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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 3, 2012 11:35 AM in response to MartinY

That sounds like it may be a different bug. For me (and I'm assuming most of the others in the thread), iTunes (and other programs) were recognizing the full contents of the iPhoto library, along with previously deleted images in date-labeled events that iPhoto wasn't recognizing, and thus couldn't be edited/deleted. With your situation, it sounds like things are backwards - iPhoto is showing the actual photo count, but iTunes and other programs that read the iPhoto library are only detecting a small portion of it.


Wish I could help. 😟

Oct 3, 2012 11:49 AM in response to rwross1776

Thanks for the reply, thechexican. I think my problem is one half of what started this thread. My exact issue was experienced by makoto99 on 9/24/12 @ 7:48pm and rwross1776 on 10/1/12 @2:32pm. Makoto99 may have resolved his problem but his fix didn't work for me. So apparently two issues in this thread brought about by the recent iPhoto updates?

Oct 3, 2012 11:55 AM in response to rwross1776

MartinY, I exactly have the same problem as you have - the number of photos iTunes shows is totally incorrect. I got 33000 pictures in my iPhoto library, iTunes only shows up some 800...of which are 90% videos. I also had the problem with old events, but this seems to be solved now. Concerning the faces, I did not look it up if some faces are showing up several times. Regards.

Oct 3, 2012 12:26 PM in response to MartinY

Unfortunately, nope, I'm still having the problem (12k+ photos in iPhoto now, about 1500 show up in iTunes). I've tried various things since 9.4.1 hit, including Rebuilding the Library and such, and nothing helps. The AlbumData.xml simply is written incorrectly, still, and fails to include thousands of photos for some reason.


I didn't bother digging to try and determine whether there's a common factor, but it wasn't the HTML entity issue (& vs. &) that others experienced in a separate thread about slideshows. I still have no slideshows, and any ampersands in my Event or Album names are properly referenced via entity in AlbumData.xml.


So, I'm glad Apple's 9.4.1 fixed the issue(s) some people were having.


Hopefully, 9.4.2 will fix the remaining issue the rest of us are having, with photo count/content inconsistencies between iPhoto albums and other products' reading of them. And hopefully, it'll be sooner rather than later that they get around to fixing and releasing it.


Edit - also as an aside, the problem of iTunes reporting a different # of photos as what is contained in iPhoto IS part of the original bug that this thread was created for, if anyone checks the original post. It's also in the title: "...and missing photos" 😉


Message was edited by: makoto99

Oct 3, 2012 2:07 PM in response to Ian Parkinson

Good to know, because even the workaround I found with using iPhoto Library Manager isn't a complete fix. The library is cleaned up and the unwanted photos/events are gone, but iPhoto still isn't playing nice with anything else.


MarsEdit's Media Manager shows the events in random order, and the "Faces" sync'd to my phone do not display in alphabetical order - it's a giant mix of everyone I know in no particular order.

User uploaded file

Oct 4, 2012 2:32 AM in response to thechexican

The iPhoto Library Manager fix didn't work for me. It duplicated all of my albums but they just sat there not copying any photos. I eventually cancelled it and looked at the log, and it had failed on every photo it has attempted. Never mind, it was worth a try. Possibly it's because my iPhoto is at 9.4.1 and iPhoto Library Manager may only support up to 9.4. Anyway, no harm done.

Oct 4, 2012 10:34 AM in response to dackman

Oh Dackman, that really ***** to hear. I'm running a retina MacBook Pro, and I keep all of my stuff up to date; I'm on the latest version of Mountain Lion (10.8.2?) and the latest iPhoto (9.4.1), and the iPhoto Library Manager trial cleaned up my library's events nicely and got rid of all the ones that weren't showing up inside of iPhoto:


My screencap of the MarsEdit Media Manager in the last post didn't have the "Events" expanded. I noticed that just now, and see that it now matches my iPhoto Library exactly - all the events are in proper order, and there's no longer any extra events in open dialogs/iTunes with previously deleted photos. In other words, my workaround ended up completely fixing my issue with the events in my iPhoto library.


User uploaded file


It's disappointing to hear that my solution didn't work for you. Now I feel lucky, and even more frustrated with Apple over this problem that shouldn't even exist.

Oct 5, 2012 8:40 AM in response to dackman

Okay, I had to quit iPhoto Library Manager because it was stuck, so I restarted iPhoto and rebuilt the library in that.


The library is 40Gb smaller, BUT has lost all rotations, so could have lost all colour corrections etc. as well. It's also lost all the Faces.


Oh well, it was an experiment and it was non-destructive.


Come on Apple, we're waiting!

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

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