Help With Metadata

[dnelms]

I'm using (PC) MetaX to tag the m4v conversions I've done. Does a great job on movies, now I'm moving to TV shows. After messing around a bit, it's obvious that iTunes fails in video/tv shows vs music for metadata.

So here is my question, I have searched the net and feel I'm just missing it somewhere. But is there a page somewhere that tells what fields iTunes uses to fill in TV shows with the proper info. I know know info goes under album or artist, etc. but I'd like something that clariies what should be in each before do this as trial and error. I know someone has probably done the trial and error and most liekly wrote it down.

Thanks for any guidance to such a page, post or document.

 

[spice weasel]

Well, it depends on what info you want displayed in iTunes. You can always add or delete the fields you want to show.

But for the core tags, you'll want title (which should be the episode title), the date (the air date), the rating, the genre, and the description fields. Then, click on the "Video" button in MetaX and add the Show (show title), the episode ID (if you care; usually something like "101" for the first episode of the first season), the season, episode, and the network. Of course you can and should add the artwork as well.

Does this answer your question?

There are plenty of sources to get this information. TV.com's episode guide is a good place to start.

 

[dnelms]

Not the info itself, I know where to search for that. It's knowing that you have to put the show's title under <name>, the show's name (ie Big Bang Theory) has to go in the <artist> field. So I'd like to know if there is anything that someone has figured out what goes where in what fields that were designed for music to make it look right on the ATV2?

EDIT: I decided to use one of my purchased episodes and went thru that and have written the info down. I'll write it up and add it back to this message so others can find it as well.

If entering by hand on the "Get Info" dialog. Note that I'm using a PC, so not all the programs that could help automate this are available to me.

INFO TAB
Name - episode name
Artist - Show name
Year - year
Track # - episode number
Album artist - show name
Album - showname, season number
Genre - TV shows

VIDEO TAB
Show - show name
Episode ID - season number+episode number (i.e. S7E1)
Season # - season number
Episode # - episode number
Description - short description (max 255 charcaters)

SORTING TAB
Name - episode name
Artist - Show name
Sort Artist - Show name
Album artist - show name
Sort Album artist - show name
Album - showname, season number
Sort Album - showname, season number
Composer - leave blank
Show - show name
Sort Show - show name

OPTIONS TAB
Media kind - TV Shows

 

[spice weasel]

Looks like you got everything. You don't have to fill in all the fields if you don't want, however. Like I said, it depends on what data you want iTunes to show. For example, by default (for some silly reason), iTunes shows the Artist field for tv shows and puts the shows name there. You can leave that field blank when tagging though and just put the show name in the show name field in MetaX. Then, in iTunes, go to TV Shows and select View and uncheck Artist and check Show.

I pretty much leave everything blank except for the episode name, the artwork, the show name, the season, genre, and description. Otherwise it takes too long to tag everything.

 

[waw74]

or get identify

it does it all pretty much automatically. grabs series name, season, and episode from the file name, and gets the rest of the info from the web.
works on movies too.

 

[benh911f]

or get identify

it does it all pretty much automatically. grabs series name, season, and episode from the file name, and gets the rest of the info from the web.
works on movies too.

OP is using a PC.