iTunes Music gone

i had like 4000 songs in my iTunes folder.
i copied my drive3 to my main then reformatted the drive. them moved the data back to the drive3.
now any song i choose beyond the letter j gives me an exclamation point.

the location of iTune folder does not show any artist names past J.

there were at least 3000 songs past j.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

And this has what to do with Final Cut?

Try the iTunes forum on the Apple support pages.

the music for my fcp projects are in that folder. thats what it has to do with fcp.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Still nothing to do with FCP. Other than you should never work with media on your system drive, and here's another reason why not. Did you go to the iTunes forum?

Just empty the iTunes library and drag the files back in. I don't think iTunes has a "batch media reconnect", so to reconnect the items back to the files you'd be doing it one by one.

The "empty Artist Name" thing could be because the music files were created before you entered the Artist Name metadata. If you're converting CD tracks into MP3s, you need to enter the information first with the disc in, then do the file conversions. If you do so, the metadata you enter becomes part of the file and will show up on every computer (even a PC Avid station retains the metadata on my MP3s). If you're lazy and convert the files first, and then change the name in iTunes afterwards, only that computer will remember the metadata because it's not embedded in the file.


www.derekmok.com

jcorbett,

This is not the end-all forum for Apple products...it's an Apple Pro-Apps forum. iTunes is not a Pro-App. Please go to Apple Discussions for iTunes questions:

[discussions.apple.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

mok thanks but i dont think that i can recover the files. i did a search for zero7 and there are no files on my system to match. some how they were deleted during the transfer.

how ever i do have some cds with 75% the songs backed up as mp3's. so i will be loading these 100 or so cds and dvds for the next few hrs.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

<<<now any song i choose beyond the letter j gives me an exclamation point. >>>

Oooo. I think I know that one.

That's the XML library file being different from the actual pile of music.

Did you have "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder" selected in iTunes Preferences, Advanced, General? If not, then your actual music library is scattered all over your machine--or was. In that case iTunes maintains links and doesn't tell you what it's really doing.

I was very careful about this and I still got burned with misplaced theme music for one project.

We like images of drives before we format them. Straight copies don't always cover everything and can leave you hanging out to dry if you're not careful. Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilities.

Koz

when i do a search on these files that are nowhere to be found. I had van hunt and zero 7, but now finders says i only have 2 songs by either artist.

now i am loading like 122 disc's back in. once i had 4824 songs exactly. now its like 3500. So i didn't loose every thing. i am getting a 160gig hard drive for itunes only.

They are gone i am sure. But thru-out all of this i have learn a valuable lesson boys and girls. Never trust that a transfer operation has been done unless yu have checked it twice before and twice after.

by the way is there any way to get itunes to check for which ones are there then purge those with non locatable files?

i have tech tools and spring cleaning if that means a hill-a-beans.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

> I had van hunt and zero 7, but now finders says i only have 2 songs by either artist.

Artist names are part of the metadata, normally not made into part of a file name and therefore not searchable in OS. You'll have to search for the track name at the point when the file was converted from CD.


www.derekmok.com

Quote

Artist names are part of the metadata, normally not made into part of a file name and therefore not searchable in OS

actually, it does.
that's what spotlight is all about.

this happened to me... what most likely happened is the file path is now different from what it used to be (before you re-formatted your drive) i've at different times done each of the following...

1, do a find and replace for the new file path within the .XML file...

2, change the drive letter back to what it used to be as well as put the music back on the same path that it was in folders etc...

<<<the file path is now different from what it used to be>>>

What he said.

Koz