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

Similar Messages

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.

Itunes crashes while determining gapless playback info

I had this problem with itunes 7 and now with 8 and its driving me crazy.
OK i have had no issues up till a few days ago. I was listening to a podcast and it had like 9 minutes to go and it froze up itunes started having the spinning beachball and it took 5 minutes before i could even get the force quit menu to come up so i could get out of itunes.
Then i reopened it and it said my libary was not an itunes libary so it began building one and it got half way though and it said determining gapless playback for sony 300 of whatever and it kept going it started slowing down then it picked up again then it froze. I saw which song it froze on so once i get itunes to quit i found the song and took it out. It sstarted up and this time froze on the song before it.
So i took out everything started a blank library and added songs one folder at a time and it got part way done but then at some point it freezes up and then every since this issue with itunes now when im typing in safari or firefox if i type to fast i get the spinning beach ball and i have to wait about 10 seconds to type again.

I am experiencing the same problem. My itunes used to freeze after several seconds of being open because certain songs would jam it on the gapless playback. However I would "X" out of this and the program would work fine. However, the first song it checks now for gampless playback jams it and as soon as i open itunes, it freezes. It does not even show that it is processing the gapless playback in the upper window. My computer also makes a "weird noise:" the hard drive turns intensely to a beat: -- -- ---- (pause of about 2 seconds) -- -- ----. I have tried reinstalling itunes, which did not work.
Mac OS X (10.3.9) 12in Powerbook 1.33 ghz

Need help with this annoying "determining gapless playback information" freeze and crash error to having to hard reset my computer! Someone please help

Haven't been able to use itunes for at least 2 months now. I went to upload a newly downloaded album and now itunes freezes on "determining gapless playback information" every single time! Then i have to hard reset my mac every time as well, which i have done a good 30+ times now. Someone please help me out, it would be much appreciated. i just want to listen to my music again. Apple support is useless and just want money when it's there fault it has happened anyway by applying that useless 'determining' non sense. Please help!

This is the "iTUnes for windows" forum, If your doing this on a mac, you may get better help in the "iTUnes for mac" forums

Determing Gapless Playback Crash

I recently reformatted my hard drive, reinstalled iTunes and loaded all my music from my external HD. iTunes added all the music but freezes when it gets to certain songs while "determing gapless playback." I tried deleting the song that was causing it to freeze but that only helped until it got through about 10 songs and then got stuck again. When it freezes, I can't do anything with iTunes and have to shut it down in the task manager. I tried letting it run it's course but nothing changed after a couple hours. I can use iTunes if I get to the little "x" at the top quick enough, but that's a pain. What do I do?

I'm going to echo the complaint and add the gory details of my efforts to this thread. Then I'm going to post feedback to Apple -- iTunes(7.6.0.29) + Vista renders both software and hardware UNUSABLE.
Objective: transfer library from old machine (SRC) to new laptop (TGT) with music folder on USB hard drive
SRC: 1.8GHz P3 desktop, Windows 2000 Pro SP4, 384MB memory, 40GB disk, iTunes 7.3.2.6
TGT: 2.0Ghz P4 laptop, Vista Ultimate, 4GB memory, 100GB SATA 7,200rpm disk, 100GB 2.5" IDE 5,400rpm USB disk, iTunes 7.6.0.29
iTunes 2771 song library -- 12 purchased from Apple (under 2 different accounts), remainder ALL created as LAME 3.96 VBR -V2 (approx 192 kbps) using dBpoweramp Music Converter and manually added to iTunes music folder on SRC (before transfer)
Conversion Process
-- Export library on SRC
-- Modify Library.xml, change all "\C:\Tunes" to "\F:\Tunes" (letter assigned to USB drive determined in advance)
-- Copy music folder from SRC (C:\Tunes\.) to USB drive (\Tunes)
-- Install iTunes on TGT
-- Set iTunes options: Music Folder = F:\Tunes; NO keep folders organized; NO copy to folder when adding; NO auto-sync when iPod connected
-- Authorize TGT computer (2 accounts) on Apple Store
-- Connect iPod to TGT and "Transfer Purchases"
-- Connect USB drive to TGT
-- Import Library.xml file
-- "Determine Gapless Playback Information" (DGPI) begins after import completes, process FAILS and LOCKS iTunes
-- USB drive shows 2 seconds of activity every 60 seconds, indefinitely, but iTunes shows no sign of progress or activity
-- iTunes must be terminated via task manager
-- DGPI repeatedly failed on song from Aerosmith's Greatest album (418 of 2581)
-- Terminate iTunes, disconnect USB drive, restart iTunes
-- Deleted problematic song, reconnect USB drive
-- DGPI fails on another song from same Aerosmith album (385 of 2549)
-- Terminate iTunes, disconnect USB drive, restart iTunes, delete second problematic song, reconnect USB drive
-- DGPI fails on THIRD song from SAME Aerosmith album
-- Terminate iTunes, restart and delete all remaining songs from Aerosmith album
-- Reconnect USB drive, DGPI fails on song from Beatles Abbey Road (673 of 2531)
-- ** all songs which caused DGPI to fail are LAME 3.96 -V2 VBR (44.1 KHz, 16 bit, 2 channel) created by dBpoweramp

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.

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.

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 hangs when determining gapless playback

I have just plugged my portable hard drive back into my laptop after a month, i have 15,997 songs in total (60.93 GB)on my hard drive but it now hangs whilst doing the initial analyzing - on 378 of 4518 track 03 and will not progress. I have the latest itunes & ipod software installed, and have done this on numerous occasions with no problem having had an ipod for 3 years and always stored my music files in a portable hard drive to prevent music loss if my laptop crashed. Please help me resolve this problem
thanks

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!

APPLE: PLEASE NOTICE gapless playback crashes iTunes--how to turn it off?

Most of the time when my iTunes starts to "determine gapless playback", it crashes. I have to re-start iTunes and run my sync (10 minutes) over again. VERY FRUSTRATING.
I have tried something I saw on another bulletin board, which was an attempt to turn off Gapless Playback:
--go into iTunes;
--select ALL songs;
--RIGHT click;
--select Get Info;
--it will now ask "Are you sure you want to edit information for all items"...click YES;
--in the lower right-hand corner of "Multiple Item Information", check the box that says NO to gapless playback;
--hit OKAY.
iTunes then goes through and removes gapless playback. PROBLEM with this solution: it doesn't stay. Every time you do anything on iTunes, it reverts to gapless playback.
Has anyone else found a work-around or a way to permanently turn off gapless playback? Or is this an Apple problem that they need to solve in the next iTunes release?
R
Windows XP

As when stopping the play of a song with the music app.
There is a pause button and a fast forward button to the next song above the volume level indicator at the bottom. Select the pause button which will turn to a play button. When wanting to start playing again, press the play button.

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'.

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.

Everytime iTunes starts with "Determining Gapless Playback Information"!?

Hi,
for 7 weeks now everytime I start iTunes (12.1.0.71) it keeps saying "Determining Gapless Playback Information" and does it with the last 189 mp3-files I imported. The files are always the same, it does not happen to any other, older mp3-files and it does not happen to new m4a-files. I found some ideas in forums but all of the suggestions are outdated because iTunes 12.1.0.71 does not have the options mentioned anymore....
Any ideas?

Welcome to AD!
I'm not sure this will work, but it's what I would try on my PC.
I would rename the folders containing those new music albums to something else. Then itunes will not be able to find them, so should skip the determining gapless info for them.
Specifically, use Windows Explorer to rename the folder they are in from "Artist A" to "Artist A re-do"
I would also check to see if another player such as WMP could play them. They might be damaged files.

ITunes Freezes when determining gapless playback information

I have a library of about 10,000 songs stored on an external hard drive. I imported them all into iTunes, and then when it tries to determine gapless playback information, it always freezes. First it froze on one particular song that I removed. It went a little longer the next time but then froze on a different song. Is there anyway I can have it skip songs? Or is it freezing because of a different reason? I basically can't use iTunes because it freezes within 2 minutes of me opening it..

Welcome to AD!
I'm not sure this will work, but it's what I would try on my PC.
I would rename the folders containing those new music albums to something else. Then itunes will not be able to find them, so should skip the determining gapless info for them.
Specifically, use Windows Explorer to rename the folder they are in from "Artist A" to "Artist A re-do"
I would also check to see if another player such as WMP could play them. They might be damaged files.

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.

Vista 64-bit - Determining gapless playback crash

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