Just wanted to let everyone know about how I get my TV onto my iPod Touch/iPhone/Apple TV, and have it come up with all of the metadata you need to have it categorized properly... and boy does it work well!

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Note: This guide can also be used for movies - just ignore the TV specific tags in MetaX. The new version of MetaX also supports tags from tagchimp so easy tags (including DVD chapter titles) is only the click of your mouse finger away.
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First step is to get your TV show or Movie onto your system. There are legal ways (iTunesfor TV Shows - then you don't need this guide), semi legal ways (DVD's ripped using Handbrake), and then there are non-legal ways (ie "TorrentTV")

One you have your show, we need to convert it and tag it.

Tools you Need.
1. iSquint (free) or preferably VisualHub (especially if encoding for Apple TV)
1a. Use Handbrake for DVD's instead of iSquint or VisualHub.
2. MetaX

What to do.
1. Either convert your DVD using Handbrake or TV show from non-iPod format to iPod format using iSquint or VisualHub. (VisualHub will give you more control of the resultant output - or just choose "Optimize for iPod Touch" or "Optimize for iPhone" and go).

Note: If you are encoding for iPod/iPhone as well as Apple TV, don't choose Apple TV as the preset as this is higher rez than the iPod/iPhone can support).



2. Do a search on your show on IMDB so you have things like the Actors, Producers etc.
3. Do a search using Google for Images of the show's DVD cover or poster (e.g. Battlestar Galactica)
4. Open MetaX, and drag the file you want to add info to onto it.
5. Fill out the details as follows:

Info Tab
Title: Episode Name
Artist: Actors (seperated by commas)
Date: Date of screening (only if you want to)
Rating: Censorship rating
Description: Put in a description of the show and/or episode
Image: Drag and drop your image you got from Google onto the cow.



Video Tab
Video Kind: TV Show
Director/Producer/Cast/Screenwriter: Fill in if you have the details
Show: Show Name (ie Battlestar Galactica)
Season: Season number
Episode: Episode number
Episode ID: Same as Episode number (needed to show episode in iTunes/iPod/ATV)



If you are going to do a number of episodes of the same show, at this point I recommend you hit the "Presets" button and hit the "+", and type in the name of the show. Next time you add an episode you can hit presets and click on the show name and it will add the show info and show graphic - then you just change the details that are different (such as episode Title, episode number & description).

You can queue up a number of shows/episodes to process by dragging and dropping more videos. Then you just hit "Write". Once complete (the cow moo's) you can then go to iTunes, and choose "Add to Library" and point it at the files you just made. In a few moments they'll all be in iTunes (and sync'd to your shiny new Touch/iPhone/Apple TV) in the TV Shows category.

Just like a bought one!

Regards,
Shane.

Thanks scritch!

Does this put TV shows into frontrow in the correct category as well? I'm assuming so...

It absolutely does, although not as pretty as the iPod Touch interface. I am gathering it would work perfectly for the Apple TV also.

Regards,
Shane.

Nice work dude! I was going to do a similar write up myself!

I can confirm that it works perfectly on the AppleTV, that's how I've been doing it for months

is there any program like MetaX for windows?

Not that I am aware of, although add it to the list of reasons to buy a Mac in the future (then you can use the best of Windows & Mac apps)

Actually MetaX uses Atomic Parsley at it's core, so there may be something out there.

Update: Of all the Windows links on the Atomic Parsley page, iPodTVShow is the only one that seems to work, although it doesn't support as many tags.

Regards,
Shane.

i'm using a macbook, just my main OSX that i use is windows but its ok. I guess once a week i'll just go ahead and update my library. Luckily all my tv shows are on an External so it won't be to hard. Oh shit wait, i have to format my External to either mac or windows right =/?

As long as the drive is FAT32 you'll be able to write to it, if it's NTFS you're screwed.

If it is NTFS then you can read from it, but can't write back. FAT32 is the best option, or do a multi-partition and put a small 5-10gig FAT32 partition on the drive next the the NTFS partition, then you can move files between OS's easily.

Regards,
Shane.

There's also an app that you can get for windows that will allow you to read and write on Mac partitions...just found it again here. So you could put that on your windows machine and format the external disc as a Mac partition.

http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/...ducts_id=26414

thats the one i'm getting, should be here any day now.

Nice, now i have a reason to convert things. Now I just have to determine the best resolution and bit rate for various items so they are fairly universal for usage.

cheers, i was about to ask if a MetaX existed, and there it is...

Now I can see Kirsty Alley in all her overweight glory for my fat actress season, thanks - I think...

Amazing program -I'm going to convert everything!

Its not very useful for new tv shows though, i wish you could get the info from a proper TV website like epguides.