Smart Playlists - whoa!

[rkuo]

I just noticed after reading someone's post here that Smart Playlists actually work with the Apple TV. Including video playlists! This is huge!

You have to enable all playlists, not just music playlists, in the Apple TV settings. Once you do that, video playlists will appear in a playlist section under the All movies sort option.

You can use the playlists to add all sorts of missing categorizations or filters ... for example, by year, or newly added movies. You can also create playlist folders to group the playlists together and that works too! I was especially irritated to not have a browse by year option, so this works tremendously, although it requires a lot of initial playlist setup. I'm sure I'll think of all kinds of interesting smart playlists to set up in the future too. Exciting!

 

[Omne666]

Yep!

I love em. Been using them for ages. The new ATV handles them slightly different, but still makes life a lot easier.

I have had the experience of having my itunes library file corrupted on occasion, so I now embed a lot of key data in the comments fields. Hence if I stuff up or the library corrupts again (its happened twice), I just recreate a smart playlist that looks in the comments field and bom bom...all is right with the world again.!!

I also use the year fields, artists (where for movies I put actor names), and Im still trying to figure out how to access the 'Directors' field. I love to have a Hitchcock or Spielberg playlist!! (without having to duplicate the data to like another accessible field)

If you figure that one, give me a yell.

 

[newagemac]

Yep!

I love em. Been using them for ages. The new ATV handles them slightly different, but still makes life a lot easier.

I have had the experience of having my itunes library file corrupted on occasion, so I now embed a lot of key data in the comments fields. Hence if I stuff up or the library corrupts again (its happened twice), I just recreate a smart playlist that looks in the comments field and bom bom...all is right with the world again.!!

I also use the year fields, artists (where for movies I put actor names), and Im still trying to figure out how to access the 'Directors' field. I love to have a Hitchcock or Spielberg playlist!! (without having to duplicate the data to like another accessible field)

If you figure that one, give me a yell.

Or you could just restore from your Time Machine backup. You are using Time Machine right? Right??

I love the way Smart Playlists work with movies on the Apple TV too. You set them up once and it all works automatically from then on. Gives you a heap of categorization ability similiar to Plex but actually more powerful and customizable than Plex's categories since you can set up all kinds of combinations of tags and can control it yourself.

 

[Crimson77]

I also use the year fields, artists (where for movies I put actor names), and Im still trying to figure out how to access the 'Directors' field. I love to have a Hitchcock or Spielberg playlist!! (without having to duplicate the data to like another accessible field)

If you figure that one, give me a yell.

MetaX

 

[Omne666]

MetaX

Stopped using MetaX some time back. To many issues. Using iFlicks now. It does it all as well, but the Director field isnt acessible from within iTunes. Just wishing it converted to mp4/m4v instead of mov. I HATE mov!! If it did that it would be virtually my one stop for handling standard def media.

Ive been speaking to iFlicks developer, and he's looking at making it an option to be able to duplicate fields to other accessible fields (actors -> artists, directors to composer or some such).

 

[Omne666]

Or you could just restore from your Time Machine backup. You are using Time Machine right? Right??

I love the way Smart Playlists work with movies on the Apple TV too. You set them up once and it all works automatically from then on. Gives you a heap of categorization ability similiar to Plex but actually more powerful and customizable than Plex's categories since you can set up all kinds of combinations of tags and can control it yourself.

I do use time machine, but I have my library in two physical locations, so I have the itunes library files on the external drive WITH my media. And Time Machine cant backup 3.5TB. At least, not with great expense, which Ive already pumped into the Drobo.

 

[From A Buick 8]

I also use the year fields, artists (where for movies I put actor names), and Im still trying to figure out how to access the 'Directors' field. I love to have a Hitchcock or Spielberg playlist!! (without having to duplicate the data to like another accessible field)

If you figure that one, give me a yell.

You could add the director to the artists field

 

[Omne666]

You could add the director to the artists field

True....but then...where would the actors go?

Wait.....you mean....in addition to the actors? Damn it! I like it!

 

[From A Buick 8]

True....but then...where would the actors go?

Wait.....you mean....in addition to the actors? Damn it! I like it!

Yes that is what i have been doing, or you could add to the composer field. I use Identify 2 for my meta data. There is a field there for director but i am not sure where it goes in iTunes

 

[From A Buick 8]

Yes that is what i have been doing, or you could add to the composer field. I use Identify 2 for my meta data. There is a field there for director but i am not sure where it goes in iTunes

I just found it, if i right click on the movie in iTunes and pick "description", and scroll down it is there.

So if i set up my Smart Playlist to check the description for James Cameron it seems to work.

 

[Omne666]

I just found it, if i right click on the movie in iTunes and pick "description", and scroll down it is there.

So if i set up my Smart Playlist to check the description for James Cameron it seems to work.

Quickly checked a couple of my itunes purchased films...and theres a lot of data in the description field, but its not consistent. But it is an option.

iFlicks (as I imagine identify is doing,) is filling in the 'director' field in the meta data. Just why iTunes is not able to look into that field puzzles me.

....C'mon, Apple...it aint rocket science!! Lift your game! Your pushing the TV as a media centre...well.....finish the job on iTunes!

 

[Omne666]

I just found it, if i right click on the movie in iTunes and pick "description", and scroll down it is there.

So if i set up my Smart Playlist to check the description for James Cameron it seems to work.

Even more puzzling.....the description field of the movie when you hit i is not the same as the description when you click the 'i' at the end of the description field......! Go figure!!!!

 

[From A Buick 8]

Quickly checked a couple of my itunes purchased films...and theres a lot of data in the description field, but its not consistent. But it is an option.

iFlicks (as I imagine identify is doing,) is filling in the 'director' field in the meta data. Just why iTunes is not able to look into that field puzzles me.

....C'mon, Apple...it aint rocket science!! Lift your game! Your pushing the TV as a media centre...well.....finish the job on iTunes!

I have yet to purchase any content from iTunes, all of my DVD's are from my own collection (i go through the $5 bin at wallyworld about once a month).

 

[CristobalHuet]

Stopped using MetaX some time back. To many issues. Using iFlicks now. It does it all as well, but the Director field isnt acessible from within iTunes. Just wishing it converted to mp4/m4v instead of mov. I HATE mov!! If it did that it would be virtually my one stop for handling standard def media.

Ive been speaking to iFlicks developer, and he's looking at making it an option to be able to duplicate fields to other accessible fields (actors -> artists, directors to composer or some such).

I use iFlicks religiously and have found the best solution:

For avi files, I use an automator workflow that uses QuickTime/Perian to convert to Apple TV, creating an mp4 file. Then iFlicks processes that.

For mkv files, the new iFlicks beta flattens them to m4v nicely and quickly (no encoding!)