Official iTunes 11 Thread (Released 11/29/2012)

[Brault]

 

Usually, it only happens on a small selection of albums that are related in some way. The most regular culprits are albums tagged with "Opera", or that are physically located in a folder where a lot of opera resides. I am beginning to suspect that some opera-hating programmer at Apple might have put something in there intentionally ...

 

i doubt this very much, Apple's programmers no longer seem to have the capability of successfully implementing such innovation.

 

SONOS has a perfectly functional "Queue" for selecting upcoming tracks to be played. Unfortunately Apple had to try to improve on it, with disastrous result. I will never again move to a new version of Apple software until it has been tested by the public....for a few months,

[Musicophile]

iTunes has an annoying habit of 'losing' the Album Art on some albums. Not losing entirely (in the sense that all I have to do is "Get Info..." on the first track in the album and the Album Art mysteriously re-appears), but the Album Art is just not displayed - only the 'grey quavers' box.

 

Usually, it only happens on a small selection of albums that are related in some way. The most regular culprits are albums tagged with "Opera", or that are physically located in a folder where a lot of opera resides. I am beginning to suspect that some opera-hating programmer at Apple might have put something in there intentionally ...

 

Yesterday, I opened iTunes and the whole music collection is showing no artwork. That's over 2,300 albums. As usual, if I do "Get Info" on the first track of any one album, the artwork re-appears. I have tried various schemes to achieve the same result with one operation on multiple albums, but so far without success. I suppose I could delete and re-import the entire collection, but for various reasons I am very reluctant to go that route.

 

Has anyone experienced this problem? How about solved it ?!?

 

Never had any cover problems at all (only the remote app every once in a while get's the cover wrong).

 

Do you have your covers embedded in the files?

[elcorso]

iTunes has an annoying habit of 'losing' the Album Art on some albums. Not losing entirely (in the sense that all I have to do is "Get Info..." on the first track in the album and the Album Art mysteriously re-appears), but the Album Art is just not displayed - only the 'grey quavers' box.

 

Usually, it only happens on a small selection of albums that are related in some way. The most regular culprits are albums tagged with "Opera", or that are physically located in a folder where a lot of opera resides. I am beginning to suspect that some opera-hating programmer at Apple might have put something in there intentionally ...

 

Yesterday, I opened iTunes and the whole music collection is showing no artwork. That's over 2,300 albums. As usual, if I do "Get Info" on the first track of any one album, the artwork re-appears. I have tried various schemes to achieve the same result with one operation on multiple albums, but so far without success. I suppose I could delete and re-import the entire collection, but for various reasons I am very reluctant to go that route.

 

Has anyone experienced this problem? How about solved it ?!?

 

This happens to me when I try to open iTunes from another hard drive (and OS) that wasn't the original that created and kept actualized the iTunes database, since the metadata link is stored in Users/Roch/Music/iTunes.

 

A trick I use is (for this, iTunes version must be the same in both OSs):

 

Move to the trash iTunes folder in the HD/OS you are using now.

 

Copy the iTunes folder from the HD/OS original to the same location on HD/OS you are using now.

 

Restart the HD/OS you are using now. 'Repair Disk Permissions' with 'Disk Utility'.

 

Open iTunes and now everything must be correct.

 

There are other ways to fix this, but this is the one I use.

 

Roch

[mwheelerk]

Never had any cover problems at all (only the remote app every once in a while get's the cover wrong).

 

Do you have your covers embedded in the files?

 

I think this very likely is the issue. If you have simply used the 'Get Album Artwork' function in iTunes the artwork is not embedded in each music file but, as I understand it, stored in a separate location which iTunes simply points to. If the library files have been moved or some other anomaly has occurred the artwork has become 'disconnected' from the music files.

[higo]

iTunes has an annoying habit of 'losing' the Album Art on some albums. Not losing entirely (in the sense that all I have to do is "Get Info..." on the first track in the album and the Album Art mysteriously re-appears), but the Album Art is just not displayed - only the 'grey quavers' box.

 

Usually, it only happens on a small selection of albums that are related in some way. The most regular culprits are albums tagged with "Opera", or that are physically located in a folder where a lot of opera resides. I am beginning to suspect that some opera-hating programmer at Apple might have put something in there intentionally ...

 

Yesterday, I opened iTunes and the whole music collection is showing no artwork. That's over 2,300 albums. As usual, if I do "Get Info" on the first track of any one album, the artwork re-appears. I have tried various schemes to achieve the same result with one operation on multiple albums, but so far without success. I suppose I could delete and re-import the entire collection, but for various reasons I am very reluctant to go that route.

 

Has anyone experienced this problem? How about solved it ?!?

 

Dear Talos2000,

 

I can assure you that you are not alone. I have exactly the same missing artwork problem as you when using iTunes 11. In my case, all my album artwork was "embedded" with each and every song. Further, as in your case, if I do "Get Info" on the first track of any one album, the artwork re-appears.

 

My 17,000 plus songs are stored in a Synology NAS and I am not sure if this is the root of the problem as I spotted from the footer of your message that you are also storing your music files in a Synology NAS.

[Paul R]

Guys- use XLD or some other ripper that allows you to embed the artwork in each file(track) and this "problem" goes away. Or you can even use iTunes to embed the artwork, though it is a bit more trouble.

 

Do that, and not only does your problem go away, but you can choose different artwork if you like.

 

-Paul

 

 

 

Dear Talos2000,

 

I can assure you that you are not alone. I have exactly the same missing artwork problem as you when using iTunes 11. In my case, all my album artwork was "embedded" with each and every song. Further, as in your case, if I do "Get Info" on the first track of any one album, the artwork re-appears.

 

My 17,000 plus songs are stored in a Synology NAS and I am not sure if this is the root of the problem as I spotted from the footer of your message that you are also storing your music files in a Synology NAS.

[higo]

Guys- use XLD or some other ripper that allows you to embed the artwork in each file(track) and this "problem" goes away. Or you can even use iTunes to embed the artwork, though it is a bit more trouble.

 

Do that, and not only does your problem go away, but you can choose different artwork if you like.

 

-Paul

 

 

Dear Paul,

 

Thanks for your message. As indicated in my earlier message, I have previously spent hours tagging each and every music file with the album art. To clarify, all the album art is "embedded" with the music file and iTunes is supposed to pick up such embedded data. The problem is that there is a bug in iTune 11 so that I have to manually play one or two music files in a particular album before the embedded album art re-appear again.

[Paul R]

Hi Higo -

 

I just don't see this as an iTunes bug, at least not exactly the same way you do.

 

The problem you describe is exactly what can happen when the database is slow and the images are NOT embedded into the files. I would carefully double check that the images are actually embedded.

 

If the images are actually and truly corrected embedded in your files, and you have confidence in your meta-data, then create a new iTunes library and import all your media files to it. That will, without a doubt, clear any metadata problems you have. Or at the very least, expose any metadata problems that you might not have completely handled.

 

You just need to recreate the database, so be sure you have iTunes set to NOT copy files and to NOT automatically manage your media files. It takes about 10 minutes to recreate an iTunes library with 50K tracks in it, so you can base the time it will take for your library on that figure.

 

Yours,

-Paul

 

 

 

Dear Paul,

 

Thanks for your message. As indicated in my earlier message, I have previously spent hours tagging each and every music file with the album art. To clarify, all the album art is "embedded" with the music file and iTunes is supposed to pick up such embedded data. The problem is that there is a bug in iTune 11 so that I have to manually play one or two music files in a particular album before the embedded album art re-appear again.

[ckpiv]

I may be wrong here, Paul can probably confirm.

 

If you want to check to see if your artwork is embedded look at your files in your music folder in finder. Do they show the files with the artwork preview or just the generic music icon?

[Boris75]

Or you can even use iTunes to embed the artwork, though it is a bit more trouble.

 

 

Paul, I am very interested by your remark as I would like to do this from time to time (even if generally I embed the artwork at the time of ripping with XLD). How do you do it?

Thanks in advance,

Boris.

[mwheelerk]

Dear Paul,

 

Thanks for your message. As indicated in my earlier message, I have previously spent hours tagging each and every music file with the album art. To clarify, all the album art is "embedded" with the music file and iTunes is supposed to pick up such embedded data. The problem is that there is a bug in iTune 11 so that I have to manually play one or two music files in a particular album before the embedded album art re-appear again.

 

How do you verify that your artwork is in fact embedded with the file? The only way I know to check and Paul or others may have another method is to go to finder, follow the path to your iTunes Music Folder and select an artist then an album and then a particular song in that album. Does a thumbnail of the artwork appear to the right of the song file you selected? Or, is there a little dark gray box with a symbol inside it. If you have the artwork thumbnail next to each and every song they should be embedded. If not then something is amiss. Any chance you use a folder.jpg inside every album file?

[Paul R]

Select "Get Info" on one or more tracks, and you can past the album art directly into the info screen. You can also right click on it and insert a file from disk. This works for albums as well, and is very simple to do once you cotton on to the idea.

 

When you close it or save the changes, iTunes will embed the artwork into the file. You can check that as MWheelerk describes in his posting. Checking the files in finder is a pretty reliable way to ensure the artwork is really embedded correctly into the music tracks.

 

-Paul

 

 

Paul, I am very interested by your remark as I would like to do this from time to time (even if generally I embed the artwork at the time of ripping with XLD). How do you do it?

Thanks in advance,

Boris.

[Musicophile]

How do you verify that your artwork is in fact embedded with the file? The only way I know to check and Paul or others may have another method is to go to finder, follow the path to your iTunes Music Folder and select an artist then an album and then a particular song in that album. Does a thumbnail of the artwork appear to the right of the song file you selected? Or, is there a little dark gray box with a symbol inside it. If you have the artwork thumbnail next to each and every song they should be embedded. If not then something is amiss. Any chance you use a folder.jpg inside every album file?

In Addition to Paul's recommendation, if you want to do this for a large number of files, you can use the tool TuneInstructor, which I strongly recommend to any iTunes user anyhow, as it allows a lot of interesting modifications of your tags:

 

Tune?Instructor | Take control of your iTunes library

[Musicophile]

Itunes 11.0.2. that was published yesterday was supposed to have a new composer view:

 

Apple releases iTunes 11.0.2 with new Composer view, improved Playlist responsiveness, bug fixes | 9to5Mac

 

I just have no idea where to find this. Did anybody see it after upgrading?

[Mister Wednesday]

Musicophile,

 

From the Macworld website article on iTunes 11.0.2:

 

"In addition to the usual performance tweaks and bug fixes, it sports a new Composer view. If you open iTunes > Preferences, go to the General tab, and click the box for Show Composers, you'll get a new view option along with songs, albums, artists and genres."

 

Regards,

 

Mister Wednesday

[Musicophile]

Musicophile,

 

From the Macworld website article on iTunes 11.0.2:

 

"In addition to the usual performance tweaks and bug fixes, it sports a new Composer view. If you open iTunes > Preferences, go to the General tab, and click the box for Show Composers, you'll get a new view option along with songs, albums, artists and genres."

 

Regards,

 

Mister Wednesday

 

Thanks for the extremely fast response. Obviously composers are unimportant enough not to show them as default...

 

It was pretty clear already that Itunes doesn't give a s@@@ about classical, but this one is impressive. They do an update specifically to add a feature that may actually be helpful, but I potentially may have never found this option.

[Brault]

...

It was pretty clear already that Itunes doesn't give a s@@@ about classical, but this one is impressive. They do an update specifically to add a feature that may actually be helpful, but I potentially may have never found this option.

Which is why I keep subscribing to this great forum!

[Mike Rubin]

About an hour ago, I said "yes" to upgrading this dog on two computers, a W7 Dell laptop and a W8 desktop. Since it barely was functional with my large collection, I figured I had nothing to lose. What a bad idea. ITunes won't work at all now, on either computer. It won't open on the W7, although the processes show it running. It opens but just sits there, unresponsive on the W8.

 

I worked at Apple when 1.0 was under development and beta tested it. Since then, I've never had a Mac or a PC that did not have iTunes on it. I am now reaching the point that, even though i like using iTunes to import downloads, edit metadata, and organize my collection into playlists, it's time to move on. My collection clearly is just too large for this thing to search and it's the least stable version, ever. JRiver is just plain fugly to me in comparison, but is much more stable, all told, and can also handle my FLAC library (which is why I have it in the first place).

 

Although I own devices on both platforms, I remain a bit of an Apple fanboy after working at Apple for a dozen years. The romance definitely is off this particular product, I am sorry to say. (By the way, I've chosen to keep my Mac stuck at version 10 forever after upgrading the two PC's.)

[Musicophile]

About an hour ago, I said "yes" to upgrading this dog on two computers, a W7 Dell laptop and a W8 desktop. Since it barely was functional with my large collection, I figured I had nothing to lose. What a bad idea. ITunes won't work at all now, on either computer. It won't open on the W7, although the processes show it running. It opens but just sits there, unresponsive on the W8.

 

I worked at Apple when 1.0 was under development and beta tested it. Since then, I've never had a Mac or a PC that did not have iTunes on it. I am now reaching the point that, even though i like using iTunes to import downloads, edit metadata, and organize my collection into playlists, it's time to move on. My collection clearly is just too large for this thing to search and it's the least stable version, ever. JRiver is just plain fugly to me in comparison, but is much more stable, all told, and can also handle my FLAC library (which is why I have it in the first place).

 

Although I own devices on both platforms, I remain a bit of an Apple fanboy after working at Apple for a dozen years. The romance definitely is off this particular product, I am sorry to say. (By the way, I've chosen to keep my Mac stuck at version 10 forever after upgrading the two PC's.)

Just a caveat: Given that the update is supposed to give some performance improvements, it may be it is busy doing some background indexing, you may want to give it a day to settle. I cannot comment on the Windows performance, using it only on Mac, but on my 3 year old Imac performance is ok, in spite of a 3TB library.

[wgscott]

There is a Dougscript to automatically embed album artwork in the metadata.

 

I use this after every import.

 

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes ♫ Embed Artwork v2.0

[Talos2000]

... Do you have your covers embedded in the files?

 

Yes, I do. And just to be clear, I most certainly, verifiably and definitively do have album art embedded into each and every one of my 27,384 (and counting) tracks

 

... A trick I use is (for this, iTunes version must be the same in both OSs):

 

Move to the trash iTunes folder in the HD/OS you are using now.

 

Copy the iTunes folder from the HD/OS original to the same location on HD/OS you are using now.

 

Restart the HD/OS you are using now. 'Repair Disk Permissions' with 'Disk Utility'.

 

Open iTunes and now everything must be correct.

 

This is the same process I use, except that I have not tried repairing disk permissions. Not really sure why this would work, though, but stranger things happen at sea...

 

... My 17,000 plus songs are stored in a Synology NAS and I am not sure if this is the root of the problem as I spotted from the footer of your message that you are also storing your music files in a Synology NAS.

 

Yes, I do have a Synology NAS, but again, I am at a loss as to how that could affect this particular problem. The album art that goes missing is cached in the iTunes directory on the local HD.

 

Recall that if I select "Get Info" on the first track in the album, the album art magically re-appears. Can anybody confirm whether or not executing "Get Info" causes the metadata embedded in the file to be re-read? I have always assumed that it does not (it seems to me it would not really make sense to do so), but you know what they say about assumptions...

[bdiament]

I requested the ability to sort by composer (or any enterable field) long ago.

When I saw the addition of "Composer", I quickly downloaded the latest version.

 

After playing with it for a few minutes, I sent Apple feedback.

Has anyone else tried it?

 

What I found was this:

I clicked on the "Composer" checkbox in Preferences and saw the new Composer entry at the top of the screen.

When I clicked on it, I saw a list down the left side with all the composers I'd entered for all the music in the library.

So far, so good.

 

So, I clicked on a composer. The right side of the screen showed that composer's name at the top with an album (or more) below, showing the tracks on that album by that composer. Only problem was, they weren't by that composer.

 

Example: I clicked on "Igor Stravinsky". There are several albums in the library with his music.

On the right side of the screen, I saw "Igor Stravinsky" at the top. In the rest of the window, I saw two James Taylor albums, a Sonny Rollins album and a Fairport Convention album.

 

No albums with Stravinsky's music were shown. I double checked in case I completely missed it but could not find any compositions by Igor Stravinsky on the James Taylor, Sonny Rollins or Fairport albums.

 

A great idea. Needs some more work.

Waiting for take two.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

 

P.S. Further thoughts:

Perhaps James Taylor meant to sing "I've seen *the Firebird* and I've seen rain"?

[REShaman]

I requested the ability to sort by composer (or any enterable field) long ago.

When I saw the addition of "Composer", I quickly downloaded the latest version.

 

After playing with it for a few minutes, I sent Apple feedback.

Has anyone else tried it?

 

What I found was this:

I clicked on the "Composer" checkbox in Preferences and saw the new Composer entry at the top of the screen.

When I clicked on it, I saw a list down the left side with all the composers I'd entered for all the music in the library.

So far, so good.

 

So, I clicked on a composer. The right side of the screen showed that composer's name at the top with an album (or more) below, showing the tracks on that album by that composer. Only problem was, they weren't by that composer.

 

Example: I clicked on "Igor Stravinsky". There are several albums in the library with his music.

On the right side of the screen, I saw "Igor Stravinsky" at the top. In the rest of the window, I saw two James Taylor albums, a Sonny Rollins album and a Fairport Convention album.

 

No albums with Stravinsky's music were shown. I double checked in case I completely missed it but could not find any compositions by Igor Stravinsky on the James Taylor, Sonny Rollins or Fairport albums.

 

A great idea. Needs some more work.

Waiting for take two.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

 

P.S. Further thoughts:

Perhaps James Taylor meant to sing "I've seen *the Firebird* and I've seen rain"?

 

Barry, really!

(Smart-ass alert) You just discovered that Igor Stravinsky is code for JTSRFCA? Did you remember to repeat "There's no composer like Igor, there's no composer like Igor", and tap your red loafers three time.

 

(Alert has terminated).Thank you for going gently into the iTunes and for putting me on notice as I was just about to change my preference setting to Composer. With appreciation for your timely discovery and a balance response to iTunes's latest improvement in our experience. The last update for my ATV 3 broke my ATV so that each rental played a minute or so then stopped and paused then played a few seconds...Requiring all kinds of problems with emails, requests for refunds, being given lessons on how to rent a movie. The latest Airport utility upgrade and firmware finally restored my service which has been so troublesome for many months of serious inconvenience.

 

Apologies to all for the OT matter re ATV when this is about iTunes...

 

Hope all is well otherwise,

Richard

[bdiament]

Hi Richard,

 

All's well.

 

Clicking the Composer checkbox in Preferences will not harm anything. This just adds "Composer" to "Songs", "Albums" "Genre" etc, which you see at the top of the iTunes window - for selecting how you wish to view your library.

 

I just went back to my default "Albums". (Didn't need to uncheck Composer in Preferences.)

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

[REShaman]

Hi Richard,

 

All's well.

 

Clicking the Composer checkbox in Preferences will not harm anything. This just adds "Composer" to "Songs", "Albums" "Genre" etc, which you see at the top of the iTunes window - for selecting how you wish to view your library.

 

I just went back to my default "Albums". (Didn't need to uncheck Composer in Preferences.)

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

Thank you for the clarification re consequences (or not) selecting composers. Obviously, I was merely being silly to entertain myself.

Notwithstanding your assessment, I am just leaving iTunes as I find it except for those "no/no's" that interfere with my own organization and Amarra's performance. I try to delegate as little to the software as I can unless doing so is not productive.

Glad all is well. Missed the earlier jam in NYC earlier in February for health reasons, though I would have enjoyed "bumping" into you downtown NYC.

Best,

Richard