All the content from my iTunes library has disappeared

Did you follow the steps as given earlier? It should recover all playlists that were in your library when the backup or .tmp file was generated, and prevent confusion with cloud copies.

tt2

Yes, there were no .tmp or backup files and no old library files. My backup is my iPod. Presumably the only thing I can do is delete iTunes from my hard drive and use SharePod again to restore from my iPod.

I have three parallel copies of my library, and haven't personal every had a problem, so my experience with iPod recovery tools is limited to some track only recoveries I've done for others. My guess is that playlist recovery works as the same tracks are copied into the library. A while back I wrote a script called SyncStats that can import stats from an iPod even when it was originally populated with a different library. I've been thinking about extending that idea for playlist import, but so far nobody has pressed me to produce on the offer.

Obviously you can only recover what is on the device so I wouldn't delete everything. Have you scanned the media folder for new content, and considered other locations you may have things stored things in? Video files may have ended up in the new Home Movies section of the library.

tt2

I don't have a Home Movies section of the library. This is what I have visible on the left side of the screen:

LIBRARY

Music

Movies

TV Shows

Apps

STORE

iTunes Store

SHARED

Home Sharing

GENIUS

Genius

PLAYLISTS

90's Music

Classical Music

My Top Rated

Recently Added

Recently Played

Top 25 Most Played

All of the playlists are from iTunes, not me.

Click into Movies. Across the top should be Unwatched, Movies, Genres, Home Videos, List - although you might not have the last one.

tt2

Thanks. I have all of those, but they're all empty. However, the actual video files are on my hard drive in the artist folder under My Music. It's just that none of them show up in my iTunes library listing.

And File > Add Folder to Library > <Media Folder> doesn't add them back in? 😕

tt2

I don't have a folder called "Media Folder" within the MyMusic folder system.

Sorry, assumptions. The < > symbols are a shorthand indended to suggest that you should "decode" what is inside for your purposes. Your media folder might be called "iTunes Media", "iTunes Music", or something completely different.

tt2

Hold on. I found something. Here is my folder structure on my PC:

-- My Music

-- dozens and dozens of subfolder alphabetically by artist name

-- iTunes

-- Album Artwork

-- Cache...

-- Cloud Purchases...

-- Download...

-- iTunes Media

-- Automatically Add to iTunes

-- Downloads

-- Mobile Applications

-- Music...

-- TV Shows...

So I should do: File > Add Folder to Library > My Music > iTunes > iTunes Media ???

Yes.

tt2

And it will repopulate my library without duplicating anything already listed?

Thanks for your remarkable patience.

Indeed.

(Unless your library is liberally scattered with playlist files in which case see KillTopLevelPlaylists for a clean-up tool.)

tt2

Did that. I loaded a bunch of Apps into that folder in iTunes, many of which I've deleted from the iPhone I downloaded them to originally. No videos were added to my iTunes Library and none of my Playlists were restored.

Boo. You can clean up the unwanted apps by putting the Apps section into list view and deleting the recently added apps. At this point it seems there is no telling where the lost video files are. 😕

As given earlier the way to restore your lost playlists would be from a backed up .itl file or with mixed chances of success, a renamed .tmp file. If neither are avaialble then we're back to seeing if they can be extracted from the iPod. Let me look at the scripting option.

tt2