Q: Any software that can rebuild iTunes songs lost to Unknown Artist/ Unknown Album

OK, here we have an album in my test library in the standard location for it...

Now I'm going to simulate the disaster by renaming the folder containing the files as Unknown Artist\Unknown Album. Note how each track now shows the ! for missing tracks.

Next I select the 12 tracks and run the FindTracks script.

I've clicked No on the first prompt so that I can get track by track confirmation. Next I check that the correct path has been assumed for the media folder to be searched. Note this must be a parent folder of where the files actually are. The script may not guess this initial value correctly if content is split over multiple paths/drives instead of the standard iTunes layout.

The script will search the following potential locations for each track:

• <Media Folder>
• <Media Folder>\<Album Artist>
• <Media Folder>\<Album Artist>\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\<Artist>
• <Media Folder>\<Artist>\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\Compilations\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\Music
• <Media Folder>\Music\<Album Artist>
• <Media Folder>\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\Music\<Artist>
• <Media Folder>\Music\<Artist>\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\Music\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\Music\Compilations\<Album>
• <Media Folder>\Music\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album
• <Media Folder>\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album

With optimizations when <Album>=<Album Artist>=<Artist>. For all searches outside of the Unknown Artist\Unknown Album folder there is a fuzzy matching mechanism which can cope with, for example, longer/truncated file & folder names or different filename character substitutions. Other types of media will be searched for in their usual locations relative to the media folder.

(Note to self: Add in ability to cope with missing track numbers)

Having confirmed the media location the script comes back with the first proposed correction. Yes will update the location of the track, No will skip that track, and Cancel aborts the script.

After all the tracks have been processed, or you press Cancel, there is a summary of the activity. Obviously confirming each track one at a time would be boring so once you've proved the script is effective it is time to run it on larger groups of files in automatic mode which will display a progress bar so you can see that it is still working. If you close the progress bar the script will safely complete its current operation and then offer to abort or resume.

tt2

thelovelyman wrote:

 

The Script worked

Good to know.

... but the objective of getting the songs back in the approriate path ...Itunes/itunes Media/ Music/Artist/Album/song...  has not been met.

Hmm, either you neglected the second bolded action from this part of my instructions...

I strongly recommend you disable the option to "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" for now. You can re-enable it once the script has done its work so that iTunes can reorganize the files back in their proper folders, then disable it again to avoid a similar problem in future.

... or the Unknown Artist\Unknown Album folder in question is not inside the currently designated iTunes Media folder.

Again ConsolidateByMoving can do much the same reorganization as iTunes would do, albeit more slowly, however it really scores when you want to move content into the media folder without leaving copies behind, or want to move the files out of the normal media folder, say Movies to a different external drive with spare room, or just want to avoid the kind of accident that you experienced at the outset...

tt2

Since, in principle, you're only interested in picking up stuff from the Unknown Artist\Unknown Album folder, use this folder as the root for the search. Will avoid all the blind alleys. About to sleep or I'd test it out but that ought to work. The matching is all done on filename using something called Soundex coding. Again too tired to go into detail now, but it does seem that I could use the filesize property to exclude false matches in a future version..

tt2

File > Library > Organize Library... > Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Media".

tt2

hi tt2,

i was reallly sweating it out until i found this thread.  describes my problem exactly.  was thrilled to find the FindTracks script.  my only issue is that when i use the script, no matter what i try, i get back the following...

I've tried the script on an XP and Win 8 machine with the same results.  Any advice?

Firstly are you using it on a small selection of tracks to start with? It may have problems if the "current" item is a cloud link or a stream URL.

tt2

Yes.  I first tried it for one specific album, 12 tracks.  Then another with just 7 tracks.  Then tried it for just one song.  All attempts generated the same message...

Also, I made sure it was not a cloud entry.

I've not been able to reproduce the problem at my end. Can you please download a fresh copy of the script and see if it still generates an error. I've made a few tweaks which may have helped. Otherwise let me know which line is now involved.

tt2

tt2

I downloaded the latest version of the script.  I continue to get the error, Line 508.

Here's a shot of ITunes before the run:

Here's a shot of the Explorer file location of the actual song file:

Here's a shot of the Script run:

And here's a shot of the error:

Might it have something to do with the various file locations and expectations of the script?

Much thanks in advance,

Dow

Are you sure you got a fresh copy of the script? Line 508 in the current version reads:

     MsgBox "The function ""ExtFromKind"" needs updating to generate correct the extension for files of type:" & nl & K,0,Title

No mention of a variable T in that line so it ought not be possible for it to throw that error. (Although I see I need to swap two words around in that output! )

Grab a fresh copy from this direct link: FindTracks

Line 4 should read: Version 1.0.1.14 - May 30th 2014

The second image doesn't reveal the full path to that folder, but assuming it is F:\Don New Itunes\iTunes\iTunes Music\Music\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album then that you have the correct media folder shown in the third image. The script should be capable of locating the files in the \Music\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album subfolder and matching on the basis of track number, name & file size.

tt2

Turns out I was using version 12.  I promise I'm not trying to be difficult but no matter how I try to access the script, either through your direct link above, or your website, I only get version 12! 

It's a brand new computer, no cookie problem.  Tried two different browsers, just in case.  Got the same problem! 

Interesting, some kind of ISP based cache perhaps. Try FindTracksV14 - they can't have cached that because it didn't exist until 30 seconds ago.

tt2