Having issues moving music from ipod to laptop

I recently had to wipe my laptop and reset to factory settings, and in the process lost all my music. I wasn't worried because I knew it was all backed up on my ipod. After I got everything up and running again, I transferred everything from the ipod_control folder (I think that's what is was called?) back into itunes and had itunes reorganize everything.

My problem is that there are a couple hundred songs where the metadata isn't showing up. I've also tried other third party software like CopyTrans and Syncios and I'm still having the same issues. What's throwing me off is that none of the music on my ipod is having any issues with the metadata. Of the 5000+ songs, every single one has artist info, album info, etc. Is there anyway I can get an exact replica of my ipod's library back onto my laptop? It would seem to me that if the ipod is showing every song with an artist/album/etc then all that info must be embedded in the file somewhere. There is just an issue during the transfer process or itunes is having trouble finding it? Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Could you elaborate on this? I understand that the tracks' metadata (artist album info) does not appear when you are attempting to play the songs - right? What player do you use to play the songs?

Also, do the track files appear saved as example "JWA3QT.mp3" on your computer? Are you using a PC or a Mac?

 

Thanks for the reply. My issue has sort of changed since this post. I ended up deciding to revamp my entire library, so I put everything in mediamonkey and cleaned everything up a little bit more. Then I wiped the id3 tags and updated them with the new info. So at this moment, all files have the new correct id3 info. I can confirm this by looking at them in windows explorer. However, when I put all these files into itunes, there still seems to be a few where the id3 info isn't being read. For example, I no longer have the problem where the songs are missing artist/album info. However, a select few songs are missing the genre and album artwork. I know that this info is in the file somewhere because like I said, I can see it in both windows explorer and mediamonkey. There's only a handful a songs that are like this. Few enough that I can just fix them in itunes, but it makes me wonder if there are some other mistakes that I'm not seeing right off the bat.

Gah, itunes is such a headache. If it weren't for the fact that I have itunes match and wifi syncing with my iphone, I would just use mediamonkey. Any suggestions on what's going on?

Update: Turns out its not "just a few" songs that are missing info. I creaeted a smart playlist to show the songs without artwork. 875 songs long, all of which I know have artwork. I'm gonna try reinstalling itunes.

 

If it's just a few songs, then update the missing meta data manually.

Oops: just saw your update. You say that you have all the music correctly loaded up on your iPod. Just use the smart backup function of copytrans to bring back the missing track metadata from the iPod directly into iTunes on your computer.

 

There are several utilities that will do the job. Copytrans is one. You can also just copy the music folder using file explorer. It is in a hidden folder called control. Apple changes the file names but the music and metadata are left untouched since iTunes uses some of the meta data. Set your folder options so you can see hidden folders then copy everything. Then you can navigate through the control folder and find your music. Use the file extentions to identify the music. I would maintain a CD/DVD backup of your music.

 

hanoobal: Unfortunately, when I use copytrans, it says that my itunes is too new. I suppose I could uninstall and reinstall an older version of itunes.

Mez: That was how I initially tried pulling my music off of my ipod. There were even more songs without metadata, and what was worse is that I couldnt even look at the filename to guess what song it may be since apple renames them all.

In the end, I ended up redoing everything the hard way by going through them in groups with mediamonkey. But now I have to recreate my playlists. Since the files aren't identical to what they used to be, I doubt there is anyway to repopulate these playlists based on the ones from my ipod?

 

You could have saved some time by using a tag utility like Scantag. That will allow you to rebuild the file names with metadata. You probably saved effort using MM. Did you know it has a script that will fill in the metadata. Using MusicBrainz, ect it is a bit complex and I never used it. It using musicfinger printing.

At least you filled in the metadata with MM. MM not only puts the data in its database but it sticks it into the files. iTunes used to do that many years ago. That was realized to be too helpful to the user and would allow you to change music management systems. A DVD will hold about 1,000 tunes. You might want to back up your tunes.

 

Seems you used an older version of Copytrans. I use the current version 4.86 which supports the latest iTunes 11.1.5 and should work fine to transfer the exact contents of your iPod playlists to iTunes.

 

hanoobal, are you sure that your music tags are not in the music files and only in the itunes database? I would be surprised if the software didn't take the data from the database but I have been surprised before.

Anyone reading this ought to make note what not to do when wiping your computer. You also want to back up your DRMs as well.

Lastly, if you have to down grade your itunes just to back up your ipod then you can upgrade again.

I might also look into a Media Monkey script that would update you Media Monkey database with the itunes on your ipod. Media Monkey are not full of sh1ts that want to create problems for their users so it writes to the files as well as the database. That is much better. I only used itunes for a few months. I had too much music for itunes to handle well. It was OK with few hundred but even when I got to your size 5000 that version turned to molasses. MM has always been infinantly faster.

 

I think tags are found in the music files themselves, yes. But data pertaining to star-rating, playcounts, and to which playlist a track belongs to is only found in the iTunes database file since it is strictly iTunes-related information.

I'd say in addition to iTunes, it depends on the capabilities of the PC. I have two computers each with a separate iTunes library - on my laptop I have some 300 GB worth of music and iTunes requires at least half a minute to load the library and start (I think my iTunes.itl file on the laptop is in the area of several MB in size).

On my desktop, the library is close to 500 GB and the time required for iTunes to start is a bit shorter than on the laptop (my impression), while the ITL file on the desktop is much larger in size. I'd agree that MM is a much better music manager than iTunes.

 

DDP, that was a long time ago but itunes was dogging at 50-60 gigs (slower computer and HD. Moved to Media Monkey and everything flew. I have a few terabytes and it takes awhile to load but once it does it is infinitely faster than itunes was at 40 - 60.

Hanoobal,
When I used itunes it stored the tags in the audio header as well as in the database. If it was still doing that B1Drock wouldn't be complaining about not having that information, would he?

 

True that.