and i am not using an external drive. Itch has worked fine in snow leopard, it just suddenly didn't work.

Dear: Simon

It could be Snow,But Let me get a Serato Rep to help us out on this one.Please bare with me.

Thank you,
Carl

Hey Simon,

Do you get an error message in ITCH when the iTunes library fails to load? Have you added any tracks to your iTunes library between the time it used to work and to when it stopped working? Also which version of iTunes are you running?

No I didn't

eh, yes?

The latest.

Hi guys.

I've got exactly the same problem,

Got to the gig last night to find no itunes library in itch. Luckily i carry two lappy's, so the back up MacBook (2 Ghz 10.5.8) came to the rescue.

Do we have a solution? I'm working tonight & I'd like to use my faster machine.

Ok, do you know if any of these recently added files have any accented or foreign characters (eg. é,ó,ø,å,ç) in them at all?

yes one song have ø in it. So thats why itch freezes when i shut it down, why i cant see the itunes library and why i cant find my recorded sets?

Errr no those sound like 3 unrelated issues. The first thing I would suggest is to try renaming the song with the ø in it and see if your iTunes library will then load in ITCH.

In regards to your other issues can you please explain in a bit more detail what is happening? Thanks :)

okay

Itch starts fine, but I can't se my itunes library at all! I can find the songs in my HD via itch, but no itunes library. Also a I can't seem to find my recorded dj-sets either.
If I try to play songs in itch it tends to lack, both sound and image, especially if i play a song on deck a, and use the jog wheel on deck b. If i record something it cant save it. When I try to shut itch down it freezes!
I have tryed to install the 1,5 beta, but it had the same problems!

So does anybody know of any tools/scripts that can find accented characters?

Also, are we talking about tags or file names or both?

same problem guys....itch starts, but i can't see my itunes library.....try to shut it down and itch freezes........hmmmm what's up?

Alright, let's try and work through these one by one :)

Did you try renaming the song with the "ø" in it? Ensure that you rename the file and edit the ID3 tag. This should then allow ITCH to open your iTunes library.


If you enter a name and save your set you can find your recordings in the Music -> Serato -> Recording folder. If you aren't saving them they will be in the Music -> Serato -> Recording temp folder, although note that only the most recent recording will be in here as any previous unsaved recordings are overwritten.


Does ITCH give you an error message if you try to save? How much free space do you have on your hard drive?


Have you analyzed all your files? Also take a look at this article as it provides some optimisation tips to help ITCH perform better -> www.serato.com (click link)


This is possibly due to a corrupt crate or database V2 file. Do you have any crates?

Hey Ian,


I'm afraid not sorry. Probably the easiest way to find the culprit is to open iTunes, sort by added date and look for any files with accented characters added to your library around the time that you noticed that ITCH was no longer able to load your iTunes library.


I believe it's related to the filename, but it wouldn't hurt to do both ;)

Hi satellitejoe,

I'm not convinced it's totally to do with accented characters, ....here's why.

I run two Macs. My primary machine is a 13" MacBook Pro with 10.6 Snow leopard, my backup machine is a Polycarbonate Macbook still running 10.5 Leopard. Both machines have identical music library's. .....Every week or so, I copy all new tracks from my main machine to the same locations on my back up machine. I also copy accross my iTunes library file.

Now if accented characters was the problem, i'd have problems on both machines. ...this isn't the case though. It's only the Snow leopard Macbook Pro that's lost the ability to see my iTunes library.

Accented characters may be a factor, but I think it's got more to do with what version of OS X you're running.

Also, I have a library of 20,000 songs on my machines. so searching for & fixing accented characters really isn't practical.

Can we have a fix please? If I can't use Itch on my new £1200 Macbook Pro, then the VCI 300 will have to go!

OK. ...I just deleted everything with "serato" & "itch"in the file name that spotlight could find. Then re-installed Itch 1.4.

I'm now up & running & Itch can see my iTunes library again.

So what's going on? ....I'm still not convinced that accents are the culprit here!

Hey Ian,


You're right, it may not necessarily be related to accented characters. However that is a bug I've seen which results in the iTunes library loading fine one day and then after adding tracks it no longer appears, so I figured it was worth trying that route out first :)


Good question. The file that ITCH reads your iTunes library information from is the "iTunes music library.xml" file, which is located in the iTunes Music folder. So if ITCH can't read the library it's usually due to it being unable to
A) Find this file or
B) Read this file.
So while it's great that deleting all the "ITCH" and "Serato" files has solved this issue, I can't really explain to you why this would have fixed it :-/ One thing that springs to mind is that perhaps you had a corrupt ITCH database or crate which was hanging on start up and stopping ITCH from reading your iTunes library, but I can only speculate on that.

So unfortunately I can't really offer much more insight on your issue sorry, unless of course it happens again in which case we can try noting what steps we can take to fix it :)

Thanks for the reply Michael.

It may not be the preferred way of fixing things, & obviously my solution will only work if you use iTunes for all your music management (As I'm deleting any existing Serato crates). But at least I now have a solution if I find myself at a gig & I can't see my music library.

The installer for 1.4 is now kept on the thumb drive on my key ring! :)

Hey Ian,

Good to hear you're prepared :) Please do let me know if you see this issue again.