iPod not getting all iTunes files
 

I just got my new iPod and synchronized my library. Turns out that the library has about 130 songs more than the iPod, also the difference in MB is shown (about 500 or so). I already checked for "disconnected" songs via iPod.iTunes - there are none and I'm also getting no error message when synchronizing.

It kinds drives me mad not to have "all" the songs from my library on the iPod even if I don't know which ones are missing, currently.

Anyone having an idea about this one?

Thanks,
bens

I think that may have to do with the songs not being a certain format (ie, aiff not MP3 or vice versa) or something to do with the digital signing of the file for copyright protection.

Figure out which songs didn't transfer, and then it will probably be easy to figure out why. Otherwise, we're just shooting in the dark.

Trevor

nope, i checked the "kind" attribute - the protected AACs also got copied.

trevor:

well, that might be pretty hard with several thousand songs in the library. how would one go about that?

If you are comfortable with the Terminal, I'd compare the music directory on your computer's hard drive to the music directory on your iPod's hard drive. Directories that are different sizes will show up in the comparison as places to look into more closely.

Trevor

Well, would directories help? Normally, on the iPod, the stuff is in FXX-form, right? Or would I compare the songs on the device? I actually don't know how to do a comparison in the terminal. diff?

Do you have any filters set up for copying or playing music?

A minimum bit rate for the file?
-aka >128bit

Are the songs that are not copied complete import/downloads? They aren't like part of a song are they?

Do you have duplicate songs in your Library? Perhaps it will not copy the same song twice?

Yes, you're right the directories ARE in Fxx form, so it's not easy to see the comparison. Maybe iPod Decloak would help you. Then you should be able to compare the directories in the Finder.

Trevor

yip - there's no filters, iTunes is brand new (online thing is I keep my songs on an external drive). I will check on duplicates, but it's not very easy to compare stuff with a library that large. I can't really tell which songs aren't copied, I only see that not all are copied (via the song count on the iPod vs. Playlist)

Will check for bitrate, but there's nothing set IMHO.

is there any tool to check for duplicates?

itunes ipod differetn
 

I just had the same problem. On my PC running XP connected to my new ipod, it would start to synch , no error messages, but very few songs got transferred. I was using the firewire cable. I switched to the USB cable, and it's fine now. Slow, but fine. No problems. I'll figure out the firewire thing later, but at least it works.

I checked that out too - USB 2.0 doesn't help (Mac).

bens

another possibility
 

I know I'm probably miles off the mark, but it could be related to something I came across the other day.

I don't suppose any of the folders in your music directory have custom icons on them do they?

I had known for a while that Windows chokes on an invisible (on a mac) file, contained within each folder that has a custom icon.

When transferring a bunch of files over ethernet to a PC, I would get an error complaining about this invisble icon file, and discovered that not all the files from that folder had copied over.

I just assumed it was a Windoze quirk until the other day, when I copied a folder over to my (win-formatted) USB pen drive. I got the exact same error, even though it was plugged into my iMac. The folder I was trying to copy had a custom icon, and only some of the files got transferred.

Is your iPod win-formatted?

Even if the the custom icons problem doesn't apply in your case, it could still be a (windows) illegal character in some of the track names.

As iTunes uses the track info to create file names during encoding, it will happily create files with names containing characters that aren't allowed by Windows. Fortunately, these should be easy to find and fix.

Like I said, I'm probably way off the mark but thought it was worth mentioning.

Rob.

rob,

it's all mac - ipod & mac ;-) (hfs+ journalled)

I just got my new iPod yesterday, 4th generation 40G click-wheel model. I'm having a similar problem to that described in the original post. I fully charged the battery overnight, then docked the iPod this morning and only managed to transfer about half of the songs. Details:

It’s telling me that it can’t load some songs because they’re the wrong format. But everything was ripped directly from a CD onto my Mac using iTunes, so it's all MP3 or AAC. (I've used iTunes for years even though my iPod is new, so about 150 of my CD's are ripped as MP3 and 25 are AAC.) And stranger yet, there are a bunch of albums where iPod accepts some of the songs but not all of them. That's what's got me really baffled, because the whole CD would have been put into iTunes at once.

At first I thought the problem might have been that most of my music was burned in MP3 format before iTunes started using AAC, but lots of the original discs made it to the iPod as MP3's and were done on the original iTunes. I know that some of the MP3 format discs only loaded partially, but I’m not sure yet if the AAC discs all loaded properly -- still checking the albums song-by-song.

Any advice?

iTunes has built in Duplicates checker now, see if you have duplicates that have the same name and track number (assuming you have selected adding the track number to your song files) or just same name...

Upon further review, iPod is accepting all songs from all AAC-encoded CD's. It looks like the first bunch of CD's that I ripped, using the very first version of iTunes, are not fully compatible with the new iPod.

Unfortunately, this means re-ripping over 100 CD's unless there's an easier cure. I'm going to wait a while and see if someone posts a cure here. I suppose I could import the CD's that are already in iTunes, but I'm concerned that I'd lose too much sound quality if the data gets compressed a second time.

It's still wierd that some of the original CD's have transferred some songs and not others.

I've never had that problem and used all versions of itunes and iPods...

(Edit: And an mp3 is an mp3...)

I found a solution to bens problem and mine:

For the songs that were not transferring, I went into the "Advanced" menu on iTunes and converted the ID3 tags to version 2.4. I did this and every single song that previously refused to transfer (about 1500 songs) transferred without a hitch when I re-docked the iPod. This was a suggestion from another forum. No negative consequences noticed so far, no scrambled song titles.

This solution took a few minutes. It would have taken me a month to re-rip all of my CD's.

wow. does this happen only on gen 4 iPods (i have gen 3). i wonder how many songs i lost previously ...