Match is Crashing My iTunes

Hey Diggit!

Yo! So you're not alone! I'm having the exact same problem - running on Win 7 64bit, with the same crash in codeaudiotoolbox, with the same module version & crash offset. I've also deleted all my errored files thinking maybe they just had some bad VBR encoding or something. I even complete uninstalled all Apple software and reinstalled a fresh copy of iTunes but still no luck.

Looking through the debug log doesn't show much information, and neither does the event viewer log.

I think it's something related to one or several of my songs because I had it working initially and got about 5000 songs indexed before it crashed, and now whenever it gets to step 3 of matching/uploading, I get this exact crash. I'll keep looking into it and let you know if I find any success.

-T

Okay! So I think I found a solution... at least, Match has now gotten past that point at the beginning where it crashes immediately at stage 3! (As an aside, I realized that I'm actually running this copy of iTunes that's crashing on my winXP box, not win7 - I'm just remoting into the box from win7).

Anyways, the problem seems to be corrupted audio files that cause some sort of crash in the CoreAudioToolbox module. After a bunch of different attempts, I finally was able to figure out how to tell which file it was crashing on using the DrWatson32 tool.

I know Win7 does things a bit differently, but you actually may not need to even run any sort of debugging. Try starting up iTunes, stopping any Match operations that might get started up automatically, and then sort your iTunes library Ascending by the 'iCloud Status' column (should have status messages like 'Waiting', 'Removed', 'Uploaded', etc).

Then, try deleting (or just removing from your library so Match won't scan) the first file you see with the 'Waiting' status, and re-run Match. This is what fixed my issue - that file I deleted was super corrupted! Since deleting it, Match is proceeding correctly (already uploaded 61 files so far, whereas it was immediately crashing at step 3).

Hope this helps! If not, you might want to try some of the Win7 debugging stuff to find out which file iTunes is on when Match crashes and remove/delete it as it's probably the one causing the issues.

All right, so after getting this error again (on a different file this time), I've realized that the offending file may not necessarily be any particular place in the iTunes list (or sort order). Instead, the most reliable way is to try to get a crash dump from iTunes & find out which file iTunes was processing when it crashed and then check the integrity of that file. Removing it or resolving issue with it should cause Match to properly upload the rest of your content. If multiple files have issues, they will each need to be resolved before Match can continue. I've done this with two different files so far, and since then, Match has continued to work properly.

I'm not entirely sure as I think it differs based on the app and the nature of the crash. Since I was running winXP, I'm not sure where the iTunes on Win7 puts its crash dump - but this post explains common locations for it:

http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/81006-automatically-generate-crash- dump-after-appcrash.html#post707826

However, what I *HAVE* noticed each time Match crashes is that it's trying to upload a file that is reported to have an invalid length in iTunes. For instance, the last file that it crashed on had an actual length of around 1:28:53, but when viewed in iTunes, it said its length was only 0:10. HOWEVER, once I clicked on the song in iTunes, it updated the length properly in iTunes, and Match didn't crash the next time I ran it.

So my theory is that Match in large part goes off of the metadata in your iTunes library file, and that it crashes when the length stored in the library file differs from the actual track length of the file itself.

I don't have a 100% fix for sure but if I go to my iTunes library & sort by length, several tracks appear with completely wrong lengths, most under 0:10-0:20 (whereas the tracks are actually fine and have regular lengths).

So my solution at this point is to sort my library by track length, highlight the first track, and then just manually highlight all subsequent tracks one at a time up until the point where the tracks start getting to the point where all lengths that iTunes displays are legitimate (around the 0:20-0:30 range).

Not 100% sure if this will work for you but might be easier than trying to track down a crash log.

So glad I could help. Took me long enough but I had to figure out a resolution for myself as well! Hopefully anyone else who comes across this issue will find this post helpful too, if the bug isn't fixed by then!

-T

I am having the same problem, but I have a quesion about the solution. In iTunes, I don't see a column labelled Track Length. I see Size, but that doesn't have the info you are describing. Where should I be looking for Track Length? I really appreciate any help.

Hey Christine,

To view the Track Length column, in iTunes, right/context click on any column name at the top - you should see a popup menu appear with a long list of columns that you can show or hide by selecting them. So in this case, you just need to turn on the "Time" column and you should be able to see the length of all your songs - and find the ones that look like they're 0:00 or 0:01 and follow the other steps as above. Hope this helps!

-T

Unfortunately, that didn't work for me. But thanks for your help.,

thank you, you have been very helpful and I too hope to have my itunes match working soon!