v3.2 Troubles with certain songs transfer to iPod

[Rednroll]

I have never ran into this problem when using MM to transfer songs to my iPod from my Library but I'm not sure if this is something wrong with v3.2 or something else is going on. But for some reason I keep running into an error with certain songs. The songs are always the same ones that get the error. I play them inside of MM and everything plays fine but for some reason they won't copy to my iPod.

Here's the errors that keep popping up when MM is copying the songs to my iPod. Any clues on what to do? It's taking me forever to sync my ipod. It seems like 1 out of 15 songs seem to give me this error and I have about 2200 songs I'm currently trying to sync to my iPod. I have an iPod Classic 120 GB and I have never seen this problem before with earlier versions of MM. This is the 1st time I tried to sync my iPod with v3.2 and now I'm seeing these errors.

MM seems to just hang there on these certain songs for like almost 2 minutes and then gives an error message. I keep hitting the "ignore" button to try to get the rest of the songs on there.

[bubbles321]

Hi

Sorry to hear you're having this problem. I had the same thing happen and coincidently on the same device, Classic 120Gb. My laptop runs Windows Vista and Media Monkey v3.2.0.1294 (although the issue occurred on earlier v3.2 beta test builds), so this may differ from your setup.

The other thing you could try before doing this, is in Media Monkey right click on the ipod and click on Rebuild Device Database, then try syncing again.

I do not have itunes installed and only ever installed it to get the device drivers. The only way i found to resolve it, after many hours of trying everything i could think of, was to install itunes again and factory reset the Ipod, uninstall itunes, then reload it using Media Monkey. That was several months ago now and the ipod and Media Monkey have given no other problems.

Regards
Colin

[Rednroll]

Hi

Sorry to hear you're having this problem. I had the same thing happen and coincidently on the same device, Classic 120Gb. My laptop runs Windows Vista and Media Monkey v3.2.0.1294 (although the issue occurred on earlier v3.2 beta test builds), so this may differ from your setup.

The other thing you could try before doing this, is in Media Monkey right click on the ipod and click on Rebuild Device Database, then try syncing again.

I do not have itunes installed and only ever installed it to get the device drivers. The only way i found to resolve it, after many hours of trying everything i could think of, was to install itunes again and factory reset the Ipod, uninstall itunes, then reload it using Media Monkey. That was several months ago now and the ipod and Media Monkey have given no other problems.

Regards
Colin

Thanks, I will give the factory reset a try. I did try the rebuild device database originally and that didn't do the trick. I even went into the iPod device preference settings within MM this last time and changed it to "Update database based on all track changes (takes longer)". Still same problem.

I'm running MM v3.2.0 1294 on 2 different PCs both with Windows XP SP2. Both exhibit the same problem when trying to sync to the iPod. I have iTunes installed on one of the PCs, so I will try the factory reset and see if that fixes things. If that doesn't fix it, then I'm going to try rolling MM back to the previous version or just try to overwrite the iPod DLL with the previous version.

[Rednroll]

Ok, I did the factory reset using iTunes last night. I checked to make sure my iPod had the latest firmware while I was at it. So I have the latest firmware which is still the same as previously and iPod was reset back in iTunes. The problem still exists in MM, and it's still hanging on the same songs and then giving the error message.

Next, I guess I'm going to make a back up copy of the current iPod DLL and then try overwriting the iPod DLL with a previous version to see if I can narrow it down to a difference in the DLL.

[Rednroll]

Ok, I tried replacing the d_iPod.dll file with the one from v3.1.1 1261 and still ran into the same problem. I don't think this problem is related to a difference in the Plugin DLL.

Right now I'm leaning towards it has something to do with the database and how MM builds it.

What I did was I installed v3.1.1 1261 onto another PC which previously didn't have MM installed on it. I then copied all the contents of that MediaMonkey install folder to an external drive. I did this, so I could grab the d_iPod.dll file and replace it on the PC where I was having the problem.

I then ran v3.1.1 1261 on the other PC. I scanned my media files and added them to the library. So now I'm using v3.1.1, a new library database, a new MediaMonkey.INI. I configured my iPod device in v3.1.1 then tried to sync my Library to my iPod Classic. I'm still getting these errors but now it seems to be fewer of them. I have a total of 2385 media files in my scanned library. When trying to sync to my iPod I am starting to notice a pattern. It seems that certain songs by particular "Artists" seem to get this error. I've been writing down the names of the files as MM shows the error this time. So for instance, currently I'm at "copying file 1500 of 2385". I've seen this error occur 28 times.....so 28 different files..

Of those 28 files
14 of them have been Guns 'N Roses songs
5 Foreigner
2 Kiss
5 The Doors
2 Skunk Anansie
1 Alice Cooper

After I complete the entire sync process, I'm going to investigate if my external drive which holds all my media files is fragmented. The reason why I'm thinking that maybe drive fragmentation may be the problem is because on my HDD I have songs organized in folders organized by Artist Names. Recently I had been using MM to rip and encode about 30 entire CDs to that HDD. I'm starting to get this feeling if certain files are fragmented on the HDD, then MM chokes on them when building the database. I have over 300 different artists in my Library located on this HDD and it seems too coincidental that songs by Guns N Roses, The Doors and and Foreigner keep getting this error.

[Rednroll]

Well, here is what Windows XP reports on this external HDD's health. It says the health is ok and a defrag is not needed. The thing I noticed is that the amount of RED (ie Fragmented Files) doesn't seem all that different percentage wise as to the amount of errors I'm currently seeing in MM when trying to Sync to my iPod Classic.


I'm gonna perform a defrag and see what happens.

[Rednroll]

Wow!!! I really have no clue as to what is going on here now. Everything I try seems to give me the same results.

I'm trying to think back to some of the things that changed since I last synced my Library to my iPod. Here are some of the things I can think of off the top of my head.

Things changed since last syncing Library to iPod Classic
1. Updated to v3.2.0 of MM
2. Added the following Scripts to MM
- MusicBrainzTagger
- YahooMusicTagger
- IListTransfer2 (Ran and Didn't work)
- MonkeyFlow
- ILTOptions
- PrettyPictures (added then removed)
3. Ripped and encoded to MP3 about 30 CDs to my HDD using MM v3.2.0

MM seems to be running into this error on the same files. It's starting to seem like something may have corrupted these files. Maybe MM v3.2.0??? Maybe one of the scripts that I added??? The files seem to playback fine in MM from my HDD. Luckily for most of these files I regularly make a back up copy of my entire Music folder. So I guess my next step is to take note of all the files that are causing these errors.....delete them from my Library and Hard Drive and then copy the backup files back to the Hard Drive and rescan them back to my Library. The only ones that I didn't make a back up copy where the ones I recently ripped from CDs and there's about 3 of those files I have noticed so far.
-

[vliegh]

For good order's sake I will also post my reply in this discussion as the problem discussed here seems to be of a similar nature.

QUOTE
Thanks for the input. Mij media files are not on an external usb HDD. Really the problem started after installing the latest update of MM, i.e. version 3.2.0.1294. I did not have iTunes installed at the time the problem started. I put it back on my pc to reset my iPod and then try sunchronising again via MM, but the same thing happens over and over again with the same result. Synchronising stops after an "x" number of songs. Unfortunately I am now back to working with iTunes to fill my iPod. As far as cover art, coverflow, etc is concerned it is a mess, but all my songs are on my Ipod.
UNQUOTE

[Rednroll]

I finally found some resolution.

It seems that some how about 50 of my media files got corrupted. The errors in MM when syncing to my iPod allowed me to identify "most" of the files that got corrupted. Additionally, when I performed a HDD defrag, the defrag report listed about 5 additional files that where corrupted that did not show up as an error when syncing to my iPod. Luckily for me I had a back up copy of 95% of the files that got corrupted. After deleting the corrupt files and restoring the backup copies everything synced to my iPod.

Additionally what I noticed once I identified the corrupt files is that I tried to open them in Sony Sound Forge, since that is the program I used to originally rip and encode most of my music. Sound Forge could no longer open these files and detected errors when trying to open them. With the songs I didn't yet have a backup copy of, I tried to copy them to another HDD. Windows could not perform the copy operation on these files and identified that they were corrupt by displaying an error message. So I mention this because it seems like a way to identify which specific files seem to be corrupt if you just try to copy them to another folder.

The BIG question remains though......What corrupted all these files? It seemed rather strange to me that of the 50 songs that I identified as having errors that about 30 of them where Guns N Roses Songs. I have every GNR CD and song ripped to my HDD and put into separate folders by album name. Yet 3 albums out of 6 had about 30 of those corrupt files. It was the same way with most other files, where if there was an error on a particular artist's song, there would be at least one other song that was corrupt also by that same artist. So this leads me to believe that a program that works with these files and can identify and sort them by "artist" might have caused them to get corrupt. I've only been using MM lately when working with my Media files and after reading a few posts in this forum that seem similar to my recent experience the one common denominator right now seems to be MM v3.2.0.

Does the latest MM update have a bug in it which can cause our media files to become corrupt!?? That's a pretty scary thought right now since that would be about the worst thing that a program used to work with your media files could do. I'm not feeling real comfortable with this v3.2.0 update right about now.

[vliegh]

First of all I do not get the notications you get during synchronisation concerning a specific song. Further it is rather strange that iTunes does synchronise all songs in the library and apparently does not regard certain songs as corrupted. MM as such, i.e. apart from synchronising, still works fine. Fact is the problem with synchronising started after upgrading to the latest version of MM. Before that synchronising worked fine as well.

[Rednroll]

First of all I do not get the notications you get during synchronisation concerning a specific song. Further it is rather strange that iTunes does synchronise all songs in the library and apparently does not regard certain songs as corrupted. MM as such, i.e. apart from synchronising, still works fine. Fact is the problem with synchronising started after upgrading to the latest version of MM. Before that synchronising worked fine as well.

Most of these songs played fine in MM and not all of my corrupt files gave errors. I'm not sure if our problems are related or not but like you I never seen this problem until recently when I updated to v3.2.

I was lucky that I made a back up of most of my songs but right now I'm not certain that all my other songs may have some kind of corruption or not. So now I have to make separate backups and keep a copy of my old backup just in case.

[kdpainter]

I have 2 iPod classic 120GB players. After upgrading to MM v3.2.0.1294, I had to reload the entire library on both and neither one works afterwards!!! They show that they are playing but are not. Also the shuffle icon is lit. I would avoid this version for now.

[Rednroll]

I have 2 iPod classic 120GB players. After upgrading to MM v3.2.0.1294, I had to reload the entire library on both and neither one works afterwards!!! They show that they are playing but are not. Also the shuffle icon is lit. I would avoid this version for now.

I seem to remember the 1st time I chose to sync my Library to my iPod after moving to v3.2.0.1294 that it seemed to reload the entire contents of my library on to my iPod also.

So far after this transition that seemed to mess things up, it is now all working for me. I'm not really sure what I gained by updating now though. I don't have an iPod touch, so I didn't need that. I'm not sure what other updates happened. I think I did it mainly to be running the latest version.

You might want to try right clicking on the iPod icon in the MM browser view and selecting to "Rebuild Device Database". I seem to have to do that on a regular basis or things just don't show up, or my album art doesn't show up on the iPod.

[Magius1337]

I'm also experiencing the same issue. At first I thought my ipod had gone bad and had tried restoring it several times as well as running a disk check. Windows said the drive was fine but I keep running into the same errors. I have mediamonkey 3.2 running on vista 64 bit. I've only synced my ipod once using the new version which was successful, but now after trying to do it again I can't get it to work.

[Rednroll]

I'm also experiencing the same issue. At first I thought my ipod had gone bad and had tried restoring it several times as well as running a disk check. Windows said the drive was fine but I keep running into the same errors. I have mediamonkey 3.2 running on vista 64 bit. I've only synced my ipod once using the new version which was successful, but now after trying to do it again I can't get it to work.

You'll probably have to do what I had to do, if it's the same problem I was having. I basically wrote down the name of the file every time the error message came up and clicked the ignore button. After it finished, I went back and replaced all those particular files with a back up copy I had.

Hopefully, you have a back up of your music library some where, or you can grab them off your iPod if they're still there. Basically, the files where all corrupt and I'm not sure what caused these files to get corrupt.

After I replaced all the corrupt files v3.2 has been working well for me. My suspicion is that there is a bug somewhere when updating to v3.2 where something can happen with the MM database update that causes files to get hosed. Either that or it's just coincidental that a bunch of my files became corrupt the 1st time I tried to sync to my iPod after updating to v3.2.

I've learned a long time ago.....back up...and back up often. You can never have too many back up copies.