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Any way to have itunes have subfolders?

F

farmermac

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 23, 2009
779
11
Iowa
Im trying to figure out if itunes can arrange movies and tv shows in folders.

For example, I've got a TV show with 5 seasons. Instead of being able to keep them together in 1 folder, my list of TV shows has them all listed. Ideally I'd like all TV shows to have their own folder so that it would be easier to find and scroll through everything.

Same for movies, would be great to group some of them together.

It seems like that should be doable but I'm clicking around and not seeing anything obvious.
 
Clarify.

Are you saying that in iTunes you see them all at once...not in season breakdowns??

If you change the view type in iTunes from the list to the 3rd option it should show season covers and within those are the actual episodes. If your not getting that, have you actually added the appropriate metadata to the files??
 
For example...
 

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Thanks for the reply. I will try to clarify.

As it is, my itunes tv shows pane is exactly like yours; I have multiple seasons of a given show. I would like to further group those seasons together. In other words, put them in a subfolder.

For instance in that screen shot you posted, you'd see one folder for NCIS, one folder for medium, one folder for Lost. So when you browse your list of shows, you see each show listed just once. Just like you could arrange them in finder.

The reason I want to do this is for organization. As it is when browsing with AppleTV the list of shows is just ridiculously long with some shows having many seasons.
 
Now Ive got you. And unfortunately, I don't believe so. Unless Apple make it happen in the core code of iTunes.

The old ATV actually is better at this then the atv2. The TV Show shows as a single entity and then splits into seasons once you select it.....I guess because its a total rewrite for the iOS, they've yet to catch up to where the atv1 ended. Hoping they plan to fix that in the next iOS release or so.
 
Humm. Thanks

Im considering pulling some shows and storing them outside the library due to this. Bummer but it's really annoying.
 
farmermac said:
Humm. Thanks

Im considering pulling some shows and storing them outside the library due to this. Bummer but it's really annoying.
Click to expand...

i just use playlist and playlis folders for this. I have several TV shows set up like this.

Playlis folder "Everybody Loves Raymond", inside of the folder is a playlist for each eason.
 
I really like iTunes, but it sucks for keeping movies and TV shows organized.
 
jeffburk said:
The playlists only work in iTunes, right? I assume I cannot access video playlists on my Apple TV.
Click to expand...

Actually yes, the ATV does access playlists. I use them all the time for having 'By Star' (ie: Bruce Willis) or 'Director', even a 'Latest Added' that shows any movie added in the last 30days.

It does not fix your issue in iTunes, and you still have individual seasons listed on the ATV in the normal areas, but if you go into the 'Playlists' section of your ATV, it is a fast way of getting to specific things depending on what your after and how you set it up.

Make sure on the ATV setup you change the 'Playlist' setting from Music Only to ALL.

If you can create it in iTunes, it'll show on the ATV. Be it movies, Music Videos, TV Shows. Whatever.
 
Omne666 said:
Actually yes, the ATV does access playlists. I use them all the time for having 'By Star' (ie: Bruce Willis) or 'Director', even a 'Latest Added' that shows any movie added in the last 30days.

It does not fix your issue in iTunes, and you still have individual seasons listed on the ATV in the normal areas, but if you go into the 'Playlists' section of your ATV, it is a fast way of getting to specific things depending on what your after and how you set it up.

Make sure on the ATV setup you change the 'Playlist' setting from Music Only to ALL.

If you can create it in iTunes, it'll show on the ATV. Be it movies, Music Videos, TV Shows. Whatever.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for this. I was resigned to having to scroll through all my TV shows or movies to find anything. This will be much faster.
 
farmermac said:
Humm. Thanks

Im considering pulling some shows and storing them outside the library due to this. Bummer but it's really annoying.
Click to expand...

Well, you could set iTunes not to organize your stuff and just read it from where it is. This way it doesn't touch the FS but still will present it as before in the iTunes interface.
 
This IS something that really bothers me too on the new Apple TV 2. I have a 2TB drive with precisely organised Movies and TV Shows for the old Apple TV 1. Every folder even had a folder image. It all looked beautiful on the Apple TV 1…. but I was lacking power.

So with the new setup, I have iTunes NOT organise the files. The downside is when you name a file in iTunes this is not saved if you remove and re-insert the items. Which is something I do alot when trying to organise folders of items.

The closest I've found is organising by genre. This is the first option on the Apple TV2 when browsing movies. For example, I have a Comedy, Musicals, Bond and even a Surfing genre. It helps when browsing some 500 movies.

Unfortunately I still have this TV series issue and scrolling through 1000 shows is not fun.
 
How do you get iTunes to NOT organise the files???

The only way I can think of is to not classify things as TV Shows or Movie etc. Why would you want to do this??

I even classify movie sequels so they show under the one listing in the movies section of the ATV.

And more importantly...WHY would you want iTunes to not organise it??
 
I would love to know how to do this too, im sick of seeing every season when i go into TV Shows. would be a much more organised itunes if it allowed folders.
 
I may not be understanding what you are asking for. You can use smart list and playlist folders in iTunes ( and you can see these on the atv2) with tv shows.

I have a playlist folder named " Everybody Loves Raymond" inside of that folder I have a smart list created for each season. So on my ATV I chose view by playlist and I see a folder for each tv show and iside that folder is a separate playlist for each season.

I have done this for all of my tv shows .
 
You can view the playlist folders and smart playlist you nestle inside them on the new ATV. I do not have a screen shot of this but that is how I view mine.

I think there is a setting in the ATV that has to be checked that allows you see the playlist, but once you do that you can click your way to them.
 
That is correct. By default the playlists on the Apple TV2 are set for music only. You can change this under settings so that playlists work for TV Shows and Movies too. So then setting up playlists and/or smart playlists in iTunes for your TV shows allows you to organize them into groups containing all the seasons and it shows up on the ATV2 that way.

Still, I prefer not to use playlists for videos and hope they plan to add automatic grouping through a software update at some point in the future.
 
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