Traktor Scratch Pro and iTunes playlists....

I'm reaching out to you guys who keep good organization via itunes in Traktor. There's a couple of issues I'd like to get opinions/help on.
My workflow goes like this... I import all my new music into a prep playlist in traktor. In there, I keyword and star rate my tracks one by one, and also drag them into new playlists. After I've updated my itunes playlists with new tunes, I open Traktor. In my Traktor playlist area, I have identical playlists to those in itunes. I then drag the updated iTunes playlist from the Traktor browser tree, into their matching Traktor playlist. Here is where my questions start.

Issue 1 - After doing this, I need to do a consistency check because all my cover art disappears inside the updated Traktor playlist. I wouldn't even be using the traktor playlists, but I can't see cover art from the itunes playlists. Is there something I'm doing wrong that is causing the cover art to disappear? Is there something quicker than running a consistency check on the playlist to refresh the cover art?

Issue 2 - I'm getting very sporadic consistency on my star ratings. This is kind of crucial as they play a big part in me identifying tracks. They are all the same ID3 tags, so I'm not sure why it's happening. Any ideas?

Maybe it's the order you're doing things or the fact that you're copying a playlist onto a the same named playlist. My workflow is to prep all my tracks with metadata and cover art in itunes and organize it in a playlist. I then import that playlist from the itunes node in the Traktor browser. I then anaylze each track in Traktor, set beatgrids and cue points and lock the beatgrid in Traktor. This adds BPM to the metadata of the mp3 but itunes doesn't show it. After every track has been analyzed and locked in Tracktor, I go back to the playlist in itunes and play each track for just a second which updates the metadata tag with any metadata I added in Traktor to show up in itunes.

It doesn't matter what order I do things in... the star ratings still don't stay consistent (meaning that sometimes they register, and other times they don't.

You're right. The rating for each program seems to be independent of each other. If I give a track a rating in itunes and then reanalyze the track in Traktor, it doesn't read it. Also if I give the same track a different rating in Traktor, it doesn't update in itunes. Hmmm.

Weird thing is it's sporadic. It should be consistent since the rating system is contained within the ID3 tag. Anybody else have any ideas?