songs disappear from ipod! (but physically still there???)

[einnim]

I use winamp to play songs at work from my ipod and winamp at home to transfer songs to my ipod. I usually don't get any problems but once in a while, all media names will disappear from my ipod! It's like it doesn't recognize the names or something. But when I view the ipod HD, it shows the same capacity (like 40% or whatever), so the media is still physically on the drive, it just doesn't show up. (Music>songs>all>all> (blank) | Videos > Movies > (blank)

Then at that point I usually reformat my ipod and re-import all the songs back into it, which can take about 1-2 hours.

Is there currently a patch in development to fix this?

[abu]

I haven't had this, and it must be reproducable in some way that I could fix it. But instead of format, you can use the database cleanup tools (if all your files have ID3 tags), read http://www.joerobot.com/mlipodwiki/i...tle=IPod_Tools on "Cleanup part 3"

[Prowler7]

I had this exact problem happen last night... plugged in my ipod, loaded up Winamp and it never detected my ipod. I disconnected my ipod and when I browsed the music I saw "Music>songs>all>all> (blank)"

Of course all the mp3 files were actually still on the device. However, since ml_ipod no longer detected my ipod I had to use another tool to recover all the songs. (unfortunately for me, some albums are duplicated and of course this other tool didn't read the disc tag).

It would be great if ml_ipod could detect an ipod with a borked database so I could use its recover songs feature to rebuild the database, in which case I'm guessing the disc tag would probably be read (and I doubt I would have ended up with the few duplicate albums).

Anyway, the short of it is that I'm thinking there is a bug in ml_ipod to cause this.

Another possible useful feature would be "refresh database from tags" (so I can get the disc tag without having to format then re-import all my music). Though this may not really be needed if ml_ipod can work with an ipod with a dead database.

Oh yeah, I'm using a 60GB ipod photo and never had trouble with ml_ipod until last night.

[abu]

Actually I doubt that the problem was caused by ml_ipod. Somehow the iTunesDB on your iPod got lost, that may be because of a hardware failure or a problem when disconnecting from USB port or some Windows issue.

But the idea to recover an iPod that has a broken or nonexisting database is not too bad. I think that should be not to hard to implement...

Maybe you could file a feature request at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?grou...28&atid=644707 ?

[Prowler7]

I'm pretty sure this problem is something that happens upon connection since I was using my ipod a few minutes before connecting it to my PC (and then seeing that it never got detected by Winamp).

Anyway, I created a feature request. I'd even be happy to work on this feature if help is needed (though it's been a while since I last looked at the ml_ipod source).

[abu]

Cool, if you want to do it, you're very welcome.
Do you have a SourceForge account already, then I can give you developer status for the project.

[Eleain]

I've had this problem twice, with 1.41 and 1.43.

Both times, my ipod had just been recognized by ml_ipod, and then all the music files became completely inaccessible while it was still connected; all the playlists just disappeared from the menu. Of course, everything was still physically present on the harddrive.

It was somehow fixed the first time when I upgraded to 1.42. As soon as I plugged it in and loaded up winamp, everything was back exactly the way it was before.

The second time happened about an hour ago and even restoring the backup file I have didn't fix it. Everything is still there and the music continued playing even as the songs disappeared.

I know this problem's already been posted, but I figured it might help to have another detailed occurance if you're going to find a way to fix it.

I was considering formatting my ipod and then restoring the backup again, but I'm not sure if that would be a wise idea considering I don't have the actual files themselves backed up or even on my computer, just drive contents as a whole.

[abu]

That sounds as if some other application tried to access the iTunesDB on your iPod. Did you have iTunes or something else running? That can cause things like this.

But maybe you can recover your data, ml_ipod has some backup strategies:
Look on your iPod in the X:\iPod_control\iTunes folder. Probably there is no iTunesDB file (that's why it is not recognized). But if you have an iTunesDB.old, you should save that somewhere else and then rename it to X:\iPod_control\iTunes\iTunesDB. After disconnect and reconnect, your iPod should be present again.

There are two more backup files on your harddisk in the %TEMP% directory (simply type %TEMP% in Windows Explorer to go to that folder). There should be an iTunesDB and iTunesDB.old. These have been created during the last writing of the DB to the iPod. Save all these files first, and take the largest or newest of them and copy it to the iPod as X:\iPod_control\iTunes\iTunesDB. Now disconnect and reconnect. Hopefully you have all back...? As a last step, do a "Full database cleanup" in iPod Tools.

If all that does not help: Move the X:\iPod_control\Music folder to X:\Music (it must not be in the iPod_control any longer!), then do a format in Winamp, then move the Music folder back, then do a "Cleanup Part 3" in iPod Tools. Then all your songs should be back. Unfortunately, not the playlists

[Eleain]

Shortly after posting my first reply, I installed itunes (which I didn't have installed previously) and loaded a song onto my ipod so that winamp would recognize it (I didn't mention that last time).

After that, I did a full databse cleanup and it actually found all the files that were missing. The only problem is that now a good chunck, I'd say 10% to 11% of them are in their raw format with file names like .WJPT and _KXEP and appear as completely blank entries in the media library. The same goes when I look them up on my ipod; I have to find them by going into Music > Songs.

I tried a quick search in the Music folder on my ipod for a couple files using the aforementioned names and nothing came up, but I don't know if that's indicative of anything.

I also tried copying from the %TEMP% folder just in case, but obviously it didn't do anything since I'd already done the database cleanup prior. But ya never know!

Thanks for the help, by the way. I appreciate it.

[abu]

The songs that show up in their raw format only are probably ones that have no embedded ID3 tags, I guess. Then ml_ipod has no chance to guess what the title or artist might be.

[Eleain]

Not much I can do about that then?

[abu]

No, sorry. All the vital information is gone with the iTunesDB

[Eleain]

Out of curiousity, how is it then, that the files existed as music files in the first place if they didn't have ID3 tags?

It seems like the file would have to be either not created with one or have it actively stripped for it to not be there.

Actually, what is an ID3 tag and what does it do?

[abu]

From http://www.id3.org/intro.html :
Digital audio files can contain, in addition to the audio track, related text and/or graphical information. The information you're probably familiar with take the form of Song title, Artist name, Album name, Year and Genre. This is the information displayed when you playback a digital audio file on your computer or portable device.

The process of including information other than sound into these digital audio files is commonly referred to as "tagging" in which you "tag" the audio file with additional information that describes the audio file. The original standard for tagging digital files was developed in 1996 by Eric Kemp and he coined the term ID3. At that time ID3 simply meant "IDentify an MP3".
[end of quoting]

If a file has no ID3 tags, Winamp tries to guess the artist/title from the filename. E.g. a file that is named "Robert Plant - Tall Cool One.mp3" will show Robert Plant as artist and Tall Cool One as title.
On the iPod, the naming is different, so there is no guessing possible. If there are no ID3 tags, we're out of luck.

[gerecter]

Hard disk space?

This could be iPod hard disk space broblem. WINAMP plugin always tries to make a backup DB file, so it requires a little more space than actual size of the songs. (usually, around 5~50MB)

The problem is: if there is not enough space to write a DB file or backup DB file, then it fails to create DB file, causing disappearing all the list of songs.

In that case, you should remove some songs physically (accessing actual MP3 "Music" folder, and delete some) to get enough iPod disk space for creating DB file and backup DB file. Then you can recover your iPod DB file with backup file. (the method mentioned by "abu")