How do I stop Determining Gapless Playback?

Yet again, another iTunes upgrade has caused the horrible gapless playback scan to occur on my iTunes library. As a result, iTunes is totally unresponsive until this action completes. In my case, it's really slow as I'm accessing my files wirelessly from a network drive. I have to keep canceling the rescan to use iTunes. For the most part it keeps track of where it left off, however some files keep getting rescanned.
Here's what I've observed so far (not that it solves anything)
- it appears that rescans are triggered whenever an upgrade rebuilds the library. After going through this once for iTunes 7 upgrade, I remember it occurring again for 8 (and probably a point release in between) and version 9.
- The gapless playback mp3 tag doesn't seem to stop the rescan from occurring. I tested this for files that kept getting rescanned. I first set them to No and they still got scanned. Next I set them to Yes and still no luck...
- The number of files being scanned are less than the total number of files currently in my library, which leads me to believe the rescan trigger has to do with either when the file was added (i.e. before iTunes 7 release) or based on what version of iTunes the file was created.
Based on the above, I think this is a bug as it should only go through this once and if needed when new files are added to iTunes. Better yet, there should be an option to shut this off completely!
Any info on what causes this to occur or how to make it stop would be greatly appreciated!!!

Yes, with previous upgrades, I had to let it run it's course (usually overnight). However, this still doesn't really answer my question.
If the scan isn't used to auto update the gapless flag, then in my option it's completely useless and renders iTunes unusable until the process completes or is cancelled by the user.
(1) What does the scan actually do??
(2) Why does it reoccur after every major upgrade??
(3) Why does the rescan only occur on a subset of the songs in the iTunes library??
I'm convinced this is a bug and iTunes is hard coded to scan for gapless playback on files added prior to the iTunes 7 release date, which per Wiki was on 9/12/06. If I create a smart playlist of songs added before this date, then the total number of songs in the list is nearly identical to the number of songs that are scanned after a major upgrade.

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STOP "determining gapless playback info": how to get rid of it?

I have itunes 7 with macbookpro and 80 gigs of music on an external hard drive connected through USB to my Airpot Extreme 802.11n base.
I CANNOT USE itunes because it is endlessly "determining gapless playback info" (i'm using the French version who says "détermination des données de lecture sans intervalle")
though I DON'T NEED IT. This is the option that allow albums to play gapless... no such an improvement for a so slow process!
This morning it treated 200 songs in 5 hours... it has been one week i'm letting it work times to times but with this rhythm I still have to wait 350 hours = more than 15 days 24/24... without speaking of the extremely frequent cases when I have to "force to quit" and restard itunes.....
I CAN'T BEAR THAT ANYMORE... IS ALL THAT REALLY NECESSARY?
I cannot imagine this option cannot be unactivated... so please if someone can tell me how to get rid of this "determining gapless playback info" thing... I would be very happy...
Many thanks for your answer!

I'm having the exact same issue. I have a 802.11n Airport Extreme that has my 100 GB music library connected to it via the USB port, and my iTunes (on my MacBook Pro) connects to it via the Airport Disk. Each time I add a batch of new songs to the library, it takes for ever for iTunes to resolve the gapless information. I just added 30 tracks, and it took about 10 to 15 minutes, during which iTunes was completely inaccessible with the spinning beach ball.
My theory is that to determine gapless information, iTunes has to load each track into memory to analyze it. That goes by quick if the libary is direct connected, but over the network that can be a pain (especially if the mp3s are large).
I really wish Apple would make this feature "toggle-able" on a future release of iTunes.

Upon opening itunes it will process the artwork, then proceed to determine gapless playback information. It will analyze a few songs the completely stop working. Any Ideas?

Upon opening itunes it will process the artwork, then proceed to determine gapless playback information. It will analyze a few songs the completely stop working. Any Ideas?

Repeated execution of the "determining gapless playback information" process may also be a symptom of corruption in your iTunes Library.itl file (the main iTunes database). If you have a recent backup it may be worth restoring that (especially if it immediately precedes addition of the skipping files). However, the two symptoms you are seeing may be interrelated, i.e., the "determining gapless playback information" repetition and the skipping music may both be caused by incomplete or corrupt media files. If possible, find and (re)move all the media files - you should be able to do a date-based search in Windows Explorer - and try restarting iTunes. Of course, you should backup your library first so that it can be restored if the media files are OK.

Songs randomly stopping in itunes & itunes continuously determining gapless playback problems

I'm running itunes 11.1.4 on a macbook pro with mavericks (and have been since mavericks has come out), and over the past week, I've been running into two problems while importing new music into my itunes.
First, certain songs will randomly stop while playing and immediately go to the next song. It seems to be happening to files that are regular mp3 files. If I convert a flac file to mp3 and then add them to my itunes, they seem to play fine. I have also went into my itunes folder and played multiple songs that I've had these stopping issues with through my VLC and Quicktime players, and have had no playback issues while running them with VLC or Quicktime.
I should also add that under my itunes' advance preferences, I have "keep itunes folder organized" and "copy files to itunes media folder when adding to library" checked, so I assume that these files that I am choosing (control/click, "open with" VLC or Quicktime Player) to play through VLC or Quicktime are the exact same that my itunes is using when I select them within the itunes application.
I have checked the start and stop times, and they all show start 0:00 and then it's appropriate stop time. For example, my entire Eric Clapton collection will abruptly stop at 1:33. If I scrub past that point, the songs will play. But if they're left to hit 1:33 on their own, they stop and then the next song starts.
At first I was thinking that these were corrupted files, but this has been happening a lot, to a lot of different files, so I'm thinking this is some sort of playback issue through itunes.
My other problem, which I've started to notice only over the past week or so, is that itunes is continuously "determining gapless playback" over a group of about 1300 songs or so (give or take a few, that's roughly the amount of songs it says that it's running through). This will happen when I restart itunes after quitting, if I add new music, or sometimes just randomly as other music is playing.
I haven't been able to see if itunes continues to run through the same songs, since I tend to catch it while it's doing it, and not when it starts. And, the time it takes to complete can vary greatly from just several seconds to several minutes, all while showing roughly the same amount of songs being scanned.
I'm use to seeing itunes determine gapless playback when it was done importing a specific album, and that would be the end of it. But now, it keeps doing it. If I add an album, it starts checking an additional 800+ songs on average. And until it's done, itunes runs slow (playback buttons, scrolling through artists).
I know that these questions have been asked before, and I have google searched for them and have come across apple discussions about similar topics. However, more often than not, the discussions that I have come across have either been older, specifically about itunes store purchases, or have had multiple people say that they're having issues with no solution, so I apologize in advance if I've overlooked something that may have already addressed my concerns. I have also checked all of my permissions through disk utility, along with verifying the disk, which showed that it was running ok.

I have the same problem but with grievous outcome: my entire machine hangs; I've done EVERYTHING I, and several product specialists can think of short of deleting my entire music collection.
I don't think it has anything to do with the name of a single track - it's hanging on different tracks for me with no consistency in naming styles. I've reinstalled iTunes several times, killed the cache, the preferences, tried it as a different user, deleted and rebuilt my library, and NOTHING helps. When iTunes comes up, it immediately goes into "Determining Gapless Playback..." and withing 2-3 songs the machine HANGS and has to be hard powered.
Of course, I've tried to set every song to a non-gapless song, tried to turn on or off song crossfade, no luck.
APPLE: Please listen and help!! Make gapless playback a removable option or something!

Determining Gapless Playback Information renders iTunes unresponsive

As soon as iTunes loads, the entire application locks up. I can't even click the little circle-X on the display to stop the operation.
The track # does increment every minute or so, so it is doing something... just... very... slowly...
It's currently on #14 of 44,465. I can't wait forever!
How do I get around this?

I was also having the same problem. I read in another forum to delete some files in my iTunes Music folder. I did that but the problem remained. Now I had windows Vista x32 prior to Windows 7 x64 and I had iTunes 9 too. Recently upgraded to 7 when everything failed. I am not sure if there is a problem with having an iTunes library from before but here is what I did.
I just renamed my iTunes music library folder to something without iTunes (music folder) and then deleted everything but the actual music files. I opened iTunes and finally it did not freeze. And the "Determining Gapless Playback" completed!
I hope this works for you.

Issues with itunes error -50, determining gapless playback, missing speaker options, home sharing not working

In the last few weeks I have been experiencing multiple issues with my iTunes.
I believe it began when my itunes library corrupted and I had to start again.
By starting again I mean I went to previous itunes libraries and used the most recent backup.
After I noticed a large number of unknown error (-50) messages I thought I better copy the backup I was using from the previous libraries folder over to the itunes folder (in case the error related to failed attempts to back up the library).
This problem in itself wasn't too bad as I am able to close and relaunch iTunes and carry on however I have noticed some less desirable side effects - the loss of home sharing. I am unable to pick speakers to broadcast to (I have 2 airport express units plugged in and working and an Apple TV2) and I am unable to access the iTunes library on Apple TV.
I've done some basic troubleshooting: creating rules to allow the home sharing ports, temporarily disabling antivirus/firewall, uninstalling antivirus/firewall, setting up rules on the router for homesharing ports, uninstalling iTunes, rebooting, reinstalling iTunes and retrying, disabling home sharing and reenabling, disabling peerblock, deauthorising itunes and reauthorising and rebooting both the pc and Apple TV, checking sharing settings under preferences and verifying both the entire library is shared and that the status of home sharing is on but no devices connected, created a new library and reimporting my media and the problem still exists.
I noticed that occasionally when I switch between libraries, deauthorise and reauthorise I do get access to home sharing and Apple Tv gets full access to the library BUT iTunes quickly becomes unresponsive and when I close and relaunch Apple TV can no longer see my library or iTunes.
I have checked the network I am running on is marked as a home network, I have tried connecting the Apple TV via LAN instead of WiFi but this makes no difference. What I do find interesting is that I have iTunes running on another pc and on a virtual machine and as soon as I run either their libraries appear on Apple TV so there must be something about the installation on my pc and nothing wrong with the Apple TV, airport express, router etc.
With that in mind I retried an uninstall and this time deleted as many tmp files as I could see in the iTunes library folder, rebooted and reinstalled. I also checked the permission levels on the iTunes application folder and the iTunes library folder (located on an additional internal drive), I then tried running iTunes as an administrator (which my user account is already set as) but all the problems are still evident.
The determining gapless playback has no effect on how I use iTunes but it clearly does not need to run for every single recently added track any time I make a minute change to other library entries. I tried looking up one of the files it was determining gapless playback for but it wasn't corrupt or read only so I don't see why it needs to retry continually.
I'm running Windows 7 64bit with all latest updates installed and iTunes 64bit 10.6.3.25, all apple devices are running the latest version of firmware and I'm running out of ideas. I did try running CCleaner to clear up and registry issues if there were any and I ran Appcleaner to remove any iTunes cache that may have been left between installs. I'm running out of ideas - what am I missing here?

I have found the problem was in part caused by Windows firewall.
Exactly how Windows firewall can cause the problem when I wasn't even using it I don't know.
What I do know is that when I checked 'allow a program through the firewall' I found 4 rules set for iTunes, one of which was public network access.
I deleted the superfluous rules and the Home Sharing problems are solved.
All that needs sorting now is the 'determining gapless playback'.

Vista 64-bit - Determining gapless playback crash

hey guys and girls
just bought a new desktop computer, intel duo quadcore processor, 4 gb ram = it can run itunes (or so you'd think). have all my music copied directly from my old computer via external hard-drive. have taken it off the external and onto the internal drive of the new computer.
added all my music to the library and it set about trying to determine the gapless playback information, at this stage it will stop randomly and will freeze itunes then i have to restart itunes and when it opens it tries to determine the gapless playback again. more often than not i just tell it to stop trying before it freezes but i want to fix this problem. i have selected all files-->get info--> and set gapless album to NO but it still tries to determine gapless playback.
anyway i can stop it from trying to determine gapless playback. or any solutions to the problem would be greatley appreciated.

Hey hammersfan,
If you are having an issue with iTunes quitting unexpectedly on your Windows computer, I would suggest that you troubleshoot using the steps in this article -
iTunes for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8: Fix unexpected quits or launch issues - Apple Support
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Be well,
Brett L

ITunes Freezes on determining gapless playback information

I really would like some help, I start iTunes up it starts to check the gapless playback information, then stops and I can't do anything more, except close it out. I have tried repairing it, I have tried uninstalling then reinstalling it, nothing seems to work. Does anyone have anything else I should try?

Wow..adding to this one and will post my own. I just bought an iPhone and discovered iTunes 9 now Locks up on "Determining Gapless Playback Information". iTunes 9 worked fine prior to this as was syncing with iTouch. While it locks up on one song "Analyzing 4 of 4: Boys Boys Boys" the screen for Welcome to Your new iPhone is up but it is already locked up. I don't want to have to un-install and possibly lose my iTouch sync info. Without the iPhone hooked up iTunes just seems to lock up right away and never gets tot he Determining Gapless Playback.

Itunes freezes - strange error message - Determining gapless playback info

I recently tried to suscribe to a new podcast and the accidently stopped the downlaod before it was finished. Itunes then locked up and i could not get out of the podcast listing.
I closed itunes using ctrl-alt-del and started started again. this time it still went directly to the podcast page and the window on top had the following message: Determining Gapless Playback Information. Analysing XX of YY. As it was counting, the computer froze again. I notice that the CPU usage was up to 100%. Everytime I go on to itunes it does the same.
I removed itunes, cleaned out the temp directory, etc. and reinstalled again - same problem.
Has anyone seen this and can you help me?

Ok - no one seems to be able to help with my problem - is there a way I can go back to an older version of itunes. I have 6.5.0 on a CD, but when I remove version 7.0.2 and install 6.5.0, I get a message that says my library was created with a new version of itunes.

ITunes 11.1.3 did not solve "Determining Gapless Playback Information" bug

The solutions here on forum are outdated (as "Get Info" – "Information" – uncheck "Part of gapless album") because we no longer have this feature, described here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1797?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
I'm a little worried about that bug because it grows every music added (+1000 musics at this time for me).
What I already tested on Lion (and with no success):
• "Get Info" music – "Options" – check "Skip when shuffling"
• "File" – "Create new version" – "Create AAC version"
• "Consolidate library" when album/musics selected
• Remove album and put it again
I can only stop this bug pressing "x" on iTunes display. But the list is growing.
Do you have any tip?

FINALLY!! THE SOLUTION:
1. Close iTunes.
2. Move the selected files at username/music/itunes to your desktop:
3. Run iTunes. iTunes will start as if it was the first time. All your preferences, musics, books, apps will not appear at this time (do not worry). If you find any problem just put all files that you move to your desktop again on username/music/itunes
4. Click on 'Files' and select 'Library' and 'Import Library'. Choose: iTunes Library.xml at your desktop. (you can say "But this library was a mess!" Do not worry, iTunes will fix it).
5. iTunes will import data from that file. For me it spends 5-10 minutes depend on the size of your library (my library has 50gb with 10.000 musics).
6. After that you will see the annoying message on iTunes display: "Determining Gapless Playback Information" and much more musics than before (do not worry, it will be the last time that you will see it).
7. iTunes will do that and it is done. No more bugs.
8. Now you say: "Where is my apps, books, movies etc.?" Do not worry. Just move the folder at 'Itunes Media' (see image above) to iTunes, I mean, move folder "Books" to iTunes on 'Books'; move 'Home Video' folder to iTunes Movie; move 'Mobile Applications' to iTunes applications.
9. Close iTunes. Run it. Smile!
Considerations:
a. consider all your library is indexed, it means, all your music is organized at username/music/itunes/itunes media/music
b. consider you have to select again visualization mode for every music list.
Tested and works on iTunes 11.3.1 and Lion

Itunes freezes everytime it "determines gapless playback"

whenever i open my itunes i have to exit the "determining gapless playback" function or it will freeze. the same happens when i add music to my library, and it determines gapless playback, or deterimines album art.
how do i fix this?

thank you! excellent answers to all the questions. although this is a pain for you, at least nothing
b really
alarming appears to be happening with your PC.
okay ... we'll start with the simpler possibilities.
(1) work through this document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93444
(you've already done the repair install trick, but sometimes sterner measures are called for.)
these two references may also be helpful:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300252
toonz, "Where to find firmware for your CD/DVD drive", 05:55pm Apr 15, 2005 CDT
(2) and then try this document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93647
... and then a couple from outside the three-point circle:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300198
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301946
if these don't help matters any, we can try poking around your Roxio, your CD drive and your error logs a little more closely.
keep us posted!
love, b

Determining Gapless Playback Information....

Ever since I downloaded iTunes 7, every now and then iTunes is analyzing my ipod by " Determining Gapless Plabyback Information ". Yet its only doing this on half of my music. It takes forever and it slows down my computer. Is there any way to shut this off or is it better just to leave it alone?
G4 and emac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Look in the little window where it says its determining gapless playback info, there should be a little x inside of a black circle, click that and it will stop, but it will keep doing this every time you sync until it checks every song. It does take a while, I suggest just syncing it before you go to bed and let it do its thing while you sleep.

Determine Gapless Playback Information"

I use Itunes ,,wha does it mean when it running "Determine Gapless Playback Information" How do I turn off? or what it this?

CasperGemini wrote:
Are you working with the gapless option in hopes of resolving the issue with the tracks cutting out early during playback?
Yes -- in upgrading the bitrate on these tracks, I merely replaced the old file in my storage device with a new one with the same title (to preserve data), and this switch seems to give iTunes ****. If you check the link in my original post, a few us of seem to think iTunes & iPods use bitrate (vs. track time) to calculate playback, which is why the new, higher bitrate tracks are being snipped early when playing them back on my iPod. Like I said, whatever that "determining gapless playback information" thing actually does in iTunes, it fixes this issue.....which is why I'd like to manually command my library to re-determine this info...

Determining Gapless Playback Information Repeats Unexpectedly

I allowed the original Gapless Playback scan to complete on all songs in my library (just 5K songs, but a slow PC). However, some songs are scanned again every time I start iTunes AND every time I sync my iPod and sometimes randomly (like when I download a new iPod Touch App). I normally allow the process to complete (again) every time. When it occurs during an iPod sync, is causes the sync to hesitate at the end of the process, apparently waiting for iTunes to finish the Gapless Playback scan. This is infuriating!
While I can cancel the Gapless Playback scan, doing so does not prevent iTunes from performing the Gapless Playback scan again the next time I start iTunes or sync my iPod! Sometimes when I cancel the Gapless Playback scan during an iPod sync, my iPod will show NO MEDIA after disconnecting it when iTunes tells me it is OK to Disconnect! This forces me to sync the iPod AGAIN, which causes YET ANOTHER Gapless Playback scan on the SAME songs! Naturally, I allow the process to complete, which solves NOTHING.
WHAT I'VE TRIED:
1) I have attempted to play with the "Part of a gapless album" setting on the affected songs to no avail (set to On, Apply, then Off, Apply).
2) I have dumped my iTunes library and created an entirely new one from scratch (holding the Shift key when starting iTunes to create a new library in a new location).
3) I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes.
4) I have tried this on another computer and found that I experience the exact same problem on exactly the same songs on both Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit and Windows XP Professional 32-bit.
5) I have submitted feedback to Apple (nearly an exact copy of the first 2 paragraphs you see above).
Note that I cannot re-rip these songs because I received them as part of a bonus package for a Sony PlayStation 3 video game (God of War 3, Collector's Edition). The MP3 files I have of these songs are the only ones I'll ever have access to. Also note that there is nothing obviously wrong with the song files because they play fine and all metadata appears to be valid.
How do I instruct iTunes to forever ignore Gapless Playback Information on these troubled songs, to NEVER scan them again, while keeping them in my iTunes library? Thank you for your attention on this matter.
null

I know this is filed under iTunes for Windows, but I found this discussion whilst Googling for a solution to this exact problem under OSX 10.5.8, so I just thought I'd add my name to the list of people who are suffering!
Running OS X 10.5.8 with iTunes 9.1.1 (12) and a 160GB iPod classic. My iTunes library recently exceeded the capacity of my iPod, so I thought I would experiment with the converting higher bitrate files to 128kbps AAC option. Naively, I thought this would only address lossless files, as the idea of re-encoding a lossy file seemed a little silly to me - but no, even VBR MP3 with an avrage bitrate of not much over 128kbps got re-encoded. During the process (which was painfully slow - disk activity was at around 1.5MB/s for the entire duration) many of these suffered from Unknown Error (-50) and simply would not convert. All in all it took me 72 hours to convert my library on a 2.4ghz machine with 4gig of ram
I guess the above doesn't really pertain to this thread, so just consider it backstory However, now that the transfer has been completed, every time I update my iPod, for example when I plug it in to charge and it syncs a couple of new podcasts, it determines gapless playback information for 11,000 songs in my library! Every time!! I can't begin to describe how frustrating this is, and I can only hope they come up with a cross-platform fix in the very near future. I doubt personally we'll even see the issue officially acknowledged, but hopefully Apple are at least working on addressing it.
As a side note - Apple, if you are reading this, please allow us to only re-encode specific types of files to 128kbps AAC - I'd love to do this for my lossless albums, but I really don't want to do it for my V0 MP3s.

Itunes 8 crashes when trying to "determine gapless playback" help!

I have around 75GB music library and every time I open itunes it goes trough this process of "determining gapless playback" which eventually and every time crashes my computer. is there a way around this aside from stopping the process every time I launch itunes?? Never had this problem before.

turns out my hard drive failed so this was the problem. Works now with new HD.

How do I stop Determining Gapless Playback?

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