Some photos not being synced

[sakau2007]

I've got all of my pictures organized into folders (albums) within a /Photo Albums/ directory on my PC.

I've selected this folder to sync to my iPhone 4. There are about 2.1 GB of photos that should sync but in the bar at the bottom of iTunes it is only indicating about 1.2 GB of photos.

And sure enough, when I sync, only about two-thirds (956 of 1456) of the photos sync. It goes through and syncs all the pictures starting with the albums that begin with "A" and it gets to the N's, and it doesn't sync any of the pictures in the folders beyond this (though the folders themselves are copied to the iPhone; they are just empty). It actually gets about halfway through one of my albums (58 of the 109 pictures in my album entitled "new house") are synced but nothing after.

I've attached a couple images so you can see what I'm seeing.

Can anyone offer me some help? For what it's worth, this is the first time I'm trying to put my entire photo library on a mobile device, so I don't know if this would have been a problem in an older version of iOS or iTunes.

Thanks!

 

[johnharbo1]

Similar problem

I have a similar problem.

The issue I have been unable to solve is failure to sync photos from iPhoto to iPhone 4S via iTunes. It all worked before on iPhone 4, and it even works now on my iPad with IOS 5.

iTunes goes through the motions, but when done, the albums are all empty on the phone. I've tried

1)toggling the syncing on and off for photo tab in iTunes. This includes unchecking everything, sync, then recheck and sync
2) deleting the iPod cache within iPhoto package contents
3) Restoring the phone from a backup from last Saturday and then synching.

I have plenty of free space on the phone so that is not the problem.

Anyone aware of any solutions I should try?

 

[emjaycee18]

I'm having the same problems. Does any have a solution.

 

[johnharbo1]

Update

I finally gave up and did a complete reset to factory settings, and then built everything from scratch. Photos all synced properly once I did that.

So if anyone gets sufficiently frustrated, you can always try that "nuclear" option.

 

[emjaycee18]

I finally gave up and did a complete reset to factory settings, and then built everything from scratch. Photos all synced properly once I did that.

So if anyone gets sufficiently frustrated, you can always try that "nuclear" option.

When you reset to factory settings, did you set up as a new phone, or did you restore from backup?

Doing this, do you loose any other data (such as text message conversations)?

 

[johnharbo1]

Quote:
Originally Posted by johnharbo1
I finally gave up and did a complete reset to factory settings, and then built everything from scratch. Photos all synced properly once I did that.

So if anyone gets sufficiently frustrated, you can always try that "nuclear" option.
=================
When you reset to factory settings, did you set up as a new phone, or did you restore from backup?


[/COLOR]

When you reset to factory settings, did you set up as a new phone, or did you restore from backup?

Doing this, do you loose any other data (such as text message conversations)?

I set up as a new phone. I previously tried restoring from backup and that did not work.

 

[emjaycee18]

Problem Solved

http://forums.macnn.com/103/ipod-iphone-and-ipad/444401/not-all-photos-not-syncing-lion/

The problem is in the iPhone photo cache. The photo cache needs to be deleted, and a new one will be created on the next sync. Worked for me.

 

[johnharbo1]

http://forums.macnn.com/103/ipod-iphone-and-ipad/444401/not-all-photos-not-syncing-lion/

The problem is in the iPhone photo cache. The photo cache needs to be deleted, and a new one will be created on the next sync. Worked for me.

I had tried that twice, and it did not work for me. Glad it worked for you. The only thing that worked for me was a fresh install as a "new phone" -- not a restore (which also didn't work)

 

[allan-vancouver]

Also having IOS5 photo sync problems

I'm discussing an active Apple Support incident about IOS5 and iTunes not syncing my 18,000 photos (18GB+). If I add Events manually a hundred at a time, the sync works, but if I clear the Photos by unchecking the iTunes Photo Sync, and then try all 18,000 at a time, the iPad and iTunes go through the motions of a full sync, but I get a bunch of empty events on the iPad, even though the photos themselves appear to have been synced.

I suspect data corruption on the iPad or an IOS 5 bug, and will probably be doing the "nuclear" reset solution and rebuild my iPad from scratch without a restore .. not the best answer, but may be necessary.

Repairing and/or switching the iPhoto library and deleting the iTunes iPod photo cache did not resolve the problem.

 

[rks4153]

Sync failure with photos from iTunes

Similar problem to that described by sakau2007, johnharbo1 and others.

(iTunes10, running on Windows XP, USB connection to iPhone4, running iOS5)

I have about 3000 photos arranged in about 150 folders. Trying to sync all of them in one go => failure
- waiting for ages, then just empty folders on iPhone. (This used to work fine with iOS4).

Deleting iPod photocache made no difference - same failure.

However, selecting just the first 30 folders (= about 800 photos) and syncing works fine (for those 30).
Then selecting the next 30, (so total selected is 60) and syncing => OK.
Then the next 30 (so total selected is 90) and syncing => OK.
Etc
Until all the folders are selected and all synced => OK
This is very tedious - but does at least acheive the desired result.

Trying this "progressive syncing" technique with > 1000 (or so) photos at time did not work - empty folders again. This suggests (to me) some kind of limitation on the space used/available to process the photos.

I'd be very interested to here the results of allan-vancouver's Apple Support incident.

 

[allan-vancouver]

I'm discussing an active Apple Support incident about IOS5 and iTunes not syncing my 18,000 photos (18GB+). If I add Events manually a hundred at a time, the sync works, but if I clear the Photos by unchecking the iTunes Photo Sync, and then try all 18,000 at a time, the iPad and iTunes go through the motions of a full sync, but I get a bunch of empty events on the iPad, even though the photos themselves appear to have been synced.

I suspect data corruption on the iPad or an IOS 5 bug, and will probably be doing the "nuclear" reset solution and rebuild my iPad from scratch without a restore .. not the best answer, but may be necessary.

Repairing and/or switching the iPhoto library and deleting the iTunes iPod photo cache did not resolve the problem.

Update: Apple Support forwarded me to a senior IOS 5 support rep. He found out from Apple Development that there is a known problem syncing large numbers (large total size) of photos and videos, and that a fix is being developed. He also said that sync works OK up to about 9000 files, but problems can occur if larger numbers are attempted.

My experience is as follows:

1) If I sync my 19000 photos/videos incrementally (use selected Events/Albums) and add a few thousand at a time, the sync will actually complete, but if I try all at once I get empty Events/Albums on the iPad, apparent hangs on iPad IOS 5, etc.

2) Even when sync is working correctly, be patient. The iTunes "waiting" messages mean it is waiting for IOS 5 on the iPad to do something. It is not very evident that things are happening, because IOS 5 is doing it all in the background rather than showing the iPad in "Sync Mode" as it was in IOS 4.

3) You can watch IOS 5 do its work in real time by opening the Photos app and displaying Events or Albums --- you will see the photos fill the Events and Albums that are initially set up empty. You will also see how many files that IOS 5 is working on, although the numbers don't necessarily match the similar progress display on iTunes. If you uncheck Photos on iTunes, it actually takes IOS 5 quite a while to remove all the Events or Albums, i.e. minutes pass with very little indication about what is happening.

4) For a while, I thought IOS 5 was having problems with video files in my Pictures folder structure or in iPhoto, but actually it was only failing to sync filetypes that IOS 5 does not support.

5) I think that when I first started iTunes syncing with IOS 5 I thought things were hung or frozen, so I terminated iTunes or reset my iPad, but this made things get even worse.

That's it for now.

 

[oarthus]

Update: Apple Support forwarded me to a senior IOS 5 support rep. He found out from Apple Development that there is a known problem syncing large numbers (large total size) of photos and videos, and that a fix is being developed. He also said that sync works OK up to about 9000 files, but problems can occur if larger numbers are attempted.

My experience is as follows:

1) If I sync my 19000 photos/videos incrementally (use selected Events/Albums) and add a few thousand at a time, the sync will actually complete, but if I try all at once I get empty Events/Albums on the iPad, apparent hangs on iPad IOS 5, etc.



That's it for now.

Same problem here but with "only" 7500 photos, so less than 9000.
Unfortunately the gradual sync has not not for me so far, after 3 or 4 smaller syncs it usually fails.

How do you open an official incindent with Apple Support, I'm sure I can help there.

Thanks

Olivier

 

[kingaj12]

photo synch problem even with 49 photos

This problem occurs even with 49 photos.

I tried deleting the cache, but that doesn't work.

 

[msmarco]

How I got my photos finally to sync to my iPhone

Using Windows XP with iTunes.

After updating to ios5 my iPhone 3gs battery was somewhat fried. After many fix attempts with ATT, Apple Care 800#, and the local Apple store, they gave me a "new" iPhone and synced it to iCloud at the store. All my music was lost, all photos were lost. I synced at home to my computer and got music back on the iPhone, but photos would not sync. I tried a lot of things, but here's what worked:

I have ten "albums" with anywhere from 30 to 800 photos in each album, totaling just under 6,000 photos. They would not sync from "all folders", and would not sync from "selected folders" with check marks next to each folder. What showed up on my iPhone after sync was folder names with no photos. This was the case for iCloud sync and sync to my computer on iTunes.

I copied all the folders of photos from my computer to a flash drive. Then in iTunes I chose the flash drive as the source from which to sync. Then I unchecked about half the folders, leaving less than one half the total number of photos to be synchronized from the flash drive to my iPhone.

After the sync, I had all the chosen folders of photos showing on my iPhone. Finally.

Now I'll choose a couple more folders of photos to be synced from the flash drive, leaving the previous "selected photos" check-marked. I'll try to come back here to report how it worked out.

Thanks everyone for posting on this forum - I would not have tried this process had I not seen ideas here!

 

[msmarco]

And how some photos just won't sync at all

The second step - checking a few more albums after the first few synced - was a success, resulting in about half my albums being synched from a flash drive to my iPhone. Then, after checking a few more albums to also sync, and running another sync process, the most recently checked albums did not sync.

C'mon, Apple, fix this bug! If the iPhone has the capacity to hold the photos, for the luvagod let them sync!

 

[eagleglen]

This certainly seems to be a bug in iOS 5. I'm having the problem on my iPhone 4s and iPad 2, regardless of the number of photos I try to sync. Ive even successfully gotten the photos on to the devices, but only to have then get corrupted upon successive syncs.

Rather than trying the "nuclear option" and loose your backed up date, I'd wait for Apple to release a fix. Frustrating I know.

 

[Confuzzeled23]

Hi,
I am also having this problem. I am running Windows 7 64-bit, using an iPhone 3GS 32 GB running iOS 5.0.1. When I try to sync my photos iTunes stayings are "Starting Sync" for at least 15 minutes, it may or may not bump an error message saying iPhone timed out and sync could not be completed. Also, it will try to sync and get to applying changes and stay there for 10 minutes stating "Sync could not complete because sync session failed.

None of my photos will go on my iPhone. They were fine, then when I did a sync it corrupted my folders, some had pictures some did not.

So last night I did the 'nuclear' option and now no photos will go on my iPhone at all. I have deleted the photo cache at least 10 times, I even moved to a different folder to sync. Nothing will remedy the issue. So now I have restored for no reason!

Did anyone find a solution for this?

 

[KurtMitch]

Solution found

This problem occurs even with 49 photos.

I tried deleting the cache, but that doesn't work.

After much frustration I discovered that all the pictures not syncing and the events not coming over from iphoto (or directly from folders) did not have a file extension on the files. It took some doing but after going through all my photos and adding '.jpg' to the end of every filename where it was absent they all sync to my ipad & iphone. Hope that helps.

 

[SerenityEve]

Some photos not syncing - frustrating!

I tore off to the Post Office to take delivery of my new iPhone 4S. Everything running smoothly - iCloud is great. Then the wheels fell off when going to iPhoto. The same problem as many people. Apart from the Photo Stream (which worked perfectly), my albums and faces which I had selected to sync were not syncing across (same grey album covers). What to do? Should I send the iPhone back and ask for another one? Do all iPhone 4S' have this problem?

Because my iPhoto library is on my external passport, I thought that may be the issue. So I reassigned where the photos should be synced from. That worked, but my photos are no longer in their albums (only under years) and not under the 'face' albums either. Frustrating as the end of the world!

Now I will try deleting the iPhoto cache, making sure all my 2,000+ pictures have the .jpg tag on them, the nuclear approach of going back to factory settings. Then slowly will try putting my albums back on. This all sounds like a lot of extremely hard work. And you know the crazy thing? My iPhone 3 is perfectly fine.

Are there any other suggestions out there? Would be very interested to know. This is the first Apple product I have ever had an issue with!

 

[randallking]

I'm having the same problem. Just adding to the thread in hopes Apple will see this and fix the bug. I have an iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1. I'm syncing from OS 10.6.8 using iPhoto 8.1.2 (424).

 

[eagleglen]

This problem persisted for as long as I had my iPad 2. I has even spent 3 hours on the phone with Apple's support people. Their final recommendation was to restore the device as new.

When I upgraded to the new iPad, I reluctantly restored from backup even though I was worried the bug would follow. Fortunately it didn't. Not really a practical solution but at least the photo stream is now a feature I get to use.

 

[ironass]

My fix - Remove & Resync

I running Windows Vista and syncing with iTunes. Ihave a 8GB 3GS with only 335 pictures on it, but they weren't syncing correctly from the selected folders. I would end up with duplicates and triplicates of some and none of others. Some photos were ending up in the wrong directory.

My solution was to delete the cache folder in my selected folder, uncheck the "Sync from selected folder", and sync the phone. This dumped all the synched photos and folders from the phone, but left the pictures taken by the phone. I then checked the box again and synced the phone. Voila! All the pictures back in the right spot. At least I didn't have to rebuild from scratch.

Good luck

 

[vigosstian]

re:Some photos not being synced

I haven't seen any error messages. The phone simply syncs like always and says it's finished. Of course albums have been synced.

I'm beginning to get the sense this might be a bug with iTunes 10.