Streaming only a selection of my library?

[ansalmo]

I've disabled syncing on my Apple TV, and have it set up to stream from the iTunes library on my iMac. In the iTunes preferences, I've asked it to share only "Music", "Podcasts", and a smart playlist I have set up that contains only video files for my Apple TV (I don't want to stream my low-quality iPod videos). I've confirmed that the shared content is correct, with my MacBook showing only the files I expect.

However on my Apple TV it lists my entire video collection, including the low-quality iPod ones

Does TV not use the standard iTunes sharing mechanism? Have I otherwise missed something obvious? Any ideas on how I can resolve this? I have to keep the low quality videos for my iPod, but I don't want them cluttering up my TV menu, and I would rather not have to mess around with multiple libraries if at all possible. Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

[nlivo]

i could be wrong but if you "untick" them they should not appear on the appletv. I'm not sure if this'll go down well for your iPod syncing though.

 

[ansalmo]

They're essentially 'unticked' already, as they're not included in any of the playlists that are being shared from my iMac. I just don't get how they (correctly) don't appear when viewing the library from my Macbook, but (incorrectly) do appear when viewing it from the tv. Is iTunes doing something special behind the scenes for streaming TVs?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Not sure if I'm completely grasping the issue, but if I am, you might have previously synched it all, then made the decision to stream? If so, I don't think TV automatically dumps the previously synched content. I think you have to reboot TV to get it to accept your change in approach. But I'm not sure of this.

As to managing lower quality ipod video vs. higher quality TV video, what I do might be helpful to you: For those videos that I want to store on the iPod, I select each, choose "get info", hit the "video" tab, select TV Show, punch "iPod Video" into the "Show" field, and a unique number into the "Episode Number" field. As long as you punch the exact same name in the "Show" field for all of your iPod videos, this will segregate TV higher quality video from ipod lower quality ones by putting the ipod videos in their own folder (as shown on TV anyway) in the "TV Show" option (on TV). And note that "show" is not the same as "name", so the individual videos will still have their own unique names.

Then, I use iTunes settings to synch those iPod videos in TV Shows to the iPod, and stream all of the (intended for TV) videos in "Movies" to the TV. The iPod "folder" still shows up in TV interface under "TV shows", but I know that those are the lower-quality versions of videos, so I simply avoid that option when using the Apple TV.

I suppose that if someone has TV Shows that they don't want to "crowd"/confuse with lower quality iPod video, they could tag their iPod video as "Music Video" instead of "TV Show", and segregate them that way.

For now, this works to my liking. Hopefully, Apple will put more effort into an upcoming iTunes upgrade to make it much easier to organize movies in folders (compatible with the TV interface), much like we can organize music. But the above workaround seems to work pretty well. And within "TV Shows" it is possible to group content together so that they are in categories when using TVs interface.

 

[ansalmo]

Not sure if I'm completely grasping the issue, but if I am, you might have previously synched it all, then made the decision to stream? If so, I don't think TV automatically dumps the previously synched content. I think you have to reboot TV to get it to accept your change in approach. But I'm not sure of this.

I did have it syncing originally, and switched to streaming, but I'm selecting my iTunes library as the source so it should ignore any local content (and I think it's automatically deleted anyway if you disable syncing).

I'll attempt to explain a little better. Take an example that I have 100 music tracks, 10 iPod-sized movies, and 10 TV-sized movies in my iMac library. In iTunes on the iMac, in the Sharing preferences, I chose to share only the "Music" and my own "Apple TV Videos" playlists (I'll ignore my previous mention of podcasts for simplicity). If I view my library from my MacBook, I see 100 music tracks and 10 TV-sized videos. However, when I set the iMac library as the streaming source for my TV, I see all 100 music tracks, 10 TV-sized videos, and the 10 iPod-sized videos too on the TV. So the question is - why do the iPod-sized videos appear on the TV, when I've specifically excluded them from being shared from my iMac library? And how do I stop them being shared to the TV?

I'm looking for a pure solution, but I'm guessing that there's a reason I can't do this.