Files on External Drive - Cover Art goes missing

[bushido]

this may have been covered before but i never got an clear answer and it literally been bothering me ever since the first iPod with Video support came out.

So anyway heres my issue. I have lots of 1080p movies and tv shows converted with iFlicks and everything is showing up fine. Obviously due to the fact that my macbook only has about 128GB of storage i have to move everything to an external drive as soon as it its converted. now heres the annoying part:

when I close iTunes and unmount the drive before mounting it again, some and sometimes all of my movie/tv show covers disappear unless i click on each and every file one by one.

is there no way to fix this permanently? going through the whole library to get the cover art back is rather annoying and also time consuming with big libraries.

background:

i convert and tagg movies/tv shows using iFlicks and have it set to auto-import to itunes once its finished processing.
Next i either go to iTunes (right click > jump to source etc) or through the finder to move the files to the proper external harddrive folder.
Finally i go back to itunes and click on those files again and pick the new source from the external harddrive as itunes obviously cannot find the files as i was moving them otherwise.

 

[ZeRoLiMiT]

cover art is missing on the apple tv? or itunes?

I have over 500+ movies and on my AppleTv
sometimes the cover art goes missing and sometimes it works but more times then not it works. I use iFlicks also

 

[bushido]

it goes missing on itunes and therefore doesnt show on the apple tv either. it does not seems to be able to fetch the data by itself once the hdd been unplugged if that makes sense. even stranger as it does show some but not all

 

[mic j]

I would recommend rebuilding your database by deleting all of the movies in iTunes and adding them back.

 

[salohcin]

Are you opening iTunes at any point while the hard drive isn't mounted? Say to play music that's on your local drive or something? Because I believe that would definitely cause the issues you're describing.

 

[ZeRoLiMiT]

I would rebuild the library also! remove everything and add everything back on

 

[bushido]

I would rebuild the library also! remove everything and add everything back on

Are you saying instead of auto import via i flicks than moving the file i should move them to the external before adding them to itunes using alt + drag & drop?

Are you opening iTunes at any point while the hard drive isn't mounted? Say to play music that's on your local drive or something? Because I believe that would definitely cause the issues you're describing.

I do sometimes as i do not always have the hdd with me when i want to listen to music but usually before i plug in the external hdd i close itunes than plug in the hdd before opening itunes again

 

[ZeRoLiMiT]

i always drag and drop!

 

[iOrbit]

I have this, i have a movie library exceeding 260 movies, many on external drives. As far as i know, what happens is if you run itunes with the hdd unplugged, everything will stay as it is unless you try to access or play the file i.e. get info. When you do this. Itunes looks for the file in the referenced place and it can't find the file ergo neither the artwork. The same thing basically happens when you fire up the Apple TV and brows movies on it - if your hdd is unplugged with the files its looking for to display artwork, it will disappear im itunes. The only way to get it back that i know of is to either delete them and add them back or to right click each one that is missing art work and select get info but only while the hdd is plugged in. It will find the file again and restore the art work.

Dont access your movies through computer on the Apple TV or try to play or access the movies in itunes if the hdd isnt plugged in, then you won't have to keep doing this.

 

[echomark]

it goes missing on itunes and therefore doesnt show on the apple tv either. it does not seems to be able to fetch the data by itself once the hdd been unplugged if that makes sense. even stranger as it does show some but not all

[doublepost=1483412322][/doublepost]This same exact issue is happening to me, too. It happens every time I have to reboot my mac. The only solution I have found to work is restore my iTunes library from Time Machine. Total pain in the butt.

 

[priitv8]

[doublepost=1483412322][/doublepost]The only solution I have found to work is restore my iTunes library from Time Machine. Total pain in the butt.

In my experience, I never rebuild my library. It is enough to open the Info window (Cmd+I) on the clip.
There are peculiarities to this: if the icon represents a single item (movie, tv show or album with just 1 item in it's list), then cover art updates instantly.
If it has more (album with many tracks, tv show with many episodes or seasons), then you need to open Cmd+I on the first item of the list (for TV shows even 1st item of last season), to have the cover art and color scheme to update.

I know, it is nowhere near less pain...
But iTunes is definitely able to update cover art from the media file, if the latter has one.