Apple TV tags

[SicMX]

Does anyone have any idea how to create tags such as Actors and Director to .mp4 files that will display on Apple TV?

So far i've been ripping DVDs to iTunes and adding actors and director and plot to artist, composer and comment, but i doubt Apple TV will display these...

[mike693]

For tags that can't be changed in iTunes (e.g., to ensure a rip shows up as a "TV Show"), AtomicParsley works.

http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/

[hawkman]

That actually can be changed in iTunes now though

If these are tags that iTunes knows about, Applescript is your friend. If not, then yeah Atomic Parsley - but if iTunes doesn't use them what are the chances that AppleTV does?

[SicMX]

I'm pretty sure Apple TV uses Actor and Director tags because they were displayed in on of the Apple TV demo videos. I'll try to find the video

[hawkman]

well, iTunes doesn't seem to support them according to its script dictionary, so if AppleTV does it'll need to be Atomic Parsley.

[Cyander]

Things like Actors, Director, and Producer(s) aren't pulled from individual tags. They are pulled from the 'Description' tag which contains the movie description, using things like 'ACTORS' in the tag to tell it to start reading actors for example.

[mike693]

@SicMX

I only see Actor and Director fields for trailers. (From the Apple Store, I only have TV shows, and a short film. I don't know if the Apple Store's full length movies have these fields.)

@Cyander

I tried this, but it didn't result in an Actors field showing up in AppleTV.
AtomicParsley "/path/to/video/test.mp4" -W --genre "TV Shows" --stik "TV Show" --TVNetwork TST --TVShowName "Test" --TVSeason 3 --TVEpisodeNum 27 --title "The big test" --description "ACTORS John Doe, Jane Smith"

I searched for how to format the Description field, but couldn't find anything.

Can you give any further guidance? Thank you.

[Cyander]

Description can't be a one-line tag. In an iTMS movie, it looks something like this:

Code: Select all

I am a movie. Watch me.

ACTORS
Some Yung Guy
Other Yung Guy

DIRECTOR
Old Dude

PRODUCER
Other Old Dude

You placed them all on one line, which breaks the parsing. If you have a movie purchased from the iTMS, then you just need to pull up the information window on it (the circular i icon in the description column), and it will show you the exact formatting you should use.

Also this information is mostly for movies, not TV shows.

[mike693]

@Cyander: Thanks for this.

@SicMX

In AtomicParsley, I could not get it to accept (expand) the newline character, neither directly in the command line nor via an environment variable. I am no shell expert, so I could be missing something obvious.

I tried in PAD (a Mac GUI for AtomicParsley). It allows entry of multiple line descriptions. In AppleTV the line feeds were recognized, but they did not result in any new fields (e.g., actors). Also, some lines of the text was fully justified, resulting in odd word spacing.

Perhaps AppleTV will create the new fields for movies, but I have spent way too much time on this already! I find it easier to batch up all my changes in a script anyway.

Give it a shot with a movie using PAD and let us know what happens.

Cheers

[JasonKerner]

Ok, so we've come to conclusion that actors and directors are stored within the long description tag. But to get them into the same format as the iTunes Store tags, they need to be on a new line. Now PAD may be one method, but the long description works with HTML tags - I've tried it with <br> tags to see if I can seperate stuff, and that works within iTunes, but doesn't come out on seperate lines on Apple TV, so I'm guessing that there might be a certain tag we need to use that Apple TV looks for - probably a custom XML tag. So can someone have a look with a film bought from the iTunes Store by using the Doug's Script to set Long Description (the long is the important part) to see if any XML quotes are visible.

[VKX]

Any progress here?

[Confused Amused]

Was playing with this today and ran across this page: http://blogs.vertigo.com/personal/liam/ ... .aspx?ID=2

Anyone know how to convert that code to AppleScript? Looks like that guy has a description field with line breaks.

[hawkman]

Confused Amazed: Doesn't Doug's script do line breaks too?

[Confused Amused]

Not that I'm aware of. If you press return it's the same as pressing the ok or cancel button on that screen. I can't find a way to insert a carriage return into that field, but I tried the XML \r\n line break syntax as well with no luck.

[washu]

How to do it with atomic parsely to get it t show up corectly. I have tagged mine and it works 100% correctly

so here we go:

1.) the data needed in is iTunMOVI element
2.) its a plist

Code: Select all

<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC \"-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN\" \"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd\">
<plist version=\"1.0\">
<dict>
<key>cast</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Bill Murry</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Harold Ramis</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Warren Oates</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>P.J. Soles</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Sean Young</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>John Candy</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>John Larroquette</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>John Voldstad</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>John Diehl</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Lance LeGault</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Robert Leighton</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Conrad Dunn</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Judge Reinhold</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Antone Pagan</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Glenn-Michael Jones</string>
</dict>
</array>
<key>directors</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Ivan Reitman</string>
</dict>
</array>
<key>producers</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>Daniel Goldberg</string>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>

Thats a sample for the movies Stripes

so you would need ot pass it to atomicparsely as <file> --rDNSatom 'the plist data' --name=iTunMOVI --domain=com.apple.iTunes


there ya go

[wakingbadger]

I just can't seem to get this to work. I grabbed the latest Atomic Parsely from here and I have used the following command:

~/bin/AtomicParsley /Users/bvinson/Desktop/The\ Incredibles.mp4 --artist "Pixar" --album "The Incredibles" --title "The Incredibles (NEW2)" --year "2004" --comment "853x358 [ANAMORPHIC]" --contentRating "PG" --genre "Kids & Family" --description "A family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world." --rDNSatom '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version=\"1.0\"><dict><key>cast</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string>Craig T. Nelson</string></dict> <dict><key>name</key><string>Holly Hunter</string></dict><dict><key>name</key><string>Samuel L. Jackson</string></dict><dict><key>name</key><string>Jason Lee</string></dict><dict><key>name</key> <string>Sarah Vowel</string></dict><key>directors</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string>Brad Bird</string></dict></array><key>producers</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string>John Walker</string></dict></array></dict></plist>' name=iTunMOVI domain=com.apple.iTunes --artwork "/Users/bvinson/Desktop/The Incredibles.jpg" --stik "Short Film"

So far, no joy on the cast details on the Apple TV...ideas? I can't paste the previous comments plist into Terminal as it chokes on the newline characters...

[batchannel]

I've checked most of the out, and this one grabs the artwork and the description in one fell swoop: Meta X, which can be found here:

http://www.kerstetter.net/page53/page54/page54.html

[gespensen]

Do you want your AppleTV to display TV show episodes in order (Bottom up only), actors / directors / writers then you need set the --track cmd and to add and xml formated plist using --rDNSatom here is an exact example of Stargate SG1 TV episode to use with AtomicParsley including 3 actors and directors. This works with Movies or TV shows. Using the terminal place all cmds are on one line, no returns. It will also put your TV shows in order from bottom up if you add the season and episodes AtomicParsley cmds they will be listed also as in the example below.

Basic ----rDNSatom format (Actors, Directors and Writes)

--rDNSatom '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><plist version="1.0"><dict> <key>cast</key> <array> <dict> <key>adamId</key> <key>name</key> <string>ACTOR</string> </dict> <dict><key>name</key> <string>ACTOR</string> </dict> <dict><key>name</key> <string>ACTOR</string> </dict> <dict><key>name</key> <string>ACTOR</string> </dict> <dict><key>name</key> <string>ACTOR</string> </dict> </array> <key>codirectors</key> <array/> <key>directors</key> <array> <dict><key>name</key> <string>DIRECTOR</string> </dict> </array> <key>producers</key> <array> <dict><key>name</key> <string>PRODUCER</string> </dict> </array> <key>screenwriters</key> <array> <dict><key>name</key> <string>Writer</string> </dict> </array></dict></plist>' name=iTunMOVI domain=com.apple.iTunes

My ApplyTV display for TV shows will only show 3 actor names any maybe part of the forth, this depends on how long the actors names are there is no room for directors, Movies will show much more. Using the --rDNSatom cmd will also place a "i" button in the Description field listing the actors, directors etc... what ever info you put in the plist.

Real TV show example:

AtomicParsley /Volumes/BorgHome/iPod/TV_Shows/Stargate\ SG1/STARGATE_SG1_S1_D3\ 1\ The\ Torment\ of\ Tantalus.m4v --title "The Torment of Tantalus" --year 1997-10-03T07:00:00Z --TVShowName "Stargate SG-1" --artist "Stargate SG-1" --TVNetwork "Sci-Fi Channel" --stik "TV Show" --contentRating "TV-14" -g "Action/Adventure" --artwork /Users/stephen/Pictures/Movie\ and\ TV\ covers/Stargate_SG\!/SG1\ S1.png --album "Episode Number: 11 Season Num: 1" --TVSeasonNum "1" --TVEpisodeNum 11 --TVEpisode "110" --tracknum 11/ --disk 2/5 --description "Daniel discovers that there was a previous Stargate explorer - Dr. Ernest Littlefield, who went through the Gate in 1945. But he never returned, so SG-1 sets out to recover him." --rDNSatom '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><plist version="1.0"><dict> <key>cast</key> <array> <dict> <key>name</key> <string>Richard Dean Anderson</string> </dict> <dict> <key>name</key> <string>Amanda Tapping</string> </dict> <dict> <key>name</key> <string>Christopher Judg</string> </dict> <dict> <key>name</key> <string>Michael Shanks</string> </dict> </array> <key>codirectors</key> <array/> <key>directors</key> <array> <dict> <key>name</key> <string>Jonathan Glassner</string> </dict> </array> </dict></plist>' name=iTunMOVI domain=com.apple.iTunes

Important note the --track 11/ sets the sequence in iTunes or AppleTV for TV show order. There is no need to list the total number of shows ether as in track 11 of 24, just use 11.

Good luck

[rkerstetter]

The new version of MetaX - 1.8 supports these style plist tags. Expect to see it released within the next day or so. You can check it out here: http://www.kerstetter.net/page53/page54/page54.html Enjoy!

[kilofox]

The new version of MetaX - 1.8 supports these style plist tags. Expect to see it released within the next day or so. You can check it out here: http://www.kerstetter.net/page53/page54/page54.html Enjoy!

Thanks for a great piece of software!! Works great!!!

[cvk_b]

MetaX is a meta-data tagger for mp4 files and their derivatives. It uses the excellent atom tagger Atomic Parsley in the back end to write tags to the movie files. MetaX will overwrite your existing movie files with the newly tagged files. Although my testing has revealed no adverse effects from this, please use caution and try it on files you are prepared to lose until you are satisfied.

Used with the latest svn, you can get some seriously professional looking results. Still, be careful, it has hosed one of my encodes (1 of 10). Just back-up first.

[realityking]

Is my observation correct that MetaX isn't able to add covers to Movies with 6-Channel AAC audio as well?

Does this mean it's an limitation of the MP4 Container?

[thabih]

The new version of MetaX - 1.8 supports these style plist tags. Expect to see it released within the next day or so. You can check it out here: http://www.kerstetter.net/page53/page54/page54.html Enjoy!

Thanks for a great piece of software!! Works great!!!

It hosed one of my movies (encoded with H.264). After tagging it I can no longer randomly access a spot in the movie in Quicktime or iTunes. Fortunately I backed up the movie and I'm trying again.

[thabih]

It hosed one of my movies (encoded with H.264). After tagging it I can no longer randomly access a spot in the movie in Quicktime or iTunes. Fortunately I backed up the movie and I'm trying again.

Re-tagged and the movie looks fine.