Playlist-Library file relationship questions...

Hello,
I periodically sync my library with a family member.(via vpn)
Here's what I've found:
iTunes Library.xml seems to contain almost all the information that shows up in iTunes, i.e. playlists and songs.
If I copy over the target iTunes Library.xml, it also copies over MY playlists, thus deleting the target playlists.
As a temp fix I've been only copying over the music files not the iTunes Library.xml and then doing a manual import from the target iTunes.
But when I delete files, it doesn't delete them from the target music list until it's done manually (usually when you click a song on the target and it gets a "!-locate file?" thing...
Is there a way to copy over the iTunes Library.xml but preserve the playlists on the target? (other than exporting them all manually from the target first, copying over iTunes Library.xml, then re-importing all the target's playlists?...
I ask this because the target has so many playlists now that i'ts becoming quite tedious...
any other ways I haven't thought of? (library sharing is out of the question since it's a 2mb VPN, which winds up being about 1.3mb 'true' with the encryption-inflation...kinda like 'rear wheel horsepower' in cars.)
Thanks all.

I had this issue and, after chasing it down on postings, I rebooted and made sure the drive was mounted before launching Itunes and that seemed to clear it up.
I did have to reset the location of the drive in prefs, owing to the still annoying defect in Itunes which blanks out the drive prefs if it does not detect the drive on opening rather than leaving it populated.

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Aperture newbie - library / file folder question

I am still trying to figure out the best way to use aperture to organize my work and even after reading the documents, I'm confused about why it stores things the way it is and what other options would be of benefit.
With iPhoto, everything was stored in the iPhoto library. With they way Aperture is set up, I still have an Aperture library "file" that is 6.x gig but all my files are being stored in the pictures folder under their own folder names. I was under the impression all pictures were stored in the library file like iPhoto did. I'm assuming I just have something set differently.
So if that is the case and I can store all my images in the Aperture folder, what is the advantage of doing that versus they way its storing all of them now? Is one way better than another? Any opinions?
Thanks.
Matt

On a laptop or on an iMac you probably do want to manage by Referencing image Masters. Hard drives slow as they fill, so at some point - perhaps immediately - you will want your Masters on one or more external Firewire 800 hard drives. OWC <http://www.owcomputing.com/> has good Firewire 800 solutions.
With Referenced Masters, simply Finder-copy each new batch of images to the external hard drive and eject the camera card. Then (after backup of images) from within Aperture Import the images by Reference (when you go to import, on the right hand side of the import window select "Store files in their current location").
Existing images on your hard drive can similarly be imported selecting "Store files in their current location" however personally I would move the originals to an external drive prior to importing into Aperture because trying to keep originals on the single iMac or laptop internal drive will sooner or later overfill the drive.
During the import process is also a good time to assign all manner of keywords, so take some time in advance thinking about keywording.
A good rule of thumb is not to fill any drive more than 70%, and for best speed keep important drives no more than 50% full.
Good luck!
-Allen Wicks

Aperture 3 library file organization question

I tried searching for an answer to this question but I had no luck. Perhaps I was searching on the wrong keywords.
In the older version of Aperture, you could look in the "guts" of the library and see individual projects, but as far as I can tell with Aperture 3 you can only see files by date (i.e. by year, month etc).
My problem is that I don't currently have access to the entire library via Aperture, but I have access to all the files via the cloud (I am using Crash Plan). I need to find individual files but searching chronologically makes no sense and neither does downloading the (terabyte plus) library to use in a local copy of Aperture is not feasible.
Is there a way that I can identify specific projects within the Aperture3Lib file? Any help would be deeply appreciated.
Attached is a couple of screenshots of what Crashplan shows.

No sorry in Aperture 3 all that got turned into entries in database files. And even if you could find them it would do you no good because the only place an actual image file is located is in the Masters folder, where the files imported are kept and the Previews folder, where the previews are kept.
Also bear in mind that the Masters folder is organized by import date and time not image date and time.
As a side note you need to be very careful using an online backup service for Aperture (and iPhoto) libraries. Because of the way the # libraries there have been reports of some of the services causing libraries problems when restored.
regards

Question about moving library file/playlists

I've just switched to a new computer, and while I was able to move my music and video, my playlists were gone(the music and video were on an external HD, but the library file with the playlists was on the old computer's HD). I've found the library file on the old computer, and I plan on plugging the external HD into the old comp and copying the libary file to it as a means to getting it onto the new comp.
Just one question: The previous comp was badly corrupted by viruses. I'm worried that if I copy the library file to the new comp, the new comp will become infected as well. Is this a risk? What can I do to prevent it?
Also, if I get the library file onto the new comp....then what?

Format the drive using your PC. Connect it to your Mac. Transfer the files. Connect to your PC. All is well.

Recovering from crash. Questions about iPhone andiTunes library files, etc.

Hi all - Had a major system crash which I'm trying to recover from. My iTunes purchases are backed up, as well as the iTunes application folder and everything contained within.
Anyway, I've reinstalled Window and iTunes and have all my iTunes purchases up and running, but have a couple of questions.
1) My new iTunes install thinks my iPhone is still synced to another iTunes library and wants to Erase and Sync to connect it to this new one. I'd obviously like to be able to sync without erasing, so are there settings and library files from my backed up iTunes directory that I can copy over to my freshly-installed iTunes directory to allow this to work?
2) Similarly, if there is a way to do this, will I be able to connect my old iPod that was also synced to my old iTunes and copy over the non-iTunes purchased songs? I have my CDs, no no real worry -- just would be simpler this way...
Thanks!

Assuming you have the default itunes setup, if you backed up your c:/.../music/itunes folder, it has the itunes database in it.
iTunes Library.itl
If you didn't make a backup of that folder and do not have the ITL file, you can try getting playlists,ratings, playcounts etc back from the iphone by using a 3rd-party ipod manager.
This ilounge article explains it more;see page 3
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-co mputer/
Make sure it supports iphone - not all of the other programs do.

ITunes won't recognize "library files" of playlists and ratings

After a Restore and putting iTunes onto an external hard drive, I can't get iTunes to recognize the library files that have my playlists and ratings.
How do you get the library files (itl and xml) to be recognized after moving all your music and iTunes to an external hard drive?
I just did a Restore on my iPod. Just before that, I had backed up my iTunes folder to an external hard drive and bought a new laptop. After I did the Restore, I was able to iTunes to recognize that my library is now on the external hard drive (to free up space on my laptop). The Apple Genius told me I could get the existing library files to work by just moving them into my iTunes folder on the external hard drive.
But iTunes doesn't recognize that I have any playlists, etc.

I think the library database files have to be in your "My Music" folder under the folder "itunes". I have not found a way of changing this. The music library can be elsewhere, but you need to have itunes do the move to keep the library database files in sync.

My iTunes is creating duplicates of playlists and hanging up. running latest version of lion, and iTunes using match and iCloud. please help. I have uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes. deleted all library files and is doing same thing.

I am runing lion and latest version of itunes. I have match on, home sharing on and using icloud. my itunes started hanging up and required me to force quit. then upon restart of itunes and restart of computer itunes would take upwards of 15 minutes to open and was using >90% of CPU and would be lagging in response if responding at all one of the playlists I had created on my ipad had over a hundred copies of the same playlist. after repeated restarts I uninstaled itunes and reinstalled. this didnt rectify the problem. I assumed library file had somehow become corrupt so I deleted library files, reimported all my music and synced with genius and match. and let the computer go over night. when I woke in morning all my music was back but I had all the extra playlists again and itunes is hogging all the cpu and was minimally responsive and hanging up after each click.
I thought this might be a virus or something but installed ESET cypersecurity did a complet scan with no threats found. I am at a total loss and do not know where to go from here. I hope one of you can assist. Thanks!

I had this exact issue. Spent over an hour on the phone with apple support, they couldn't resolve. Here is what I ended up doing, that worked.
1. Turned iTunes match off on all my iOS devices
2. Deleted the offending playlists from the iOS device they originated on
3. Started iTunes, let it run (literally) for an hour before it became responsive. First thing I did, before clicking anywere else was disable iTunes match. If I clicked anywhere, it would clock for another hour.
4. Let iTunes run overnight, by morning it had cleaned out the repeating play lists. This got my Mac/iTunes back to an operable state.
5. Restore iPhones from backup in iTunes.
What was causing my issue was a single playlist that was created on an iPhone, then suddenly showed up with several thousand duplicates on my other iPhone. The culprit playlist did not, for some reason, duplicate itself on my two iPads. Apple support seemed to think it was because the problem iPhone tried to sync the playlist to iCloud over and over again unsuccessfully, then it finally went through and populated the thousands of blank/failed playlists which then tried to propigate to iTunes and my other iOS devices. Seems like a reasonable theory.
I have not yet re-enabled iTunes match. So, no idea what will happen if I decide to go back down that rabbit hole.

I have a damaged library file, and a few questions?

My laptop shut down instantly because of a charger/battery problem and when I started itunes up again I got the message (importing itunes music library.xml) I thought it was going to double my library so I clicked stop and when itunes opened only half of my collection was there and all playlists/smart playlists are gone.
Can someone give me some advice as to how I can bring the songs back into my library with all of the tags I have edited, (Album, Comments, Sort Album, Genre etc..)
I had the option to copy files to itunes music folder checked, so does that mean that every edit I made in itunes would change the file names in the music folder?
I still have the Itunes database file - (iTunes Library (Damaged) (date modified 15/01/2012 12:02). But there is no exact file called (itunes music library.xml)
I do have a some sort of document with that name listed as an XML Document (date modified 15/01/2012 13:55) (about 2 hours after the problem occurred) but it just opens a webpage. I can also open it in a notepad etc.. and it brings up loads of encoding detail.
Is there any way to restart that XML import?
I am sure I still have most of, if not all of my music, but it's very important for me to get back the tag info.
It would also be great if I can get back the smart playlists and date added, but this is the least important.
I'm in the middle of a slow process of transferring the itunes folder to my old laptop to see how it looks before I make any changes here, but I'm not sure how many songs I had exactly, do you think there would be any reason songs got deleted because of this? There are no songs in my itunes collection stored in folders other than the itunes folder.
You are saving my life if you can help me here.
Thanks.

Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps youshouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See iTunes Folder Watch for a tool to catch up with any changes since the backup file was created.
When you get it all working make a backup!
tt2

ITunes Library File Damaged; How Do I Get My Playlists Back?

My PowerMac G4 was in Sleep mode, and the power went out in my house for two seconds. iTunes was open when the computer went down as was Stickies. Upon starting up my computer, I found all of my Stickies memos were gone, but worst of all, I got a window telling me the iTunes library was damaged, so I had to go through a new iTunes setup. After iTunes found all of my music files (nearly 10,000 songs), I now have all the songs retrieved but my hundreds of playlists are gone. My 80Gig iPod still has all of the playlists, but of course, if I sync it with my computer, I'll lose them from the iPod. Is there any way to get my playlists back without having to go through the arduous task of creating them all over again in iTunes? Help (And thanks in advance to anyone who can offer me some enlightenment...)

Do you have a backup of your library files?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93063

ITunes 7.1.1 crashed - library file rebuilt - playlists gone - help

I have iTunes 7.1.1 and today it crashed and when I re-opened it, it said something like the iTunes Library could not be found and then it started to rebuild the file and named the old one damaged. Now all my playlists are gone, all my saved podcasts are gone and stuff that I ripped to my iTunes in the last two weeks are gone too. How do I get my old iTunes library file back?

Ignore the previous post.... my issue has been solved. I had the iTunes plug-in iConcert. At the suggest I found in another thread, I deleted it, re-installed iTunes. and BANG, iTunes is working!!

How do I import playlists from an old library file?

How do I import playlists from an old library file?
I have a new computer and it has the music files completely reorganized from my last computer so I can't just drop in my old library files and have it work. Basically, I'm hoping there is some way to recover my old playlists from my old backed up copy of my music library without recreating my old jumbled file paths and just using my old library.

Backup the current passwords with the Password Exporter extension.
Then you can re-import them afterward.
For restoring the names and passwords from Firefox 3.5.x and later you need the file signons.sqlite from the old profile.
You also need the corresponding file [http://kb.mozillazine.org/key3.db key3.db] that stores the encryption key in addition to the signons file.
Password Exporter: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/2848
See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Password_Manager#Backing_up_and_restoring_passwords
For the bookmarks to need to do something similar unless you have a HTML backup of the old bookmarks because restoring a JSON backup replaces all current bookmarks.
If you need to preserve current bookmarks then you can export your bookmarks in Firefox to an HTML file and import that file afterward.
Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Export HTML & Import HTML > From File
Another possibility is to use the clipboard to store selected bookmarks before restoring a JSON backup (e.g. All Bookmarks: Ctrl + A and Ctrl + C).
You can paste the bookmarks from the clipboard back after you have restored a JSON backup.
That will preserve all data including tags and annotations, but you should create an HTML backup to be safe.

How to re-create playlists from Windows iTune library file?

After importing my itunes library from a Windows 7 sledded HDD, I have all my music etc but no playlists.
The kb article that explains the importing of the library files (itl and .xml) give some warnings about doing this import.
I can see both the xml file and a number of recent itl files on the sledded drive.
Am I going to mess anything up by importing these? It's possible that some of the songs the playlists pointed to are no longer in iTunes (I deleted some beore the import). Is this going to cause a problem.
Will this even work?

Assuming your relocated library is now at *Z:\iTunes Media*, for example, copy the library files that you restored onto drive C: (iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, sentinel & Album Artwork folder - ignore the .xml) into the parent of this folder, i.e. Z:\, then click the icon to launch iTunes and *immediately press and hold the SHIFT key* until presented with an option to choose or create a library. Choose the library at Z:\ - all should be well. If I guessed wrong just use your actual media folder & parent of that media folder as approptiate.
tt2

Playlists empty, no iTunes Music Library file

Is it possible to recover songs from a playlist?
I was reading over some posts on the subject, which mention moving the iTunes Music Library file. I see the iTunes Library file, but not the iTunes Music library file.
Thanks for any help!

I don't know exactly what you mean by recover songs from a playlist. What are you trying to do?
The two library file terms are the same, just differ with iTunes versions.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

HELP! Library File won't save, Playlists lost, and Itunes behaviour erratic

Can someone please help me? Itunes is doing my nut in. My Itunes was working fine until last week, when for some unknown reason, I connected my ipod to my PC and it killed all my USB ports. After stopping and restarting the Itunes service, that seemed to resolve itself.
However, today, I have had real problems with Itunes. First, it didn't want to open at all. Then, when it did open, I kept getting the dreaded 'Library file cannot be saved' message. I followed the instructions in the help articles, but as soon as I get to the stage where you move the library file to your desktop, it stopped Itunes working - it wouldn't load and gives me a message about some files missing.
So I uninstalled Itunes and re-installed it. Well, the first time it said there was something wrong with the installation package and it wouldn't work. The second time it got stuck on the registration process. The third time it worked but couldn't connect to the ITunes Store. Next time, it worked, and all my music is there, but the playlists have vanished and it keeps telling me the library file can't be saved.
Please help!!!!! (and no sarcastic comments about buying a Mac please...there's a recession on you know!)

This issue persists whether the drive is accessed via AFP network or FireWire.

Migrating Library files (playlists) from Windows to new mac?

Hi There;
I have New Mac Mini and WinXP SP2 laptop
both sharing a buffalo "network Drive"
with all the Media files - music and photos.
I want to migrate my iTunes library including
-- my rating, playlist, etc ... --to the new Mac Mini.
In the laptop, my iTunes Music folder is set to:
P:\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music
so when I check the "iTunes Music Library.xml" on my
laptop the location reference (path) point to any
song point to P:\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\... . . . .
I could import the music files on the mini, that is not
a problem, but I don't want to loose the playlist and other
info about the songs.
Moving/Coping the library file "*.xml" I don't think would work since the reference to the network drive on the
new Mini, start with "smb:/... ... " so iTunes
will not find any song.
Any ideas on how to do it?
Does a manual "search and replace" all the "P:\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\" referece work?
Thanks.
JCC

Hi There;
Thanks but when there is a problem, when you import you don't get the
rating for the songs.
IF I just move the whole iTunes folder,
When you check the iTunes Music Library.xml
you find that in the Mini box, the location key points to:
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/FAM-DIR-1/My%20Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Armik/Rubia/ 01%20Rubia.mp3</string>
In the windows box:
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/P:/My%20Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Armik/Rubia/01%20Track%2001 .mp3/</string>
So it will not find the media file.
Any other ideas?
What is the function of the iTunes Library.itl file?
Thanks for any help.
JCC

Playlist-Library file relationship questions...

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