Moved from ATV3 to ATV4 and now movie descriptions are gone

[GhostMac24]

Title says it all. Just replaced the ATV3 in my theatre to an ATV4. Not impressed at all so far. Constant need to restart to connect to my home sharing and a few other little things.

Back to the title issue.....on my ATV3 I was able to see the "description" of the movie. On the ATV4 it is not there. I have verified on the other 5 ATV3 boxes in my home that "description" is still there. So, any idea why ATV4 doesn't display that field from the iTunes library?

This is only for movies I have manually added to the iTunes library and not ones that I have purchased directly from the iTunes store. When I started moving my entire Blu-ray (and DVD) collection to iTunes (MKV-->Handbrake-->iTunes) I would add the genre and description. Genre is still listed on the screen. Not sure why description is now not displaying.

TIA for any help!

 

[benjitek]

Try Plex or Infuse instead...

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Title says it all. Just replaced the ATV3 in my theatre to an ATV4. Not impressed at all so far. Constant need to restart to connect to my home sharing and a few other little things.

Back to the title issue.....on my ATV3 I was able to see the "description" of the movie. On the ATV4 it is not there. I have verified on the other 5 ATV3 boxes in my home that "description" is still there. So, any idea why ATV4 doesn't display that field from the iTunes library?

This is only for movies I have manually added to the iTunes library and not ones that I have purchased directly from the iTunes store. When I started moving my entire Blu-ray (and DVD) collection to iTunes (MKV-->Handbrake-->iTunes) I would add the genre and description. Genre is still listed on the screen. Not sure why description is now not displaying.

TIA for any help!

There's 2 description fields for movies in iTunes: description and long description. Have you populated both?

Have you closed and reopened iTunes since swapping out TVs?

Have you restarted your host computer since swapping out TVs?

Many (most?) of us migrated from 3 to 4 and haven't had this issue, so it should be working. Try the above and see if any of that works.

If not, after the computer restart, unplug the "4", wait about 60 seconds and plug it back in.

 

[priitv8]

From the amount of text visible in aTV 4 UI for movie comment, I am pretty sure it is the Long Description field that is used as source.
For me, populating the metadata with Subler directly from iTunes Store has provided me with exactly the same user experience as with purchased movies.

 

[GhostMac24]

Try Plex or Infuse instead...

Reading many of your past relies while searching (and there were many replies), I'm not surprised by your lack of help. Seriously, I'm not sure why you reply to threads that do not answer the question of the OP. smh

From the amount of text visible in aTV 4 UI for movie comment, I am pretty sure it is the Long Description field that is used as source.
For me, populating the metadata with Subler directly from iTunes Store has provided me with exactly the same user experience as with purchased movies.

Interesting. I wasn't aware there were 2 different description fields. I'm guessing the "long" description field is hidden as I only see 1 description field in the "info" page for each movie.

Thanks for the tip on Subler. I have no idea what it is or how to apply it to my current library. Is this something that can be done post hoc? If so, maybe this is the direction to go? My current process involves downloading the iTunes artwork from https://bendodson.com/projects/itunes-artwork-finder/ and then copying (and pasting) the "description" from IMDB. That and genre/year is all I have been doing. Very quick an easy.

There's 2 description fields for movies in iTunes: description and long description. Have you populated both?

Have you closed and reopened iTunes since swapping out TVs?

Have you restarted your host computer since swapping out TVs?

Many (most?) of us migrated from 3 to 4 and haven't had this issue, so it should be working. Try the above and see if any of that works.

If not, after the computer restart, unplug the "4", wait about 60 seconds and plug it back in.

Thanks for the reply tip on the description field. I wasn't aware there were 2 different description fields. I'm guessing the "long" description field is hidden as I only see 1 description field in the "info" page for each movie.
How do you populate both?

Yes, iTunes has been closed and reopened since swapping out

Yes, iMac has been restarting since swapping out

I have "restarted" the ATV4. Same as unplugging?

Thanks so much for the helpful replies HobeSoundDarryl and priitv8!
[doublepost=1469489822][/doublepost]

For me, populating the metadata with Subler directly from iTunes Store has provided me with exactly the same user experience as with purchased movies.

Just did some reading up on Subler. Looks like a great option if I was starting at the beginning of creating my library. The problem I have now is that I have approximately 700 movies that I'd need to run through Subler which would be extremely time consuming. Ugh. Would be great if there was an program that would make this process easier. I can live without the description if it will take this long.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

The Subler suggestion is a good idea for testing. Open ONE video in it and see if you have the description or long description populated (I forget which one is the one you can access in iTunes). Copy the content in whichever one you have, insert the new (other description) field, paste the same description into the new description field, save. Then, delete that video from iTunes... then, drop it back in. Check it on your TV4. Do you see the description for that video?

Close iTunes and open it again. Check that video in TV4 again. Do you see the description?

I agree that it may not be worth it to go through 700 movies doing the same if that works- but this is just part of trying to figure out what's going on with your setup.

Do ANY of the movies you've manually tagged yourself show their description? Or does every one of them NOT show the description?

 

[2010mini]

OP

Are your ATV 4, iTunes and host computer all on the latest software versions? I ask because it could very well be a bug that was solved with an update.

 

[GhostMac24]

The Subler suggestion is a good idea for testing. Open ONE video in it and see if you have the description or long description populated (I forget which one is the one you can access in iTunes). Copy the content in whichever one you have, insert the new (other description) field, paste the same description into the new description field, save. Then, delete that video from iTunes... then, drop it back in. Check it on your TV4. Do you see the description for that video?

Close iTunes and open it again. Check that video in TV4 again. Do you see the description?

I agree that it may not be worth it to go through 700 movies doing the same if that works- but this is just part of trying to figure out what's going on with your setup.

Do ANY of the movies you've manually tagged yourself show their description? Or does every one of them NOT show the description?

I have gone through a substantial portion of the movies and it is ONLY with the ones I have manually done. All movies purchased through iTunes have the description posted to the ATV listing on screen. However, when I go into the info page for the purchased movies in iTunes, the "description" tab does not show the full length description I see on the ATV. It's a truncated (appears to be character limited) description that cuts off in the middle of a description in the middle of a word if it has exceeded the allowable length. Very odd the way ATV handles purchased versus uploaded movies.

OP

Are your ATV 4, iTunes and host computer all on the latest software versions? I ask because it could very well be a bug that was solved with an update.

Yes, everybody is updated to the latest versions.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

OK, again, I encourage a little experimentation with ONE video file NOT showing the description. Subler would make it easy to try my previous suggestion and see what happens. You could also try something like Meta Z too... Basically just any app that will let you manually populate BOTH description fields.

 

[benjitek]

I'm not sure why you reply to threads that do not answer the question of the OP

So you haven't tried Plex or Infuse?

 

[GhostMac24]

OK, again, I encourage a little experimentation with ONE video file NOT showing the description. Subler would make it easy to try my previous suggestion and see what happens. You could also try something like Meta Z too... Basically just any app that will let you manually populate BOTH description fields.

I'll give that a try and see if that's the answer. Just wish that iTunes would allow us to populate the fields manually. Not sure why they need to be so restrictive with that.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I don't know that that will do the trick. It's just a guess at something easy to test. Since I converted my own movies, etc, I've always subscribed to using other tools like Subler to do the tagging... conceptually keeping all of that OUTSIDE of iTunes and INSIDE of the files. It may be that tagging in iTunes does the same thing (I don't know). What I do know is that I have TV3 and 4 and descriptions are showing properly on both. So I'm (good) guessing that you will find out that whichever description field is not currently filled in the movie file is the key.

If you open your test video file in Subler or Metz Z and neither description field has anything in it, try filling each with something different as that will help you simultaneously figure out which field is the one that shows in the TV description. As is, I am suspecting that you have nothing in the "short" description field and (I'm guessing) TV4 is seeing the blank there but content in the longer description field and using that instead. And that's why it's cutting off the description in videos where you have descriptions (though if that's ONLY iTunes purchases, I'm a bit mystified at what is going on there).

But again, all a big guess until you get to test it. While Subler is a great tool, I suggest Meta Z for this particular test as it is going to be quite obvious which description field(s) is empty and you'll easily recognize which fields to fill to try this test. If you are worried about this test, duplicate a video file and try either app with the duplicate file.

 

[priitv8]

In addition to what HobeSoundDarryl already explained before, let me get you started with Subler.
NB! you are really better off with testing on just one movie. If you will let Subler (or some other tool) to fetch you new metadata for your existing and already tagged files, fields will be overwritten. Those of your fields, that Subler does not get online, will remain untouched (it will not delete existing metadata fields if no new content is found).

Subler started out as an iTunes media metadata editor, but by now has added much more (eg. audio/video conversion, MOOV-atom optimization, dictionary-based OCR-ing of bitmap subtitles from DVD/BD to iTunes-friendly text format, direct metadata/artwork download from online sources, most importantly from iTunes Store, direct chapter info download from chapterdb.org, adding tracks to MP4 file, metadata templates, to name some). At the end of the day, Subler usually outputs a MP4/M4V file that iTunes will be happy with. If you use iTunes Store as the source, your file will look in all UI-s (iTunes, iOS, AppleTV) exactly as if downloaded from iTunes Store.
Last but not least, you can do this for a whole queue of files.
Indeed also post-factum to import into iTunes. You will need to open the Info pane (Cmd+I) to see the changes in iTunes.

 

[Gjwilly]

You can select multiple movies in Finder and select to open them all with subler.
By going through and fixing them in batches it shouldn't take all that long.
I do entire seasons of TV shows that way.