Something odd has been going on with my iPod. Every once in a while, I’ll hit a song that ends abruptly. The first couple of times it happened, I thought the iPod was simply skipping to the next song; I figured I’d bumped the controls somehow. But after having it happen while the iPod was sitting on my desk and I was typing away on my laptop, I decided that it merited further investigation. Turned out—here’s where it gets weird—the songs had been truncated, with the iPod reporting that they were actually shorter than I knew them to be.
A resync with iTunes fixed the issue the first time around, but I noticed the same problem this week while listening to a classical music track. The piece in question, “Jupiter” from Holst’s The Planets, runs a good eight minutes, but for some reason, the iPod was only registering a 4:17 length.
Strange, right? Stay with me; it only gets stranger.
I thought a resync might fix this, so I popped into iTunes, only to find that the track length was listed as 4:17 in iTunes as well. Now I knew I’d listened to that whole MP3 before, so I hit Get Info on the track to see if it had somehow been shortened (you can set the endpoint of a song under Get Info’s “Options” tab). To my surprise, the endpoint listed under Get Info was 8:17, the real track length. When I dismissed the Get Info box (without changing anything!), the duration of the song in the iTunes list magically changed back to 8:17. A quick update of the iPod, and the track was fixed there as well.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll say that neither the iPod firmware or the copy of iTunes are the latest versions, so perhaps this bug is fixed in the newer releases. A quick search of Apple’s discussion boards shows that other people have had similar issues. I will certainly update my software and see if this happens again, but I find myself, oh, let’s call it intrigued by this iTunes truncation incident. Perhaps iTunes and my iPod simply don’t want me to hear the entire track, to spare me the ecstatic highs of Holst’s composition, or the crushing sadness of Something Corporate’s “Cavanagh Park.” Who can say?
How about it, readerly friends? Anybody else experiencing a little iPod self-censorship?
Thank You!
I've been having the same issues with my 4Gb Nano but never realised it. Like you I thought I had just bumped it through to the next song. Now I know this is happening I will look into it more. One thing - I have the latest iPod/iTunes updates so it's not fixed yet..
This has happened to me with certain podcasts -- very annoying and mystifying.
Hey! This happened to me too! Very frustrating... On a "home-made" audiobook (from Project Gutenberg), it cuts off the end of chapters :( But when I come back and fast-forward to the end, it's fine.
I've been having that same problem for at least 6 months - I've noticed it with numerous songs - say 10-15 out of around 1000. I didn't realize the fix was to check the info on the song file.
Do you think re-adding all songs to the library will fix the problem? Is there even a way to do that without losing song ratings and playlists?
The same thing happened to my iPod shuffle running iTunes 6.0.1.3. I would be merrily listening then the song would cut out so I raised the volume . When that doesn't work I switch to another tune and shuffle until I hear something. The crappy made in China remanufacture needs to be taken to task for this shoddy work. FYI my shuffle is the second after Apple replaced the first because of the well-known but unofficial "unable to update issue" Check out the Apple forums and learn more consumer woes.