Home > Metadata
Video tutorials: "How to add metadata for iTunes", "How to use metadata templates"
Related topics: iTunes
What are tags, metadata, movie information, and why is it important?
Tag, metadata and movie information are the same: Information about the movie, like Director, Actors or Description, that is written inside the movie file.
It allows to build a rich collection of media,
Around iTunes and devices like iPod and AppleTV, Apple has built an ecosystem to produce, buy, store and consume movies. Our media collection (music, movies, …) grows bigger every day, and we all have now terabyte hard disks with capacity for hundreds of movies and tens of thousands of songs, so good indexing is very important.
iTunes library allows for music and movies to be “tagged” with useful information like Title, Director, Album, … and nice touches like Cover Arts, used in Front Row and in cover flow animations to pick a movie or song.
SimpleMovieX is a good companion to build your iTunes video library, with important features.
How to detect that there is metadata in a movie?
When you open a movie that contains metadata, the (i) blue badge is displayed. By clicking on it, the movie informations are shown, both in a text report window, and in the Metadata Pane. (it pops out automatically)
The text report window is static: I will not refresh when you add or modify metadata.
How to add and modify metadata?
Open the Tools drawer and select Metadata.
Adding or modifying metadata is done by filling the form.
Some fields are predetermined, like Genre and Description in the picture below. See sections Media Kind and Templates to learn more.
Others can be specified: By clicking on the little arrows, you select the field.
Note that if you select a field already present in the form, like Year, it replaces the other. There can only be one of each in the form.
What is Media Kind exactly?
Media Kind is not just another metadata field.
It plays a special role in iTunes: If you choose Podcast, the movie will be classified in the Podcast collection of the iTunes library. Depending on the media kind you pick, iTunes and FrontRow will show what they consider the most relevant information.
Album, Composer ... are relevant fields for Music.
Feed URL, Episode # ... are relevant fields for Podcasts. (but not for Music)
Similarly, SimpleMovieX shows you the most relevant information in one page:
When you pick a Media Kind, the form layout changes, but the information is not lost: It is just moved to a different location.
What if all doesn't fit on the page?
SimpleMovieX tries to display all the information on the front Metadata page, but if it doesn't fit, part of the information goes to a second page.
The disclosure button highlights in blue when there is information on the second page.
Press the button to switch between front and second pages.
How is the metadata saved? What formats are not supported?
Nothing is saved until the movie is actually ... saved.
All saving commands, Save, Save As, Export and Save as Ref will write the metadata into the movie file.
As Metadata is embedded inside the movie file, it will be moved and copied with the file.
Embedded metadata is a move file is not possible when saving or exporting to AVI and MPEG formats.
In such cases, the metadata you may have entered in the form is lost. (except Spotlight comment, see below)
QuickTime mov container format is fully supported, even for files bigger than 4GB.
MP4 container format (including m4a, m4v, mp4 extensions) is also supported, even for files bigger than 4GB.
Dates Formatting. Numbers formatting.
The fields Year and Purchased must contain a date.
You can either specify just the year, like "2009", or the day "2009-04-30" .
The etiquette says that Podcasts should have a date, but for Movies the release year is enough.
The fields Track # and Disk # accept only two types of data:
Either a numeral between 1 and 99, or a pair of numerals separated by a slash (/), for example: 1/5
Amazon search
Most of the movies have been released in DVD or other physical formats, and are being sold by Amazon.
You can type a query in the Amazon search field.
After a few seconds, a pop-up menu replaces the search field, indicating how many articles have been found.
You can pick any of the articles, and its Amazon information will be copied to the metadata form.
You will usually try several articles until you settle for the preferred.
You finally use the first, empty item, to quit the Amazon picking menu.
WARNING: Amazon information will overwrite previous metadata information.
You can protect yourself by doing Copy Metadata before launching the search. If the result is not satisfactory, you can revert with Paste Metadata. Both commands are inside the action menu in the lower right corner.
The fields usually filled by Amazon search are:
Note that you can choose the country of the Amazon store. German movies will most likely be found in amazon.de, and the information will probably be written in German.
Cover Art (picture) can be trimmed by clicking on the picture. See below
How do I set the Cover Art? Can I remove the borders of the picture?
Three methods to set the picture:
Note that another method exist: Set Poster Frame in Navigation menu. This command takes a frame from the movie, and uses it as Cover Art. (but this is not considered metadata)
The picture is reduced to fit into the frame, but in reality the picture written as metadata has the original size.
Metadata picture are written in JPEG format, no matter what the original format was. Alpha channel and transparency is not preserved.
SimpleMovieX tries by default to remove white borders or black borders from the pictures. This is useful when you take a snapshot from a movie with black stripes on top and bottom. Also when you get the picture from Amazon, that usually has white vertical stripes at left and right sides.
SimpleMovieX proposes 3 trim modes, and by clicking on the picture you cycle through them:
Left to right: Full-size, Border trimming, Heavy trimming
Is "Spotlight comment" really metadata?
SimpleMovieX presents Spotlight comment as just another metadata field (called Spotlight)
In reality, Spotlight comment is a file system feature available for any file, not just for movies. Unlike metadata, it is not embedded inside the movie file, but stored by the operating system in a Spotlight database.
If you copy a movie to a Windows PC hard disk, its Spotlight comment will not be carried over.(but Metadata will)
A big advantage of Spotlight comment over other metadata, is that you can search it with Spotlight. For example, it you enter "Director: John Ford" as comment, the movie will appear in the list when you the 2 words in the Finder Spotlight search field.
Spotlight comment is also the only movie information that is supported by any movie format, including AVI and MPEG.
How can I customize the form layout?
Each Media Kind is associated with a certain layout, or template.
The purpose of customizing the template is to organize the information as you want. The most relevant information should be in the prominent fields of the front page. You decide.
When you open the lock icon, you can modify the template...
During the template editing session,
When you close the lock, original information comes back.
How do default values work exactly?
Defaults values are entered during a template editing session. (See picture above)
They are stored persistently: If you close SimpleMovieX and launch it again, they are still here.
Default values are displayed in the form when, upon opening or after creating or saving a movie, the form is void.
If the movie comes with information pre-filled, the default values are not shown.
When default values are displayed as dimmed, they are not persistent. Only when you edit the field, either by clicking on it or cycling with TAB through the form, will the default value become black, indicating persistency.
You can force default value to overwrite existing information, by using action menu. (see below)
Commands from metadata's action menu