iPod Nano skipping songs

Ken S.
to contact apple... http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

I sent them a complaint just now after reading all these discussions. Maybe if you send one and everyone else in this dicussion maybe they will work a little faster in resolving this issue.

I can't believe this. I have an iPod nano, unsure of what generation, 2GB. I've put about 300 songs on it, almost all of them from limewire. I've had it for exactly one year and haven't had any problems. But, the last time I downloaded some more songs off my sister's computer, it won't play ANY of my songs. My iPod is set up for PCs because most people have them, so I can download music almost anywhere. Anyone who has used limewire knows that its not exactly the easiest thing to use. All my efforts looking for music is wasted! The music won't play on iTunes OR the iPod itself. When I click the song on iTunes an exclamtion point comes up next to the song. When I try to use shuffle, it just jumps to the next song immediatly,and then skips that one,and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, until it runs through all of them. I don't have any of the songs backed up (cause I'm stupid and don't know how to, or that you could in the first place). So, is there a way to fix my iPod without restoring it or being forced to redownload all that crap? HALLLPPPPP!

*hey everyone. i solved my skipped songs problem!!!!!!!!!!*
it was so easy, i wanted to shot myself cause i didnt realize this before
all i did was convert the song into AAC format and i synced it onto my ipod, and no more skipping. try it! right click the song tht skips on itunes, click convert selection to AAC, let the computer do its work, select it to my synced, and it should play right afterwards.
hope this helps everyone

So let me get this straight. In order for our Ipods to work correctly, we have to convert all of our music into Apple's own proprietary format (i.e., AAC)? No thanks. I'm done with Apple and with Ipods. My Nano is going up on Ebay today. They are nice little devices, but once you factor in the expense of buying the unit and the fact that you can only use them with Itunes, it is just not worth it (at least for me).

wow thats a coincidence because my song that always skips is i believe (punky irie mix.)

are there any actual answers on this forum?

This has happened to me before with the song Dirt off your shoulder/lying from you, and i got it to work. But i don't remember how. Now its with I believe (Punky irie mix) and that song has been problematic for almost a week. I have tried: Syncing, powering off, resetting, powering off while syncing, resetting while syncing, removing the file from itunes and putting it on again from my desktop, and nothing has worked.

I am also noticing that no one has answered this post so far.
Someone please help us!

Hey! I had the same problem. The song plays fine when you play it on iTunes right? If that is the case I found out that if you burn the song to a blank CD, erase the song from your iTunes, then import the song from the disk back to iTunes then put it on your iPod it works. I tried several things that is the only one that works so I think you should try that and see what happens.

I have had this problem consistently with my iPod Nano (latest gen) and my iPhone across multiple OS versions (1.0.1 -> 1.1.3). Based on previous postings that the problem could be MP3, I deleted the album from iTunus that most annoyingly has this problem (it was rippted originally by RealPlayer in MP3 and then imported into iTunes). I then imported the CD directly into iTunes using the AAC encoder, readded the album to my iPhone play list, sync'ed and voila - the problem is gone!
I strongly agree with others here that Apple should get their MP3 playback software fixed ASAP!
Work-around: normally the skipping point is always the same. If you fast-play (forward wind) the song past this point, chances are you will get to enjoy the rest of the track.

I'm dumb and don't know anything about computers, but I did have the same problem as many of you in that I would download a set of songs off of itunes, sync them to my ipod, but 2 of the four songs from that artist would not play. It would just skip to the next songs.
After reading some of the troubleshooting I decided to burn the 2 songs onto a cd. I then went back into my itunes library and sent the 2 songs into the recycle bin and made sure the songs were not in any of my playlists. I also unsynced the playlist they were going to go into. I then put the cd back in and added the 2 songs back into my library and added them to the desired playlist and synced it back into my ipod and it works now. Don't know if I got lucky or not but if I had to do anything more complicated than this I would have punted and accepted not being able to listen to those 2 songs. Like I previousely said, I'm dumb, but at least I can listen to all my music now.

This is what I have discovered in my trouble shooting.

1. If your iPod skips a song, it corrupts the track on your iPod. If you then sync, that song on your library will be corrupted.

2. If you change any of the default menu settings after a complete restore the problem is reintroduced.

The solution appears to be:

1. If a song skips, stop, and save that song to a different location on your computer's hard drive. Then plug in your iPod, and delete the track(s) that was/were skipping, then restore your iPod to factory settings. The resync and don't change any of the settings in the iPod, leave clicker on, all the menus on the defaults. I got through three whole days with no skipping and then I got sick of the clicking noise and I rearranged by view settings on the iPod, and wow, 10 minutes later it started skipping again.

This is an electric problem I think, caused by a software error in the iPod nano video. The problem touch not occur on our iPhone, not on older iPods (the first aluminum bodies), nor on iPod Video 60G.

Firmware apparently cannot handle certain invalid ID3 tags -- that explains why converting to AAC format fixes the problem. For example, a file with invalid COMM frame (without language code -- i.e. frame data starts at offset 0, not 3) is skipped by iPod. This can be fixed by re-tagging the offending file.

If Apple engineers read this, here's a link to id3lib bug report with sample file attached:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1788937&group_id=979&at id=100979

There is a worse problem, though -- a mp3 file that has an uppercase extension will crash Nano outright. iTunes users don't see this because iTunes converts file extension to lowercase before transferring it to iPod.

Relevant libgpod report: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1676748&group_id=67873& atid=519273