User profile for user: Barry Bennett
Barry Bennett Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

iTunes On The Fly Conversion When Syncing Not Reliable

I am having random behavior with the iTunes feature that allows you to convert higher bit rate songs to AAC format during the sync process. For reference this is on a Windows 10 machine (i7, 3 GHz, 16 GB RAM) running iTunes version 12.11.4.15. The issue has occurred with a variety of devices all running iOS 14.7.1. The issue is that iTunes complains about not being able to convert some songs, but it is not consistent about which songs it has issues with. I have seen it successfully convert and transfer a song to one iOS device but fail to do so on the same exact song with another iOS device. I have also seen it complain about a song during a sync operation but when trying the sync again it had no issues. I am interested in the conversion feature because some of my devices do not have enough room to store my music in their original higher quality format. The music that I have seen fail are in MP3 format and were stored in my iTunes library by pulling them from CDs using the iTunes import feature. In other words, non of these songs should have any kind of DRM or protection on them.


To make matters worse regarding this issue, it seems that when iTunes determines that it cannot convert a song (erroneously as far as I can tell) it then decides to remove the song from my playlist. This of course is troubling because if I have spent significant time creating a playlist that contains what I want then after a sync/conversion issue the playlist is no longer the same. Over time I have had hundreds of songs disappear from playlists because of this behavior. I have learned to maintain a master reference playlist copy and never sync a device to the reference playlist so that I can at least recover from this odd and annoying behavior.


I have also noted that during a long sync operation I will sometimes get a popup box that says an unknown error occurred and the operation cannot complete. (Usually the error code is -54 but that is not always the case.) I can close the popup box and the sync is still happily running and will complete so the "error" warning seems to be inaccurate because there does not appear to be an critical error.


As a test I have tried disabling the on the fly conversion feature and the sync operation will go pretty smoothly. I still will get occasional popup error warnings that I can ignore but the end result is all of the songs in a playlist are transferred to the device as expected. The playlist after the sync operation is not modified and matches my reference copy. Of course with this solution I am limited on how many songs I can sync to the device because of the device's storage limitations.


Related to this topic is that doing the on the fly conversion significantly slows down the sync operation. I understand this is to be expected but the difference is pretty dramatic. Syncing a playlist of 1500 songs without the conversion feature enabled takes about 15 minutes but with the conversion feature enabled it is many hours. Sometimes it is so slow that it looks like it has stalled and I have ended up cancelling the operation before it finishes to restart it.


Having summarized the issues, I have the following basic questions:

  1. Are other users experiencing this kind of random behavior with the on the fly conversion feature?
  2. Are other users experiencing this same kind of performance issue with the conversion feature?
  3. Has anyone come up with a solution that resolves these issues?
  4. Is there any way to stop iTunes from modifying my playlists just because it has an "issue" with a file?


To avoid some of the lesser helpful responses, let me just say that my PC is fully up to date, I have rebooted it, I have rebooted my iOS devices, I have tried a difference sync cable, I have tried a difference USB port, I have tried clearing the iOS device of all content first. None of these changes made any difference. I also understand that turning off the conversion feature "fixes" the problem but that is not really the question being asked.

iPad (5th gen) Wi-Fi

Posted on Aug 20, 2021 9:16 AM

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12 replies
User profile for user: When-In-Rome
When-In-Rome
User level: Level 1
9 points

Sep 18, 2021 2:32 AM in response to Barry Bennett

You're not alone as Olive once opined, there's at least two of us. Me too. It's obviously a flaw with the 'conversion on the fly' process, one that doesn't seem to affect my iPod Nano but affects all of my 5th/6th/7th Gen iPod touches. It can happen if I try to sync 10 songs or or if I try to sync 100 songs. Any song can be affected. Sometimes the iPod notices and will try again, other times it does not and I have noticed later when it skips the song.

My workaround is to check every song that is converted, if it will not play, untick the song, sync, tick it again and sync. This works on the first go 9 times out of 10, sometimes it works on the 2nd or 3rd go. Sometimes I have to turn the 'Pod off then on again. It is not ideal.

The problem with playlists is worse and not good at all, as this creates new playlists automatically or affects the original playlist. It's a shame as the feature is a great idea - it just work doesn't properly!

Also, to just make matters worse, the 7th gen iPod touch creates gaps when the file is converted on the fly and is no longer gapless (should it require it) but that's another problem. One I have flagged up to no avail 'round these parts also...

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
278,055 points

Aug 20, 2021 1:23 PM in response to Barry Bennett

Perhaps you can modify the break up large transfers method I used to use with my iPod classic. Essentially make a second smart playlist with the rule Playlist is <List to transfer> initially limited to say 100 tracks. After syncing you raise the limit to 200 and sync again. When the whole smart playlist has been added you can add the original list to the device and remove the smart version. Still seems like a bit of work, but might be easier than starting over each time.


tt2



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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
278,055 points

Aug 20, 2021 2:17 PM in response to Barry Bennett

I've experienced iTunes sync failing when trying to repopulate a large number of tracks in a single action. I've not really had cause to use the downsampling sync method other than to test it briefly with a small playlist. The files it creates are tag-free ACC versions, which complicates the process of recovering media from the iPod if the original library is lost. I worked out a way to reconnect the metadata on the device with the files that had been copied from it.


tt2

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User profile for user: Barry Bennett
Barry Bennett Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Aug 20, 2021 12:55 PM in response to turingtest2

I agree that I can recover the unmodified playlist through various methods, all of which should not be necessary. Even with recovering the original playlist though the process of syncing to my phone is extremely time consuming with the current behavior. Best I can tell with the on the fly conversion turned on I can only get through about 100 songs before iTunes just stops syncing completely. At that point I have to disconnect the phone, shut down iTunes, fix the playlist, and start again. With a playlist of ~5000 songs, and it taking anywhere from 5-10 minutes per attempt, it will take over 8 hours to do the sync and I have to babysit it the entire time! I would not call that an intuitive or friendly experience.

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User profile for user: When-In-Rome
When-In-Rome
User level: Level 1
9 points

Oct 22, 2021 10:37 AM in response to jon8979

I'm in the same boat, it would be nice to swap and change the contents of my iPods but if I have to check each and every song to make sure its synced every time the fun disappears. I had a dream of carrying my whole library in my pocket - I'd take it as 128kbps, I still have my lossless files on the PC and the play counts would all still stack up but sadly, those dreams are dashed and I have to be a bit more choosy. I suppose I could just convert all my files into AAC and be done but it's not really the point...

Anyway I'm glad I'm not the only the one; suppose it'll never get fixed if there's seemingly only three of us that it affects!

Safe travels, friends ;)

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User profile for user: Barry Bennett
Barry Bennett Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Aug 20, 2021 12:08 PM in response to turingtest2

Not sure what method I should use to check the health of the media source drive, but here is what I can tell you. Running check disk on this drive with a full scan produced 0 errors. In addition to that, I have not had any issues with any other software including those that are pretty disk intensive. The media source drive is a SSD with 250GB of free storage so it is relatively new and certainly not short on space. If there is some other method of checking the health of the drive that would be better then please let me know.


As far as anti-virus software, I forgot to mention in my original post that I had disabled all real-time virus protection and scanning in my earlier tests with no change in behavior. I saw this suggestion in another post I read on the topic and figured it would not hurt to try it. I repeated this same disabling of real-time protection a few minutes ago with the same results. Files continue to be reported as "cannot be converted" even with the virus protection disabled. I think doing a global disabling of all virus protection/scanning is even more of drastic measure than just excluding a specific folder as suggested.


With regard to both of these suggestions, I am not surprised that neither made any difference. If I disable the on the fly conversion completely iTunes still has to be able to access the same files so if random read errors were occurring or a file was locked by the virus scanner then at some point this would show up during a lengthy sync. For my iPad which has enough storage to sync without the on the fly conversion feature I was able to sync all 5000 songs with no issues. For the most part I think this proves that disk or virus protection is not likely the issue.


I mentioned in my original post that one of the frustrating things going on here is iTunes is modifying my playlist based on having an "error" converting the file. As I think about what is going on here this is only making the matter worse. If iTunes did not remove these files from the playlist then a relatively simple solution would be to sync again and there is a reasonable chance the files that failed to convert/transfer the first time would be successful on a subsequent attempt. I cannot take that somewhat simply solution because the files are removed from the playlist so they will never attempt to sync again! Is there perhaps a way to disable this behavior in iTunes so that files that have "errors" are not removed from the playlist?


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iTunes On The Fly Conversion When Syncing Not Reliable

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