ipod artwork problem

[erhodes]

Recently I've been adding album art to my ipod. I have a 64G Touch. It has a little less than 800 songs using up about 10G of storage. The artwork is almost entirely jpeg's I've found on the web plus a few that I have in my very small collection of jazz photos. I think none of it was downloaded from something like the itunes store. My ipod is synched to an old Pentium 4 computer with 2G of ram running Windows XP.

I have a lot of Trane on my "pod" and I loaded a bunch of Trane pics last night, album covers and regular photos where there is no album. When I tried to synch, the process stalled. It went on for close to an hour saying that it was preparing to synch but the synch never took place. I finally canceled it using the slide switch on the touch screen. At that, it took awhile for the synch to cancel.

I noticed, too, that after loading up the pics my itunes was responding sluggishly, showing delays when scrolling through my library. When I click on a song, the album artwork shows up after a noticeable delay.

Itunes is acting as though the new artwork is a strain on its capacity or on its capacity within the limits of my pc and its "resources". I'm surprised...perhaps I shouldn't be...since I would assume that itunes and my ipod should both have the capacity to hold artwork for the number of songs that can be stored. And in my case, I would appear to be no where near capacity.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has run into something like this or if anyone has any suggestions, including diagnostic suggestions. I suppose I can just go in and delete a bunch of artwork but, again, it seems strange that either the tunes or the pod couldn't handle a few dozen additional jpeg's.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Noj]

I have a 160gb iPod with close to 26,000 songs on it, and many of them have images (amounting to nearly a gigabyte of space taken up by images alone). When the iPod is connected to my MacBook Pro it can some times lag when scrolling or when selecting a track to play. Usually it amounts to a brief stall with the little spinning rainbow of death appearing on the screen momentarily.

I'm not sure if the images are what causes this little hiccup, but your problem makes me wonder if that's the issue. On its own the iPod scrolls through the music and works without any delay.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Noj

[mjzee]

Make sure the operating system on your iPod is up to date, and that you're using the most current version of iTunes.

[Brad]

I've done what you did and added artwork from the web when it wasn't available through iTunes but I've never had the problem you have. I have an iPod classic but also have a touch and although not related to the music part of the Itouch, it has asked me to delete photos and images (and I have very few on it) so it may be a similar issue.

[mjzee]

It might be that some of those photos and graphics are in file types not supported by the iPod. I know .jpg and .tif work, but I can't speak for others.

[erhodes]

I have a 160gb iPod with close to 26,000 songs on it, and many of them have images (amounting to nearly a gigabyte of space taken up by images alone). When the iPod is connected to my MacBook Pro it can some times lag when scrolling or when selecting a track to play. Usually it amounts to a brief stall with the little spinning rainbow of death appearing on the screen momentarily.

I'm not sure if the images are what causes this little hiccup, but your problem makes me wonder if that's the issue. On its own the iPod scrolls through the music and works without any delay.

This is instructive and I thank you for the response. The problem went away...perhaps temporarily...after I rebooted. That, plus your comments, suggests to me that the problem is with my computer rather than with itunes or the ipod.

[erhodes]

Make sure the operating system on your iPod is up to date, and that you're using the most current version of iTunes.

Itunes is always urging me to do this but I have read here and elsewhere that the updates, particularly for itunes, are sometimes buggy or sometimes take functionality away, e.g., the whole issue of the 1 second space between tracks. Nothing recent on this but I seem to remember a discussion about it in this forum some time ago (a couple of years?). Mzee, do you regularly update both your itunes version and your ipod software? Can you comment on your experience? And do you think newer versions of either might have an impact on apparent capacity, particularly with respect to image files?

Also, per your second comment, I think they are all jpeg's. But if there were unsupported image types, any thoughts on how to find out which ones?

And thanks for your response. This has been helpful.

I've done what you did and added artwork from the web when it wasn't available through iTunes but I've never had the problem you have. I have an iPod classic but also have a touch and although not related to the music part of the Itouch, it has asked me to delete photos and images (and I have very few on it) so it may be a similar issue.

Not exactly the same thing but I see some similarities. Was it itunes or something actually in your ipod that asked you to delete images? And did it give a reason or do you think it was a capacity issue? I got no message in my episode. The synch just hung until I canceled it.

And thanks for the reply. Very interesting.

[JSngry]

No suggestions here, sorry, but I'm glad to find that I'm not the only one who finds a product from the supposedly unbuggy Apple family of world-changing products to be pretty damn buggy, all things considered.

I've got the 160GB, update it's OS regularly, and still am not immune to the odd "surprises", the most irritating one being tracks not playing to completion before moving on to the next one.

Apple!

[John L]

No suggestions here, sorry, but I'm glad to find that I'm not the only one who finds a product from the supposedly unbuggy Apple family of world-changing products to be pretty damn buggy, all things considered.

I've got the 160GB, update it's OS regularly, and still am not immune to the odd "surprises", the most irritating one being tracks not playing to completion before moving on to the next one.

Apple!

I've had that problem of tracks skipping or not playing through to the end. What I do is "make a MP3 copy" of the files. The skipping always stops with the copies. It may be that some of the digital information is lost as well.

Edited November 23, 2011 by John L

[mjzee]

Mzee, do you regularly update both your itunes version and your ipod software? Can you comment on your experience? And do you think newer versions of either might have an impact on apparent capacity, particularly with respect to image files?

I do always regularly update all software, as I'm always eager to see the new functionality, or apply any bug fixes. Sometimes updates can result in bugs or erratic performance - I found some of that with the recent upgrade to Lion. But for me it's about the experience. I approach a new Apple version like I'd approach seeing a group in a jazz club: I'm hoping I'll experience something surprising and inventive; occasionally I'll be let down. I figure with technology, newer is almost always better. As for "impact on apparent capacity," the only time I experienced that was when I enabled the voice feature on my iPod Shuffle (it's so cool to hear the computer tell me the track name and artist through my headphones!); it took up some memory, so I wasn't able to import as many tracks as before. But it was worth it! However, that brings up a good point: I always make sure to leave some unused space in memory on the device. For example, on my 120 gb iPod, I only use 100 gb. Why? I always figure the devise needs some empty room for "doing stuff" (that's my technical term). You should try leaving a few gb free, and see if that helps you.

I've had that problem of tracks skipping or not playing through to the end. What I do is "make a MP3 copy" of the files. The skipping always stops with the copies. It may be that some of the digital information is lost as well.

I experience that sometimes too. What's even spookier is when the track continues to play after the "time remaining" reaches zero. Huh?? Although I don't use it, there is an option in iTunes when ripping tracks to "Use error correction when reading Audio CDs." This will slow the ripping process, tho.

[JSngry]

For example, on my 120 gb iPod, I only use 100 gb. Why? I always figure the devise needs some empty room for "doing stuff" (that's my technical term).

Just wondering...do they have that space already protected so you can't put any data on it?

[mjzee]

For example, on my 120 gb iPod, I only use 100 gb. Why? I always figure the devise needs some empty room for "doing stuff" (that's my technical term).

Just wondering...do they have that space already protected so you can't put any data on it?

No, it was a decision on my part. When you sync the device to your computer, you can see how much space is reserved for the device's operating system. My space (hey, I should copyright that name!) is in addition to that.

[JSngry]

So there's no built-in "swap drive" or whatever it would be called, and no way to format one even if you wanted to?

Do Apple computers work that way also? Just wondering. Don't know if the differences in Mac & PC architectures create different needs in that regard (and that's as far as I can go without being totally ignorant about what I'm talking...)

[mjzee]

Not really sure what you're referring to, Jim. I know you can use part of an iPod's memory to transport files, but I've never had a use for that.