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Fix disappearing album art after moving iTunes

Related to all the other "disappearing album art" discussions but I could not find a specific solution for my case.

I'm using Windows 10 and iTunes 12.  My music is on a NAS (Z:\Music) and the iTunes library data is in the default location (C:\Users\Me\My Music\iTunes.)  After many months, I have 98% of album art working right and iPod syncing works properly with all music and artwork.

Reloading Windows on a new drive so I saved the iTunes folder in my profile to an external device.  Installed iTunes on the new drive and ran it once to create the profile folders.  Exited and then replaced the new iTunes folder with the old one.  Restarted iTunes and it displayed all music/artwork properly.  So far so good.

However, when simply selecting the first album and hitting Play, the artwork disappeared.  Tried a second album and same result.  Selected a specific song and yep, artwork disappeared.  So simply moving the iTunes library data back to the profile folder in the new installation is not working right.

I did not use any third-party software or any "backup" procedures because I don't need to copy thousands of songs (they are on the NAS) and the copy/restore of the iTunes folder in my profile should work.

So how do I fix this and not have to somehow re-add artwork?  It's the same library so it should all work the way it did previously.

Thanks.

See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows and make sure the permissions are right on the restored iTunes folder. I would recommend embedding all artwork as it reduces the chances of issues when opening media in a new or relocated library. iTunes is not guaranteed to play nicely with NAS. It may work fine but if and when it goes wrong recovering data is likely to be impossible. Better is an self-contained portable library on an external drive (see Make a split library portable) with the NAS used as the backup for the primary copy.

tt2

I checked permissions and they were set properly throughout the iTunes folder structure.  However, I still did "reset" them per the instructions you pointed to but that was not actually successful.

It's been a week since posting this and I finally got back to it so I did the permissions reset and started iTunes.  The first 2 albums had their album art back so I first thought this was the fix so I double clicked on the first album and the art stayed.  But clicking the 2nd album had the art disappear.  Rats.

Going down the line and double clicking albums in order, some art stayed and some art went.  So it's not possible to tell if this permissions thing was successful or what is different between albums to make iTunes freak out.

I have about 25,000 songs arranged in /artist/album/song...  And in the album folder are all the folder.jpg files so all my other software (VLC, for example) simply pick that up.  Of course iTunes works differently and does not always see that if at all so adding album art to all my music in iTunes was a chore but finally got them all done.  This was all using the iTunes folder in the standard Windows location with the music on the NAS mapped as drive Z:\.  Has worked fine for a number of years.  Until this reload.

See EmbedFolderArt for a script that can embed the folder artwork.

tt2

Yeah, I've seen that and hesitated to use it but did commit to try it since you suggested it.  It worked on one album and on the second one I get an error (&A0040202 - the artwork has been deleted while checking for art in z:\iTunes\.....) even though the folder.jpg file is clearly right there.  I tried several ways by selecting the album, selecting the tracks, creating a playlist and selecting that, before running the script.

Tried another few albums and continued to get the error.

Maybe I just need to start over and delete the library and re-import it all over again but, as you know, iTunes will not always find the right art nor use what you have even if it's right there.  I really don't want to go through that again as it took months to get it all right.

Can you post the line number for that error? If iTunes "thinks" it has a cached image, but then cannot find it, that might be why the script fails, but also why iTunes isn't fetching a new image automatically. If I can stop the script from bailing out on that error it may be able to insert the local image anyway.

The other more drastic option would be to delete Album Artwork folder causing iTunes to have to rebuild it from scratch which you can do by slowly scrolling through the library in the albums view. Anything with embedded artwork should show up fairly quickly. Restoring fresh images downloaded from the store may take longer. If you want to try this backup both the iTunes Library.itl database and Album Artwork folder first so you can restore them if things just get worse.

tt2

Sorry, I'm gong to go ignorant on you and ask to what line number are you referring?  Unfortunately I'm only getting a Windows dialog box that pops up which says:

Error: &A0040202 The artwork has been deleted.

while checking for art in:

Z:\iTunes\America\History - America's Greatest Hits\12 Woman Tonight.mp3

With an OK or Cancel button.  I don't see an indication of a line number.  I click OK and the script closes.  In this case, it apparently embedded art on songs 1-11 but not 12. If I select that song and run the script again, it works.  Of course iTunes does not refresh immediately but if I close and reopen, the album art is now there.

So this is still partially successful.  Perhaps this is good enough.  I just need to select a slew of albums at once and run the script picking up errors as I go.  But if you have thoughts on how to bypass the error (iterate just the failures, maybe?) I'm willing to keep trying.

Ah, if you're not getting a line number then it is an error that I've tried to catch, but haven't yet worked out how to avoid it happening. I should be able to tweak the script to give you an option to ignore subsequent errors.

tt2

Do you think this is an error that, once bypassed, would still embed the art or I'd have to select the songs that failed and still re-run the script as I have been doing?

Or is it an error that can be captured and "analyzed" so that you can intercept it during the script and re-run against the songs with that error?

Either way, if there's a way to capture the error by popping in a debug stop of some sort let me know.  Or if I can run the script with more verbose output.  I'm not a programmer but am pretty techie if you want me to try something.

Otherwise, I'll keep going through the music incrementally and seeing how it goes.  As you suggested, I could always just delete the whole art folder and start over.  Don't want to do that but will if I get tired of what I'm doing now with your help.

Thanks!

I should be able to modify the script so having reported the error once you can decide to ignore repeats. You can then rerun the script to catch anything missed in a previous pass.

tt2

Ok, thanks for the help.

最後更新：2018-01-17 12:05:01

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