An AtomicParsley GUI for Windows, targeted at tagging MP4 Video TV Shows for the iPod and AppleTV, especially the tags you don’t have access to in iTunes.
The Summary
VideoTag is a program I’ve written as a front end to Atomic Parsley to make batch tagging of TV Shows on your video iPod much easier.
I’ve written this program for my personal use, but I’ve decided to release it in case it proves useful to anyone else. By downloading it, you are agreeing that you are using the program at your own risk.
I’ve attempted to put in as much automation as I can to make tagging your videos and tv shows for ipod less of a chore. The program currently has the following features:
- Edit the stik tag, or “Video Type” in iTunes. Choose from Movie, Normal, Music Video and TV Show
- Set the broadcast date, and includes a button to automatically add 7 days from the last broadcast date
- Drag and drop files straight onto VideoTag to add them to the edit list
- Autofill the TV Show Name (allows auto-fill of all loaded shows with a particular name)
- Season Number (allows auto-fill of all loaded shows with a particular season number)
- Episode Title (derived from the file name if blank)
- Autmatic Episode Numbering (You can drag and drop the loaded files into the correct order, then auto-fill the episode number)
- Add an Episode Summary viewable in iTunes
- Embed cover artwork in the video itself
- VT has the ability to add or edit most of the tags supported by AtomicParsley, with the rest to follow soon
If you wish to comment, request a feature or report a bug, please send me an email to videotag at this website address.
Download Page
The Story
When it came to putting TV shows on my iPod, I was constantly frustrated by iTunes lack of support for batch editing of tags like video type, and in some cases the complete inability to edit tags such as the iTunes description at all. I’m a fan of iTunes on the whole, but they need to ditch the non-standard interface (it’s too slow, use API calls like everyone else) and needs to incorporate some better batch editing facilities in there and for gods sake let us have access to all the tags you can set. The main frustration for me was the lack of ability to set the Broadcast Date field, which used to determine the order of the shows on your iPod (before Apple realised their mistake and fixed the firmware).
After a long internet search, I turned up AtomicParsley, a command line tool that can clear and set the all the MP4 tags used in iTunes. After using this for a while, I was wishing for batch editing without writing batch files and the ease of a windows interface. After another long search turned up a few GUI’s to AtomicParsley, but was ultimately disappointed with them, either they wouldn’t work, or were intermittent performers, one JAVA one (I hate java) would work once, then never work again until the PC was rebooted.