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iTunes sync issues with iPhoto 9.4 (extra empty photo events and missing photos)

I post this once above but it got swarmed with the larger xml related issue that prevented syncing at all. Not complaining, just wanted to revisit this other issue now that folks are mostly able to get their syncing started. I'm pretty sure this, too, is an xml related issue. To that end, can anyone point to where iTunes is getting it's list of iPhoto Events and Albums? **


I believe we are all experiencing variants of the same issue.


Here is mine and I'd ask if others are seeing this specific issue as well.


With an iOS device attached, and looking at the photos tab, I see a number of Events with questionable names that seem to be old data from somewhere. They look like the name of test events I may have made and delted over the years. Regardless...they are are empty.


I then checked the Advanced tab within iTunes and used the share photos option I use to stream photos to my TV and the same empty Events are there too.


These first two are annoying...and now comes the really troubling part.


For the Events that are not blank and look like the ones in my iPhoto library, many of these events are not reporting the same number of photos as does iPhoto. For example, an event named "Beach" in iphoto consists of 100 photos, but that same event when selected within iTunes only has 85 photos in it. When iTunes sync'ed the first time it reported XXX items could not be sync'ed check iTunes. That error message has not yet reoccurred but I can confirm that only the 85 photos sync'ed not the 100 that are present on my iPhoto 9.4 library.


If I drag the entire contents of that same 100 photo event to the desktop and then drag it back into iPhoto, iTunes will then recognize it as containing the full 100 photos. But...of course you lose all tags, face data, etc.


I'm not yet prepared to do this major surgery, but does anyone have other ideas?


One additional thing I noted...remember that there were always more pictures in the iPhoto Event than in the iTunes list for that Event. Well, I noted that all the images that were missing from iTunes and thus my iOS device, pretty much sucked. Why is that important? It seems like they might have been pictures I previously deleted but that iPhoto still has in the Event even though iTunes doesn't "see" them.


Conversely, it seems like iTunes is seeing old Events that I had long since deleted from previous incarnations of iPhoto.


Anyway...if you have a moment check out your iTunes list of Events and Albums to see if 1) there are extraneous Events listed there and 2) if the number of pictures in those events matches the same number reported by iPhoto.


thanks!!

iMac (27-inch Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Sep 21, 2012 4:18 PM

Reply
149 replies

Feb 25, 2013 1:24 PM in response to thinkmilo

That's a lot of unnecessary work to do that. Give this a try if you want to start ofver from scratch:


Starting over from scratch with new library


Start over with a new library and import the Originals (iPhoto 09 and earlier) or the Masters (iPhoto 11) folder from your original library as follows:


1. Open the library package like this.


User uploaded file



2. Launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and, when asked, select the option to create a new library.


3. Drag the subfolders of the Originals (iPhoto 09 and earlier) or the Masters (iPhoto 11) folder from the open iPhoto Library package into the open iPhoto window a few at a time.


User uploaded file



This will create a new library with the same Events (but not necessarily the same Event names) as the original library but will not keep the metadata, albums, books slideshows and other projects.


Note: your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.

Apr 23, 2013 3:23 AM in response to rwross1776

I still had phantom single-date events with one photo in each showing in iTunes but not in iPhoto even after upgrading to iTunes v11.0.2 and iPhoto v9.4.3. The problem had been there for me for several months and updating all the apps made no difference. I was reluctant to try some of the suggestins here as that would involve loosing years of iPhoto work.


So I did some lateral thinking and had the idea that, since Aperture and iPhoto can open each other's libraries it might be worth a try to open the troublesome iPhoto library in Aperture. This won't be suitable for everyone of course as you need access to Aperture, but it worked on my library.


In Aperture the phantom events showed up and I was able to delete them (and empty the trash before leaving Aperture). Back in iPhoto everything looked OK and they had gone in iTunes. After syncing they had gone from the iPad.


This might be worth a try if you have some access to Aperture. Make sure you have a good back-up of the library before trying this of course.


Message was edited by: Nigel Goodman to correct spelling!

Apr 26, 2013 10:00 PM in response to Nigel Goodman

The Aperture trick worked for me. All the phantom events showed up in Aperture and when I hovered over them they showed zero contents but when I selected and deleted them, the trash filled with images from them. I deleted the Aperture trash then dragged the images out of the finder trash to a folder on the desktop to make sure that I wasn't tossing out my only copy of something. All the images were intact and were openable in Photoshop etc. I opened iTunes and the phantom events were gone. I'll have to go through and make sure all the images I rescued from the trash are in my iPhoto Library but it looks like they were all images that I had deleted previously in iPhoto. There's just one leftover from all this and that's 3 folders named "Recovered Folder (1,2 & 3)" under Albums in the iTunes Photos tab that I would like to get rid of. They don't show up in iPhoto. Well done Nigel! I'm now off to the Genius Bar to tell the guy there about this as his only advice was to rebuild the database and if that didn't work, to export all the images to a folder and start a new library.

Jun 19, 2013 11:52 AM in response to rwross1776

I think I've found a solution everyone... if you have Aperture installed as well! I wanted to try to remove iPhoto and redownload from Appstore to see if this may help, after many attempts to delete specific .plist files or rebuild/repairing library and after editing .xml data was unable to resolve the issue of "phantom events" showing in iTunes.


Turns out with Aperture, the solution is a breeze. When I had deleted iPhoto, I double-clicked the iPhoto Library and opened it in Aperture. AMAZINGLY, the phatom events were present under projects! I deleted the projects (which showed photos, but totaled 0) and after opening up the iPhoto Library again in iPhoto, VOILA! The next time I launched iTunes, the events were removed, and I was finally able to sync all photos and events on my iOS devices 🙂


I don't know if I had opened the library at some point in Aperture and photostream synced them in as projects and the slight differences in photo management between the two programs prevented me from ever seeing these in iPhoto, and if this makes my circumstances unique when compared to the rest of those with this issue, but this definitely worked for me! I'll be providing the feedback to Apple though!

iTunes sync issues with iPhoto 9.4 (extra empty photo events and missing photos)

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