iTunes 11.0.1 stops working wile playing movies or music...

In the last few days iTunes has stopped working as it once did ( I'm not referring to v10 ). Playing music, watching a podcast or a movie... After a few seconds / minutes / hours... iTunes seems to be paused, sometimes it starts playing again other times the death circle starts spinning and it's finished. When I force quit iTunes there is no message saying iTunes is not responding, but it's not responding regardless. Once iTunes is reopened it will play where it left off for several seconds / minutes / hours...

I tunes is v 11.0.1

OS 10.8.2

I tunes is playing from my iMac's internal HD. I've tried a full shutdown of the computer. Checking for updates and looking over the communities for help. I have to ask. Please help.

Thank you,