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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

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149 replies

Oct 2, 2012 5:47 PM in response to rwross1776

Has anyone solved the events sort order issue yet with itunes/iphone synch? I've always had ascending order in iPhoto and the list in iTunes refuses to recognize it. I've done all the fixes and nothing works. It's really like iPhoto 9.4.1 and iTunes are not "talking" to each other. Hoping apple comes out with another patch, but there's always a chance a preference or cache could be the problem so looking for others in the same boat.


Thanks, Keith

iPhone 4S, iOS 6, iTunes 10.7 on iMac Lion 10.7.5

Oct 3, 2012 1:17 AM in response to kshapiroeditor

The update to 9.4.1 has sortde out my issue whith phantom events appearing in iTunes, and as i didnt have the issue with faces it is all good for me (sorry to those who still have a problem)


I do still have the issue of events in iTunes and apple tv being out of order. I have changed my events in iPhoto to be alphabetical but show in date order in iTunes and apple tv. a bit of a pain but i can live with it, if that is the only proplem..

Oct 3, 2012 11:02 AM in response to antoniofrombakersfield

I tried attacking the problem again this morning, and I ended up on an article on iPhoto Library Mangement that linked to an application called iPhoto Library Manager. It's $20, but I decided to give the trial a shot anyway.


Once I installed it, I poked around to see all of the options it had, but didn't administer any changes. I finally settled on using the "Rebuild Library" option in the file menu of the toolbar. Now, it may be just because my iPhoto library is relatively small (only 48 events, with an average of about 20 photos for each), but I haven't run into any trial limitations.


It's still working, but all of those "phantom" events are now actually showing up in iPhoto. Going to go through the library and check its integrity (make sure everything got imported). Once that's done, I'll delete the unwanted events and sync this new library to my phone.


Hopefully, it works. If it does, it's pretty sad that the solution to the problem comes not from Apple, but from a third-party software developer. I'll check back with the results.

Oct 3, 2012 11:30 AM in response to thechexican

Well, it seems to have worked. The iPhoto Library Manager makes a log output that you can view in OSX Console. For my library, it said that 17 images couldn't be imported. I looked through the rebuilt library, and all of my videos and photos are there (I didn't care enough to go hunting for those 17, and decided to cut my loss with whatever those pictures are).


One thing I noticed is that the rebuilt library is about 1GB smaller than my original library was. Guess all of that junk data iPhoto was storing added up. Syncing the rebuilt library to my phone, and although the images are still transferring, those "phantom" events and the pictures in them are gone (which I assumed would be the case after finally being able to delete them in iPhoto).


As such, I'm going to recommend this approach as a fix for the problem, at least for those who are having issues with "Events". I would think it would also work for those having issues with "Faces".


🙂

Oct 3, 2012 11:30 AM in response to rwross1776

FWIW, the 9.4.1 update resolved my problem with the multiple, empty, date-titled events. Unfortunatlely, I'm still having the problem with iPhoto showing the correct number of pictures (2,790) but iTunes reporting and syncing only 627. After looking at this and a number of other threads, I installed iPhoto Library Manager and ran the Rebuild Library command. The rebuilt library, "Default (rebuilt)", only contained 627 items - duplicating what I see in iTunes. The interesting thing is iPhoto Library Manager showed the "Default" library also with 627 photos and not 2,790. However, if I went back into iPhoto using the "Default" library, it showed all 2,790 photos.


So I'm wondering if the 9.4 and/or 9.4.1 update(s) have irreparibly damaged my iPhoto library? I have backups of all these pictures along with Time Machine backups. I haven't tried a Time Machine restore to 3.9, but maybe that's the next thing to try. There has been a lot of discussion about the empty events issue, but is anyone still experiencing the problem of iTunes reporting an incorrect number of photos?

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

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