iPod Changing from 'Movie' or 'Music Video' to 'TV Show'

[astrobot10]

I've been adding descriptions to my own MP4s through AtomicParsley (under cygwin) and after looking around online, come to the conclusion that tags are limited to a length of 255 characters. However, I've been copying the descriptions right out of the iTMS (the show is Lost), and it works correctly in the store but does not show at all in my library.

Anybody have any info on this?

Edit: for clarification, after using --textdata to check if the tag was written correctly, AtomicParsley says it was. iTunes just refuses to show it under the Description column.

 

[Lacero]

We might as well wait until Macworld as there's a strong possibility this missing feature will make it's way into the next upgrade.

I've been having questions too, since I've made several videos ready for a 5G iPod. I read this thread, but someone really needs to make a summary of sorts.

Here's to the Crazy Ones ​

 

[anaxamander]

I've been adding descriptions to my own MP4s through AtomicParsley (under cygwin) and after looking around online, come to the conclusion that tags are limited to a length of 255 characters. However, I've been copying the descriptions right out of the iTMS (the show is Lost), and it works correctly in the store but does not show at all in my library.

Anybody have any info on this?

Edit: for clarification, after using --textdata to check if the tag was written correctly, AtomicParsley says it was. iTunes just refuses to show it under the Description column.

See where it says in the included AtomicParsley documentation (which is "Using AtomicParsley.txt" for cygwin) near the bottom:

• I believe that there is a 255 (maybe 256) character limit on text strings. I haven't tested it out, but for the overly verbose out there, iTunes may limit the text.

It would seem that instead of "limit" I should say "ignore". I'll change that in a future version. Perhaps you would also like to also look at the "AP buglist" file while your at it.

 

[norville]

I've been adding descriptions to my own MP4s through AtomicParsley (under cygwin) and after looking around online, come to the conclusion that tags are limited to a length of 255 characters. However, I've been copying the descriptions right out of the iTMS (the show is Lost), and it works correctly in the store but does not show at all in my library.

I used to experience this problem exactly -- many of the descriptions attached to files (again copied from iTMS) using AtomicParsley would not show up at all in iTunes.

However, at some point (it may have been when I upgraded to 0.7.6), the descriptions started appearing in iTunes, only they show up truncated at 255 characters. I really don't know what changed. It may have been the version of AP, or it may have been that I changed the way I was formatting the AP command in the shell. Which version of AP are you using?

 

[pepita]

shidoshi, try this:


Create a short (5-second) MPEG-4 video that can be tagged as described. Tag this 5-second clip with the episode information (show, season, episode #, etc.)

Once the iTunes database stores the information for your 5-second clip, locate the actual 5-second video file in your finder (or explorer), and delete it. Click get info in iTunes and an exclamation point appears next to your TV episode, because you just deleted it.

iTunes will ask if you want to manually locate the missing file. When it does, point it to your referenced .mov file. Your TV episode information will be retained and you can organize your files that way (at least this works in Windoze).

That's a fantastic solution, thank you so much, ignus graius!

I'd been looking all over for a way to tag my .mov music videos as "Music Videos" - I don't have any mp4 files, the .mov or .mpg are all downloaded from bands' websites and such. I tried converting to mp4 with QuickTime but it was so slow and I couldn't understand which settings were better, it was going to be a pain. So I just converted the smallest .mov file to mp4, tagged it with Lostify (which works great) as "Music Video", followed your tip above, and then...

... I found out a really cool thing: once you've managed to "trick" iTunes by adding an .mp4 file tagged as "Music Video" and then replaced it with a .mov file (following your advice above), iTunes will add the "Music Video" field to the "Video Kind" option for all the other QuickTime videos. (ie. Get Info on a video, go to the Options Tab, and pick "Music Video" from the "Video Kind" popup - previously the only option was "Movie"). I guess the same process can be repeated with a file tagged "TV Show" so iTunes will let you pick the "TV Show" Video kind option. And so on.

So basically you only need to do that mp4/mov switching trick once for each Video Kind you want to add. Isn't it brilliant?

 

[astrobot10]

I used to experience this problem exactly -- many of the descriptions attached to files (again copied from iTMS) using AtomicParsley would not show up at all in iTunes.

However, at some point (it may have been when I upgraded to 0.7.6), the descriptions started appearing in iTunes, only they show up truncated at 255 characters. I really don't know what changed. It may have been the version of AP, or it may have been that I changed the way I was formatting the AP command in the shell. Which version of AP are you using?

I've been using the most recent version of AP to tag these. I've run the iTMS descriptions through a character counter, and it does turn out that the ones less than 255 characters do appear for my own files, but the ones greater do not.

 

[AHDuke99]

itunes 6.02 now lets you set your video as a TV show, but i still dont know how to set the series, episode etc... Lostify keeps telling me my mp4 is corrupt too...

 

[Butters]

Yeah I noticed the new iTunes can now tag as "TV Show" too but I've yet to find a way to set the show, season, episode etc. either so as much as I'm glad apple added this feature it seems kind of pointless.

Who wants a TV Show that isn't categorized anyway?? the only reason I really wanted to be able to import my own shows as 'TV Shows' was so that I could be more organized.

 

[norville]

In addition, when you use iTunes 6.0.2 to change something to TV Show, it is only changed in the iTunes database. iTunes does not bother rewriting the video file itself with the metadata. This means if you have to remove the file from iTunes and put it back in, it loses the information.

And another thing... since you can't set Show or Season, that means you'll have a tough time navigating to the show using an iPod.

 

[astrobot10]

Does anyone know how to get the little (i) thing to show up in the description column with a video tagged with AtomicParsley? Videos downloaded from the iTMS have it, but not my own.

 

[john7jr]

Does anyone know how to get the little (i) thing to show up in the description column with a video tagged with AtomicParsley? Videos downloaded from the iTMS have it, but not my own.

That's a link to the iTMS, your listed artist for those videos has to match an artist found at the store for a link to exist.

 

[Butters]

That's a link to the iTMS, your listed artist for those videos has to match an artist found at the store for a link to exist.

I think that's actually a button that opens a box displaying the description for the video, not a link to the store. Like Podcasts have too.

I know what you want astrobot but unfortunately I can't help sorry. Is that big of a deal?

 

[john7jr]

I think that's actually a button that opens a box displaying the description for the video, not a link to the store. Like Podcasts have too.

I know what you want astrobot but unfortunately I can't help sorry. Is that big of a deal?

Oh, sorry. You are right. The "Arrow" button is what I was thinking of.

 

[norville]

Does anyone know how to get the little (i) thing to show up in the description column with a video tagged with AtomicParsley? Videos downloaded from the iTMS have it, but not my own.

astrobot10 -- for me, the little "i" button shows up when I'm browsing the iTunes Music Store, but it does not show up when I'm browsing my own (local) video library. On my machine, the Description column just shows the begginning of the text, whether the track was purchased from the iTMS or whether I tagged it myself.

 

[BWhaler]

AtomicParsley is a great app...thanks for writing it.

Any chance you are going to write a GUI for it?

 

[astrobot10]

I am currently writing a Java GUI for AP (TV tags only) running on Windows/cygwin. Download it here. Make sure it's in the same folder as AtomicParsley.exe and cygwin1.dll and cygiconv-2.dll (dlls available in your cygwin/bin directory). Unzip the download and run AtomicGUI.jar. It's pretty barebones at the moment, but let me know what you think.

 

[asherman13]

an update with my multiple show titles on my ipod: i have the newest firmware, and after deleting all the old videos and re-encoding them witht the latest version of lostify, i found that the show now appears three times (wtf?!?!?). i did modify the episode #, album, and release dates on each file to agree with each other in each file, and with the guidelines in lostify.

what's going on!?!?!?

 

[MSean101]

I'm new to this...

I would like to put my videos in iTunes (as TV Shows) so that I can keep them all together, especially when using Front Row, but most of my recorded TV (not purchased from the iTMS) is in DivX .AVI format. Is there some sort of easy way to convert them to MPEG4? I can't find converters for Mac that will do what I want...

 

[asherman13]

I would like to put my videos in iTunes (as TV Shows) so that I can keep them all together, especially when using Front Row, but most of my recorded TV (not purchased from the iTMS) is in DivX .AVI format. Is there some sort of easy way to convert them to MPEG4? I can't find converters for Mac that will do what I want...

iSquint, MPEG Streamclip, Enpod, iTunes (the latest one should be able to do it now, but thats H.264)...

 

[astrobot10]

AtomicGUI 0.5 is now available here. If you missed the post above, it is a Java-based GUI for AtomicParsley on Windows/cygwin. The design is entirely ripped from Lostify, with permission from its author, and painstakingly coded by myself.

To install, unzip AtomicGUI.zip to whatever folder you'd like. You'll need the latest version of AP, as well as cygwin1.dll and cygiconv-2.dll (found in your cygwin/bin folder) in the same directory. Double click AtomicGUI.jar to run. The file is not editted in place meaning a new file is created in the same directory with the updated tags.

Tags found in the file when it is loaded will attempt to be placed into their respective fields within AtomicGUI. As Java is Unicode-friendly, things should work alright when dealing with odd characters. If not, let me know.

Unfortunately, I seem to be having problems with AP and setting empty tags in order to delete them (as stated in the AP command line help). AP crashes whenever I attempt this, so avoid doing that for now unless you'd like to help me figure out what the problem is.

If you have any other bugs/feature requests/comments, please email me at astrobot@optonline.net.

A screenshot is attached.

 

[asherman13]

an update with my multiple show titles on my ipod: i have the newest firmware, and after deleting all the old videos and re-encoding them witht the latest version of lostify, i found that the show now appears three times (wtf?!?!?). i did modify the episode #, album, and release dates on each file to agree with each other in each file, and with the guidelines in lostify.

what's going on!?!?!?

does anybody know why this is happening?

 

[anaxamander]

Any chance you are going to write a GUI for it?

AtomicParsley is going to remain a command line program. I have a front end called ID Infiltr8 for it that I wrote before AtomicParsley and now incorporates it, but it is geared towards audio files and won't be extended to video files.

Tags found in the file when it is loaded will attempt to be placed into their respective fields within AtomicGUI. As Java is Unicode-friendly, things should work alright when dealing with odd characters. If not, let me know.

Unfortunately, I seem to be having problems with AP and setting empty tags in order to delete them (as stated in the AP command line help). AP crashes whenever I attempt this, so avoid doing that for now unless you'd like to help me figure out what the problem is.

That should be fixed with the new version I just put up - you might have to wait for it to percolate around the mirrors. You should read the buglist file for the myriad of issues under cygwin. There's also a utf-8 version included - that might help with your cygwin unicode issues. Then again... might not - I'm not on windows.

You should note that the reading/setting of stik has changed
You should also test out how your program handles when a text string is over 255 bytes. I think it should be uneventful and get chopped off, but if you rely on the progress number, it could throw you for a loop.

And I've AtomicGUI onto the AtomicParsley main webpage. Congradulations - you will probably make some digitally crippled windows people very happy

 

[asherman13]

AtomicParsley is going to remain a command line program. I have a front end called ID Infiltr8 for it that I wrote before AtomicParsley and now incorporates it, but it is geared towards audio files and won't be extended to video files.


That should be fixed with the new version I just put up - you might have to wait for it to percolate around the mirrors. You should read the buglist file for the myriad of issues under cygwin. There's also a utf-8 version included - that might help with your cygwin unicode issues. Then again... might not - I'm not on windows.

You should note that the reading/setting of stik has changed
You should also test out how your program handles when a text string is over 255 bytes. I think it should be uneventful and get chopped off, but if you rely on the progress number, it could throw you for a loop.

And I've AtomicGUI onto the AtomicParsley main webpage. Congradulations - you will probably make some digitally crippled windows people very happy

will this new AP version fix my problem of TV Show repetition?

 

[astrobot10]

New AtomicGUI blog/homepage here. anaxamander if you could update that on the AtomicParsley page, that'd be great. Thanks.

 

[anaxamander]

an update with my multiple show titles on my ipod: i have the newest firmware, and after deleting all the old videos and re-encoding them witht the latest version of lostify, i found that the show now appears three times (wtf?!?!?). i did modify the episode #, album, and release dates on each file to agree with each other in each file, and with the guidelines in lostify.

what's going on!?!?!?

does anybody know why this is happening?

will this new AP version fix my problem of TV Show repetition?

I have no idea. If you want (you could RTFM where to submit bugreports), get this Mac version http://members.verizon.net/pucklock/AP-metadump.zip and use "AtomicParsley /path/to/your.m4v --metaDump" & "AtomicParsley /path/to/your.m4v -t > ~/Desktop/print1.txt". Then provide me with both files. If you have multiple files having problems, then you have multiple dumps & printouts. rapidshare, yousendit, whatever.

-----------------------------------
astrobot10,

ooh, spiffy. Link changed. I tried to leave a comment for you there, but

"The e-mail could not be sent.?Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function..."

This might be of use to you as well - a static version that might not require cygwin installed (assuming I compiled it right):

http://members.verizon.net/pucklock/AP_cygstatic-v0.8.zip

might lower the bar a bit for you and your users.