Solution: iTunes "Analyzing Gapless Playback" Bug Fix

I have seen many complaints of a problem that has become somewhat commonplace in iTunes. I work for a major Technical Support company and get customer complaints about this often. It is frustrating because I generally am good at solving issues. Now I have a solution and I wish to share it with everyone.
The Problem
The issue is whenever you open iTunes it begins "Analyzing Gapless Playback" for a certain number of songs. In my case I have discovered that once this issue begins happening...every single song you add to iTunes thereafter will be added to the list of songs that need to be analyzed. I had this issue in Lion and Mountain Lion. But I have heard lots of people have the same issue with previous versions of OS X.
The Cause (hypothisis)
My hypothesis is that the problem is that iTunes loses the ability to physically write the ID3 tag information. When you make changes to files the changes are saved in your iTunes library files but nowhere else. Because iTunes detects the ID3 tags untouched when it opens it assumes that they have not yet been checked for gapless playback thus performs the check. The problem lies in permissions. Some change you make (OS Upgrade, Reinstall, etc) cause the permissions in the folder to not allow iTunes to write the ID3 tags. I have tried everything I could think of to fix this and was unable to do so. I tried using MP3 repair programs (MP3 Scan & Repair.app)
The Solution
I have tried a lot of different things to fix this and the only thing I figured out is kind of a "catch all" but it works none the less. I want to preface this with saying this is kind of an extreme pain the neck thing to do but it fixed my issue. In my iTunes preferences I have enabled Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized and Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder. This is how I have always kept my iTunes. These instructions are assuming that is also what you are doing.
Quit iTunes
Navigate to your Music Folder
Move all of the highlighted items in the photo below to a new folder on your desktop.
   4. Now launch iTunes. When it opens it will appear like the first time you opened iTunes because (duh) there is no media in it yet.
    5. Go into Preferences (advanced) and make sure your iTunes Media Folder is set correctly.
   6. Make sure that iTunes Match is turned off for now.
   7. Click File>Add to Library and then choose your iTunes Media Folder. You will then wait for a long time (most likely) while your media is rescanned.
The Fallout
At this point (if you organize your iTunes with precision like I do) you are going to find your iTunes Library with a little bit of disorganization (depending on how long the issue had been going on). Because iTunes had not been able to write to your ID3 tags many corrections you may have made over the past couple of months (however long the issue had been going on) will not be in effect. For me it wasn't so bad. I had about 200 songs & books that I needed to fix. Audiobooks seem to be more of a problem for me.
So go through and get your iTunes Library back to the way you like it. Then turn on iTunes Match (if you have it). The reason we had it off was to make sure that your match data didn't get replaced with your iTunes Library mistakes not re-fixed.
I have restarted my Mac many times and it has been about a day since I did this and everything appears to be working correctly.
Prevention
I wish I had something to write in this area but I have no clue how to prevent this from happening again. If I figure out a way I will be sure to edit this article. I am open for suggestions!

Apple should provide a way to disable Gapless Playback.
For Albums I guess checking is not so bad, though I prefer GP only to work when asked.
However, there is a major bug.
I record my own music which results in a single file with no Tags or references of any kind.
When I one of these files to "Add to iTunes Library" I get the spinning wheel while iTunes
tries to figure out if it is Gapless. This usually freezes up iTunes for about 15 minutes.
Please Apple. Just give us a way to turn off Gapless Playback.
I have my iTunes library on an external RAID drive, using a MacBook Pro.

Similar Messages

ITunes 8.0 Crashes When Analyzing Gapless Playback

I made a smooth transition to iTunes 8.0 and had no problems loading my library or having Genius search through my library about a month after the transition. The problem began when I attempted to add about 2,000 song to my library. The songs were added fine, but when iTunes began to 'analyze gapless playback', iTunes got stuck on one song. Eventually, iTunes froze, then Vista froze, then Vista restarts automatically. This problem now occurs every single time I open iTunes as it will never be able to analyze every new song without freezing. A couple of times, I have actually received a blue screen error as a result of iTunes freezing. The same freezing also occurs when I tell Genius to collect information about my library.
What I have tried:
1) I have tried removing the file that iTunes becomes stuck on. This did not work, iTunes only got stuck on another seemingly random song when 'analyzing gapless playback'
2) I have tried to click the 'x' option in order to stop the 'analyzing gapless playback', however, iTunes archives the songs that it has already analyzed before it freezes, so once iTunes is restarted, the song that freezes the computer is the first one to be analyzed.
3) I have tried removing every single component of the iTunes program from my computer and reinstalling a fresh copy. This does not work, I still have the same problem.
4) I have tried reverting back to an older version of iTunes (7.6). This did not work, iTunes still could not finish 'analyzing gapless playback' without freezing.
5) I have tried downloading the 32-bit installer for iTunes so I could run it as a 32-bit process, however, when trying to install, an error occurs that says that I should download the 64-bit installer.
6) I have tried deleting my iTunes library file and the entire iTunes file all together. I still have the same problem once I load my music again.
I know other people are having similar problems, but I didn't read about anything that couldn't be fixed by what the steps I tried above. If you have any advice, please email me and let me know. I honestly can't do anything in iTunes and it is the most important program on my computer. Thanks for your help.

It is most likely that there is a track in you library that is causing trouble and the trick is to find it and remove it from your library.
Then iTunes should be able to complete the gapless playback calculations and then it won't happen every time you start iTunes.
A way of doing it is to create an alternative library. Un check "Copy to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" in Preferences during the test.
Then start adding tracks to the test library a folder or a few folders at at time until the problem starts. Then go back and try and isolate which track it was.
Royb from Apple has posted a different way of doing it that might like to look at:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3413761&#3413761

Launch of iTunes = hangs on "analyzing gapless playback"

anybody know how to resolve this ? Geez, I dont even need whatever iTunes is trying to do ... why does this come on automagically ?
TIA

I'm not sure that was the problem. I have the same 20GB 4g colour ipod, and have also updated to ITunes 7. I connect the ipod, sync some tunes and it then starts "Determining Gapless Playback Information" (which I don't want it to do since evidently my 4G can't handle gapless). Gets so far then freezes, and the only way to unfreeze is to disconnect the Ipod. I also have an external HD with my Itunes library on it (Iomega Mininmax 250GB connected via USB2). Tempted to roll back to IT6? Any other suggestions?

Itunes - determining gapless playback information driving me insane

Hi, basically ive had enough of gapless playback information so have decided to post another topic about it. The last year or so its been very frustrating. Every time i open itunes, unless i manage to click the x button very quickly to stop the gapless playback function itunes freezes at around number 8 or so. After this if i dont click the x button in time my finder freezes, forcing me to restart my computer. This has happened to me every day, probably at least three times.
Now when i open itunes i dont even have the few seconds i had before to close the gapless playback function. It just freezes as soon as i open itunes. This now makes itunes un-usable.
Please apple make a feature that lets you turn it off. Ive tried all the ideas in the forums but none of the work. I cant handle this anymore. im on a 15'' macbook pro 2.15ghz intel core 2 duo machine.
Pleeeassseeee help. Thanks

Select all music,
Get info
Dismiss warning dialogue
Click "Options"
Click Gapless Album
Select no from dropdown menu
This option does only one thing.
If you have *Cross Fade* playback enabled in iTunes prefs and you play a gapless album followed by the next song on that same gapless album, the songs will not cross fade.
iTunes will always analyze songs for gapless when added to iTunes.
iTunes will always play back gapless if the songs are gapless.

ITunes determining gapless playback information then freezing computer

I imported my music to itunes last night. My computer froze while it was trying to find the artwork then i rebooted it and now itunes keeps determining gapless playback information. It gets about three quarters of the way through and freezes in the same spot everytime. I don't know what to do.

I have the same problem - and cannot use iTunes at this point. Have about 15,000 tracks, and it got through most of them crashing which seized up the whole machine. I removed the song it crashed on which didn't fix it.

ITunes 10.1 Major bug fix?

I recently upgraded to version 10.1 as I was excited to try out iOS 4.2... Only to find that there were some interface bugs on installation.
http://img641.imageshack.us/i/buggyitunes.jpg
Does anyone know of a solution to my problem?? It's stopped my iPhone from connecting to the internet for some reason! :'(
Thanks in advance!
Nick x

... talk about a picture telling a thousand words ...
Apparently that one's not new to 10.1, Nick, but it does seem to be striking more commonly on 10.1.
In most cases, it seems related to various troubles with the Segoe family of fonts on the PC. There's a variety of particular causes though.
It might be best to head to the following thread, and have a read through the various descriptions of the various problems. I'd try reading the entire thing prior to checking to see what seems to be the most likely cause of the issue on your PC:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2647111

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!

Gapless playback or cross fade: Hobson's choice!

My mini dies, so I got a nano... find so far, until I discover iTunes calculating gapless playback information.
What's it going to take Apple to fix this? How hard is it to offer one or the other?
I should not have to choose between cross fade or gapless, I should be able to choose neither!
If I have cross fade, the audio books with no silences at the beginning and end of each file have the words faded together.
If I have gapless, the stupid software picks the wrong silence and I end up jumping over audio. If there is too long a silence in a pause in an mp3, it seems to be marked as the end of the track and I am jumped to the next one.
Come on Apple! If you don't fix this, I'll have to give GtkPod a try.
Jim
mutt Windows XP Pro ...and Linux! Centos, Fedora, RH, you name it.

Opinions of users do affect my decisions, but I really am very careful about how I make those decisions. I may sound like a mad reactionary twit and I probably was until I found GtkPod, but that's not all I am.
I'm really close to getting a Mac in my life now that their Mach/BSD hybrid is the base instead of Finder and the toolbox ROM. Linux is mostly taking care of the heavy lifting for me, but I need a consumer OS sometimes. I just can't run Vista, so that leaves MacOS X for a consumer OS for me, and it's not a bad choice.
Where did you find a link to http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html? I spent a long time trying to find some way to communicate with them and that's a reason for my low opinion at the moment. I'll be chargrined if I just missed it.
You really have properly chastised me, and I deserved quite a bit of it, but... I do have to take issue with your last point.
The idea that an audiobook can't be an MP3 because an MP3 files are music is not true. I guess iTunes/iPod sees it that way, but that is changing. They have added "remember my position" to MP3 files and made it easy to set on a multi-selection, too.
I think you will find MP3 audio books are very common everywhere but at Audible. Isis Publishing from the UK (Pratchett) and Blackstone Audio Books (Heinlein, Bujold) both use MP3 for there audio books. 32K or 64K Bps and mono or stereo make for very small audio books that play anywhere.
DRM is broken by design, so I've just avoided Audible and iTunes and looked elsewhere. The iPods are the best audio players out there, though, so I am happy to use them. Until they get all gapless on me
Thanks for the link.
Jim

Gapless playback info

can anyone tell me why every time i update my ipod lately, after it updates any new songs/videos/whatever, then it says "analyzing gapless playback information"? like, what does that mean? and every single time, its for the same exact 67 songs... not like its affecting me or anything, but it kinda takes a while and i was just curious what that means exactly..?

The real questions are these:
Why is the iPod database so brittle that the slightest thing makes you have to redo the whole thing? This is the same problem with Album Artwork. You mount the iPod wrong or view it with another program and Poof!, no more album art.
and...
Why couldn't the gapless option just get embedded into the file? Just make it a comment tag or something. Then it doesn't have to be scanned time after time.
and...
Why can't we just turn it OFF!?

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

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.

Stuck itunes due to gapless playback information

Hi everyone- I always get good answers here so hopefully someone will be able to help with my dilemma!
This past week my computer was acting up, but it seemed to repair itself. Just things like Mail forgetting my password, Safari closing by itself, that sort of thing. But the one lingering problem was with my iTunes. When I clicked to open it it had erased all of my playlists, and it was only recognizing about 1,400 of my songs. I called apple, and they had me delete the .xml file and the data file from my iTunes. Then I added my library back in.
I've got about 5,000 songs so it took forever. When it finally added all the songs it got stuck on retreiving album artwork. I let it go for about twenty minutes, and had to force quit it. Tried the enrtire process all over again, and again it got stuck on the same artwork.
From there I just restarted. Now when I opened iTunes it got stuck after about 100 songs in the "determining gapless playback info" mode. It gets so stuck that I can't even force quit it- I have to press down the power button and let it restart that way.
Called apple, and they couldn't figure it out. I tried creating another account to see if I could add the music from my account and see if I got the same error. But I couldn't get to my music from there. I also tried deleting the album that was giving me issues and it just paused on a different album.
I am lost! I have no time this week to take it to the Genius Bar, and I'm leaving for vacation in a week so I really want to sync my iPod. Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you!
Mac Book Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

The problem occurs when you are importing tracks from another drive than the boot drive. It's a bug in iTunes or OS X. I've had two machines do it, and there is no way to remedy it, and never any response here on the board when it is mentioned. Apple please fix it!

ITunes crashing - Determing gapless playback information

I am having a big problem with itunes, since my main drive crash with all my music, i had was to trash my library and restart from what every music I can find on my other drives.
Problems problems....
1. Adding music itunes will crash
2. Most time it will crash while trying to determing gapless playback information
3. and just at startup it will crash
I have repaired permissions and all the fancy stuff but still problem, now apple has updated to 8 and the problem was never fixed any ideas anyone????

Hi,
Try deleting the iTunes preference file. /Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Open the Preferences folder, locate this file: com.apple.iTunes.plist drag that file to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot. You will have to reset your iTunes preferences, but this is the only way to find out if the file is corrupted and considering you are experiencing so many crashes... that might be the culprit.
Carolyn

Help ! ITunes crashes everytime on gapless playback information

Please, i don't know what to to. Everytime I open Itunes it says gapless playback information and goes on forever, it won't let me import a cd . It just crashes. It's version 7 the latest one. It didn't happen before until the upgrade
how can i stop that gapless playback information from apperaing everytime??
Windows XP

Hey, guess what...I fixed it!
It appears to be that when iTunes updated to the 7.1 version, you needed the newest version of quicktime to be running and fully installed.
For example. I had the K-Lite Mega Codec pack, which in it contains a quick time alternative codec which allows you to watch .mov or quicktime movies without having quicktime actually installed on your computer.
So I completely removed the K-Lite Mega Codec pack and rebooted, then completely installed iTunes 7.1 + quicktime, and then rebooted again to be safe. And it worked. I also installed the K-Lite Mega Codec pack later and excluded the quicktime alternative.
But if you dont have the K-Lite Mega Codec pack on your computer I suggest uninstalling quicktime, and reinstalling it, then install iTunes 7.1 all over again.
Does this help you? If you have anymore questions just ask sophie.
Best wishes,
Oakie

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.

Solution: iTunes "Analyzing Gapless Playback" Bug Fix

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