So iTunes has two levels of file selection: 1) Unchecked selections show up but can't be used, while 2) checked selections have to be altered to not fit the "smart playlist" selection criteria/um in order to be removed. Aye-yi-yi.