How to handle muliple versions of same movie?

Some people choose to use an external program to mark as SD or HD but that only offers two. (I guess you could have not labeled, SD and HD.)

I don't know how to do this, however. Google around. It was some freeware via Google download (not made by Google, just a dev uploaded it there, I forget).

Doju said:

Some people choose to use an external program to mark as SD or HD but that only offers two. (I guess you could have not labeled, SD and HD.)

I don't know how to do this, however. Google around. It was some freeware via Google download (not made by Google, just a dev uploaded it there, I forget).

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I believe the program you're talked about is Subler.. that's the one that I use for tagging my vids. I've never done what the OP is asking but I believe that if you set the cnID as the same for both vids it'll work. Google "Subler cnID" or something to look for more.

http://code.google.com/p/subler/

JonHimself said:

I believe the program you're talked about is Subler.. that's the one that I use for tagging my vids. I've never done what the OP is asking but I believe that if you set the cnID as the same for both vids it'll work. Google "Subler cnID" or something to look for more.

http://code.google.com/p/subler/

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Exactly right. Add cnID tag (use same number for both, choosing whatever you like) to both versions, being sure to click the HD Video box under Other Settings for the higher resolution version (HD or not). After importing into iTunes, you should see an HD-SD identifier next to the film if you are viewing is List mode. You are only able to do this with 2 versions though.

JayV2010 said:

Is there a good way for handling multiple versions of the same Movie/Show?
I rip all my DVD's with Handbrake for the ATV which makes them around 3-5gb which look great on my Larger TV's, but I also rip a smaller version for my iPhones and now looking at having a 3rd version for the iPad.
My system has just to been to put a * in-front of the iPhone version, but would love to know if someone else has come up with a better solution. it gets tedious to scroll through a ton of movies to pick out which are which.
Would love a solution that lets me just stack the 2-3 formats on top of each other so on the ATV I only see that Version and when syncing my iPhones or iPad it only picks up that version. I know Apple is doing something similar to this with the Apps so that they will be aware as to what device is trying to sync.
Thanks in advance
Jay

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Just my $0.02 but don't think you'll need 3 versions. The highest resolution you can encode DVDs will play on the iPad (for that matter will also play on your iPhone if you're using TV preset) so your TV version should be fine. Also, what settings are you using to encode your DVDs for TV? My blu-rays encoded to 720p are 3-5 GB while most of my DVDs are only 1-2 GB and that's with the TV preset and the constant quality bumped up (RF: 19.25).

JayV2010 said:

I am running some encodes right now to test it out, but that should help out. I may just bump the iPhone version up a little for Dual use on the iPad. Will have plenty of test files to load and play with come delivery on Saturday.

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I have the same question as you regarding a third version for the iPad, but I'm going to wait until I get it in hand before I worry about it.

As tbayrgs said above, the iPad can play the ATV version, it's just a question of file size at that point. I have an iPhone version of movies for when I travel and, going forward, it is likely that I will take my iPad along for this purpose.

At 64 gigs, I can easily get all my music on my iPad and still have room for 8 - 12 high-res movies (assuming a file size of 3 - 5 GBs). That should be fine for most trips. If not, I may simply re-encode the lower-res version for an optimum iPad size & resolution, and nixing the iPhone version.

Not really a perfect solution but could you just have Smart Playlists and either add a keyword in a field to search for or else just filter by bit rate?

Would leave the main library a mess of duplicates and give issues in front row (although AIUI lots of people suggest smart playlists as a good way to manage large libraries for frontrow anyway), but I think gets there in terms of giving you a list of full res / iPhone / iPad movies.

Personally though it looks like a 3GS iPhone will already handle files which are about as good as it gets for ATV so I'm likely to just go with one and live with a reduced number on the iPhone at any one time. Given the iPad will do the same I can't see the need for more than two really (main quality and a stripped down version, probably at iPad type res to cover the bases), just seems more trouble than its worth to optimise for each device when they're all capable of playing the same files.

JayV2010 said:

I tried the subler program and it does what it says, but I also tried out iFlicks

And that seems to be a much slicker program. I am not sure I would trust it to do the encoding, but it adds in all the meta data and a Thumbnail. I set one version as HD and the other as SD, and since it puts the cnid number in there automatically the files lay on top of each other when imported to iTunes.
$27 but this will be a big timesaver for cleaning up my collection.

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I tag with MetaX (its inability these days to pre-fill tags is not a bother as I like to control my tags rather than accept random sets from other people), and then do the HD-SD thing in Subler. It would be helpful if MetaX could include the HD-SD tag option, and then I wouldn't need Subler at all.

How do you get HD tags to show in iTunes? They show on apple tv. Also on apple tv the HD tag will show but for some of the same movies on iPad they won't.

obey908 said:

How do you get HD tags to show in iTunes? They show on apple tv. Also on apple tv the HD tag will show but for some of the same movies on iPad they won't.

Click to expand...

JonHimself said:

I believe the program you're talked about is Subler.. that's the one that I use for tagging my vids. I've never done what the OP is asking but I believe that if you set the cnID as the same for both vids it'll work. Google "Subler cnID" or something to look for more.

http://code.google.com/p/subler/

Click to expand...

tbayrgs said:

Exactly right. Add cnID tag (use same number for both, choosing whatever you like) to both versions, being sure to click the HD Video box under Other Settings for the higher resolution version (HD or not). After importing into iTunes, you should see an HD-SD identifier next to the film if you are viewing is List mode. You are only able to do this with 2 versions though.

Click to expand...

See my previous response above for using Subler to get HD tags in iTunes.

You could create an iTunes smart playlist for iTunes Media Kind "Movie" or "TV Show" which would key off of the iTunes comments ("Info:Comments") or groupings ("Info:Grouping") like:

Apple TV
iPod
iPhone
iPad

Unfortunately, the raw iTunes bit rate will not work because that uses the rate for the audio track, not the video. However, you could combine the Time and Size attributes in a range to select effective bit rates for the encodings.