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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 6, 2012 12:47 PM in response to rwross1776

Here is another indication what maybe goes wrong. I did with "iPhoto Library Manager" a "Rebuild Library..." and it came up with the message shown atttached. It seems that the original library is corrupt for some reasons. However, it is the same library as it was before all those updates. Now I am stucked and dont know what to do!


User uploaded file

Oct 7, 2012 5:07 AM in response to akoe

Well, my solution to all this *****, but it has worked.


I created folders on my desktop, dragged each event into a folder - it took a long time as I have 321 events - created a new iPhoto library and dragged them all back in.


The result? An iPhoto library that is 69Gb compared to the original 136Gb, and that works properly in iTunes. Now, I realise that I can't load iPhoto, click on a photo and restore it to a previous version, because I have lost all that data (actually, I haven't as I backed up the big version) but honestly, do I really want to remove red eye and unrotate my pics, or remove the colour correction I applied? No, I don't.


I'm going through adding Faces again right now, but it's not as bad a task as I thought it would be. All in all, I think it's taken about a day and a half. I'm very pleased with the enormous saving of HD space, and iPhoto is much faster. I can't help thinking there must have been a lot of redundant data in my library, maybe that was confusing iTunes.


I had no albums, or they would be lost. I had no slideshows etc. either. I lost a few photobooks I've bought in the past but I'm not bothered, and the Facebook albums are gone too, but that doesn't bother me, as they are on Facebook anyway. Talk about an enforced springclean.


However, it's still pretty crappy of Apple to put me (and you) in this position.


'It just works' - my a**e.

Oct 7, 2012 11:27 AM in response to antoniofrombakersfield

Yes. Just select the following in the File ➙ Export pane:

User uploaded file


However, it won't include faces. But if you want to create a new library you can use the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager to copy Events from the current library to the new one and that will include the following:

User uploaded file


This will copy all versions of the photo to the new library.

Oct 7, 2012 11:59 AM in response to dackman

It's tempting and I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons. It looks like I'll lose my ratings, but I can make smart albums with individual photo ratings and then rename those photos so that they are easily distinguishable. It looks like I'll also have to seperately drag and drop all my movies out of iPhoto as they don't correctly export - but that too shouldn't be too hard.


So is losing (1), "Faces", (2) Original uneditted photos and (3) Event Key Photos all I'm going to lose? Other than hopefully a bunch of GBs!


With 30,000+ photos, 200+ events and lifetime of memories I'm nervous as I've spent a lot of of time orginizing the iPhoto.


Oh wait, I'll also lose (4) Slideshows, (5) Books, (6) Calendars, (7) Smart Albums (which I should be able to easily recreate).


Other things I'm missing?

Oct 8, 2012 2:02 AM in response to antoniofrombakersfield

I had the problem of ghost events tuning up in iTunes and thought i had fixed it with the latest update. I then realised that not all photos were being synced to my iPad.

I then found iPhoto crashing constantly, I tried all the usual rebuilding the database etc but nothing worked. Reading the posts above i decided to copy all the events to the desktop and create a new library.

22,000 photos

Original Library size 155.98 GB

New Library size 102.82 GB (what was in the extra 53 GB????)


But loosing faces is a bit of a pain after spending hours. I have also lost all the Keywords, albums, ratings etc but the spring clean has made iPhoto stable and iTunes now sees all the photos

Oct 8, 2012 2:07 AM in response to Guy - UK

I didn't realise that keywords were lost, I mistakenly thought they were buried in the metadata of the photo like the locations. Oh well...


Redoing Faces made me realise just how badly I had done Faces to start with. It's much better now.


The 53Gb you have gained, Guy, would have contained all the iterations of the photos you have rotated, adjusted, red-eyed, colour corrected etc. You will now not be able to load a photo in and restore it to a previous version. But who wants to anyway?


It also contained the iPhone / iPad optmised versions of the photos, so when you sync the library will increase in size again, but not by 53Gb.

Oct 10, 2012 9:15 PM in response to Ira Wolf 81

i was having issue where the *album* sort in iphoto was not being carried over to itunes (except i was able to resort 1 album in iphoto and it showed up that way in itunes - but i couldn't get the others to follow suit and i lost track of exactly how i did it).


i followed ira w's "sort technique" of my albums - one by one - in iphoto and it worked in itunes.


yaaaaaaaa ira w!


there needs to be a "refresh" command to sync iphoto with itunes to push to the iphone AND apple tv. it's way to tricky to get recently imported photos to appear on apple tv without "tricking" it...


good luck everyone else.

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

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