Re: problem with itunes and my music

[VaShaun Jones]

Mike, I had the same problem, but with my Desktop folder and files.  
What I did was made sure the view was set to the setting that I  was  
use to using. HTHHOn Oct 6, 2007, at 2:21 PM, Esther wrote:

Hi Mike,
On Oct 5, 2007, at 11:56 PM, michael babcock using a mac! wrote:

ok, so this is the third time in the past 2 days this has happened
to me. I've ripped about 10ish cd's and all goes to plan. I
shutdown my mac book and boot up again about an hour later. I am
going threw the files, looking for something to listen to. (note,
i'm going threw the files not in itunes, but in the music
directory), and all is well. After i play a song, i close itunes,
go to my documents folder and open another file (or get on the
internet or something), the point is i move my self out of the
music directory. I go back later on and there is no music
directory. I launch itunes thinking it has been hidden and itunes
states it does not have a library to access. I try to find the
itunes library but there is no music directory.

There is normally a Music directory in the sidebar of finder.
So when your problem shows up, under finder when you
VO-keys arrow to the sidebar and interact with the list,
you no longer hear "Music selected folder" if you arrow down
from your home directory past Applications?

If you use Spotlight to search for one of the songs you ripped
and played earlier under iTunes can you find it?

I haven't heard of any problems like the one you report.  You
didn't try to delete a folder named iTunes under the Music
directory, did you?

<Long description follows of iTunes database files; skip if not
interested in technical details.>
When iTunes is first launched, the default location
for its files is in a folder named "iTunes"
that is located under the Music directory.  Music that
is added to iTunes gets added to a folder named "iTunes
Music" in that directory.  Two key files get created: an
iTunes Library file and an iTunes Music Library.xml
file. These two files contain the database information for
iTunes with all the tag information about artist, album,
song names, playlists, play counts, ratings, etc.  Actually, the
first file is tthe one that iTunes itself uses, and it's a
binary file that you can't read.  The second (.xml) file
is a version of the binary file (a subset of the information,
really) that third party applications can work with -- for
example, to get information about tracks or to modify
keywords and tags.  When you burn a data disc or mp
cd under iTunes you copy the information for your
tracks and playlist from this file onto the disc.  (If you
want to view the kind of information that's in this file,
stick in an mp3 or data cd/dvd you've burned with
iTunes and check its contents with Finder; there should
be a ContentsDB.xml file on the disc that you
can examine with TextEdit.)

iTunes checks for these folders and files when it starts up.  If
you delete these folders and files or rename them or move
them to a different location,  iTunes won't be able
to "find" your music.  It will assume that it needs to
create a new library for you and create the folders and
files with blank information. The database files also contain
pointers to where your music is stored on disc.  if you were
to start up iTunes and start playing your music (or if you
browsed your music directory with finder and used
command+o to "open" music that is set to play with
iTunes as the default app) this information should stay
available as long as iTunes is up.  However, if you moved
or deleted these files, then shut down your system and
started up iTunes again, it wouldn't be able to find your
music or the previous tagging, playlists, rating, etc.
information.

This is the closest thing that I can think of to what may have
happened.  You should be OK browsing your music with
finder and opening selected tracks with command+o to
get them playing in iTunes (although you can do most of
this with the "Search Text Field" and combination of
View options (customize your own by checking the
information you want displayed; command+j to bring
this up).  You can also toggle on/off the browser menu with
command+b.  This gives you the option of filtering
the selections displayed in the Songs Outline by
Genre, Artist, and Album, assuming you have this
information tagged.  When enabled, you tab into
the browser after the Search Text Field and before
the Songs Outline, and you can select, for example,
an artist.  Then, the album listings in the next browser
field will show you the different albums for that artist.
The songs outline will have all the works by that artist.
If you select a specific album in the browser, the songs
otuline will display all the songs in that album.  When
you toggle the browser off (command+b), the songs
outline will go back to displaying everything in your
selected source library.  And anything that you type
in your Search Text Field can also be used to modify
what's displayed in the Songs Outlines in combination
with the browser settings.

The only thing I can think of that explains your symptons
involves moving or deleting files.  If you didnt' delete
anything between boot ups, then I don't know what's
going on.  In particular, the files you ripped should
still be somewhere on your disc.  Failing that, the
only explanation would be a corrupted disc sector,
but it seems unlikely that ths would only affect your
Music library.

Try using iTunes for a while just making selections
of what you play through iTunes and see whether you
still have problems.  This is still worrisome, because
if you didn't delete or move any critical files you should
be OK opening files from the Finder and playing them.

HTH.

Esther


hi all;
It does not happen but randomly, has any one had this problem
before? Should i try to remove itunes (or can you even?) or should
i do an entire format and re install?
please do give me your advise.

i also forgot to state that the music directory is not in the trash.
This is the first thing i thought of, thinking i some how removed the
directory not thinking of what i was doing. I checked it and it had
some other files i knew i sent to the trash, but aside from them, no
mp3 files or anything.