Ipod skipping songs after a few seconds

Question

I have been having problems with playing certain songs on my new 80GB ipod classic (all ripped from CDs, not purchased or downloaded).
The songs will skip to the next song after anything from right at the beginning of the song to 30 seconds in. If I go back, I can fast forward past the point it skips, and it will play to the end.
I have already tried deleting the songs from my library and re-importing, restoring my ipod with the latest software and checking that the stop time on the song is correct. Does anyone have any other suggestions for me?
Thanks

Answer 1

I have a similar issue, the only difference being that when I fast forward it will not continue to play, only again, skip to the next song.
After some research I have found that the only thing that seems to work for me is to convert my files to MP3 using the "convert to MP3" function found in iTunes. All my songs are already in MP3, but the reason this works is due to the encoding. If the encoding is unknown, it seems more often than not my iPod will skip those tracks. When you convert it to mp3 using iTunes it changes the encoding to some kind of iTunes encoding.
This makes me VERY angry. There is no way I have found to sort the items by their encoding as to convert only the problematic ones. Also, when you convert it changes the bit rate to read what ever your rip settigs are. This ***** because I plan on reripping some of my CDs that I ripped years ago at a low bit rate. If I convert to MP3 I cannot search my library to see which ones were ripped at the lower rate.
It also creates a duplicate of the audio file, which means I will not have enough space on my hard drive to compensate for over 12000 duplicated at a higher or equivilant bit rate.