iTunes AppleScript to batch edit video metadata

iTunes 7 ushered in some great new video metadata, but editing this information, especially when in batches, can sometimes be a pain. For example: iTunes can differentiate between "movies" and "tv shows," (just check your Sources list on the left) but trying to select 14 episodes of an Aqua Teen Hunger Force season and pressing cmd-i doesn't yield any way to make a broad-sweeping change to "tv show."

If you're in the same boat as me (and I sure hope you are, or this is a useless post), a script from the venerable Doug (you know, AppleScripts for iTunes Doug?) called Set Video Kind of Selected can bring some automation to this process. In fact, as you can see, in allows you to edit not only the Video Kind, but the Show Name, Season Number and the starting episode number of the batch you've selected. This is a killer script for those of you who have some major iTunes video library cleanup work to do.

As usual, this script is provided free, but Doug solicits donations for all the rocking work he does with his now over 400-strong library of iTunes AppleScript.

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Source: http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=setvideo…

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iTunes 7 ushered in some great new video metadata, but editing this information, especially when in batches, can sometimes be a pain. For...

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Andy

Thank you!!

I just got through manually editing Season 1 or Robot Chicken and Season 8 of the Simpsons. I'm now ripping all 100 Strongbad e-mails, and I just couldn't bring myself to edit each one manually again.

November 23 2006 at 2:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cody Dildy

Wait? Set "Video" kind? What about audio? How do I move something from music -> audiobook?

November 06 2006 at 6:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Donald Burr

#4 and 5 - if Steve's demo of iTV at the Showtime event is any indicator, then Front Row may soon display these additional tags. The iTV screen showed several fields of more detailed information, including description, while scrolling through and selecting movies/TV shows. (I remember seeing Description, MPAA Rating, and probably several others that I forgot; I don't have the video handy otherwise I'd check).

The iTV interface basically strikes me as being the next evolution of FrontRow, "FrontRow 2.0" if you will. If this is the case, then it is surely to trickle down into the Mac products.

November 06 2006 at 5:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I wish iTunes would break out each series of a show so that you get one entry per show in the cover flow view.

And yeah it be nice if FrontRow would display description information.

November 06 2006 at 5:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shane Hale

Now we just need to be able to edit other Atom Tag information such as Description, Network, etc from within iTunes. It would be even nicer if FrontRow displayed information like description.

-shane

November 06 2006 at 4:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Donald Burr

This is going to save a LOT of time and effort. Previously I have been using Lostify (http://home.comcast.net/~lowellstewart/lostify/), which only a partial solution at best. It would edit the tags all right, and you could "lock in" a tag's values so that all subsequent files you drop onto Lostify would get the same value. But, you had to individually click "OK" on each and every file you are trying to edit. (There was no real batch mode) This looks so much cleaner and easier to use. Woot!!

November 06 2006 at 4:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cody Dildy

YES YES YES! Now I can get my damn audiobooks out of my music folder and stop ruining my "Shuffle Songs" playlist. I hate having to skip audiobook files.

November 06 2006 at 4:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

deviant1

holy god this is good!

i've had the same problem, itunes 7 handles tag editing of video files in a pisspoor manor. this should hopefully make apple more eager to edit the videos. REALLY, why is itunes 7 so bad at editing the tags?

do you know how bad my hands hurt from tagging 2 seasons worth of Lost in iTunes???

November 06 2006 at 4:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply