How to troubleshoot tracks not being indexed

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bizmodeller
Posts: 458
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 8:40 pm

How to troubleshoot tracks not being indexed

Post by bizmodeller »

Quite a few users have emailed us because they are not seeing all their iTunes library tracks appearing within My Media. Here are some common reasons for this and also steps on how to troubleshoot this yourself.

Common Reasons

1. Transcoding not enabled

By default, My Media will only index mp3 and some m4a files. If you have other formats, eg WAV, OGG, etc, or incompatible M4A files you will need to enable transcoding by following the instructions here - https://www.mymediaalexa.com/home/ffmpeg

2. M4P iTunes Protected files are not indexed

Unfortunately we cannot stream M4P files from iTunes to Alexa as these are encrypted by Apple using a proprietary protocol that we cannot legally decrypt. Apple used encryption in all tracks purchased from the iTunes store prior to 2009. After 2009 Apple stopped encrypting. So if you purchased content before 2009 you will need to look at options for converting the encrypted files to unencrypted files for them to be successfully indexed by My Media. Google 'iTunes M4P conversion' for options on how to do this - My Media does not provide this function.

3. Permissions

The user running My Media may not have sufficient permissions at the file system level to access your iTunes tracks. Windows versions of My Media run as the Local System account which should have access to your files, but if you have custom permissions, you may need to add READ access to this account to your iTunes directory. On Mac/Linux, My Media will run as the user you installed under, so this account will need READ access to the directory and files you want to index.

4. Remotely indexed iTunes library file

If you are running iTunes on a Windows / Mac machine, but running My Media on, for example, a NAS or Raspberry Pi, you may have tried to mount a share on your My Media server pointing to the iTunes music folder on your Windows/Mac machine. Unfortunately, this usually won't work because My Media reads the iTunes Library.xml file to find out about your iTunes media collection. This XML file contains the list of files within your iTunes library and the filenames are usually local file references, relative to the machine that iTunes is running on. Even though the iTunes Library.xml file may be able to be found by your remote My Media server, the local file references within that file won't be able to be resolved by the remote machine.

Ways to Troubleshoot

My Media creates a log file each time it scans each Watch Folder. You can download / view this log file after each scan by clicking on the notepad icon next to each Watch Folder in the Watch Folder tab:
Screenshot 2018-12-26 at 09.32.23.png
Screenshot 2018-12-26 at 09.32.23.png (57.84 KiB) Viewed 10648 times

Review this log file for reasons why files have not been imported. Compare them to the common reasons above. File Not Found typically points to reason [3] or [4] above.
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