Adding artwork has corrupted song

When you change metadata on an iTunes file, iTunes tries to re-write the whole file so that the metadata bits are in the very beginning and the audio and video is interleaved through until the end. This creates an optimal experience when streaming the videos through homesharing to another computer or an AppleTV (ie: it is fast, load times are insignificant, and the file plays through to the end with no re-buffering). If the metadata you are changing is not big, it might be able to do this change without significantly moving any other data in the file. If you are adding something bigger, such as a large picture, then the file will be re-written and optimized for streaming. If your computer loses power or iTunes stops running or something else happens to halt this re-write while it is in progress, then you will have a damaged file.

Subler is a better program to write your tags. You can selectively save or optimize, and you have much more control over the metadata being written.

Completely agree Subler is much quicker and gives access to "Hidden" tags such as HD, Explicit/Clean. It is very good for video files as well as audio

You can find it for free here

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31647/subler

But djcastaldo it's not big pictures, it happens with 500x500 or 600x600 - standard iTunes sizes.

And it's not when you're 'powering off' or 'when something else happens' you can have nothing else running.

It's a fault in iTunes.

Why on earth would I want to start using a third party app? Running the risk that has a separate fault?

I'm no fan of subler in any case.

I just want iTunes fixed or at least acknowledgment from apple of the fault so widely reported.

it 'freezes' for awhile, because it is re-writing the whole file since it is placing that metadata at the beginning and shifting everything else afterward. I have never had it crash on the few times I have used iTunes to edit metadata, but there are better apps for that, so I don't usually use iTunes. If there is a problem with the software though, you could try a different sofware program to do the task.

boomhaueruk wrote:

Why on earth would I want to start using a third party app?

...because it is faster and works better?

boomhaueruk wrote:

It's a fault in iTunes..

I just want iTunes fixed or at least acknowledgment from apple of the fault so widely reported.

These are user forums and not the place to get any kind of acknowledgement from Apple.

Never been a fan of people cutting sentences in half to make a point; I said why on earth would I want to use a third party app, running the risk it would have a different fault.

And yes, of course this isn't the place for apple recognition, but lets be honest, these are apple forums, there's no reason for apple not to read them.

Hopefully, like me, people have logged the fault with apple direct too.

This fault isn't iTunes crashing or the task crashing, it completes, but has corrupted the files in the pass - and it worked fine until a release around version 9 or 10. We've struggled to identify exactly which build.

I have a routine to avoid the issue being unrecoverable as, as I say, I avoid adding 3rd party apps to fix singlr faults, especially 3rd party apps I found unwieldy and rather painful to use when i tried it like subler, but I'm hoping apple eventually acknowledge the issue with iTunes.

If you want to use and promote subler, more power to you, but frankly it would be more of a hassle than simply following my process and continuing to use the broken itunes for me.

Frankly, I've got just too much kit that uses iTunes not to push for a fix, though I'd imagine if one ever was released it would be for the latest iTunes only, which would sadden me as there's a lot there than I'm not a fan of either.

Hi all, in you need it I found out one of Doug's scripts can help identify these corrupted tracks (useful if you amend thousands of files like I did only to find out later about the corrupting).

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/2012/10/find-truncated-tracks/

Hi folks,

I'm having these issue since I cannot remember when. This is what I found:

- happens with all file types (losless, mp3, aac, cbr, vbr)

- bitrate does not matter

- happens with all kinds of pictures (jpg, png, tiff)

- picture size does not matter

- it doesn't matter if the artwork comes from file or is pasted from the clipboard

- it doesn't matter if iTunes was just started or has been running for some time

- it doesn't matter if iTunes is playing music or not (though the corruption will be different ;o)

- it doesn't matter if iTunes had been executing scripts or not

I have adjusted my workflow with scripts so that I always keep a safe copy of the files to be able to undo the damage. And it seemed to happen less often. I suspected it might be related to iTunes scripts I had been using regularly before changing my workflow. But not really. Once I have a critical combination of tracks and artwork it *always" happens. Absolutely reproducable.

So I thought I'd run iTunes under the debugger and dtrace (iosnoop), and this is what I found:

- if it works, iTunes writes out all altered tracks and the the artwork file (.ict in /iTunes/Album\ Artwork/Cache)

- if it corrupts files, it writes out a few tracks, then the artwork file, then the rest of the music files. All tracks prior to writing the artwork are sane, the rest are corrupted.

The symptoms of corruption have been described in detail in this thread.

Suggested workaround: Using a different picture (source) does help. And once the files are sanely stored with artwork you can go ahead and use the original picture and it will not corrupt the tracks (at least it hasn't for me, yet). So this is an easier way to work around this instead of altering one-by-one.

Anyone from Apple reading this? Has anyone filed a radar where this information could be added? I still think this should be fixed :o|

Regards,

Klaus

Just to confirm that this 4 year old bug where iTunes destroys your music files still exists. Unbelievable.

I too am completely mesmerized by this problem. I have had it occur on multiple machines, with multiple albums. Weirdly, however, it rarely (if ever) corrups the actual music. It simply infects certain songs in albums with corrupt cover art – cover art that simply refuses to be deleted:

I recorded the process of manually going through the songs and deleting the corrupt images only to have them reappear when I "get info' on that particular track again. Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD2lfWmjN_w&feature=youtu.be

Anyone have any suggestions to this problem that seems to be as old as iTunes?

I am also having this issue, though its manifesting in a slightly different way.

I recently started using MediaMonkey to clean up the ID3 tags (which store Album, artist, title, etc.), and noticed, only after going through my entire library (which contains ~1000 m4a tracks), that the majority of them were corrupted. Fortunately I had a backup, which allowed me to do a bit more troubleshooting. I can easily reproduce the corrupting of a track by REMOVING the artwork for an m4a. After the artwork is removed, the song will no longer play, in any media player. From what I've read on other forums, this may have something to do with the way ID3 tracks are written by iTunes, and corruption is occurring when proprietary tags, used only by iTunes, are modified. This is only speculation, but is something to consider.

Its a very frustrating situation, and I'm really hoping that a solution can be found.