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Happens regardless of how frequently or not I'm hooked up to PC/iTunes. Most of the time I discover the shortened songs on the go - in the car, in the backyard - when playing the iPod. Also, it matters not whether the song is purchased on iTunes, Amazon, or is homemade. Nor does it matter if the song has been played a dozen times or even the first time.

When I later check the song in iTunes and in all my backup locs, it is alsoshortened in all those folders - whether by 10 seconds or by 2 minutes.

BREAKING NEWS!

A respondent on the Apple Support forums recommended me to "mprVal"(idate)!

This free app analyzes, and then at your discression, fixes flawed or corrupt mp3 files.

Turns out about 25% of my collection has one of the following errors:
"File is either truncated or has garbage at the end"

"Number of bits incorrectly reported in header"

"streaming/synchronization error"

So very likely the ones flagged "truncated or garbage at the end" are bombs waiting to go off - suddenly become 30 to 50sec files!

Question is - how did these mp3s get that way?!

ChrisCoaster

The correct app name is "MP3Val" (can't type on an iPod Touch!)

wrote:
> BREAKING NEWS!
>
> A respondent on the Apple Support forums recommended me to "mprVal"(idate)!
>
> This free app analyzes, and then at your discression, fixes flawed or corrupt mp3 files.
>
> Turns out about 25% of my collection has one of the following errors:
> "File is either truncated or has garbage at the end"
>
> "Number of bits incorrectly reported in header"
>
> "streaming/synchronization error"
>
> So very likely the ones flagged "truncated or garbage at the end" are bombs waiting to go off - suddenly become 30 to 50sec files!
>
> Question is - how did these mp3s get that way?!
>
> ChrisCoaster

You're not out of the woods yet.

Keep a log (today) of exactly which files are affected.
You say 25% are bad.

Now, watch the other 75% in coming days. Do those go bad too ?

Or, are all future events related to the 25% now known bad ones ?

You're going to have to watch things that way for a while.
And that might give you an idea whether they're corrupted "onboard",
like bad flash on the storage device, or the corruption happened
during download or import.

You can also watch any new purchases, immediately, when they come
in, and see if they're malformed.

Paul