Determining Gapless Playback Information

I only had about 20 songs out of several thousand that would consistently get scanned for gapless information. I followed the advice in this post from Bobotmedia and used mp3val to scan/repair the files in question. Problem solved!

Okay, I've found the cause and the solution. Why it's happening can only be attributed to Lion. Only since Lion have I ever had any issues with iTunes.

I've had three issues when adding Mp3's to iTunes. Sometimes they all occur, sometimes one or two, with each file. It occurs with the two types of import, whether you "Add to Library," or simply highlight multiple songs from an Mp3 folder and double-click.

The issues are:

1. "Determining Gapless Playback Information, " every time I open iTunes.

2. The songs affected by the above issue also sometimes do not play in their entirety and skip to the next song.

3. Also, while playing the affected songs, if you attempt to skip ahead (near the end of the song) by clicking the progress bar, it will not jump to that part. For example, if three minute song is currently playing and it's at 1:09, and I try to click around the 2:45 mark, it will only jump ahead to the 1:50 mark. If I click the end of the song repeatedly, it keeps jumping only to the 1:50 mark. Once I stop, it will continue playing beyond that, however.

The crazy, simple, PITA solution is to add the Mp3's one at a time. I just tested it. I had about 68 Christmas songs (three folders, three albums) I added to my 65 gig iTunes library yesterday. When I opened iTunes this morning, I had all of the above issues with the songs, even after closing and reopening iTunes. I deleted all 68 and added one at a time. After the first two, I closed iTunes, reopened, and there were none of the above issues. Now all are added with no issues. I double-clicked each Mp3 to add it.

It would be nice to know if others had the above issues in conjunction with "determining gapless..." and/or test this solution. The issue may simply be due to adding multiple files at once. If this is the case, Apple could be notified as to how the issues are occurring, then they could figure why.

I'm still having this issue, but for me it's been a little different. Since I've upgraded to iTunes 10.5.1 about 50% of my tracks get scanned for gapless playback information every time I open iTunes, add something to iTunes, or even wake from sleep. I've tried repairing the tracks, reimporting the tracks, etc and nothing seems to work. I'm beginning to think it has to do with how iTunes is writing the tunes to my external HD and how it reads them.

It's driving me nuts as this process gets longer and longer the more I add to iTunes.

So for those of you still paying attention or having this problem, I was able to solve the issue through the roundabout process of rebuilding my iTunes library. With much trial and error and figured out that something had corrupted my library when I upgraded to 10.5 and thus by rebuilding the lbrary (which took about 24 hours), I now have no Gapless issues. Hopefully this helps.

I am having this same exact issue. I started a thread and got zero responses. My question is, if I rebuild my library, do I loose all of my playlists? Also did this solve the song not playing through or being able to drag the playbar across?

XJ

"Why it's happening can only be attributed to Lion."

Except for the simple fact that this thread started long, long before Lion was released.

Yes, I overlooked the age of this thread. The issue for me has has only occured since installing Lion.

What's amazing is that no one has chimed in trying what worked for me.

As a test, identify one song getting caught up in this issue, copy it from the finder to your desktop, then delete it from your library within iTunes. Double-click the file on your desktop to load/play in iTunes. Close then reopen iTunes. I'm sure that song will no longer be an issue unless the file itself is corrupt.

I found a complicated solution...spent 30 minutes typing it up here in great detail, only to have this window crash as I was about to post it. Unbelievable

Essentially you need to copy all of the files causing the gapless playback to a new folder out of iTunes (like on your desk top). Delete them out of iTunes. Reimport them ONE AT A TIME. Each time wathing to make sure they do not trigger successive gapless playback scans, and the play each one and drag its playback slider around and seeing if it snaps back to the middle or anywhere that you did not drag it. If either occures you need to delate, re-import and start again.

I did this with 265 files last night over a 4 hour period. It was trial and error, but now all of my files in iTunes play fine and I have zero gapless playback scans.

I found that this is

A: Not limited to any specific OS. I have seen people here with the issue in Win 7, XP and Lion (Mac)

B: It is not a corrupt mp3/aac issue. It is an import issue and how iTunes sees and stores they file and its meta data. I know this because I dragged and copied my files right out of iTunes to a new folder, reimported them one by one and the once bad file now worked. Also I checked the files in Sound Forge, Wavelab, a diefferent copy of itunes on a diferent computer, both XP and Snow Leopard (no lion yet mac is too old) and on 2 iPods. The files play fine in all programs and devices other than iTunes, and in iTunes it is an import by import crap shoot. Bottom line this is a 10.5 problem, and something goes wonky when importing the files in.

Anyway my issue is 100% solved, but was a huge pain in the butt and very time consuming. Hope they fix this soon

XJ

Are you serious?

I may not have been perfectly clear, but your initial post was three posts below my initial post with the exact same solution. I'm glad you figured it out before me.

Now, two people have verified the problem and the solution.

Adding multiple songs (whole albums) at once is the cause. The solution is adding one file at a time.

Again, for any progress and to assist Apple, could someone else please let me know if this works for them as well? I will file a bug report report through the Appleseed program. Informing them of how it happens and how to avoid the issue will go along way toward a speedy fix.

I have tried the process of finding one of the (2555) files that continously determine gapless playback info, deleting it from itunes, deleting the file itself, and adding it back in, and it continues to determine gapless playback info. For me this solution didn't resolve anything it seems.

Well, try one mpre thing. Just go through your finder to your iTunes library and copy an entire [affected] album (the folder) to your desktop. Then, delete the entire album from within iTunes. Then, open the folder and double-click each song, one at a time, to add/play in iTunes. All of the albums that have been affected for me were delleted and added one song at a time. I have no more issues.

I wish it did, but that didn't work either. Only difference being that I'm on Windows 7x64. Copied the folder, deleted from iTunes, added each file 1 by one...and watched the determining gapless info number climb with each track added. Now back to the original 2555 after adding each track from that album, one by one.

Thank GOODNESS for 10.5.2. After updating this morning, my gapless info problem has been resolved.

UPDATE: well, sort of resolved. Looks like now instead of 2555 tracks having the problem, it's down to 1290.

Stay tuned, I suppose...

Message was edited by: codepoit

I've been having this issue for a few months. I tried everything you suggested and it didn't work for me. But I found a solution that fixed it. Don't know if it will help other people, but it did to me.

What I did was finding the file (in my case, luckily, only one) that made that message appear, and convert it to MP3 through iTunes (even though it was already an MP3 file) by right-clicking on it and selecting "Convert to MP3". To my surprise, the new file duration was shorter than the original one, but after playing it entirely it's the full version. So the original one had, for some reason, a wrong duration.

After that, I tried quitting and restarting iTunes, and no issues anymore.