I recently did a couple of recordings using my new iPhone 4, and ran into a problem that others have been having regarding syncing Voice Memos to/from iTunes from Apple devices running iOS4. I have managed to work around the problem, without resorting to deleting the memos in question. Hopefully this can be useful to some. The main caveat is that this will only work for users running Windows.
You must make sure that your device is not syncing with iTunes when using this guide. Close iTunes completely before follwing any of the steps below.
Update 16th July 2010
Some users are reporting that the files appearing in the iPhone Browser window are M4A as opposed to MOV detailed below. If this is the case, then you should be able to transfer the voice memos directly from the device as detailed below without any conversion. I would suggest that you check each voice memo all of the way through before deleting it from your device to check that it hasn’t been corrupted or mis-converted. If all memos play correctly, then you can remove them within the app.
Step 1 – Download iPhone Browser
iPhone Browser Connected
iPhone Browser bypasses iTunes, allowing you to access the files directly on your device rather than going through iTunes. It should be noted that this is third party software and is not supported in any way by Apple, and is provided with no warranty, however I have used it and tested that it works.
Download iPhone Browser and install it. Connect your device, and start iPhone Browser. It should automatically connect to your device and show its contents. The screen should look like the one on the left (click the image to view a larger version).
Step 2 – Save the Memos
Navigate to the Recordings folder in the list on the left – you will then see a list of files. From here, I suggest that you save all of the files to a temporary folder on your hard drive. If you want to select multiple files, hold the “Control” key and click on the files to save. When you have the files selected, right-click on any highlighed file and click “Save As“, and choose a location to save to – for simplicity, I suggest creating a folder called Temp in your user’s home folder (you’ll see why later).
Even though iTunes saves voice memos as M4A files, the files you need to save are the MOV files (QuickTime video). I believe that iTunes transcodes these into m4a when syncing, which could explain the high CPU usage and “hangs” that users are reporting – in fact iTunes is still working, but transcoding the files into M4A.
Once the files have transferred, you can then close iPhone Browser, delete them from your device within the Voice Memo app, re-launch iTunes and the device should sync properly.
Step 3 – Converting MOV to MP3/M4A
Playing the MOV files in any player will not give you usable audio. You then need to extract the audio data from the file. The command-line utility FFMPEG is a very handy tool for manipulating multimedia, you can download a Windows version here (I have uploaded it to my own webspace for ease of access, as the distributable version is .
Download FFMPEG, and move the file into the same folder as your MOV files. Open a command prompt by pressing Windows+R and typing “cmd” into the box. By default, the window should have the path to your home directory loaded. Type “cd <foldername>” (without quotes) to move into that folder. For example “cd Temp” will move into the Temp folder. Now run the following command to extract the audio from the MOV file:
ffmpeg -i file.mov audio.mp3
FFMPEG Output
Substitute file.mov for the filename of the MOV file, and FFMPEG will convert the audio into a file called audio.mp3.
If you would like the audio in m4a format, just replace “audio.mp3″ with “audio.m4a” and FFMPEG will automatically convert it. The output should look something like the image on the left (as before, click for a larger version).
You can then move the MP3/M4A files into your iTunes library to sync with the rest of your music if you like.
Hope that’s been some help! If you have any questions or queries, please comment 
Craig,
Thanks for your help with this incredibly frustrating problem.
I downloaded iPhoneBrowser and copied the recordings to a temporary folder, but they appear to be .m4a files, not .mov files as you mention in your instructions.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks,
Brett
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the comment. I only mentioned the MOV files as that seemed to be the only way to get my memos to play – the M4A files were there, and were showing as full-length, however VLC (my media program) wouldn’t play them, so I assumed that it was done using MOV and converted to M4A.
I would suggest listening to all of your memos all of the way though and checking that there’s no corruption or missing parts. Of course if all the memos are perfect, then there shouldn’t be any more problems.
I’ll update the post to reflect this – thanks for the feedback
Hi Craig
Great post – I nearly left when you mentioned windows – but I got inspiration
and read on.
For the frustrated MAC users out there – this discussion SHOULD NOT be skipped at the mention of the phrase ‘Windows users’
My issue was with latest updates applied (as at post date) on snow leopard (macbookpro) AND iPhone 4.
ITunes BUG ladies and gentlemen – follow these steps and all will be well:
1 – connect the iPhone to your MAC and allow it to sync.
2 – UNTICK voicememo’s from music sync options and apply – you will immediately notice the bug – your voice memo’s will appear even though you’ve just switched them off! stoopid?
3 – disconnect your iPhone – quit ITunes
4 – restart iTunes and connect your phone and allow sync
5 – TICK voicememo’s again and hit apply.
6 – Enjoy!
Thanks for the post on the apple support forums, I’ve been trying to get a voice memo off my iPhone as it wouldn’t email (too large) and for some reason wouldn’t sync.
I ended up using the other application listed in the thread – Phonedisk, but both seemed to do the job well enough.
Really really great!! Thank you. By the way I did not do the Step 3 anymore. I just play it directly to iTunes and convert from there. Great help. Thanks!!!
you are great sir.
Your suggestion worked very well. i did two step. in fact i was just doing all wrong things and i might had lost data. but you helped me.. thanks a lot.
Worked like a charm. Even with the OS4.0.1 upgrade, I couldn’t sync the voice memos, so I used your method above to download and convert to mp3 the new recordings. Then I deleted these recordings from my phone, unchecked sync voice memos, did a phone sync, then re-checked sync voice memos and the phone is now again syncing new voice memos.
It worked fantastic!
The first step was enough to solve it all.
My voice memos were automatically in mp4 format.
Didnt have to delete anything.
Now i could upload my covers!
Thanks Craig!
thank you thank you!
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awesome dude!!!!
shot for the help man, so appreciated..
lata holmes
I was able to synch the memos with itunes — it appears that sometimes, the transcoding process stalls and itunes doesn’t transfer the .m4a to the computer. Deleting the .m4a (ONLY IF THERE IS A CORRESPONDING .MOV) file and resynching allows the system to re-transcode and transfer the file on the next itunes synch.
Does this work with the iPod Touch? I’m having the same problem, but I don’t even see the memos under Devices when I try syncing. Very frustrating. They are certainly there on the iPod Touch, just not showing up in the iTunes application.
Hi Oryx,
I don’t have an iPod Touch to test the guide on but it should work on any device running iOS, so my guess is that it will work on an iPod Touch
Craig
Hi Craig,
Thank you so much for making this app available and for providing such great instructions. It worked perfectly. Too bad Apple Support doesn’t provide this kind of solution. Best Regards!
Oryx
Thanks very much for the info. It was extremely useful in resolving the issue.
I was having the same problem with not being able to get large voice memos off my iphone 4 and into iTunes. Called Apple and here’s how we fixed it.
1. In iTunes, uncheck the “Include Voice Memos” box and then sync iphone. Let sync finish
2. Close iTunes and unplug iPhone from computer.
3. Search for iSync in Spotlight (magnifying glass in upper right corner by the clock). Open iSync application.
4. In iSync menu go to Preferences. Click on “Reset Sync History” (let it finish. It won’t take very long.)
5. Close iSync. Open iTunes. Plug iPhone in. Go to Music tab and click to Include Voice Memos.
6. Click Apply or Sync so iPhone syncs.
7. Voice Memos from phone should now be in iTunes.
Worked perfectly for me.
if you are in the middle of a hang up ( ie iphone is still connected to the i tunes player and seems to not be responding) can you disconnect without losing your info?
Hi Jan,
You should be able to disconnect your iPhone without losing any data. When connecting to the iPhone Browser software, it’s best to make sure that iTunes is closed completely (not just minimised to the taskbar) to make sure that there’s no background sync’ing going on.
Thanks,
Craig
just did what Simon said: 1 – connect the iPhone to your MAC and allow it to sync.
2 – UNTICK voicememo’s from music sync options and apply – you will immediately notice the bug – your voice memo’s will appear even though you’ve just switched them off! stoopid?
3 – disconnect your iPhone – quit ITunes
4 – restart iTunes and connect your phone and allow sync
5 – TICK voicememo’s again and hit apply.
6 – Enjoy!
on a windows machine. Works like a charm. all my voice memo are now syncing no problem at all.
Craig, your fix was exactly what I needed – thanks! I was having the issue of music not syncing onto my iPhone; iTunes kept freezing up because even though “sync voice memos” was NOT checked it was still trying to convert them or something. As soon as I migrated them to my PC (using iPhoneBrowser) and deleted them from my phone – voila, no problems!
Craig – I am much indebited to you….I have read about 20 sites which didn’t come close to solving my problem. You have in about 2 minutes. Best wishes. Cambridge Jones
Thank you Thank you!!! Have checked loads of sites with no luck was beginning to think about giving up! Not only does your guide work but its straight forward enough for a ‘mum’ like me to follow!!!
This issue still exists as of May 2011 and I’ve just run into it for the first time after recording a new voice memo (I already have many others for a long time. I did happen to change labels on some of them around the same time though so I wonder if that’s where it’s choking?). What I see is that is tries to copy the voice memos and when it reaches the last one the status up top will be “Copying Voice Memos from ‘iPhone’ (Step 2 of 4) / Copying 24 of 24″ and then I get a popup with a title of “Organizing Files” and a label of “20110106 115122″ with a “Stop” button. It maximizes a CPU core indefinitely until I kill it in task manager.
Specs are:
- iPhone 4
- iOS 4.3.3
- iTunes 10.2.2.12
- Windows 7 x64
I really didn’t care about having the voice memos anywhere other than on my phone so I just tried turning off “Include voice memos” on the Sync Music tab but it still appeared to try copying them during the sync and hung as usual.
When that failed I downloaded iPhone Explorer and when attached I noticed that there was a single .mov (from 6 months ago) in the Recordings directory and the rest were .m4a. I deleted the one .mov, exited iPhone Explorer, went into iTunes, and tried to synch but it ended up hanging as usual.
Finally I went back into iPhone Explorer, copied all recordings onto my computer (this page mentions right-click but my only option was drag & drop), and then deleted them all (with right-click) on the phone. I went back into iTunes and the synch then worked.
Thanks to everyone for sharing how they dealt with it.
Hi Craig…. Great post (Apple should take a leaf out of your book!)
One of my voice memos is saying its corrupted or and I cant listen to it on the iphone or play it through quicktime… (Its the only MOV file). Is it nexessary to delete all my voice memos before trying whats listed above? I really need them for work, and am worried I wont be able to retrieve them??
Genius!
Thanks so much — one of the best (of hundreds) of “how tos” I’ve read/used…