Time for imported AAC files is changing to 789:57:13

Hi, I have the same problem both on Mojave on Mac and Windows 7 on PC

I am thinking this problem will occur with the last issue of iTunes, 12.9.4, but not sure !

For the Mac I have used the Tag Stripper application which erases the tags of music files, it seems it is working well

For the PC under Windows 7, I uninstalled iTunes 12.9.4 and reinstall an older version 12.7.1 ; I did it yesterday evening, at this time it seems OK, but to be confirmed

I'm starting to wonder if Apple tech actually read these complaints !!

I can categorically say that this is definitely and iTunes issue. I have iMac with Mojave . Very recently certainly within the last month since the last update a lot of albums and singles that have been perfect for years suddenly refuse to play and as many have said skip to the next track. However if you copy and paste the tracks onto the desktop and click play they they play perfectly. I get the same error duration 789:57:13 , this is not a coincidence. PLEASE SORT THIS OUT APPLE !

Running my AAC files through the "Tag Stripper" app that I downloaded from the App Store on my Mac also worked for me - iTunes is playing the files successfully and their length is displayed correctly now. Thanks TimPollard and Denis1951 for suggesting this!

Most audio files contain the audio information, data, and a separate block of information that contains metadata (data about data) called a tag. This is where details such as the song name, track number, artist and album can be stored.

tt2

I assume this app will NOT work for those of us that have a PC and the songs affected? Also, when a new version of ITUNES comes out will you (TT2) or SteveDB be testing to see if the problem has been fixed? In order to reach out as much as I could, I sent an email to Tim.

You describe a 'tag' for an audio file as an information block that contains data specific to the song, e.g., album, track number, etc. Is there also a '2nd tag' which contains data specific to iTunes, e.g., number of plays, date last played, date added, etc.? Or is there only one tag per file that also contains this iTunes data? Just trying to understand tags, because...

My main question is if you use an app to strip the tag(s), are they gone permanently, or can they be restored? In other words, using a 'tag stripper' app, you may be able to play the song ok, but is it at the cost of losing your data?

Plays, skips, date added, last played, playlist membership, start & end time, checked, and a number of other properties are stored only in the iTunes database. iTunes will likely remember all of the details for a track stripped of its tag. With mp3 files you can even get iTunes to write the data to a new tag, but I don't know if this is possible with AAC. It might happen automatically if you make a single change. I haven't had a chance to test out this utility but perhaps those that have can tell us more.

tt2

For what it's worth, I opened a case with technical support on this issue on April 9th, 2019. The Case ID no. is 20000043746405. The tech support person, Sheena, said she would gather the information and forward it to the Apple engineers. I allowed her to take control of my PC to download whatever she needed. I assume she is a contractor rather than an Apple employee, so no idea how far up the chain it got. I also referred her to this forum thread.

Just piping in that I'm having the same issue. .m4a files created via Audacity are showing up as unplayable with a time of 789:57:13 in iTunes for Windows (Win10). It is interesting to read that the problem appears to be with tags. I've tried removing the tags with a id3 editing tool and re-adding them via Windows file property edit but that doesn't resolve the issue. If I convert the .m4a to .mp3 iTunes is happy with the result. Sadly, I have hundreds of .m4a files so this isn't a viable solution.

In my opinion, Apple has always relied primarily on the iTunes library file rather than the tags on the files so I can't say I'm shocked that they may have made a change in the latest release that misreads .m4a tags. Hopefully, they will decide that fixing this in a future release of iTunes makes for a better customer experience rather than telling their customers they have to re-encode and/or re-edit tags on all the .m4a files.

Like I have mentioned earlier, I have thousands of songs affected. Best solution (for Now) is load an older version of iTunes. It fixes the problem at least in the short term. Unfortunately, apple tech support wont help you do that.

Can 12.9.3 read a 12.9.4 library? I've made a significant number of changes to song metadata (I've been editing data on 20 to 30 songs a night for the past three weeks before I noticed the problem) and so rolling back is only an option if the older version of iTunes can read the new version's library file. Otherwise, I'll have to re-edit metadata on hundreds of songs...

I don't know what metadata is. Maybe someone else in the forum can help you ( TT2 or Steve DB?). My problem was when I updated to ITUNES 9.4.2. and all of my songs that were edited in Audacity and loaded into iTunes using M4a, they became unreadable with the 789:57:13. I uninstalled 9.4.2 and reloaded a previous version and all of the songs are now back working. In total I have 19K songs and probably 4 - 6K that have been affected by the latest iTunes upgrade. I hope that helps.

I know you are using iTunes on Windows, but if you have access to ffmpeg I have a solution.

> ffmpeg -i <song title>.m4a -t <song duration hh:mm:ss> -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s copy <song title>-out.m4a

Song duration is in hh:mm:ss format. So a song two minutes and four seconds long would be - '2:04'.

This seems to fix the faulty duration field and allows a song to play.

Thanks for the info. I do have ffmpeg, but don't what to do with the info you provided. Maybe it will help others. A coupe of questions - Can it change mass number of songs or you have to do one at a time. Also, will the change cause it to have problems when you play songs on applications like virtual DJ and audacity?

Hi,

I can't say for sure that there would be no impact in your situation. In terms of the edits you were making - are you talking about name, artist, album, genre etc.? To m4a files or ALAC? You did those changes in iTunes or to the files directly or in another program. Either way, It should should not matter. Those changes should stay with the files in your music folder. If you can see that data listed with the files in the music folder it will not go away. Alternatively, any files I have edited in iTunes and moved elsewhere or played in another music playing program, still retain any data that I added including artwork.

When I uninstalled iTunes the file folders on my hard drive (Windows 7) stayed intact as is, as if there was no change. My current iTunes folder has a date created of 1/3/2018 and that did not change earlier this month when I uninstalled 12.9.4. The "date modified" - while a different more recent date - is still a date the precedes my install and uninstall of 12.9.4 this month. I didn't stick around in 12.9.4 that long once I noticed the problem shortly after updating to it. I had added one new playlist of 11 tracks encoded as AAC m4a outside of iTunes when I experienced the issue. They immediately would not play. When I rolled back to 12.9.3.3 those same files were fine. I believe that you should be able to roll back to the earlier version and if there's issue's you can always return back to 12.9.4. If your iTunes music file library is in your music library on your PC, you should be OK. The Program files for iTunes will change and be updated when you install a new iTunes version.