Broken music files. Tool to fix them?

I had a very large number of music files on a drive on my PC that went bad, and now all the files have corrupted file names, although they are still recognizable as music files. I'd like to import these files into iTunes on my Mac. Is there software that can analyze the files and fix the broken file names?

You can go look in Doug's Scripts and see if there is an Apple Script that will help you - http://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php
MJ

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I just purchased to songs to put on my child's Leappad 2 MP3 player and I can see the songs under my music files but cannot save them because they were not downloaded as a MP3 file What can I do?

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Once I deleted my music files can I get them back via I cloud? I have Itunes match on.

I actually deleted my backup :-) That's the problem. But thanks.
I've managed to get some back but via a slightly different method.
Because the files weren't there, when I deleted them from my library they actually disappeared from the list.... So I created a new library (backed up my original one) and then synched that with Match so that all the files appeared. I'm just going through the ones I'm missing clicking 'download' and then when they're all back on my hard drive I'll revert to the previous Library which will hopefully pick up all of the recovered files.
Bingo!

Moving Garageband Music Files to MyBook for Mac External Hard Drive on OSX 10.5.8 I'm a musician and need to make space on my mac hd. Is it safe to move music files there and delete them on the mac? Thanks!

use a MyBook for Mac external hard drive.
I need space on garageband or the entire hard drive, since I am getting the "need space on the hard drive" messages.
It's scary to move my precious music files!
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The process is as simple as just copying your Garageband project to the external drive and deleting from the macs hard drive. But before you delete anything you really need to back them up to someplace else also. Having just one copy is not safe. Get another external drive, DVDs or even flash drives, you absolutely need anything important in more then one place.

Music Files - when Itunes reshuffles them to a mess

How do merge my music files back into one. I tunes has whipped them out and split my music (randomly). I have spent too many hours and have too many songs to do it manually.

*Whenever I plugged my iPOD to my old computer, the files in iTunes would automatically upload to my iPOD*
Check your update settings. Connect your iPod and click on it's icon in the iTunes source list (the narrow pane on the left). This will bring up the preferences tabs in the main pane on the right. The first tab you'll see is Summary, look for "manually manage songs and videos", if there is a check mark there then the iPod is set to update manually and you have to drag songs from the iTunes library to the iPod to load them on. If you want to update automatically you need to remove the check mark from there (I would also remove the "enable disk use" check mark unless you want to use the iPod as a removable storage device) and click the Apply button in the right hand corner:
Loading songs onto iPod automatically - Windows
Managing content manually on iPod

ITunes is moving my music files when I play them

I am using iTunes 10.3.1. I have all of my music in a folder on an external drive attached to my Airport Extreme Base Station. I am having an awful time maintaining links between iTunes and the music files, but I understand that is because the drive keeps going to sleep and unmounting. The big problem is that when I do play a file, iTunes actually MOVES the file and creates a new folder outside of the media folder.
Structure
Seagate Drive attached to AEBS
->Central iTunes Library
     ->Music
          ->Artist Name
               ->Album Name
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After I play the song, I get this
Drive
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Can anyone explain to me why this is occuring and how to stop it?
Thanks in advance

If by 'multiple' you mean 'duplicate', iTunes 6 has a "Show Duplicate Songs" option under the 'Edit' menu.
This won't delete duplicates, but it'll assist with locating them.

How do I stop Quicktime from overriding music file downloads and playing them in the browser rather then letting me download them straight to my hardrive.

I am trying to download a mastered track from a fellow musician.
And up untill recently this wasen't a problem...
It seems so stupid considering the ammount of people who use Macs for musical production.
Can someone help please?!

Thanks Michael. Apologies for the slow reply I was away for a bit (holiday blitz at work and visiting family madness etc.etc.) back now, I set both options you requested to "never " and retried the CMS software with no change.
I do have progress of a sort though, as a test I took a separate test PC and put a clean install of Win7 on and loaded up the CMS software (it worked perfectly) and then took the version of ole32.dll off that machine and put it onto the computer I had built
for her (using Linux) and...
got a new error code. Darn I was so sure I had found a clever solution this time lol.
Anyway now when the CMS fails it gives me a similar error but the offending module is "ntdll.dll" sooo... I tried taking the "working" version of ntdll.dll from the test box and moving it over (making sure to back up the existing ones
first so I could put them back if needed) to her new PC and the PC would not boot.
It seems to want the original versions of a few Dynamic Link Libraries and if I could somehow give it those while not breaking Win7 it should theoretically work seeing as it no longer errors with ole32.dll.
ntdll.dll however seems necessary for Win7 to boot.
So what I am wondering now is:
Is there some way to have both versions of the DLL file in the system32 folder (bypassing the "cannot have two files with the exact same name in the same folder" thing) or rename the original DLL's something else and somehow make the CMS look for
the new named versions so the system has the updated DLL's it needs to boot/run and the CMS has the old ones it wants to run or is there someway to have a self contained install of the CMS, say on a USB flash drive and give it it's own E:/windows/system32/needed
dll's path to the files it needs?
Willing to try any other options or settings you may have come up with as well.
Thanks again for your reply and my apologies for not answering sooner.

HT203167 My iTunes Media folder is missing and I cannot access my music files anymore to back them up.

I back up files constantly to an external drive. I went to back up again & my iTunes Media folder is gone & I can't find it anywhere (including Trash Bin). Will I have to uninstall then reinstall iTunes to get that venue back? I've even tried changing the location in my preferences of where new file should go to & nothings doing.

Compacting is deleting messages marked for deletion. It has nothing to do with trying to squeeze out just a little more space in an already full folder.
Here are some good articles that you could probably benefit from reading.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_Tips_:_Compacting_Folders
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_-_Thunderbird
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/archived-messages
You could also create folders under Local Folders and move the older message there.

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My cameras become blurry and freeze they also turn black. Does anyone know how to fix it? Please help! Thank you

Try:
- Reset the iOS device. Nothing will be lost
Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
- Restore from backup. See:
iOS: How to back up
- Restore to factory settings/new iOS device.
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Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar
If not covered by warranty
Apple will exchange your iPod for a refurbished one for $149. They do not fix yours.
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How do I add a music file to the playlist I made in iTunes for my iPhone4?

Apple Tech suggested I make a Playlist for tunes I wanted to play on my iPhone 4, syncing the list to the iPhone 4. But I cannot figure out how to add tunes to this list I made once. I try to drag and drop from my iTunes library, directly on top of this Playlist, but itunes refuses to copy the file to the list. Apple told me not to add music files by manually dropping them on the iPhone4 in iTunes. They specifically said to not do this any longer. So I tried to drop them on the Playlist, but no joy.
Once I have made a Playlist for the iPhone 4, and synced to the list, how does one ADD any songs to this Playlist?

Nevermind. In the iTunes Area I can drag and drop tunes onto the iTunes playlist I made, but NO I can't drag and drop to a synced list in the iPhone area of iTunes. Reason is that it only represents the list I sync to in iTunes.
I did download a Doug Script where I can add files from one play list to another which is neat. Donated some cash for it.

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IF i have no choice but to leave all the music solely on my ipod without backing it up on my computer, how do i go about syncing new music without deleting the old stuff?

Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod. When your iPod appears in the iTunes source list change the update setting to manual, that will let you use our iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default: Managing content manually on iPod and iPhone
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. There are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well. Have a look at the web pages and documentation, this is just a small selection of what's available, they are generally quite straightforward. You can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
SharePod Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod2PC Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac and Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows
Floola Mac & Windows
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content only from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync.

Problems viewing picutres and opening music files

I have just installed a 32 G micro SD card to my BB curve 8530; since then I start to have problems
viewing pictures.
In addition when opening some of the music files (not all of them) ; I have been receiving
the following messege:
[The media "file name" being played is in unsupported format]
Although all music files are in .MP3 format.
thanks for your help

Back up all data.
Quit Safari. In the Finder, select Go ▹ Go to Folder from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-G. Copy the line of text below into the box that opens, and press return:
/Library/Internet Plug-ins
From the folder that opens, remove any items that have the letters “PDF” in the name. You may be prompted for your login password. Then launch Safari and test.
If you still have the issue, repeat with this line:
~/Library/Internet Plug-ins
If you don’t like the results of this procedure, restore the items from the backup you made before you started. Relaunch Safari again.

Uh Oh...I manually consolidated/reorganized a lot of my 38k+ music files and now iTunes is not able to locate them!

Hi there,
So, I realize now that what I did was stupid...but it's done and now I need to find a solution. I have an external drive with over 38,000 music files so I decided I would consolidate all my music into one location. By doing this, I renamed file locations, renamed artists (corrected spelling, etc.) and when I thought I was done (and so proud of myself), I noticed that iTunes now no longer knew where to find anything.
I searched these forums and the internet and I can't seem to find a solution to my problem. Everything I find involves moving the file through iTunes. Well, since I've already passed that point, I was hoping there's an easy way to help iTunes find my music (rather than album, by album - as, with the size of my library...it would seem like an impossible task).
The other problem I see is, I have several different iTunes folders in my computer. This is probably due to upgrading systems (computers...not iTunes), obtaining an External Drive, etc. I'd like to clean this up somehow but each time I try to...it seems that I make it worse.
Anyone out there able to help me?
Thanks!

The exclamation mark for missing files is shown if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a label change. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use CMD-I to get info, then say no when asked to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps and locate the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links, which should work if they are in the expected layout.
tt2

Music files getting renamed (why?), iTunes loses them

This has happened once every month or two since I started using iTunes on my laptop. I haven't been able to figure out what triggers it, but every now and then my music files get renamed. Not all of them, but, for example, this time every song on 24 albums out of about 100. It's always entire albums. When it has happened, I double-click on the song, I get the message saying the "original file could not be found", then I re-find it and it starts playing. When it starts playing, iTunes will usually rename it and/or move it to another folder. Sometimes the album ends up in the "unknown artists" folder, or in the "compilations" folder, but once I track it down (through iTunes "do you want to find it") it gets moved back where it belongs.
It was only this last time that I noticed that these lost files were not only getting moved, but they were getting renamed as well. When everything's working fine, my music has been moved and named like has been renamed by iTunes and looks like "C:\My Music\The Dresden Dolls\The Dresden Dolls\03 Missed Me.mp3". Some process in iTunes or in Windows is renaming only certain albums to look like "C:\My Music\Stephen Lynch\A Little Bit Special\10-Gerbil-Stephen Lynch-A Little Bit Special.mp3".
When the files get renamed like this, iTunes can't find them anymore until I go in and fix things, file by file. This takes forever. If not for the fact that I need to preserve my playlists and my play count numbers, I would just blast the whole library and reimport the folder, but I can't do that.
So, any one have any ideas why this happens, how to keep it from happening, and a way to fix things while preserving my metadata without having to double-click on a few hundred songs?
Windows XP Pro

Actually, I found a good solution based on another question. If I re-import the folder, it finds all of those misnamed files and adds them to the library. Then I tell iTunes to keep my music folder organized, and it fixes all the file names and folders. Then after I make sure the original entries work again, I can sort the list by date added, and delete the new entries.
But I still have no idea why those albums are getting renamed. It's not just the most recent ones or the oldest ones, it's not ones that haven't been played, it's just random-seeming.

HT203167 Music files present but iTunes can't see them

OK, I have the unfortunate situation that all of my music files appear to be present and correct, but iTunes just shows nothing at all. I have tried all of the suggestions I can find online, including changing the Music folder using iTunes Preferences/Advanced, selecting a new folder on startup by pressing the Alt key on my MacBook, and re-installing iTunes from scratch, but nothing seems to work.
Config: OS X 10.7.4 (Lion) and iTunes 10.6.3 (25)
I have a sneaking suspicion that this occurred just after the system upgraded my version of iTunes, but can't be 100% certain since upgrades seem to happen all the time.
This is obviously frustrating, so any advice would be gratefully received. It's an unusual case I think, in that I've got my music and backups, but can't actually play the blasted stuff with iTunes. As a last resort I may have to just re-import it all, but this will take and age and will almost certainly lose my playlists, so I consider this a last resort. Everything is there on the 'puter, so I don't see why it has to be so **** difficult!

Oh well, nobody replied so I went out on a limb and thought I'd try a combination of the various fixes that I had seen for similar problems on this forum. This seems to have worked, so I thought I'd document them here, in case anybody has the same problem. Yes, I know it's just repeating stuff that other people have said (by definition), but it'll be useful for me, even if nobody else ever uses it.
I'd pretty much resigned myself to screwing everything up, so I thought I might as well tidy up my iTunes folders to begin with, since these had got rather scrambled over the lifetime of iTunes.
As a first step, I exitted iTunes and used the OS X Activity Monitor to kill the iTunes helper.
I then moved all of the various iTunes media folders from the "iTunes" directory to the newer "iTunes\iTunes Media" folder. The media folders that I had on my system were: Album Artwork, Audiobooks, Books, Mobile Applications, Movies, Music, Podcasts, Ringtones, TV Shows, Voice Memos, iPod Games and iTunes U. Note that this is just what I found on my setup - ymmv.
Rather pleasingly, by performing this step I located a number of orphan media files that I hadn't seen for ages (years in some cases), so it was a step well worth doing imho.
Since I didn't want to waste time actually moving any files at this stage, I started up iTunes and set the iTunes/Preferences/Advanced dialog to disable the "Copy files to media folder" option.
I then dragged each of the media folders from the Finder into iTunes. I was really pleased that it was able to automagically assign them to the correct categories under the iTunes LIBRARY. Apart from the music selection the transfer was pretty fast, which made it easier to stomach. I also began by transferring some of the smaller folders (e.g. Books) which reassured me that the process was working correctly.
Note that the "File/Add to Library..." menu option did not work in the same way - only dragging from Finder.
After all of this, my media content inside iTunes was pretty much pristine, with all of the media located, in the correct place and with al of the artwork as expected.
Unfortunately, I had lost all of my playlists, which is something I had resigned myself to. However, I'd read elsewhere that these might be recoverable from the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file. I did a quick scan of this file and was able to locate some of my old playlists - much to my surprise (recall, this was after I had already made several attempts to recover my files, so I was expecting this to have been scrambled).
I therefore copied this file to my desktop and used the iTunes "File/Library/Import Playlist..." to see if I could recover any playlists from this file. Amazingly, they all re-appeared. Better yet, they actualy worked, despite the fact that I had moved loads of the files during the earlier housekeeping stage. A few playlists were duplicated but it was a trivial step to delete the unwanted ones.
To finish up, I re-enabled the "Copy files to media folder" - fully expecting this to take an age to move the files around. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised that nothing seemed to happen - possibly because all of the media files were already in the 'correct' location - I'm not sure on this point.
So, to finish - all of my media files are back in iTunes, all of the playlists recovered, and I've also recovered some music files and movies that I thought I'd lost. Not a bad outcome for a couple of hours work (most of which was during the initial housekeepign step).
If I had the time, it'd be nice to write a script to do the housekeeping step, but well, you know how life goes...

Broken music files. Tool to fix them?

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