iPod to Mac transfer problem. M4a file problem

paulneathery wrote:

thanks again!

Did I screw things up when I deleted all my iTunes song names after the hard drive crash?

Yes. Always important after anything goes wrong not to compound the error by acting in haste. I've assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you don't have Time Machine set up and covering some aspect of your library? Time Machine can let you go back to an earlier state of particular files or folders, otherwise you only have the current state to work with. You may have a Previous iTunes Libraries folder that contains an older version of your database, but these are generated sometimes when iTunes is updated. Given you are running Snow Leopard this is unlikely to have happened recently enough to be useful.

Let me try to explain what is going on again. Normally in iTunes you might have a track like a-ha's Take On Me, track 1 from the album Take On Me. This would usually be stored on your computer as say ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/a-ha/Take On Me/01 Take On Me.m4a and if you look at the properties in Finder you would see details such as artist and album included under more info, like this:

See all the details with the pink stars? Here I've made a copy of this file, added it to Music (I'm working in Catalina here) then stripped out the tag by converting it to none, and finally I've given the file the kind of filename typical for files recovered from an iPod. You'll see that the more info area is missing all the important details that identify the track.

As far as I can tell the only place these details would have been stored would have been in the database on your device, but for reasons unknown that database has been overwritten so the information there is lost. The files still exist in their hidden folders taking up space, but the metadata was only being stored in the database because the downsampling method makes new smaller copies to place on the device and doesn't bother adding tag information which would be otherwise unused by the device, potentially saving a little more space.

Even if you can recover the lost iTunes database that would have been linked to the original files, not these compressed versions that you've recovered, so linking the two sets of data back together would not be a trivial task. When reclaiming details from the iPod's database I've been able to do it using the file's size in bytes, which has a reasonable chance of being unique for each track. Again see in the images above how the file size differs between the file that has a tag, and the one that doesn't.

Honestly I don't see any way to mechanically restore the missing details using the data you have to hand. I wish I did. Picard tagger or Shazam and a lot of manual effort seem to the only way to go from here.

tt2

iTunesDB on the device is a database file that acts as an index to the content on it, knows which file is stored in which F## folder with which four letter filename, has the playlists, ratings, etc. If the device cannot read this file properly it will appear to have no songs. If iTunes cannot read it then it will tell you the device needs to be restored.

Thanks for checking on the contents of iPod_Control/Music but I don't think anything in there is going to help. I was hoping there might be something called TempDB that could have been used to replace the current iTunesDB which would appear to be corrupt. The file isn't one you're meant to be able to open using Finder.

If you've copied all of the files out of the F## folders into your computer and unhidden them then that is as much as you're going to get from the device.

MusicBrainz Picard tagger https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ is software that is supposed to be able to analyze music files that are missing tag information, name, artist, album, etc., and fill in the details in the file's tag. It has been a long time since I tried using it, but you can give it a shot. You would need to repair the tags, then add the files to iTunes, or play the files if they've already been added so it notices that the tags have changed.

tt2

Hi,

I believe you will have used the option to convert higher bitrate songs to XXX AAC. The converted tracks are stored on the device without any tags, in .aac format, and the metadata is only written into the device's database. I've worked a solution for recovering metadata from the device in Windows but haven't yet done the same for Mac. How many tracks are you looking to recover? Do you have access to a Windows machine? What version of macOS/OS X are you running?

tt2

The four letter file names are used in the hidden folders on the device. This is an anti-piracy measure designed to stop you from connecting a friend's iPod to your computer and quickly scanning the folders for files that you want to copy. In most cases recovering files from an iPod relies on the fact that the files also contain tags with the details such as artist, album, song name, track #, etc. that you don't see in the path, but if you've used the option when syncing to the device to Sync higher bitrate songs to ###k AAC then the files that are placed on the device are generated without any tags. On import iTunes uses the only bit of information it has, the filename, as a song name. I have a Windows script that given a working library on the iPod can read its database and match up tracks in the library on the basis of unique file size, and if such a match is found it can then copy over any other details that can be read from the device and are missing in the main library. I think we've established that you don't have a valid database on the device so that line of attack won't work. If your files can be recovered from your original hard drive they should include metadata and be stored with conventional paths and filenames that reflect their properties.

tt2

Drag and drop from one drive to another usually copies. Drag and drop within the same drive usually moves.

You need to let iTunes populate the drive. If you drag the files there by hand then they don't get added to the device's database.

What files do you see in <iPod>\iPod_Control? There is a very slim chance that it could hold a backup of the device database.

tt2

Picard's job is easier, for example, if it knows that a set of 10 tracks come from the same album. That said I recall it working with individual songs as well. Again, years since I used it for a similar project of recovering untagged media but I remember it being useful. Drag in a few tracks and see what it can do with them.

tt2

paulneathery wrote:

Thank you for replying, turingtest2.

I do not have Windows access. I have 17,000 songs. My Mac is running Snow Leopard.

I have another question. I left my iPod plugged into my Mac when I put it to, sleep. Next morning, my iPod said, No Music. But, it showed 80 gigs being used up for, 'other'. Do you know what happened with my iPod's music and how I can restore my iPod's music? My Mac was set, Not To Sync.

I have all my songs in a folder on my desktop.

This can happen if for one reason or another the database on the device becomes corrupt. If you have all of the media on your computer it isn't really a huge issue, restore the device and reload the media. See Corrupt iPod Classic - Apple Community and check the HDD stats to rule out any underlying health issues with the drive. You want to see a zero pending count. For those that don't have their media safely secured the first section of the tip deals with media recovery.

You don't need to resort to using Windows for assistance as you have the media, but for psnabbey a script of mine called SyncStatsPlus can be used to recover metadata that isn't pulled back when using steps such as those in Recover media from an iPod - Apple Community to reclaim the media, as long as the database on the device is still well behaved.

tt2

paulneathery wrote:

Also, a window pops up and says: iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPod “Paul Neathery’s iPod”. Go to the Summary tab in iPod preferences and click Restore to restore this iPod to factory settings.

I assume this will erase everything on my iPod?

Yes.

Would you recommend 3rd party software, Kernal? If your advice doesn't do the trick?

Not anything I've tried. I think the position will be the same. If the media files are tagless, and there isn't a valid database file on the device to read the metadata from, then you're going to have to rebuild it the hard way.

tt2

Thank you for replying, turingtest2.

I do not have Windows access. I have 17,000 songs. My Mac is running Snow Leopard.

I have another question. I left my iPod plugged into my Mac when I put it to, sleep. Next morning, my iPod said, No Music. But, it showed 80 gigs being used up for, 'other'. Do you know what happened with my iPod's music and how I can restore my iPod's music? My Mac was set, Not To Sync.

I have all my songs in a folder on my desktop.

I have the music in a folder on my desktop, but when I drag it to iTunes, the m4a files have no song names, etc.

If I restore my iPod, won't that erase everything? I can't see my iPod being corrupt overnight? I was hoping there was a trick to get my iPod music to show up, since it was perfectly there before, and for no reason just vanished? Is there a way to bring back the hidden songs or are they all gone from my iPod?

Also, a window pops up and says: iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPod “Paul Neathery’s iPod”. Go to the Summary tab in iPod preferences and click Restore to restore this iPod to factory settings.

I assume this will erase everything on my iPod?

Would you recommend 3rd party software, Kernal? If your advice doesn't do the trick?

thank you,

Paul Neathery

Thank you for your reply. Can I ask a question?

Originally, I dragged all my music files from my iPod folder to my desktop. Wouldn't that leave my iPod folder empty?

I still have all the music files on my desktop. Again, they all play on iTunes but the M4a files have no song names.

Should I hit that, OK button that iTunes puts up to restore my iPod? Then, drag my music files back into my iPod?

Thank you again, for helping me to get my music files back. I have a lot of very important files that I can't ever get back.

I am sorry that I do not understand a lot of the computer terms.

What do you mean by, 'iTunes populate the drive'? If I drag the files from my desktop folder to my iPod, they won't get added?

When I go into iPod_Control it shows all the folders and hidden ones. It shows Device and it has .DS_Store, alarms, clock, PlayCounts, Preferences, Sysinfo, and Users.

Also, the iPod Control folder contains the Music folder. I opened it and it has all 50 folders F00-F49. I opened some and it took a minute but all the 4 letter music files came up. I looked at 'get info' from a folder and it said 1.47 GB. which makes sense since I have about 80 gigs of music.

the iTunes pop up window continues to come up and say it can't read my iPod. And to go to Summary tab in iPod preferences to restore. But, again, restore will erase my whole iPod, correct?

Again, I am sorry for being naive. All 50 F01 type file folders contain over 300 random 4 letter song files. There are no albums that they show.

I've downloaded Picard, clicked on the directions, and find it difficult to understand. It seems they just want me to drag albums into it? I don't know, sorry?

I guess, I need a software program to find these song names, Picard or other?