[Macworld]

Post your comments for Organize videos by groups in iTunes here

[LouisMd64e]

I list all my home movies as TV shows and group them as home movies. More specifically the movies of the kids go in their own "tv show". I wish however that appletv would recognize these more correctly and also the music videos.

[lancelotlink]

The first day you had a column I posted a question about video playlists. I know you have a huge amount of questions to go through so maybe someone in the forum can answer this. If one creates a playlist that has many videos, only one will be played at a time, once a video has finished, it goes back to the main window. Is there any way to get a video playlist to act like a song playlist and go through all the videos without stopping? I'd love to create a "Saturday Morning Cartoon" playlist. I have 400 bugs bunny and friends, Schoolhouse Rock stuff, and other cartoons that I would love to put into a shuffling video playlist and just hit play and have it go. Is this possible?

[jonmichaels]

This is a great tip, but I will mention that there is one little problem: any of the metadata that you enter from setting the files up as TV Shows or the Show Name is only stored in the iTunes database. It is not written back to the video file. This is different from entering data on audio files---that metadata gets saved to the file itself. So if you ever need to rebuild your iTunes database from scratch you will lose all of that data and organization. Or if you send some home movies to a family member to import into their iTunes, they won't see the metadata either. You need to use a third party application like MetaX if you want to write the metadata into the video files.

[Raymondo17]

Thanks for this tip in overcoming one of iTunes' many shortcomings.

When is Apple going to focus on iTunes and give it the complete overhaul it screams for? This is just one prime example: I don't want my Hollywood blockbuster collection interspersed with the kid's visits with Santa and the Easter Bunny. While this tip certainly addresses this issue, do we really need to wrestle with workarounds when using Apple's media hub?

[vnavone]

lancelotlink, on 15 May 2012 - 07:46 AM, said:

The first day you had a column I posted a question about video playlists. I know you have a huge amount of questions to go through so maybe someone in the forum can answer this. If one creates a playlist that has many videos, only one will be played at a time, once a video has finished, it goes back to the main window. Is there any way to get a video playlist to act like a song playlist and go through all the videos without stopping? I'd love to create a "Saturday Morning Cartoon" playlist. I have 400 bugs bunny and friends, Schoolhouse Rock stuff, and other cartoons that I would love to put into a shuffling video playlist and just hit play and have it go. Is this possible?

You can do this on your AppleTV if you're willing to jailbreak it and install FireCore's ATV Flash. I did the exact same thing - created a playlist of Looney Tunes for my kids, and the Media Player lets me play video playlists with shuffle (in addition to a bunch of other useful functions). As far as I can tell, there is no way to playback video playlists non-stop in iTunes or AppleTV. Seems like a ridiculous oversight to me.

[Bairnsfather]

Raymondo17, on 15 May 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

Thanks for this tip in overcoming one of iTunes' many shortcomings. …

Let alone the nightmare of dealing with hundreds of podcasts, TV shows, and movies on iOS or Apple TV and the dearth of sorting options. I tried to make a smart play list of movies I was in the middle of watching and can't really figure out how. Last Played only ticks off once the movie has been fully watched. There is play count of zero and play count of one, but try to do a play count in the range of zero and one and you have an OR not truly a “between.”

I agree they definitely need to give iTunes more attention.

This post has been edited by Bairnsfather: 15 May 2012 - 06:33 PM

[THEGR8LAKE]

YOU CAN CREATE A PLAYLIST LIKE "HARRY POTTER MOVIES" OR "CARTOONS" JUST LIKE YOU CREATE MUSIC PALYLIST THEN GO TO THE MOVIES AND RIGHT CLICK ON THE MOVIE. GO TO "ADD TO PLAYLIST" AND FIND THE PLAYLIST YOU CREATED AND CLICK. YOU CAN GROUP MOVIES THIS WAY AND THEY WILL PLAY ONE AFTER ANOTHER LIKE MUSIC PLAYLIST.

[Jasonmwa]

Raymondo17, on 15 May 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

Thanks for this tip in overcoming one of iTunes' many shortcomings.

When is Apple going to focus on iTunes and give it the complete overhaul it screams for? This is just one prime example: I don't want my Hollywood blockbuster collection interspersed with the kid's visits with Santa and the Easter Bunny. While this tip certainly addresses this issue, do we really need to wrestle with workarounds when using Apple's media hub?

I am hoping this is addressed by the next Apple Music Event (traditionally October, who knows anymore with the iPhone seemingly updated then). I have videos that I've shot that I don't want in iTunes. Granted, not having a family, I can't see wanting to keep things like that classified along with crappy Michael Bay action movies or Joss Whedon TV Shows in iTunes. All of my amateur video is in iPhoto (imported from iPhone) or in iMovie as projects. Finished projects and random clips are just kept in my Movies folder. I could see how people who would like to share these, say, over AppleTV would like them accessible. I am just hoping I get access to my music videos on mobile again.

Personally, I think it would be advantageous for Apple to expand iLife the next time. iTunes used to be a part of that bundle. Make it so again or, more pointedly, take away some of the features packed in iTunes and make them their own apps. Perhaps a Front Row type of software where one can access whatever files they need, like selecting photo albums from iPhoto to place on your iPhone via iTunes or accessing movie files or movie playlists kept in the movie folder for mobile or streaming over AppleTV.

[TomiToivonen]

I'm using TV-Shows to group some podcasts.
Podcasts do not have episode, but release date. It's impossible to arrange videos by release date while keeping arranged under TV-Show name. Giving episode numbers will not work either. Shows are always arranged by name.
It's difficult to watch these shows in correct order. This is very annoying.

[davidagalvan]

I am a father of two young children, and we produce a lot of home movies. Apple's treatment of home movies in the iTunes-AppleTV ecosystem needs improvement.

1.) I don't like labeling my home movies as "TV Shows" because, call me crazy, but THEY ARE NOT TV SHOWS!

Instead, I label my home movies as Movies (which they ARE) and use "genres" to categorize them. So, when viewed on Apple TV, under the Movies category I have a listing of the different genres (Disney, SciFi, Action, 2010 Home Movies, 2011 Home Movies, 2012 Home Movies, etc.). Putting the year at the beginning of the genre is useful because Apple TV uses alphabetic-numeric ordering to list the content.

2.) I'd like Apple to streamline the process for home movies as it already has been for music and photos.

Consider how simple it is for music: you get a music file either from iTunes Store or ripped from a CD or wherever. That music file lives in iTunes, and you can listen to it on your Apple TV through Computers-->Library-->Music. Great.

Now photos: you plug in your camera and download the photos into iPhoto. As long as you've enabled the option/checkbox in iTunes, all those photos are instantly viewable on your Apple TV in the Photos section without any additional action from you. Great.

Now consider home videos:
You plug in your iphone. Those home MOVIES taken on the iphone go into. . . iPhoto? Ok. . . well at least the movies are automatically visible on the Apple TV. .. but not in the movies section, in the photos section. Why are movies in the photos section when there is a perfectly good movies section? I guess you could argue this setup makes sense because the movies will be shown in context with photos from the same event. But what if you just want to see a list of all your home movies on the TV screen? You'd have to remember which iPhoto events include movies and go find them one by one.
If you want those home movies listed (properly, IMO) in the Movies section of your Apple TV, you have to actually drag the movies from iPhoto into iTunes! That's an extra step and an annoyance, but fine. Oh, but you say you used iPhoto's tags, title, and captioning features to label the movie? Well that metadata isn't passed through iTunes, so on the Apple TV you still see the same nonsensical title that your camera gave the movie file when it recorded it, completely disregarding the organizational labeling work you may have put in. To fix the metadata, you have to manually edit your title and caption information AGAIN in iTunes, even though you may have already done that in iPhoto. Why can't iTunes read the iPhoto meta-database?

And that's the best-case scenario if you are using Apple-only products! Let's say you have an AVCHD camcorder. You plug that into your mac and the movies go into . . . iMovie! But now none of those movie clips are instantly viewable on your Apple TV, since iTunes doesn't access the iMovie movie files like it does the iPhoto movie files. . . for some reason. In order to view your camcorder movies on your Apple TV, you have to put the iMovie clip you want into an iMovie "project", and then manually export the project to iTunes. Then, once it is in iTunes, you can do any titles, captions, or genre labeling.

To sum up: Photos are instantly viewable on your Apple TV after being imported from your camera. Home movies take multiple (often time consuming) additional efforts in order to get them viewable on the Apple TV, and the treatment is not consistent depending on what type of camera you took your movies on.

[aussie]

davidagalvan, on 16 May 2012 - 08:27 AM, said:

I am a father of two young children, and we produce a lot of home movies. Apple's treatment of home movies in the iTunes-AppleTV ecosystem needs improvement.

1.) I don't like labeling my home movies as "TV Shows" because, call me crazy, but THEY ARE NOT TV SHOWS!

Instead, I label my home movies as Movies (which they ARE) and use "genres" to categorize them. So, when viewed on Apple TV, under the Movies category I have a listing of the different genres (Disney, SciFi, Action, 2010 Home Movies, 2011 Home Movies, 2012 Home Movies, etc.). Putting the year at the beginning of the genre is useful because Apple TV uses alphabetic-numeric ordering to list the content.

Exactly. What's wrong with classifying them properly as movies and assigning them a genre?