Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[fourkidsco]

So new to all this, and I have done a bunch of searches but can't seem to find what I need.

My wife used the "Show" field in iTunes for a few things with AUDIO files, and I did find the Tools-Options-Library...-Manage library fields options, so I can add the field but it doesn't seem to want to populate. 

In mp3tag, the field comes up as TVSHOW, and I have tried that as well.

I am sure this is something simple...I just want the data in the iTunes Show field to to show up somewhere when I import audio files.

Any suggestions?

[JimH]

Did you try adding the TVSHOW tag?  If it's exactly the same, you should see it in MC.

[6233638]

Once you have added the TVSHOW tag, I believe you need to run Tools → Library Tools → Update Library (from tags)

I would suggest creating a library backup first, just to be safe, and it might be best to run: Tools → Library Tools → Update Tags (from library) first - which I believe will only update tags, rather than clear them if they are blank in the library.
 
Try it on one or two files first, before running it on everything.

[fourkidsco]

Well, I discovered a couple of new things:

1. I had done what was already suggested (adding TVSHOW and doing an update library from tags) but to no avail

2. I discovered that the TVSHOW tag shows up for m4a files (unprotected) in mp3tag but there is no TVSHOW tag on the mp3's.  This seems to indicate that itunes stores this information differently depending on the file, which is a bit messed up.

That last item probably means that the tag is somewhat non-standard, but I figured that it should at least show up for the m4a's which it doesn't.

Any other suggestions?  Looks like I am screwed for the mp3's anyway.   Bit of a bummer given the level of effort she put into this.  Another reason no to use itunes if they are bunging things into their system and not tagging the files uniformly.

[6233638]

Is this information used elsewhere, such as the file path?
 
If they are stored in something like \Videos\TVSHOW\Season\ you could use the Tools → Library Tools → Fill Properties From Filename tool.
 
I'm not sure that there's any way to force iTunes to write this information to the files.

[fourkidsco]

I think the problem may be that the tag is usually used for video files but in this case is used on audio files instead.  iTunes may treat them a little differently (thus writing it for m4a but not mp3).  

[glynor]

2. I discovered that the TVSHOW tag shows up for m4a files (unprotected) in mp3tag but there is no TVSHOW tag on the mp3's.  This seems to indicate that itunes stores this information differently depending on the file, which is a bit messed up.

That last item probably means that the tag is somewhat non-standard, but I figured that it should at least show up for the m4a's which it doesn't.

iTunes stores some of its metadata only in their database.  Another obnoxious one that they make very difficult to use is their equivalent of MC's [Media Sub Type] (called Media Kind in iTunes), which is only stored in the iTunes database, and not exposed through the iTunes API.

That makes it difficult to sync Audiobooks back and forth between MC and iTunes because there's no way to tag them as Audiobooks in iTunes programmatically, even using a third-party sync tool like prod's MCiS.  You also have to manually tag the Media Kind on Movies and Shows you import from MC to iTunes.

I suspect Apple's argument (much like JRiver's, in fact) would be that there aren't good tagging standards for these kinds of things.  I'd still rather it expose some way to set it, since they force you to sync audio to iDevices through iTunes.  But, alas, it is quite difficult.  I think you could do it by reading and/or modifying the iTunes Library XML file directly, though I've never tried to wire anything up.