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Resolved iTunes on Mac skips to end of track before song has finished.

B

BigBadDavid

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 29, 2012
28
6
I think this is a known problem for some people, but searching the forums I can't locate any solution, so I am hoping someone may be able to help.

On certain tracks, iTunes will skip to the end of the song prematurely. Only certain tracks are affected, but they always skip forward at the same time - iTunes thinks the songs are shorter than they actually are. Certain batches of imported songs seem to be more affected than others e.g. over half the tracks on Take Flight by Maya Jane Coles (excellent album btw) are affected, other imports since then have been fine.

-This bug occurs irrespective of how the music is played (laptop, airplay etc).
-None of the tracks have a bespoke "stop" time in Options.
-All of my music files are stored locally on my laptop.
-The files themselves are fine (checked with QT/vlc).
-Deleting the files from iTunes and re-importing does not solve the problem.
-It might only affect mp3's...? EDIT AAC also affected.
-The bug seems to have first started after a clean install of High Sierra and restoring iTunes from a backup.
-Matched and uploaded tracks play correctly via iTunes Match on another device (so it is a local problem).

From the above, I think it is likely to be a corruption within "iTunes Library.itl". There seems to be a discrepancy between the actual lengths of the tracks and what iTunes thinks locally.

Short of nuking my iTunes Library entirely and reimporting everything (with no guarantee it will solve the issue) has anyone come up with another solution?

A bug report has been filed with Apple.

MacOS 10.13.1, iTunes 12.7.1.14
 
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Check to see stop point Isn't set wrong in track properties.
If That's not the case, you can sometimes the full thing back by exporting and passing through Audacity before reimporting,
 
Partron22 said:
Check to see stop point Isn't set wrong in track properties.
If That's not the case, you can sometimes the full thing back by exporting and passing through Audacity before reimporting,
Click to expand...

Stop points are untouched.
Original files are fine, they play fully outside of iTunes, is it's definitely an iTunes bug. I've double/triple checked with fresh downloads, being careful to remove all trace of the tracks from iTunes before re-importing them.
iTunes can do one.
 
Might be helpful to store a copy of your new .itl somewhere, in case things get messed up again.
Of course, you'd have to remember to refresh it every time you add new music.
 
Partron22 said:
Might be helpful to store a copy of your new .itl somewhere, in case things get messed up again.
Of course, you'd have to remember to refresh it every time you add new music.
Click to expand...

My backup, if I have the same bug reappear, is to generate a fresh xml file and create a "new" library/itl file from this. It seems to have worked this time. On High Sierra you can ask iTunes to make an xml file on demand (Preferences->Advanced).

I have a theory that when creating a "new" Library/itl file, iTunes recreates all track length data from scratch from the actual files (or ignores anything contained in the xml file). Or prior to that, iTunes does something similar when making a new xml file. Either way, corrupt track lengths (for those songs that I have specifically tested) have been flushed and they play correctly to the end now. New songs added since also play correctly.

The main advantage with this method is that you can leave all of your local files in place and it's relatively straightforward to make a new Library itl file as needed.

One downside is that all local settings (view settings etc) are reset to default. A couple of tracks were also reported missing after the new Library was built, however out of over 41,000 songs that's not a bad hit rate and may have been references in my original Library to deleted songs.

I would log out of iTunes before starting any of this if you are using Match/iTunes Music Library in case it starts to over-write your existing iCloud data with the blank library you create as part of this process.

My playlists were more or less intact as that info is contained in the xml file (a few random tracks were missing from certain playlists but nothing major). Some playlists were duplicated after I logged in to my iTunes account, but I think this was due to iTunes Match pulling in the latest versions from iCloud (easy to delete the duplicates).

I haven't had time to thoroughly check my older tracks to confirm that playback is correct for those since the new Library itl file was created. However, as new songs recently imported are playing correctly I am making an assumption that older files will be ok. For comparison, while I had this bug 50-75% of all new tracks imported into iTunes would skip before the end.
 
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BigBadDavid said:
Yes, more or less. I think there was the odd one missing but they populated soon enough
Click to expand...

Hey,

I had this problem too long time ago. I solved it following the guide from Kirville that you posted earlier. Now I'm using iTunes 12.7.5.9 on El Capitan 10.11.6 and my songs play just fine.

HOWEVER, I'm seeing this bug persist in my iPod Video (5.5G), which is super weird as I've just restored it recently with iTunes. It's the same nightmare I used to experience a few months back — mp3 files skipping before the end, only that in my iPod.

I even ran a test and converted an album which would present this problem on my iPod. I made an AAC version of it, sync it and guess what... it plays just fine. On my iPod.

Just in case, I have the Share iTunes Library XML with other applications option activated in iTunes.

Do you think there might be a reasonable explanation as to why this problem persists on my iPod, even though it seems to be solved in iTunes on my Mac'
 
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