Mp3 corrupt in iTunes but not in Finder. Why?!

[cooknwitha]

My iTunes library has decided to be obnoxious and while listening through a bunch of tracks, one song kept jumping like it was corrupt - as if half a second was removed and then spliced back together.

So, being a good little boy I accessed Time Machine, went back a few months, found the file in Time Machine and it wasn't corrupt. Then, just to satisfy my own curiosity, I went out of Time Machine and played the supposedly "corrupt" mp3 direct from Finder using QuickLook and it played fine. The fault at 3:01 didn't exist.

Back in iTunes, the song is corrupt and again skips at 3:01. So, clearly there is something in iTunes and not the mp3 itself which is corrupt, no?

Any ideas how to fix it?

 

[TEG]

I have fixed some files that do this, or can't play in their entirety. To do it, I usually re-encode the file. On some, iTunes saw the corruption, but QT didn't, others iTunes plays the file just fine, but my iPod/iPhone doesn't. However, in each case, re-encoding the file fixes it.

TEG

 

[cooknwitha]

Just tried that and not only did it not work but it shaved 3 seconds off the 6:33-length song. (The Message - Grandmaster Flash... for the curious)

So, I'm guessing iTunes thinks the original is corrupt and in reencoding it, it has given the true length of the song with the skips taken into consideration.

And when I play the new version in Finder, it's got the skips!

This is just getting weirder now!!

 

[Teej guy]

By re-encoding it, you're also losing quality. Any lossy to lossy encoding reduces quality.

 

[OriginalFormula]

Have you tried re-importing the song from your Time Machine copy?

 

[Trainwreck707]

I would take the above advice and grab the Time Machine copy. Another option would be to download MP3 Scan+Repair and try to fix it. I have had a few mp3's in the past that I couldn't even import into iTunes and repairing them with this program did the trick.

MP3 Scan+Repair