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sulliweb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 13, 2011
250
8
Here we go again. I did the update and now my TV seasons are out of order under computers - TV Shows - By Show...

Any thoughts? Anyone else seeing this? :confused:

Thanks!
 
is it shows you converted yourself?

you have to make the disk and track number match the season and episode.

i recommend identify to help with track tagging. get's everything tagged properly.
 
is it shows you converted yourself?

you have to make the disk and track number match the season and episode.

i recommend identify to help with track tagging. get's everything tagged properly.


I have the same problem as OP and all my shows are dutifly and fully tagged.
 
It is ordering them by the date they were added to iTunes. It seems that iTunes is the cause of the problem, as it is affecting Apple TV's even if they haven't been updated.

At the moment there doesn't seem to be a solution short of restoring your iTunes from a backup.

I hope there will be a iTunes update fairly soon, but I'd imagine that it will take a week or two.

I got round it by deleting my TV shows from iTunes and then re-adding them in the order I want them displayed. It took about an hour, but that's less time than I would have spend restoring from Time Machine.
 
It is ordering them by the date they were added to iTunes. It seems that iTunes is the cause of the problem, as it is affecting Apple TV's even if they haven't been updated.

it certainly isn't ordering them by date added for me.
the most recent added item for me (3 seasons of 1 show) is not at the top of the list, but in the middle of the list in no particular order.

if i change the sorting method on the appletv to "by date" then it does what you say, but setting the sort to "by show" sets it to some random ordering.
 
As I said in a reply to you previously, it is not ordering them with the newest at the top.

You had stated previously that you have old ones at the top and new ones down the list. That would appear to be ordering them based on date added.

However, as you are saying that it is putting the newest in the middle, I will change my statement a bit.

In my experience, it is ordering them in order added, with the newest at the bottom. I checked this against the date added field in iTunes and I have deleted and re-added all my TV shows in the order I want them and they are all now showing up in the correct order.

I believe that in the case of TV series with episodes that were added at different times, it is using the date of the first episode added.

Your experience may be different.

EDIT: I have mine set to sort by show.
 
I've just checked my ATV to make sure that I hadn't accidentally switched to "by date".

If I do switch to that it sorts them in order of release date (not in seasons, so each episode is listed individually). Sorting by show puts them in order added, but within seasons.

So, if you are seeing what I am describing when looking at "by date" then we have got some very big differences.

You do understand that I'm talking about date added to iTunes and not release date?
 
You do understand that I'm talking about date added to iTunes and not release date?

i understand exactly what you are saying.
when using the "by show" option, it is neither listing it by date added to itunes or release date.

using "by date" lists them correctly as you mentioned by release date.
"by show" appears to be some totally random ordering, and definitely doesn't appear the be the order that i added them to itunes. this is quite obvious when i check as i have only added 1 specific tv show to itunes in the past 6 months, and that show is neither at the top or the bottom of the "by show" list.

whatever the problem is though, it truly amazes me that with every "new" release of an appletv software, there are obvious bugs. it's happened time and time again, and really makes me start to think just how does the testing (obviously someone that doesn't use an appletv very often).
 
whatever the problem is though, it truly amazes me that with every "new" release of an appletv software, there are obvious bugs. it's happened time and time again, and really makes me start to think just how does the testing (obviously someone that doesn't use an appletv very often).

True enough... I'm curious, though. Is anyone with a Mac having this problem with TV show ordering? Or is it possibly something up with the 10.6 update to iTunes for Windows?

I checked last night, and I can confirm it's an issue with iTunes, not the ATV itself. I have 2 ATV2's, and the one I hadn't updated had the exact same order and ordering problem as the one I had run the update on did.

Hopefully, if we can isolate it a little, we might be able to give someone enough information to quickly fix it.
 
True enough... I'm curious, though. Is anyone with a Mac having this problem with TV show ordering? Or is it possibly something up with the 10.6 update to iTunes for Windows?

I checked last night, and I can confirm it's an issue with iTunes, not the ATV itself. I have 2 ATV2's, and the one I hadn't updated had the exact same order and ordering problem as the one I had run the update on did.

Hopefully, if we can isolate it a little, we might be able to give someone enough information to quickly fix it.

i'm all mac
 
i understand exactly what you are saying.
when using the "by show" option, it is neither listing it by date added to itunes or release date.

No, that's what you are saying.

When I use the "by show" option it is sorting it by date added. It seems that you are not experiencing the same thing.

I agree totally with you about the ATV updates by the way.
 
It is ordering them by the date they were added to iTunes. It seems that iTunes is the cause of the problem, as it is affecting Apple TV's even if they haven't been updated.
Yup. I didn't upgrade but noticed all my TV Shows are out of order so its iTunes. I wonder how long until we get a fix.
 
Tagging issue..

I see there are two topics with this question. I am responding to this one, because it was higher up.

Anyway, I think this is the same issue that people have been having for awhile with iTunes library sharing on the iPad. If you search for it here, or on the Apple discussion forums, you'll see all kinds of things about it. Anyway, I too had this problem with my iPad, but after reading other solutions, I was able to fix it for my iPad, finally! I'm not 100% sure it will fix the Apple TV issue, as I haven't upgraded yet (waiting for JB).

So, it seems to be an issue with tagging. For some reason, the iOS sorts in a weird order, looking at album field, artist field, episode id, "sort name", etc. Here is what I did, following others' advice, that fixed it. It basically involves a lot of re-tagging, but it is worth it. I know you might be thinking that you have it all tagged correctly. I thought so too, but it got weird.

1. Make sure every episode has the same thing written in "Show" field, "Artist" field, and "Album artist" field. For ex., "Family Guy".
2. Make sure every episode per season has the same thing in "Album" field, like this: "Family Guy, Season 1". This is how iOS will group season episodes together.
3. Include "Episode Number" for every episode in the correct order..
4. Include "Track Number" for every episode in the correct order, as well as total track numbers. Ex., "1" of "22".
5. Trickiest one: Every episode must have a UNIQUE "episode ID" within a season. Meaning, you can't have the "episode ID" number of "Family Guy" Season 1, Episode 4 as "4", and have the "episode ID" number of "Family Guy" Season 2, Episode 4 as "4". You can repeat the "episode ID" in another series, but not within seasons of the same series. I hope that makes sense. For me, I named every "episode ID" for each show with this convention: "S01E04", S02E12", etc.
6. Do not put anything in the "sort" fields, like "Sort Artist", "Sort Album". Let iOS use the other information.

So anyway, sorry for the long winded response. I hope this helps. It's a pain in the ass, but it worked for me. The best thing I used was Dougs iTunes script "Increment Number Tags". It takes care of "Track Number", "Episode Number", and "Episode ID" in batches.

Good luck!

-Lilscoy22
 
Last edited:
I don't think that is relevant in this case. It's all good advice about tagging so that things are generally in order but since the iTunes update it doesn't seem to be taking any account of the tags.

Most of us had well tagged and correctly sorted libraries prior to this.
 
It might not be relevant. Like I said, I can't confirm as I haven't downloaded the upgrade yet. I just know this fixed my similar iPad issue.

Also, I too had a very, well-organized library before. I correctly tagged the field for show, season, episode, title, etc. But it still displayed in a really messed up way. It wasn't until I changed the other fields that it was finally fixed.

I would just take a look at the metadata of your files and check out the "extra" fields I mentioned in my previous post. See if those are tagged correctly. If not, fix it and see if it helps. If they are, then it must be something else.

-Lilscoy22
 
This is something else.

I've been basically using the system you mentioned since I got my first ATV in 2010.
 
I see there are two topics with this question. I am responding to this one, because it was higher up.

Anyway, I think this is the same issue that people have been having for awhile with iTunes library sharing on the iPad. If you search for it here, or on the Apple discussion forums, you'll see all kinds of things about it. Anyway, I too had this problem with my iPad, but after reading other solutions, I was able to fix it for my iPad, finally! I'm not 100% sure it will fix the Apple TV issue, as I haven't upgraded yet (waiting for JB).

So, it seems to be an issue with tagging. For some reason, the iOS sorts in a weird order, looking at album field, artist field, episode id, "sort name", etc. Here is what I did, following others' advice, that fixed it. It basically involves a lot of re-tagging, but it is worth it. I know you might be thinking that you have it all tagged correctly. I thought so too, but it got weird.

1. Make sure every episode has the same thing written in "Show" field, "Artist" field, and "Album artist" field. For ex., "Family Guy".
2. Make sure every episode per season has the same thing in "Album" field, like this: "Family Guy, Season 1". This is how iOS will group season episodes together.
3. Include "Episode Number" for every episode in the correct order..
4. Include "Track Number" for every episode in the correct order, as well as total track numbers. Ex., "1" of "22".
5. Trickiest one: Every episode must have a UNIQUE "episode ID" within a season. Meaning, you can't have the "episode ID" number of "Family Guy" Season 1, Episode 4 as "4", and have the "episode ID" number of "Family Guy" Season 2, Episode 4 as "4". You can repeat the "episode ID" in another series, but not within seasons of the same series. I hope that makes sense. For me, I named every "episode ID" for each show with this convention: "S01E04", S02E12", etc.
6. Do not put anything in the "sort" fields, like "Sort Artist", "Sort Album". Let iOS use the other information.

So anyway, sorry for the long winded response. I hope this helps. It's a pain in the ass, but it worked for me. The best thing I used was Dougs iTunes script "Increment Number Tags". It takes care of "Track Number", "Episode Number", and "Episode ID" in batches.

Good luck!

-Lilscoy22

I really hope this isn't the solution and we get an update from Apple. We have well over 1,000 TV shows and about half of them are out of order, I don't have the time to edit all of them.

The vast majority were bought through iTunes, if Apple require this metadata then they should have provided it!
 
I'm having the same problem, I've also seen this happen on my iPhone 4 when I use "Home Sharing". smh and here I thought Apple was suppose to be simple and problem-free.
 
i also encounter this problem before but now i have resolved,yes it's the update problem
 
Same problem here, it doesn't seem to make a difference whether the show was bought from iTunes or ripped myself, but there's far too many shows to try and edit meta info for.

Does seem like a really strange bug to have been missed in testing given how widespread it seems to be.
 
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