How to Keep Your iTunes Video Library Organized

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Sometimes, I call up I'one thousand way too anal almost some things. According to some of the comments on my previous posts, you agree. Simply naught beats how much of a Nazi I am when it comes to my iTunes library.

Certain, I know the clamor is coming; iTunes sucks, use (insert alternative software here) instead. I'm on a Mac as I write this, I own an iPhone and an Apple Television set and a few other Macs are planted here and at that place around the house. Then information technology just makes plain sense for me to use iTunes.

But I hate the hoops you have to jump through to go along your iTunes video library in a decent state.

Information technology used to be that I had to salvage my AVI movies equally "pretend" MP4 files, or create separate reference files that just masqueraded as MP4s when they actually pointed to the original AVI. That was pretty bad, especially since the latter option created a bit of a mess in my folder structure and used upwards more infinite.

And then I got my iPhone, so subsequently my Apple Boob tube, and both of these simply run MOVs and MP4s. Y'all can hack the Apple Tv and jailbreak the iPhone, but I'chiliad too lazy to play with the iPhone's innards ("What! You're a Lifehack writer!" I hear you say) and I tried the Apple TV hacks and didn't think the system was shine or integrated enough.

So, the level of complexity in keeping a workable, networkable iTunes library together only got much greater. And we haven't even spoken about music, though absolutely that does a much improve task of organizing itself and it's possible to ready simple things without relying on a script.

At that place are a few things that are important to having a functional and organized iTunes video library:

• The files are correctly named.
• The files are in well-organized folder structures, non straggled around the hard drive.
• The file metadata is correct; the file bodily proper noun and the file'south title in iTunes aren't the aforementioned thing and what works for one doesn't piece of work for the other.
• The file works across all devices I desire it to work across.

Earlier I import television shows in detail, I go into Preferences and tell iTunes non to brand a copy of the file when it imports it. I manually go into the iTunes folder structure and create a folder for the show inside the actual iTunes TV Shows folder. Otherwise, when iTunes imports, it'll make a re-create in the movies folder. That's non a well-organized folder structure! Office of the process nosotros'll be using actually fixes this automatically, but as I said, I can exist strange about maintaining my library and you might want to skip this step (if you're following along the whole way).

When it comes to movies, though, this isn't so important, and if you similar the way iTunes organizes music in folders you'll desire to plow information technology back on when you're done (at the end of the whole process, that is, not but after you've created the new folder).

Before adding the files to iTunes, I go through and check the file names. For movies, I but want the title, zero more or less. But for TV shows, I normally adopt a construction such as this:

Evidence – Episode Name – Season/Episode

So, that might be:

The Role – An American Workplace – S01E01

It can be difficult to continue a Tv series in lodge, specially when they're long (like Stargate!). So if your iTunes database corrupts, you're going to want a articulate title that tells you everything.

Once your idiot box bear witness is in the correct folder, drag the file into iTunes. The iTunes Movies pane is pretty shocking at treatment Telly Shows, which is why in that location's a divide pane for them. But Apple doesn't let you change the video type from movie to TV testify manually. You lot have to use the Set Video Kind of Selected AppleScript for iTunes.

This AppleScript lets you set four things:

• Whether the video is a motion picture, tv set show, or music video,
• The show name,
• Season number,
• Episode number offset.

This is great because you lot can import a whole season of television receiver shows at once, select them in the movies pane, gear up them as a Television receiver show, set the show name and season number, and so you merely enter the episode number of the earliest episode in the series and it orders the rest for you.

When you set the file every bit a Idiot box testify, it will move that file into the Tv set Shows folder construction automatically.

Just what practice you do when the file is not an iTunes compatible file? You've got a few options.

1. Go into QuickTime, become to File > Save As, and salvage a reference movie. It will point to the original video, only iTunes volition treat it as though it'south an MOV or MP4 file. However, your Apple Telly volition not play information technology, and nor volition your iPhone.
2. Utilise the Drop to Make M4V Movies AppleScript. Y'all tin can drop a agglomeration of videos onto this droplet and it'll convert them all to M4V format, save them to your Movies binder, and then add them to iTunes. It requires QuickTime Pro, though.
3. Get Handbrake, convert your stuff manually, and drop it into iTunes.

Once the file is converted and in iTunes, information technology's a matter of using the Set Video Kind AppleScript to sort them into the right places.

And finally, I similar to have metadata filled out nicely, mainly for the sake of my Apple Television—if I'm flicking through all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 I want to have the clarification of each episode at that place, every bit it's easy to become lost! At that place was an app I once tried that automatically converted videos in a "drop box" folder to an iTunes compatible format, put it in your library, and then automatically searched IMDB for all the metadata and filled it in. I didn't like the app, only that was a great thought.

Now, I just make a quick trip to IMDB and fill in the episode descriptions—it's quick and easy since they provide them in the season listing—simply I'thou definitely looking out for a quick fashion to fill these fields in automatically without using that conversion software!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/how-to-keep-your-itunes-video-library-organized.html

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