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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

Sep 27, 2012 2:24 PM in response to rwross1776

I wonder if any of you have been using Aperture as well since they went to the unified library? I have also seen this issue in iTunes when trying to sync my photos to devices, where there are a bunch of duplicate empty events or albums that were actually deleted but still "showing" in iTunes. I thought it was related to a massive reorganization I have been doing in Aperture and it sort of is I think, but I was able to make these go away by doing something in aperture:


First my setup: I originally had an iPhoto library. When Apple moved to unified library I tried Aperture out and in the end am moving to Aperture. So I am directly opening my pre-existing iphoto library in Aperture. The way it works is that iTunes/iLife apps still recognize it as an "iPhoto" library when sharing even though I use Aperture on it. I did not re-import the iPhoto library into Aperture and still on occasion switch between the two.


Now I have been trying to consolidate all my hundreds of events from iPhoto into something more manageable (like monthly archives similar to how photostream creates monthly events now). This also makes it much much easier to navigate on Apple TV. In doing this reorganization I necessarily have to combine and split projects (there are a few different ways of doing this) but I've noticed that for example if I've got an existing event that needs to be split into say two different aperture projects (the aperture event equivalent) and I move selected images from one project to the new one, such that the original project is now "empty", it will leave behind a ghost project, that itself needs to be deleted.


So back to iTunes: SOME of the ghost projects that I see listed in iTunes were in the trash, and emptying the trash got rid of them. But some of them were deleted and NOT in the trash but still listed, and corresponded to some of the odd dates of ghost events created when I was merging projects (eg Dec 9, 2011 was popular for some reason). I could not figure out what was going on since these were not in the project sidebar and not in the trash, but in Aperture you can global search projects in the sidebar and when I do this....my ghost projects magically appear in the sidebar! Now if I reselect them and re-delete them, re-empty the trash, they will disappear from iTunes at last as well. I still can't get Itunes to respect the sort order though of events (ascending vs descending)...that one is next.


So if any of you have the latest Aperture as well you may have luck too (unless I am mistaken I don't see that iPhoto will search the sidebar where all the events are listed like Aperture does).

Sep 30, 2012 8:57 AM in response to rwross1776

Guys, I am having exactly the same issue.


When synking Photos using iTunes 10.7 I can see many empty events with repeting dates (like, September 25, September 25, etc...)


So I can't choose to sync the newest 5 events as it synks this empty events and nothing is showing up on my iPhone.

I tried to fix the iPhoto library by opening with command + option key, (I tried all the options in there) and nothing happends.


I hope Apple fix this soon, is definitely a bug.

Oct 1, 2012 2:32 PM in response to Kosimo

Well, it appears today's iPhoto update to 9.4.1 fixed HALF the problem.


Looking for the community to confirm...


So, all the duplicate Events with the silly names appear to have vanished back from whence they came....which is good.


However, the mismatch of pictures between what is reported by an Event in iPhoto and what is reported by an Event in iTunes remains.


For example iPhoto is reporting my 2012 Family event as having 394 pictures in it. iTunes reports that same event as having 246 pictures.


Albumdata.xml still seems to be the culprit here although when I search that file, it reports 2012 Family has having 269 pictures in it, which neither iTunes nor iPhoto agrees with.


Here are some screen caps to illustrate...



User uploaded fileUser uploaded file


Can anyone else confirm this behavior?

Oct 1, 2012 2:36 PM in response to rwross1776

I ran the newest iPhoto update.


It made it better but in no way fixed it.


The update removed most of the random events that were showing up in iTunes. However at least 2 dozen or so remain.


The update did nothing about the random faces I have in iTunes.


The update did nothing about events not syncing to the phone in alphabetical order.


Total fail.


Screen shot with random events still there.


User uploaded file

Oct 1, 2012 3:07 PM in response to rwross1776

So, actually, despite iTunes reporting that it was about to sync 246 pictures...see my post above...it actually sync'ed 269 pictures which is the same number I found in Albumdata.xml.


So...


  1. iPhoto is not writing Albumdata.xml correctly based on what it is reporting via its main interface (394 pics)
  2. iTunes is not displaying correctly what is IN albumdata.xml (246)
  3. iOS device syncs based on the number in albumdata.xml (269) which matches neither iPhoto nor iTunes


What a mess...

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

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