iTunes hates me. I think the feeling is mutual.

Germanprof

Just for anyone else still in the should I/shouldn't I with the latest iTunes upgrade...I just upgraded to iTunes 10.5 and iOS5 on Win 7 and a latest gen iPod touch. I have not had the widely reported problems with the upgrade killing the iPod touch - that part went smoothly. But iTunes has in the past always been stable for me, for all its quirks. The latest version, however:

1. crashes/freezes at least once per session, often during sync.
2. Randomly decides to lose some or all of my playlists. (This may be related to the crashes). Since my sync is built on smartlists, this means it then keeps deleting Gigs of music from my Touch, 2which then takes ages to restore. Just now it seems to have lost my three largest/most used playlists (=~35Gig). I tried the steps here: http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/07/itunes-playlists-disappeared-recover-missing-itunes-playlists/ and it did not work.
3. Deletes file info randomly. I was using tags in spare fields to e.g. demote which were complete albums - specifically I had the phrase "FullAlbum" in the "Sort Show" field. That field has been wiped clean for all of the songs that were on the playlists that disappeared.

Not a happy customer. Any suggestions? I have a recent backup of the iTunes folder on an external drive, but I think it was before I upgraded. Might that help me?

Germanprof

OK, as you were, I found some more instructions online and replacing the library files with my backups (which were only a few days old so not too many albums out of date :-)) seems to have done the trick. Now I have to reload everything onto the Touch. And I am still not sure I trust the latest release.

Katrina

I haven't had any problems with 10.5. Sorry to hear you did.
It's always a good idea to back up the itunes library database file before upgrading.
iTunes Library.itl (for Windows)

During the upgrade, it should make a backup copy in a folder named drive:\path\Previous iTunes Libraries.
For example, my ITL file is on my root T: drive, so my path to the auto-backup is
T:\Previous iTunes Libraries\iTunes Library 2011-10-12.itl

Is that where you got your old library file from? It should have today's date, if you upgraded today. I upgraded on 12 October.

Here's the Apple directions of what to do.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1967
My advice for step #7 is to copy/paste instead of dragging, because you want to keep that previous ITL there in case you need it again...at least until the next upgrade, or you've tested everything out on the new release.

Germanprof

Thanks. I actually upgraded last Saturday and have had a number of crashes since (it's still freezing up intermittently during sync). I back my whole music directory u to an external hard drive and restored the library from there as my last backup was last week, before the upgrade.

greg

I suspect it must be a ipod touch problem only. I upgraded about a week ago on my ipod and ipad and my wife has upgraded her iphone all with no problems. After the previous major upgrade a few months ago she had to return it to the shop to get sorted out - it is a contract phone. I hope you get it sorted as it sounds really problematic

Germanprof

OK, so it did it again. I spent 90 minutes last night restoring the iTunes library from backup and re-syncing a large amount of files to the iPod touch. Then tonight I come home and plug in the Touch - and when the sync is done, the same two playlists have been deleted from iTunes and all of those songs have been deleted from the Touch - a LARGE number of songs. Clearly something is corrupted somewhere.

Any views on which of the following directions sounds promising?

(1) delete iTunes and reinstall? (But if I then reinstate the old library might I not be reinstating the problem?)
(2) return iPod to factory settings and restore everything from backup? (but if I am reinstating everything from backup would the problem come with it?)
(3) create new playlists with the same function and different names? (going to try that first, as least invasive).

Germanprof

And...I just created a new 5* playlist. All of the conditions are IDENTICAL to the old one (Sort Show contains FullAlbum, Rating is *****, Genre is not Christmas). The old list says it contains 192 albums. The new one says it contains 202 albums. How can that be?

(And I add the new playlist to the iPod sync list and hit "apply" and iTunes freezes again. Seems to be working now after a restart.)

amclark2

I have no idea about any of it, but agree about the hate. I stupidly bought the new Bjork on my phone - seems like I will never have it anywhere but my phone now.

Germanprof

Well, tentatively it seems as if maybe deleting the two playlists and making new ones with the same criteria has stopped the bleeding.

What I have learned: playlists too can get sick and die.

Germanprof

iTunes (or something in the sync process with my iPod Touch) has just started randomly upping the playcount on some tracks. For instance, it says I have played one of the Sunna Gunnlaugs albums 20 times - there is no way that is true, the real figure is probably between 5 and 7 (no way to know for sure now). Same for a handful of random other albums - suddenly inflated play count numbers. (Would syncing some of the same music to both an IPod touch and an iPad affect this? How does iTunes handle playcounts from multiple devices?) Since I use playcount to control smart playlists this is an annoying development.

Also, I have albums showing on my Touch with the wrong album art or no album art even though the art shows correctly in iTunes.

Has anyone had either of these symptoms and found a solution? I'll do some more google searching when I have the energy, but if the wisdom's already there do share.

choiceweb0pen0

I've heard of the album art issue before. I had that trouble too, especially on an Ipod Classic. I think I had to delete all the music and start over. Not sure if it is what is happening with you, but for me I think the music files on my Ipod became corrupt through syncing and re-syncing. I find the website ilounge.com has a lot of tips or at least a discussion forum.

denver

My relationship with iTunes is sort of like that with my ex-wife. I uninstalled it years ago and have no reason or inclination to go back. (Actually, it's more like my ex uninstalled me, but I don't think I want to go too far into that.)

Plong42

my iPod art is hopelessly confused, it is a known issue on the classic and I am not sure anyone cares at Apple. On the other hand, it is sometimes amusing what art turns up for any given album.

Germanprof

Thanks, I tried deleting all of the music and reloading it all, and that seems to have solved the cover art issue. I'll have to monitor to see of it also helped with play count irrelarities.

choiceweb0pen0

No problem. It used to bother me too. Now I'm more annoyed when a single space or uppercase/lowercase variation causes iTunes to treat an artist or album as two different things. I also don't know what happened to album compilation for various artists albums.

Germanprof

Yeah, tagging for iTunes is like gardening. You can work really hard and get all the weeds out but it's only going to hold for a couple of weeks. Even with a fair bit of diligence (everything I download gets manually retagged before adding to iTunes) sometimes slight variations on genres slip through and I get an extra genre with one album in it. (And Amazon tends to tag all ambient stuff as Dance & DJ). And the whole two versions of the same album thing that you mention can be very frustrating - sometimes the only way I've been able to solve it is by deleting and re-adding the album, which screws up date added data.

choiceweb0pen0

Gardening is an apt analogy. I can see why there is software to help with tags.

choiceweb0pen0

I tried to create a smart playlist for my ipod Touch to help me keep up with unlistened tracks. Kept it small to about 100 tracks. iTunes would keep timing out after syncing a track or two, leaving this playlist full of gray not available track. Searching on Google, this happens often to many other touch/iPhone users. Some suggestions included turning off Genius (which also seems to delete all genuis related info), uncheck the sync music button in iTunes, and for some odd reason, if you're using a Mac, to delete all of the cookies in Safari. I'm not completely sure which of these moves helped the most, but now it seems to sync tracks without trouble. Maybe it was a free space issue, since when I unchecked sync music, it complained that there wasn't enough free space for music.

BTW i do the sync plus tell iTunes what albums and songs have to be on the iPod.

choiceweb0pen0

If anyone has updated their iOS device to 6.0, you might notice that podcasts are moved to their own app. I was annoyed at first by this, but realized I can now subscribe to podcasts on this new app instead of having to plug my device into a computer or go through the tedious find podcasts in the itunes store on my device process.

Edit: I also notice that sorting/choosing to listen by compilations option is back in music. Now, if only so many random albums weren't mislabeled as a compilation...

Doofy

Oh for @#%! Preparatory to doing a backup, I followed the steps to "consolidate' my iTunes library - with the result that it copied everything into a new "Music" folder within the old "iTunes Music" folder! In other words, all the files are still there, plus a new "Music" folder with copies of all the files that are still there. I guess this is an idiot-proofing feature, but now I gotta go through and delete the "old files," being careful not to delete anything that may not have been duped. What a PITA...

Katrina

Yikes - that consolidate command doesn't have an undo, and it does really strange things if you have a non-standard iTunes setup.

PaulR

There is so much more to hate about iTunes 11. Having delayed release, as it was not complete back in October, to November - it still appears to have been rushed, poorly tested, and rushed out the door.

Not only have so many features disappeared - obvious ones are coverflow, any meaningful view options for playlists, so much information not easily available when in the album view (date last played, date added, number of plays, to think of just a few) - but also sync with my iPod Touch now does not complete, and iTunes is no longer stable...

Why do I never learn not to install anything new from Apple, at least I have a backup of the iTunes 10 library files so I should be able to restore back...

greg

Thanks Paul - I got an email about it earlier this morning but did nothing about it as I was short of time before going out. I was going to update in a few minutes, but I won't do so now. If you are using Windows 7 restore should be relatively easy.

choiceweb0pen0

Ugh sorry to hear about the syncing issue Paul. I've been through that a few times myself in older versions and iOS upgrades.

Germanprof

Thanks for the warning. Given my history with this higher up the thread I will avoid.

PaulR

Restoring is the option of last resort, but will be resisted for now.

In many ways I like the new interface, just don't like the lack of configuration options in album view (now just get track no, title, rating and duration) . But it is liveable with, for now at least.

Think sync is solved for now, though to be fair iTunes 10 also problems with some of the large podcast files, though none of the cover artwork appears on the iPod

cafreema

You mean you can no longer configure the interface to add things? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Craig

greg

I decided I might as well try it, and I've had no problems. It is slightly different in layout, but everything I want is still there, and when I connectd my ipad, the view seemed much better to me. Under Music, go to the Songs tab and the traditional layout comes up. Playlists are via a tab at the top, rather than at the side. But it does give a bit more space for the music list. What I have not discoved yet is the bit that used to be at the bottom telling you overall size and number of tracks on itunes, but I suspect it is there somewhere. For playlists it is at the top

Doofy

You mean you can no longer configure the interface to add things?

That can't be right.

Under Music, go to the Songs tab and the traditional layout comes up.

That sounds better...but I still ain't touching it for a couple versions (at least!)

kargatron

Album-view now just shows album covers, but 'Songs' view is the typical column display where you can add any of the columns you like.

elwoodicious

It's really pretty...



and Up Next is great.