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Make all iTunes music available to iPhoto2/iMovie3 Apps

I was so excited for iMovie 3.0 and the Ken Burns Effect. I'm working on a very large project involving over 200 photos and it has made a huge difference to be able to pan and zoom still photos easily. I was also excited about the integration between iTunes and the other iLife apps. But when it came time to select music for my movie I was surprised to find that not even half my library was available to me. Out of 2996 songs, I was seeing only 1098 in iMovie.

A little bit of poking around in the iTunes Library and corresponding XML file led me to the problem. I have my MP3s stored on a separate partition. At some point I changed the name of the partition. For some reason all the songs imported before the name change still had references to the old partition name in both iTunes library files. They were available in iTunes just fine, but not in either iPhoto or iMovie.

First I tried the Consolidate functionality in iTunes. This appeared to do nothing, and didn't solve the problem. Then I hoped someone else might have already written an app to fix this, but I could find nothing on Version Tracker that fit the bill. I tried playing around with the XML file, but this didn't fix the Library file.

So in the end I moved the iTunes files to a safe location and ran iTunes. Since the files were gone, it assumed I had no music. I then used the Add to Library function and selected all the MP3s in my music directory. It added and organized all the music. Of course I lost my Playlists, but I didn't feel that was much of a problem. The important thing is that all the music is now available in iPhoto and iMovie. I created some new Playlists, which I figure has the benefit of getting me to listen to some music I might have been ignoring.

[robg adds: I haven't experienced this problem, but forcing iTunes to recreate the library certainly seems like it should resolve the issue.]

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Make all iTunes music available to iPhoto2/iMovie3 | 5 comments | Create New Account
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I've been having a similar problem
Authored by: pwharff on Feb 21, '03 11:59:57AM

My problem is similar to yours. This is what I do. My wife is the one who keeps up on all the new music and she loves iTunes, so since her playlists are more organize, I use a synchronizing program to copy her iTunes from her iMac to my Power Mac G4. It seemed to work perfectly as I now had an exact copy her iTunes, but I couldn't use iTunes in iPhoto or iMovie now. I hope someone could come up with a better fix.



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Make all iTunes music available to iPhoto2/iMovie3
Authored by: srcleaves on Feb 21, '03 02:26:49PM

Now that this hint has been posted I can see that my language may have been a bit confusing and made the solution sound more involved than it is.

When I say I moved the iTunes files to a safe location, I mean only the library files. There are two of these, and the sizes will be larger or smaller depending on how many mp3s you have. If you find you are unhappy with the results of re-adding all your music and losing your playlists, you can easily just copy these two files back to their original location and everything will be as it was.



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Make all iTunes music available to iPhoto2/iMovie3
Authored by: kol on Feb 21, '03 04:59:30PM

There is a known bug in the way iTunes handles .xml files. It's been reported to Apple, and I hope they fix it. I've run into it several times when dealing with my iTunes Library and SLIMP3 (which is very cool, see http://www.slimdevices.com, insert "just a happy customer" disclaimer).

You can also just select and then delete all your music in iTunes (be careful NOT to move it to the trasth!) and then drag and drop your music folder onto the iTunes icon and i'tll recreate everything.

Of course, this does trash your custom playlists, thought the explanation of how to do this and save your playlist sounds like it would work.

HTH

Kevin



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Keep your playlists
Authored by: benfsmith on Feb 21, '03 05:10:56PM

I just went through this yesterday. The issue relates to two different ways that iTune maintains data in the xml files. THe other iApps can only recognize info in those files if it in the newer format.

The solution is to export your library, delete the xml files in your iTunes folder, and import the previously exported Library.xml file. The only minor annoyance is that it duplicated my *smart* playlists. Otherwise, it was flawless. In fact, it cleaned up my library a bit.

The other iApps will now recognize all your music and playlists.



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Make all iTunes music available to iPhoto2/iMovie3
Authored by: momerath on Feb 21, '03 05:25:57PM

Another disadvantage of this is that it will lose all of your ratings and your play counts too. That is just not fun.



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