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Displaying Cover Art on Appletv

J

jamiedm

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 21, 2008
3
0
Hi all:

I, like most people I am sure have been ripping my Dvds with handbrake for use with appletv. I then run the file through MetaX to get all the tags. Works great.

Cover art shows like iit should in Front row, but on the appletv, I get the first frame of the movie.

Can anyone tell me why this is?

Thanks,

Jamie
 
I just used MetaX to tag and add cover art to my movies and it all worked fine. ATV had to re-sync the files, but after it was complete all the covers were updated. Do you see the cover art in iTunes?
 
Why not just use iTunes to enter the Meta Tag information and cover art? You have to use it for Apple TV to see the movies anyway.

I think there is some kind of resolution or format limit on cover art for movies on Apple TV. Any JPEG under 500 pixels height should be fine. Like Mac.Jedi says you have to re-sync the Apple TV from your iTunes.
 
Sol said:
Why not just use iTunes to enter the Meta Tag information and cover art? You have to use it for Apple TV to see the movies anyway.
Click to expand...

Is there some documentation somewhere that shows how to properly format the DESCRIPTION field to show the various pieces of movie information - actors, directors, year released, rating (G, PG, R, etc.). Are these values embedded in XML tags or something?

I don't have the benefit of being able to use MetaX because I'm on a PC running Windows Vista (no laughter from the peanut gallery please!).

I put a basic synopsis of the movie in the Description field and fill out the Year field (which doesn't show up in Apple TV), add Cover Art and that's about it. I'd like to do more. Suggestions for us PC folks?
 
jamiedm said:
Hi all:
Cover art shows like iit should in Front row, but on the appletv, I get the first frame of the movie.

Can anyone tell me why this is?
Click to expand...

Are the movies streaming from your computer to the :apple:TV or are they on the :apple:TV hard drive? If they are on the hard drive of the :apple:TV then you may want to try and clear them off of the :apple:TV and then reload them back on. I noticed that if I made a change to the tags of movies after they were already residing on the :apple:TV, they would not get those tag changes on the :apple:TV without reloading them back on. Of course if you are just streaming then this suggestion will not work. Try and reboot the :apple:TV.
 
I've been adding movies to my iTunes library with Handbrake 0.93 to stream to my two AppleTV units and most movies are NOT showing the added artwork that DOES show up in iTunes. Sometimes adding artwork via iTunes won't even show up in iTunes, but if I start the movie in iTunes and then exit it and then add the artwork with the GetInfo requester in iTunes it will then show up fine in iTunes, but it generally will NOT show up on my AppleTV units where I get the poster frames instead. I have tried rebooting the AppleTV units, rebooting my Mac running iTunes (and just quitting a restarting iTunes) and nothing seems to make any difference. The artwork will not show up. I am streaming movies, BTW.

A few movies do have their artwork show up and early on, I had some luck getting some live concerts to show artwork by selecting a 2nd video (say a home movie) and using the slightly different requester to add to multiple files and then delete it from the irrelevant one. But that no longer seems to work either. I tried MetaX and the resulting file did not even have its artwork show up in iTunes let alone on AppleTV.

Something is amiss here. It should not be this difficult to add artwork to movies and get them to show up on AppleTV. I had zero trouble adding artwork to my music albums, etc. and have them show up so I don't know what the deal is. I thought the movies that were showing art were ones that had no Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack on them, but upon closer inspection, that isn't true either. Some do and some don't. It seems random which movies will show their artwork on my AppleTV units, but few and far between. The poster art selections generally look like crap so it's really a shame thus far.
 
oursfan said:
Are the movies streaming from your computer to the :apple:TV or are they on the :apple:TV hard drive? If they are on the hard drive of the :apple:TV then you may want to try and clear them off of the :apple:TV and then reload them back on. I noticed that if I made a change to the tags of movies after they were already residing on the :apple:TV, they would not get those tag changes on the :apple:TV without reloading them back on. Of course if you are just streaming then this suggestion will not work. Try and reboot the :apple:TV.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

To who it was suggesting to just edit this stuff in iTunes, that is a terrible option. Nothing is more aggravating than taking the time to put in the short description of a Spongebob episode, the name of the episode itself, and whatever other info only to have AppleTV say Season 2, Episode 5. Like my son is going to know wtf that episode is about. Metax works great for me. My only guess is that it first got a copy stored (or maybe just the cache of the album art) from a time when you didn't have it. Remove the movie completely, sync it all up and add it back after you know it's gone. Good luck!

great link for movie poster artwork (yes, I know it's been mentioned in many other threads)

http://www.getvideoartwork.com/
 
Something happened.....

Either in iTunes or between Handbrake .92-.93 versions. Handbrake 0.92 encoded files could have artwork added via iTunes. When Handbrake 0.93 came out all of a sudden you couldn't add artwork via iTunes, you had to use MetaX or some Metafile tagger. One interesting note is that if the file is only AAC 2.0 sound then you can add artwork via iTunes, if you have AC3 5.1 audio in your file then its a "no go wheezy Joe"........ You have to add via MetaX.

This is all from personal experience of what works and what doesn't.
 
I use HB .93 and then add the cover art and year in iTunes. I don't bother with the description. The cover art shows up fine (streaming) on my ATV.
 
Is it possible you added the Artwork (with MetaX) "after" the file was already in iTunes. If so, I believe you need to delete/remove from iTunes and then add it back to iTunes and then Sync it with AppleTV. My Movies (the m4v file itself) are not actually located in the iTunes folder, just the information about it. Sync does not mean the whole movie is copied to AppleTV if you are Streaming. It just updates the file information.

I am running iTunes on Windows.
 
I haven't even tried MetaX until now. I was adding artwork through iTunes and it'll show up in iTunes but only some (seemingly random) show up on the AppleTV. Reboots/Restarts of either iTunes and/or AppleTV do not seem to help (at least not reliably). MetaX doesn't seem to work right at all. SOME of the information shows up in iTunes and the artwork does NOT. I tried it both with the PowerMac in Tiger and the latest in Leopard on my MBP. It's all very disappointing.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
I haven't even tried MetaX until now. I was adding artwork through iTunes and it'll show up in iTunes but only some (seemingly random) show up on the AppleTV. Reboots/Restarts of either iTunes and/or AppleTV do not seem to help (at least not reliably). MetaX doesn't seem to work right at all. SOME of the information shows up in iTunes and the artwork does NOT. I tried it both with the PowerMac in Tiger and the latest in Leopard on my MBP. It's all very disappointing.
Click to expand...

MetaX stores the information as part of the M4V file and iTunes stores it separate from the M4V file somewhere within iTunes. I think I heard that on some systems the information in M4V files are unable to be displayed.

I am using Windows Vista and all works great. I just have to remove the files from iTunes each time I change that M4V file and then re-add to iTunes.
 
After playing around with MetaX some more, I see that it didn't click the artwork check box to include the artwork. To make a long story short, it worked GREAT in iTunes with all data this time and names for chapters, etc.,...except that the resulting movie is completely 100% unplayable now. A black screen comes up for Pitch Black (ironic eh?) and nothing else. Glad I made that backup.... Whatever happened to things "just working" on the Mac? (sigh)

I reedited the same non-working file and changed something minor and rewrote it. The movie oddly now plays, but with no sound! This is just plain weird. Does MetaX work great for everyone else or am I the only one experiencing these sorts of oddities? I'm going to try out the Windows version and see how it does next after trying to edit the original file again.
 
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