iTunes suddenly cannot find any of my music or videos. I was cleaning up my drives and did not delete *anything* that was labeled as an iTunes or library file, but all my videos (and there are many) and music (and there is a lot) is no longer in the library (the names are there but it says the files cannot be located. I *did not move them. This will take days to restore if I have to do it manually. Is there any other way?
There are three main approaches you can take when there are missing links in the library. You can try to move the files to where iTunes thinks they should be, you can try to use a script to predict where the file is and if found tell iTunes the new location, or you can import the files from their new locations and then deduplicate, discarding the items with the broken links. Some metadata such as rating, dated added, play count, playlist membership, etc. lives only in the iTunes library, so this is lost if you reimport the lost content and clean up. I have a script called DeDuper which can preserve some of this information, but not date added. Video files may also lose some properties that would normally be captured in tags for mp3 or aac files. There is a slim possibility that the DeDuper script won't be able to match your reimported files but again that is something that might be tweaked if needed.
I've updated FindTracks to give it a chance of finding your TV Shows if you start the search from E:\Handbrake. If you don't have any luck could you post a screenshot of running my GetInfo script against one of those Colombo episodes, or an episode where if doesn't work, so I can see what information there is to work with?
tt2
Double-click on it as you would to open or run anything else.
tt2
Indeed it is! I have started reinputting data manually and boy is that slow. I'll stand down and wait for your magic. Good night and thank you.
I thought you'd already got a library where music was working properly so we were only dealing with repairs to TV shows in that library?
tt2
Here are screenshots from an April archive, which has specific listings but no connection to content, and generic listings (the file I am currently using/rebuilding)
ah. I see now. Ok, here is same Matlock entry in the two iTunes libraries.
easier to read version:
Ok, tried grouping episodes by season and that seems to work. Will try other programs next. Thanks.
You're welcome. 🙂
tt2
Hi. As discussed previously, Music and Videos are on separate drives. When I action it on the video drive, I am pointing it to the video folder (ie., not the root). But I have to admit the videos themselves are four folders deep.
Under Video, there are roughly 200 folders, each of which has subfolders.
Might this work if I open each one and drill down a level or two and run script? Failing that, how can I get iTunes to scan for video files on that drive? Import playlist? (I am kind of hesitant to change C:\Users\Edison\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media because it now seems to have found my music, and I wouldn't want to go backward!) Thanks.
Wow, that would be fantastic! I am not quite sure what you are asking but here are a few examples:
E:\Handbrake\A good day to Die Hard\Apple\A Good Day to Die Hard (the latter being the actual video)
My files are organized by the disc I burned them off of. So I have, for example:
E:\Handbrake\Columbo s1d1\Columbo-1.m4v
and
E:\Handbrake\Columbo s1d1\Columbo-2.m4v
These are separate episodes.
The meta data on the TV files includes season number, episode number, and a blurb summarizing the plot.
OK, here is a direct link to the new custom version which I've called ExportImportAltKey,
See Open a different iTunes Library file or create a new one - Apple Support and open your old library that has the right metadata.
Select the files with the correct metadata and run the script which will export a file with the details.
Revert to the current library database.
Select the same set of files in the current library.
Drag the text file created earlier and drop it onto the script.
This will start importing properties from the text file to the current set of files.
The script is set up in such a way that you can see each proposed property change and decide to allow it, abandon the run, or allow each further change to happen without prompting. It should be clear after you've looked at a few if it is doing the right job or not.
You should really have a full backup of the database and media files before you get started.
tt2
tt2
As earlier:
It might be useful to try another script GetInfo on an item that you can identify in both libraries, i.e. one with metadata that cannot find the file and one where the file plays but details are missing. Comparing screenshots of the two different outputs might make things clearer.
tt2
I obviously haven't been clear. The script GetInfo can produce output like this:
In this example I've been using the information to work out how to attach metadata that was on an iPod to the files that were recovered from it (IPOD CLASSIC 160GB), which is a similar situation to your video files issue and helped in the development of the two new scripts that I've written to try to help you. I need to see what is different about the with and without metadata version of the same episode to see why the ExportImportAltKey or FindFiles scripts might be failing to be useful.
tt2
That is the plan. If it worked you would be able to export metadata for all TV files in one hit, then import in one more. In the Episodes view enable the Album column to get a clearer picture of what values you have there.
tt2
itunes cannot find files
