Selection of media content item having preferred instance attributes

A method of synchronizing a plurality of media content items between a first device and a second device, the method comprising:

• determining an inclusion set of media content items to be included on the first device after synchronization from the second device;
• intersecting the inclusion set with a set of media content items already on the first device to form a candidate set of media content items, wherein the candidate set of media content items includes only those media content items in the inclusion set that reside on both the first device and the second device;
• forming a set of preferred media content items including a preferred encoding instance of any media content item in the candidate set of media content items having two or more instances with different encodings, the preferred encoding instance selected based on a comparison of instance attributes of media content items that utilizes a table of logical elements, the table of logical elements establishing a hierarchy of a plurality of instance attributes including encoding instances, where the table of logical elements is a two-dimensional matrix including a first dimension including a set of columns, each column corresponding to an instance attribute of a set of possible instance attributes, and a second dimension including a set of rows, each row corresponding to an instance attribute of the set of possible instance attributes;
• forming a final set of media content items by excluding from the set of preferred media content items the preferred encoding instance of any media content item for which the preferred encoding instance is already on the first device;
• and
• transferring the final set of media content items to the first device.