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theprizefight

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 29, 2006
91
0
whenever i plug my iphone in, while its synching it goes into "updating files"...it does this for usually 80-100 songs, which are already on the iphone. No changes are made to my music library between synchs. Is this a glitch with itunes synching? or is it supposed to do this?
 

Xtal

macrumors member
Jun 23, 2008
52
0
Never seen this.

Maybe try deleting all the songs from your iPhone and copying them over again.

Also check your iTunes settings. On the Summary tab I have "Manually manage music and videos" checked and in the Music tab "Sync Music" is unchecked.
 

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
I have this issue too. I tried to delete/resync my music but it still happens. Even if I sync, wait a minute then sync again I still get a ton of tracks that get copied ("updated"). What a pain.

If you discover the cause (and cure), please post it.
 

PrinceDraven

macrumors regular
Jan 7, 2008
188
0
London, UK
Me too

Add me to the list.
This happens on mine too.
Doesn't cause me too many problems (compared to the hour long backups) so haven't bothered to mention it, but if someone finds out why i would be interested.:D
 

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
I mentioned above that I have this issue...lets try to troubleshoot:

I sync between an iMac (just iTunes content - music, podcasts and applications) and a PC laptop (Outlook contacts and Calendar).

I wonder if syncing between 2 machines is related?

My Music sync is set to a single playlist called "iPhone". However, when I view playlists on the iPhone device, I see three listed (On-The-Go, iPhone and "Normal Playlist")

The first 2 are expected, but the "Normal Playlist" is a "smart" playlist from my iMac that I don't have set to sync (!!). I'll delete that list from the iMac and resync.
 

diesel

macrumors 6502a
Aug 3, 2007
807
25
happens for me as well for two songs, consistently. since it's only 2 songs, and half a sec, doesn't bother me, but i'm still curious as all of you are........................
 

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
mine does it to about 500 tracks - really slows down the sync process.

Deleting the extra "Normal" playlist didn't help.
 

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
Fixed!

Thanks to Lynn at Apple Support

Basicall I had to reset the sync history. To do this:

Open iSync in applications
Menu item iSync / Preferences
Select Reset Sync History

The next time I sync'd my iphone it worked flawlessly (and didn't reload all my content, which I thought it might do).
 

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
Fixed!

Thanks to Lynn at Apple Support

I had to reset the sync history. To do this on a Mac:

Open iSync in applications
Menu item iSync / Preferences
Select Reset Sync History

The next time I sync'd my iPhone it worked flawlessly (and didn't reload all my content, which I thought it might do).
 

TEG

macrumors 604
Jan 21, 2002
6,621
169
Langley, Washington
This also occurs to files that you have set to remember the last location. I have several mp3s on my iPhone whose length is in excess of 3 hours, and I have the iPhone and iTunes keep track of the time so I can listen straight through, each time I'm syncing, it flashes that it is updating the file.

TEG
 

jsgreen

macrumors 6502
Nov 27, 2007
372
59
NH
Not Fixed!

My iPhone is again "updating files" for 500 songs, seems that deleting the sync history didn't fix the issue.

Maybe rebuilding the iTunes library will help - anyone try that yet?
 

psywzrd

macrumors 68030
Feb 6, 2008
2,837
35
I'm having this same problem as well - itunes always wants to update a bunch of songs when I sync my iphone even though those songs are already on my iphone and haven't been updated in any way.
 

psywzrd

macrumors 68030
Feb 6, 2008
2,837
35
Just a quick update. Per Apple support's recommendation, I deleted all of my music from my iphone (basically I just unchecked the sync music option in itunes). I then created a playlist called "iphone music" and added a bunch of the songs that "update" every time I sync my iphone. I synced up and the iphone music playlist transferred over. I then synced again to see if some of those files would update again and they did not. I deleted the iphone music playlist and synced my entire library again. Sure enough, the next time I synced the same exact thing happened with certain music files "updating". I then tried deleting my sync history in isync - that didn't help either.

I don't know why this is happening and Apple support is stumped as well. If anyone here has a clue, please feel free to offer suggestions. This is a very annoying problem since it makes my syncs take a lot longer than they should.
 

psywzrd

macrumors 68030
Feb 6, 2008
2,837
35
It looks like I'm having a conversation with myself here but that's ok - I figured out my problem and wanted to post the solution for you guys.

I'm going to assume that everyone here is experiencing this problem with music only. I paid very close attention to what songs were being "updated" every time I synced. It turns out that all of my problematic songs were from CD's that I had ripped myself (each of these specific albums were causing my problems) During the process of copying the mp3 files over from my Windows PC, it looks like something got corrupted in the ID3 tags - that's why these songs were constantly being updating upon syncing. It took a few hours but I had to write down each and every song that was being updated (it was a bit easier for me because as long as I recognized one or two song names, I could easily determine which album they were from). Once I determined which songs were causing the problem, I updated the ID3 tags for each and every one of them.

For me, I had around 220 songs that would always update so that was about 15-20 albums. That made it a bit easier because I could just update the entire album at once - all I did was bulk change the information in one field (you can just pick a field that you're not really using). I used the "Album Artist" field and just put the name of the Artist in that field. What this does is cause iTunes to "reset" the ID3 tag information for each of those songs upon syncing with your device (iphone or ipod). Once I did that for all of my problem songs, there were only 2 more songs that were still updating every time I synced. Since updating the ID3 tags on those songs wasn't helping, I deleted them from itunes completely and brought in fresh copies. That took care of the problems with those 2 songs and now I don't have this issue anymore!

I can't say with 100% certainty that this solution will help everyone here but it certainly worked for me. It's a bit time-consuming (especially if you have a few hundred songs that are giving you problems) but it's well worth the effort if this problem annoys you as much as it annoyed me.

Let me know if you guys have any questions and I'll help as best as I can. Good luck!
 

coloma

macrumors newbie
Jun 2, 2009
5
0
Corvallis, Oregon USA
thank you and a possible cause?

Thank you so much for this suggestion. I had 477 songs updating over and over -- my normal "quick" sync had gone from 15 seconds to 5 minutes! It affected both iPod Nano and iPod Touch.

I didn't have the time/patience to figure out which albums were affected, so I selected all the music in my library, did a Get Info, and changed the comment field to "," as I never use that field. The next time I synced, it updated the entire library. But since then, it has only updated only new podcasts and such. Back to the 15-second sync!

I don't know what caused this but since you mentioned album covers, I have to say this started happening shortly after using CoverScout to search out covers. http://www.equinux.com/us/products/coverscout/ It may be a coincidence but I'm wondering if any of the rest of you use(d) CoverScout?

Donna
 

nonie3234

macrumors newbie
Nov 9, 2009
1
0
why is my iphone "updating files"?

OMG!
Many thanks to psywzrd and coloma!
You guys are genius!

I had over 2,500 problem files so - like coloma, I chose to update all with a blank in the comment field, and - VOILA - all better.

FYI - I don't even have a Mac, I'm using iTunes on Windows XP. This is just a heads up to anyone else who finds this thread like I did (on Google) but doesn't have a Mac either.

YOU ROCK!
 

bjjp2

macrumors regular
Jan 13, 2005
196
401
Posting to this old, old thread because I'm having this problem for the first time right after "upgrading" to 8.02. Apparently this issue has been going on for years. Anyone else? Any solutions?
 

DARKiLLUSiON

macrumors 6502
Sep 21, 2007
327
25
Toronto, Canada
Posting to this old, old thread because I'm having this problem for the first time right after "upgrading" to 8.02. Apparently this issue has been going on for years. Anyone else? Any solutions?

This just happen and it constantly updating files and not a small amount but with 1354 songs! Now half of my album arts are gone after syncing my iPhone to iTunes manually and I don't own any of those songs that are in my iPhone anymore.
 

Eurobuff

macrumors newbie
Oct 12, 2013
18
0
This just happen and it constantly updating files and not a small amount but with 1354 songs! Now half of my album arts are gone after syncing my iPhone to iTunes manually and I don't own any of those songs that are in my iPhone anymore.

I had the same problem with 560 songs and an audiobook. I have fixed it, but it took 6 hours. I have an iPad and an iPhone, which both have the same tracks on them. The iPhone is fine it was the ipad that had the problem. So I knew it couldn't be that there was anything wrong in the actual files. I have about 2200 tracks on my iPad. I noticed at first that the some of the tracks that were "updating" were actually missing off my iPad, but when plugged into itunes they showed as being there (not greyed out with dotted circle), but when I clicked on it in itunes it showed the "!". I ended up deleting album by album, and then putting them back on again, until eventually it showed about 18 tracks "updating", I then picked these out one by one, deleted them and copied them back again. Strangely though some that I "fixed" at the start of the process, were "updating" again at the end. So I had to remove these yet again and put them back on again.
If anyone has a "quick" fix I would appreciate it if it could be posted on here. For now my iPad is fixed and can only assume it was the update that corrupted it somehow, as I didn't have any problems prior to this.
 
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