I transferred half of my iPod songs over to my Mac desktop. All the mp3 files transfer sound and song info. But, the M4a files only transfer the song with no info. Just 4 letters, BHNE for example.
Can someone tell me how to have all of my iPod songs successfully transferred to my Mac.
thank you,
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
Thanks for your reply!
When my hard drive crashed. I noticed my iTunes library songs and artists, etc, were still on my iTunes. But, they would not play music. I deleted all 17,000 song names, etc from iTunes. Remember, I downloaded all my songs back to my desktop from my iPod, but as 4 letter file names. Does that have anything to do with why my 4 letter files remain as 4 letters when I drag them from my desktop to my iTunes?
Is there a way to retrieve the info. that my iTunes used to have?
And, if I do get my hard drive info restored from a private company.....will those music files show up as 4 letters?
thanks again!
Did I screw things up when I deleted all my iTunes song names after the hard drive crash? Can they be found in any trash? I didn't think they were important? Is this why the SLKS files have no names when dragged in?
Please, I am wondering if all the file names are still in my iPod. It still shows 80 gigs being used but shows, 'No Music'. What is all this space for? Can I get my iPod going again? I just put my Mac on sleep and left my iPod plugged in to charge.
thank you,
Thanks for your detailed reply!
I'm confused. You're saying that if I pay a lot of money for a company to get my iTunes files off of my crashed hard drive...that, when I drag them to iTunes, those file will be the same 4 letter files? Or will they contain all the music info. for iTunes to show?
I'l also sorry to ask again, but I am confused as to what happened to my perfectly good iPod when I plugged it into my Mac Pro and left it overnight to charge. I had just dragged all the files off of it, onto my desktop and was going to do more work the next day. I put my Mac to sleep and left my iPod plugged in.
thank you for your time!
If I did have Windows access from a friend, what do you recommend for my 2 problems?
paulneathery wrote:
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.
Ah, I misunderstood. So you're in the same boat as psnabbey in that you have tagless audio files, but in your case you don't have a valid database on the device to read the metadata from. The songs are likely still on the device, but with a damaged database the device doesn't list the contents. I'm afraid my script cannot help you. Best I can suggest is you try https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ to fill in the missing details.
tt2
Sorry, been a long time since I've delved into this location. What files are listed in \iPod_Control\ITunes ? One of them would normally be called iTunesDB. That file is the equivalent to the iTunes Library.itl file in your iTunes library. It is the file that lets your iPod know what tracks and playlists have been added into it. I rare cases there may be a temp/backup copy of the iTunesDB file that can be restored.
Just putting the files on the device, even in the F##\XXX.<ext> layout, doesn't update the database. You must either sync or manually manage the device using iTunes rather than Windows Explorer to add the content. See Sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod using your computer - Apple Support.
Restoring the device will wipe out what is currently on it. Don't do that before you exhausted the possibilities of reading the missing metadata from the device. I'd be tempted to try MusicBrainz Picard first, just to see if that line of attack is going to be profitable.
tt2
I have a Mac Pro. Files on iPod_Control are: ._Device, ._iTunes, Artwork, Device, gamedata_RW, games_RO, gamestats_WO, iPodPrefs, iTunes, Music, tones, and .DS_Store
Inside the iTunes folder is: ApertureAlbumPrefs, Extras.itdb, IC-Info.sidb, iPhotAlbumPrefs, iTunesControl, iTunesDB, itunesPrefs, iTunesPrefs.plist, Rentals.plist, .DS_Store. I don't think I can open iTunesDB or any of the other files. Why? when I try to open one, I get my Terminal window that says, cannot execute, process complete with some computer code sentences.
I can not Sync without songs in my iTunes, right? Manually manage will be a life of work and will be the last choice if I don't jump off a building. :)
Yes, I am glad that I didn't get impatient and restore my iPod. What does Picard software do? Is there other 3rd party software that can do what I need?
Stupid question but....what happened to my nice iPod with 17,000 songs on it a few nights ago. And why are the files shown in my iPod but they won't appear the iPod or desktop screen as songs? The music files seem to be on my iPod.
The files from the old hard drive will contain metadata, unless they are in .wav format.
I don't know why the library on the device was corrupted. It is somewhat unfortunate that you had two failures at the same time.
tt2
iPod to Mac transfer problem. M4a file problem
