Broken iTunes files

Question

Broken iTunes files

hi all

had my iTunes library HDD fail on me a while back got new drive and used a recovery program to restore everything off old drive ......all show up fine but when i go to play some of them they start fine but then stop mid play.

Is there a program i can use that will scan all my .mp4 and video files in my iTunes drive and find/repair broken/corrupt files (i have 3.4tb of tv shows on my iTunes drive ) so going through every episode to see what ones play and what ones don't would be very time consuming . Really don't want to delete all and rebuild library from scratch .

any help gratefully received and appreciated :-)

iMac with Retina 5K display, iOS 11.2.1

Posted on Jan 5, 2018 7:07 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

428,441 points

Jan 5, 2018 9:09 AM in response to derek stewart

I am not optimistic. If you search the web for "video repair tool mac" you will find some hits. I have no idea if they are any good (and anything that has "wondershare" in it -- well there used to be a lot of postings to this site for their other tools as "solutions" for things which iTunes already had built-in and felt a bit like spam to me).

Are these iTunes Store videos? I don't know if the fact they have DRM protection will affect the ability of a tool to repair those.

If they are regular videos you may see if simple meddling with free/shareware tools will help. You can try re-packing them with a tool such as Subler. If the video data is corrupt then nothing will help but if only the package data is corrupt a tool like that may be able to repackage the tracks if their data is okay.

You can also try to play them with various tools such as VLC which may be more tolerant to minor corruption.

Now you know why I have two weekly backups of all my media on separate HDDs, plus I run a Time Machine style backup that means I am never more than 3 hours behind.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 5, 2018 9:09 AM in response to Limnos

hi thanks for reply :-)

kinda thought it would be like that have tried to find repair tools etc but they all seemed linked or actually recovery type programs

TV shows are not iTunes purchases mostly DVD rips from collection to iTunes

have seen that vlc has some form of repair option so will have a look at that , agree re back ups i do back up my iTunes but had major issue with HDD during that time (2 failures within a week ) but all sorted now and backed up with time machine and external back up of iTunes weekly

thanks again :-)

Reply