Using iTunes to organize your videos

brussell · October 23, 2005 2:42PM

Has anyone tried doing this? It seems convenient and logical, but I've had some hesitations:

1. The tags for music make sense: Genre, composer, artist, album, etc. Will videos need a news set of tags, and if so, what would they be? Videos get copied into the iTunes Music folder just like music, but if there's no artist or album, they get put into the dreaded "unknown" folders.

2. Many people on the Mac use VLC for unusual video types. What about Quicktime plugins for playing these videos?

3. How do the video controls for iTunes compare to Quicktime itself?

anders · October 23, 2005 3:01PM

I have no idea.

But your sig. Is that quote for real? And they did not axe him together with Crossfire?

midwinter · October 23, 2005 4:46PM

Quote:

Originally posted by BRussell

Has anyone tried doing this? It seems convenient and logical, but I've had some hesitations:

1. The tags for music make sense: Genre, composer, artist, album, etc. Will videos need a news set of tags, and if so, what would they be? Videos get copied into the iTunes Music folder just like music, but if there's no artist or album, they get put into the dreaded "unknown" folders.

2. Many people on the Mac use VLC for unusual video types. What about Quicktime plugins for playing these videos?

3. How do the video controls for iTunes compare to Quicktime itself?

1. There is currently no way to tag video in a way that is meaningful. Or at least, I can't figure it out. I have, for instance, about 200 gig of video, and I'd like to be able to tag big chunks of it as TV Shows or Movies or whatever. I cannot find how to do that. I like the interface, though. I have turned off the

copy to music folder option. I have external drives for that. But at the moment, Apple really needs to make the prefs for dealing with video as sophisticated as the ones for dealing with music.

2. I don't have Divx installed on this machine, but it wouldn't surprise me if iTunes could play any files for which you have the QT codec installed. I'll look into this as soon as I fix my copy.

3. Once you click on the preview pane in iTunes, the video goes to what looks like 640x480, with the standard play/pause, volume and a slider for scanning through. Seems ok.

Apple's going to have to spin this off, I think, before iTunes becomes iKitchenSink.

endymion · October 23, 2005 8:05PM

Quote:

Originally posted by midwinter

1. There is currently no way to tag video in a way that is meaningful. Or at least, I can't figure it out. I have, for instance, about 200 gig of video, and I'd like to be able to tag big chunks of it as TV Shows or Movies or whatever.

You can select the videos in either the video window or the Library and Get Info just like you would audio tracks. Then you could adjust the genre or groups to read TV Shows and then you'd have what you're looking for.

kotatsu · October 24, 2005 3:45PM

iTunes lets you sort by movie, TV show, music video etc. But what do you need to do to get it to recognise videos as these categories?

I've tried giving files the genre 'TV Show' or 'TV Shows' but iTunes still thinks they are 'movies', and when I click the TV Show tab it displays nothing...

midwinter · October 24, 2005 3:57PM

Same here. The tabs aren't "hooked" to the manual categories.

shady104 · October 25, 2005 12:32PM

when i inport one of MY videos it only lets me tag it as movie or music video. also it dosnt let me change the artwork. it uses a random frame from the first few seconds of the video. sometimes its a rele bad one =/

kotatsu · October 25, 2005 2:58PM

You can change the artwork by bringing up the info window, going to the artwork tab, then deleting the automatically generated frame and dragging/dropping your own image.

brussell · October 25, 2005 8:40PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Anders

I have no idea.

But your sig. Is that quote for real? And they did not axe him together with Crossfire?

It's real. And no they didn't axe him.

Thanks for the input midwinter.

dreads3213 · October 25, 2005 9:22PM

the kind of annoying thing for me (windows user) is that a lot of my videos are in mpeg or wmv so i have to encode them into mp4 or mov format. and in regards to the ability of itunes to play videos it will play any video that you have a QT codec for. it's kind of misleading though because if you try to transfer it to your iPod it won't unless it's .mp4 or .mov

imergingenious · October 26, 2005 1:11AM

1) It doesn't have the same QT7 fullscreen controls, which is a real downer.

2) The videos should not be included in the main library- they should only show up in their separate video library.

3) Podcasts shouldn't show up in the main library either. At least give an option to show/hide in the prefs.

4) There is no video equivalent mini-player

5) Album=season, Artist = show title, Name = episode title. If they completely separated the video into its own library, we wouldn't have to make these mental conversions.

6) As already stated, iTunes + QT doesn't support enough formats to be a "video jukebox" solution yet. A free and easy to use tool to convert wmv and real files (at a minimum) to quicktime formats is needed.

7)keyboard shortcuts for screen sizes, fullscreen, etc. are missing. This could be a big issue because it involves competing keyboard shortcuts for music and video. Lets see how apple works around this.

8) The episode number isn't displayed in the thumbnail view.

9) It would be great if they followed in Aperture's footsteps and made the videos stackable. One thumbnail for each season, click on that thumbnail and it expands out to show you each episode

dreads3213 · October 26, 2005 1:15AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imergingenious

1) It doesn't have the same QT7 fullscreen controls, which is a real downer.

2) The videos should not be included in the main library- they should only show up in their separate video library.

hey the videos do show up in the main library and then have a cute little tv-ish icon next to the "song" name to help differenciate between songs and videos.

imergingenious · October 26, 2005 1:47AM

Then maybe they should create a separate music-only library. I do not want movies and TV shows cluttering my music library.

midwinter · October 26, 2005 8:17AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imergingenious

Then maybe they should create a separate music-only library. I do not want movies and TV shows cluttering my music library.

They should create a separate video-only *application.*

the general · October 27, 2005 1:41PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imergingenious

Then maybe they should create a separate music-only library. I do not want movies and TV shows cluttering my music library.

smartfolders can be your friend for this.

)

kwsanders · October 27, 2005 2:41PM

Quote:

Originally posted by midwinter

They should create a separate video-only *application.*

It's called QuickTime. It just needs some kind of management tool incorporated into it.

midwinter · October 27, 2005 3:27PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kwsanders

It's called QuickTime. It just needs some kind of management tool incorporated into it.

In other words, it's something like Quicktime but not Quicktime.

kwsanders · October 27, 2005 4:10PM

Quote:

Originally posted by midwinter

In other words, it's something like Quicktime but not Quicktime.

Exactly.

brussell · October 27, 2005 4:53PM

I can understand their desire to put the videos in iTunes - it makes the transfer to the iPod all from one app, for one thing. If they did a better job of handling the categories for videos I wouldn't mind it so much. But as it is now, it just doesn't feel done.

Using iTunes to organize your videos

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