Computer/IPod Help

[Neato Torpedo]

Well, only songs downloaded from the iTunes Store or ripped from a CD with iTunes are backed up in the program's system folder. Songs downloaded from Napster, Limewire, Bittorrent, etc are stored in a regular easy-access folder within My Documents or Downloads or something. I assume Inukchuk deleted these folders or had a computer mishap that deleted the songs. And when you've downloaded 50 GB of music over the years like I have (a good 40% of it is lossless audio quality) drive space becomes a problem.

Auto-syncing is the worst, though. If you delete, move, rename, reorganize, or change the files or folders in any way, the songs get deleted off your iPod as well. It's alright when you just use the iTunes Store or CDs you bought, but anything else becomes a pain to manage.

[Inukchuk]

I assume Inukchuk deleted these folders or had a computer mishap that deleted the songs.

Yup, that's what happened. I actually went exploring in my iPod, and found over half the files to be mp4's. Is this a problem? Can I handle them as you described earlier?

[Neato Torpedo]

I assume Inukchuk deleted these folders or had a computer mishap that deleted the songs.

Yup, that's what happened. I actually went exploring in my iPod, and found over half the files to be mp4's. Is this a problem? Can I handle them as you described earlier?

.mp4's as in videos? Or m4a audio files? m4a is the standard iTunes audio file and it's rarely used anywhere else for compatibility reasons. I assume these are the songs you bought from the iTunes store or ripped from your CDs, so they would certainly retain their metadata. Audio files with the .mp4 extension are pretty damn rare, and though I'm fairly sure that it follows the same rules I can't promise it. .mp4 videos lack the metadata 99% of the time because DVD ripping software isn't as advanced as its CD counterparts, so data gets lost along the way. You would definitely have to rename the videos.

When in doubt, just copy them to your computer and load them onto iTunes to see if anything's wrong.