iTunes 10 - incorrect ipod/iphone free space calculation

Jeezus frigin' christ - THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT PROBLEM. It's ridiculous that they don't have a fix yet! What can we do to get them to listen?

Tony

I just want to add my 2 cents. This is an embarrassing bug, and it is incredible that Apple hasn't fixed it yet in iTunes 10.1. Doesn't anybody there use the software?

With the "convert higher bit rate to 128" flag ticked, I have experienced many crashes (iTunes crashing repeatedly, then the entire Mac hanging repeatedly) since iTunes 10.0 (using a new iPod Touch). That hasn't happened yet in iTunes 10.1, but the capacity bug is still there.

There has been some dispute in various online fora about whether this is a real bug or not-- some have claimed it is just a different way of calculating free space. It isn't-- it is a very real bug. At a certain point, iTunes simply seems to decide that there is no more room on the iPod, even though there is (in my case about 5 gig). At that point it won't sync a single additional track, no matter how small. I assume, as others have, that at this point it is calculating space based on the uncompressed rate, rather than the downsampled rate. Why it should do so is mysterious, because when it began the original sync it thought there was enough room, and there in fact was.

Once this happens syncing no longer works at all; you can't add applications, photos, or anything else either, because iTunes stops syncing after giving you the capacity warning.

Restoring the iPod makes no difference, since once you re-sync the entire situation repeats itself.

If no workaround presents itself soon, we will all have to go back to not using the unusable 128 flag. In my case that halves the capacity of my iPod, since most of my music is encoded at 256.

The only factoid I can add to this discussion is that the bug seems to happen on the iPod touch (newest model) but not an older Nano, which I sync frequently at 128 without problems. But since I assume the downsampling happens in iTunes, not in the iPod, I don't think we can blame the iPod per se; it's some interaction between the two, or between iTunes and IOS 4.1.

Here's another example on a big 160GB IPOD using the 128 AAC conversion. iTunes reports 8.6GB available while the device itself reports 2GB free. When trying to load 600MB of new music, iTunes apparently gets confused with the math and complains not enough free space available.

This problem STILL exists after upgrading to iOS 4.2.1 on my iPhone.

Please everyone - submit a bug report to Apple if you haven't already!

Tony

I'm having an issue where iTunes is saying i have MORE free space than i really do. Awfully annoying. Please fix

mdiamant wrote:
I'm having an issue where iTunes is saying i have MORE free space than i really do. Awfully annoying. Please fix

Well, the problem is even if it says you have MORE space than you actually do, it actually computes you to have LESS space than you actually do, so you can't load additional media even if you have room.

I assume you are using the 128 kpbps conversion, as this is in fact a symptom of the problem that we are describing.

Tony

Add me to the list of frustrated iPod users.

I have a 2009 iMac, running iTunes 10.1, my 4th gen 64 gig iPod touch is iOS 4.2.1. Though the bar graph shows about 10 gigs of free space, I am unable to add music via sync. Like others, I am using the "compress to 128 bit AAC" option.

A complete restore to factory settings of the iPod allowed me to add music that I wanted, but because of a USB connection and the fact that iTunes has to compress the music on the fly, it was a slow (about 10 hours) process.

Until this is fixed, I'll just not add music randomly and do a restore when I have a bunch of songs to add (and a bunch of time).

This was NOT a problem with iTunes 10 and my 5th gen iPod classic (64gig).

Message was edited by: George K

Ok for the protocol:
- the bug is still present in iTunes 10.1.1
- Apple is neither willing nor able to resolve that
- Reports are NOT answered at all (should they? - dunno)
- Don't use the on the fly conversion if you don't want to see weird capacity values or even run into problems adding new content if the iPod/Pad/Phone "thinks" it is full

shame on you, Apple

Can anyone tell me if this bug is fixed in today's 10.1.2 update?

Tony

ok boyz and girlz, glitch in the matrix or not, red or blue pill, deja vu?

consider erasing/resetting your ipods/pads/whatever, and then, be patient do your 128k bit/byte? thing...... and wait, and wait more, screen/energy saver off?

franswaza wrote:
ok boyz and girlz, glitch in the matrix or not, red or blue pill, deja vu?

consider erasing/resetting your ipods/pads/whatever, and then, be patient do your 128k bit/byte? thing...... and wait, and wait more, screen/energy saver off?

I don;t understand what you are talking about. Did you test if this problem still exists in 10.1.2?

Tony

erasing/restoring does not help - i already tried that.
The slider still jumps around and finally gets "stuck" at the wrong value...

...and YES we still have the problem in 10.1.2

Yes it does still exist!!

APPLE - PLEASE FIX THIS DARN VERY OBVIOUS BUG!!

Tony

As the problem is still there in 10.2 i guess, Apple is simply unable to fix it. As a matter of fact, it makes that "on the fly" compression useless, as the free space calculation is based on the uncompressed filesize.

Irritating.