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Question on Meta-Tagging? basically.. how?

J

jrm27

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 3, 2008
579
31
Hello all,

For the past year or so, I've slowly been working to convert my entire DVD library to digital files. I've converted about 300 movies and roughly 500-600 TV shows thus far. Originally, I was watching them on my computer, using Plex. Plex scraped and downloaded all the info that I would have wanted. However, now I am using a WDTV Live to watch these files on my home television. Now, I'd like to figure out how to tag these movies correctly. That way, if I move from the WDTV Live to some other machine, I'll be able to view my movies as sorted by different fields (genre, etc...).

Is there a good solution out there for me? Is there a program that will help me tag my collection? I'd love it if there was a program that was like Plex that would scrape for movie posters as well and embed them in the file. That would be awesome. None of these movies are torrented. All are converted from my library using handbrake.

But at this point, I really don't know what I'm doing and would love to get started on the right foot... employing "best practices" and such. Thanks for any direction/advice!

-jon
 
If you're using a Mac, identify is probably the best (for free). Subler can do it, too, but it's not as good in my opinion.
 
This thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/805573/
...has a procedure which automates everything about the ripping and encoding process including tagging. It has rarely let me down.

I am not sure it will tag already encoded files as the process essentailly tags as one of the first things it does, but check in this thread and maybe download the procedure and give it a shot.
 
Plex went through my entire library of tv shows, dvds EVERYTHING and tagged the lot, only a few errors, fully automated and linked to my JB ATV2 - awesome
 
Thanks all. This is good info. Checking out those programs now.

BCBurrows, I was just looking at Plex on an Apple Tv2. Looks pretty cool. However, I neither have an ATV2, or internet at home.. but hopefully some day I can take that road! Looks like a cool option indeed.
 
Doe's Identify permanently write the meta-data to the file (unlike PLex which seems to keep the data in a separate file). Can the meta-data be removed from the file easily if I decide to take another route later? Looks like a cool solution for 8 bucks!

Also, if I tag all my movies using Identify, is there an easy way to generate playlists from the metadata that is created? Say, I wanted to create a playlist of all movies in a certain genre.. is that doable?
 
Last edited:
jrm27 said:
Doe's Identify permanently write the meta-data to the file (unlike PLex which seems to keep the data in a separate file). Can the meta-data be removed from the file easily if I decide to take another route later? Looks like a cool solution for 8 bucks!

Also, if I tag all my movies using Identify, is there an easy way to generate playlists from the metadata that is created? Say, I wanted to create a playlist of all movies in a certain genre.. is that doable?
Click to expand...

I do this all the time, i use a playlist folder and smart playlist. I setup smart playlist for actors, genre, etc...

You may need to add some grouping items directly in identify, one of the biggest issues was the director. Identify adds that to the the description field and i have not found a way to create a smart-list that searches that field. So i have been adding the director to the album artist field.
 
Thanks From A Buick.. Sounds cool! Do you know of a way to make playlists outside of itunes? I want to be abel to make playlists that will be useable on my WDTV Live. Or if I make them in itunes, is there a way to export that playlist "file"?
 
MetaX does the trick for me. It takes longer to process the file, but I find it easier to use than subler.
:)
 
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