iTunes match crashing at step 3. Win7 x64 iTunes v10.6.3.25

Question

Level 1

34 points

iTunes match crashing at step 3. Win7 x64 iTunes v10.6.3.25

I'm having the same problem as so many other people it seems - part of my library is matched and now I'm stuck with a constantly-crashing iTunes when it gets to step 3. I've checked for zero-length files or tracks where the track length is invalid - all clear. Checked for tracks that have their match status showing as 'error' - don't have any of those. I've really come to a dead end here - any other tips or advice?

I spent a while using sysinternals process monitor to see if I could find the source of the problem and it was always tripping up on a certain track recently ripped from CD (using iTunes). So I deleted that track and it crashed again but on a different track. After a while it became clear that it was all my long tracks that are causing the problem - and I have several hundred tracks that are over an hour long - DJ mixes, mix albums, stuff like that. Given that I'm not going to delete all these tracks (as I don't have sources to many of them any more) just to get iTunes match to work, is there any way I can flag these ones as "don't match" so they get skipped? Or any way I can take the remaining short tracks and force iTunes to manually match those?

Or am I just S.O.L until Apple admit there's a problem with very long tracks, and try to fix it?

iPhone 4S, Windows 7

Posted on Sep 1, 2012 2:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Sep 2, 2012 8:48 PM in response to chrisell

I don't see the long tracks as being a problem. If the tracks file size is below 200mb then they will upload but will take sigficantly longer. I have A LOT of long tracks. Some as long as 2 hours long but the file size is below 200mb. If your file sizes are larger than that they will become ineligible. You can change this by change your import settings and picking the create acc version under the advanced tab. I haven't noticed a lot of different things that may cause things to glitch up in my experience. I've don't about 6 different people's match accounts and windows seems to give a lot more problems than MAC does. Which would seem about right given that this an apple product. But if you will try taking your tracks that are messing it up and let itunes create a new acc version match will probably accept it.

There is no way to flag anything and tell iTunes match not to upload it. If it is in the library then it will try to be uploaded. There also is no way to force iTunes match to upload certain songs without doing all of them. If it seems that iTunes match is crashing then just restart is and see if it is a certain song and try the creating a new file method described above and a lot times it will go ahead and upload. as I said I have a lot of really long tracks and they all get uploaded eventually but it takes a lot longer.

You can delete the tracks out of itunes and do not press the move to recyle bin just press the keep file button and you can reimport them again later on. You do not loose your music by deleting from itunes unless you press the button that says move to recycle bin. Which you could get back out of the recycle bin if you don't empty it before you realize what you've done. Always check whats in your recycle bin before you empty it.

Reply

Answer 2

chrisell Author

Level 1

34 points

Sep 3, 2012 7:56 AM in response to carltonfrombedford

I don't have the time to sit and find several hundred tracks and re-encode them to AAC. The tracks it has trouble with are all about 2hrs long, MP3, 256kbps bit rate with file sizes about 220Mb. None of them show as 'ineligible' (which according to Apple they should) and that I think is the problem. iTunes for whatever reason thinks these are eligible tracks, when they really aren't, and then chokes when it tries to upload them.

I tried deleting the tracks from iTunes but not from the disk and it then greyed out all the tracks as if they were already on the cloud and gave me a cloud download icon. Of course when I clicked that, iTunes crashed because it's never uploaded the files.

I think Match is a good idea but I think they rushed it to market - it's just not really ready - has far too many problems. Lets hope these get addressed on September 12th.

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 19, 2012 6:16 AM in response to chrisell

I'm having the same trouble. Just bought Transatlantic's More Never Is Enough and the first song is 1 hour and 20 minutes. Itunes match is crashing on step 3 every time. Not sure what to do.

Reply

Answer 4

Sep 25, 2012 12:16 PM in response to chrisell

I'm still having the same issue with long tracks. This wasn't a problem a while back but itunes crashes consistently right now when uploading long tracks. The latest itunes update didn't fix the issue - is a patch coming?

Reply

Answer 5

chrisell Author

Level 1

34 points

Sep 25, 2012 12:38 PM in response to Panda Scout

I'm with you - the latest update didn't cure my issues and it's always long tracks that do it. I don't know about a patch but I know they've basically re-written iTunes for the next release. Whether they've changed anything in the underlying match code to allow long tracks? Guess we'll have to wait and see. I'm within a couple of weeks of cancelling my match subscription - the hassle outweighs the benefits, especially when half your library won't parse or upload.

Reply

Answer 6

AndyB7

Level 1

0 points

Sep 30, 2012 12:33 PM in response to chrisell

I also was having this problem but I checked all my short length songs and they didn't appear to be causing an issue. This is how I eventually fixed it.

1. I copied all of the 'iCloud Waiting' songs to a playlist.

2. Next I use Home Sharing to copy them to another computer.

3. Removed all of the songs in the 'iCloud Waiting' playlist from my library and deleted the files.

4. On the other computer I broke the list of about 500 songs into several smaller playlists of about 100 songs each.

4. Signed out of itunes store.

5. Signed back in to itunes store.

6. Enabled iTunes Match and let it sync with nothing left waiting.

5. Then one playlist at a time I could copy them back to the original computer and told it to sync iCloud.

6. After the one playlist was finished I would copy the next over and start a sync again. That helped me narrow down where my problem was occuring.

It turns out that one of my songs had an accent character in the artist name and this appears to have been causing my crash. Not sure how they get by with that in Europe, but I removed the accent e character and replaced it with a standard US e. Then it synced fine.

Hope that helps!

-Andy

Reply

Answer 7

Dec 8, 2012 7:48 AM in response to chrisell

Thanks Andy, but we shouldn't have to do this work around. This is part of the reason I am moving my stuff to Apple, I just haven't gotten to my PC's yet. This is ridiculous. It doesn't matter WHAT we have in our libraries, iTunes Match should NOT crash. Apple had better get on top of this. It's pretty widespread apparently.

Reply

Answer 8

Dec 9, 2012 5:44 PM in response to iWillNotEatGreenEggsandHam

Just to update everyone, I simply kept at it. I rebooted a few times, I found a file that was a PDF but was listed in the library and deleted it, I made sure my computer wouldn't sleep or powersave, etc. Nothing really worked, then this morning, I tried it again and it worked. All of my songs are now available. Sorry I can't offer anything more.

Reply

Answer 9

chrisell Author

Level 1

34 points

Dec 11, 2012 6:35 PM in response to chrisell

Finally updated to the new iTunes. Problem is still very much there - Match still crashes at step 4. Same problem - doesn't like long tracks over an hour. I've pretty much given up with this now and pulled my Match subscription. It's more trouble than it's worth. If it properly worked, like Apple of the good old days, it would be fine. But it's so buggy and slow and causes so many problems (like 80% of my library won't sync because of the step 4 crash) that it's just not worth the money. Such a shame because it sounded like a great idea.

Reply

Answer 10

johnish

Level 1

7 points

Dec 13, 2012 11:22 AM in response to chrisell

Win7, iTunes 11.0.0.163

Mine crashes every time on Match step 3. This is really upsetting me. I was hoping this would be better than Amazon Clouds Music but it's worse.

Reply

Answer 11

Jan 3, 2013 4:41 PM in response to chrisell

I have this same issue. Pretty much every long track (~50m or greater) causes Match to crash whilst uploading. I have resorted to turning Match off in order to avoid the persistent crashing.

This seems to have been an issue for many months now. Having to perfrom multi-step "work arounds" is simply unacceptable for a paid service such as this.

Solution to this problem: drop iTunes Match and look elsewhere.

Reply

Answer 12

Aug 2, 2013 5:56 AM in response to chrisell

Hey buddy ! after strugling for three entire days on this i finally realized that, besides all those points everyone mentioned like, removing problematic files, etc.... you REALLY should turn off itunes match on any other device than the one you´re doing the "first upload" of your library... after that you should not find any problem and could then activate itunes match on how many devices you want... that should work... =)...

Reply