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Version History
6th December 2008 – Ver 0.43
Not a big update here, but VideoTag seems to be much less needed since Apple finally included batch changing of video kind in iTunes. Also most of the bugs being reported to me are down to AtomicParsley, and as no new development has been done on that for a couple of years, those bugs aren’t likley ever to be fixed.
For 0.43, I’ve updated the app to work better in Windows Vista (using the correct font, dialogs etc) and got rid of a bug where typing a non-existant path as an output folder causes a crash. Doing this now forces the creation of the new folder for speed. The other change I’ve made is to add the option of another rename format. This is really for myself as I’m sharing my itunes library with my MediaPortal machine, and MP-TVSeries doesn’t recognise my older rename format.
13th August 2008 – Ver 0.42
Thanks to Chris Heuer for identifiying a bug with the rename feature that causes problems when there are control charaters in the title of an episode or show (eg. Stargate: Atlantis). This has now been fixed. The control charaters are removed from the filenames, but kept in the tag.
13th July 2008 – Ver 0.41
I fixed a bug where the move to the recycle bin option wouldn’t always be able to move the files. I also repaired a bug where dropping mp4 files with a capitalised extension wouldn’t add the file. Finally I’ve reinstated a feature lost a few versions ago, where the episode number would be copied to the track number if the track number were left blank.
7th July 2008 – Ver 0.4
A couple of nice things in this release that I’ve been asked for. 0.4 sees the addition of artwork and overwriting of the source files safely.
The artwork feature lets you add or delete artwork in individual videos or multiple files at once. VideoTag is drag and drop enabled, so you can drag your video files to it, select them all, flip to the artwork tab and drag and drop an image to add it.
The overwriting feature lets you edit files in situ. Due to my concerns that AtomicParsley can occasionally go mad and corrupt a video (although this is incredibly rare now), VideoTag drops the old file in the recycle bin for you, ready to be restored in case the worst happens.
As well as these two big additions, a few minor features have been added. First your write settings are now saved between sessions, so if you always want to overwrite your files, just set it once and VideoTag remembers it until you change it. Secondly, I’ve added a significant amount of debugging code and error trapping in an attempt to make the program even more stable.
Next in my sights is cast information for the appleTV users though I don’t actually own one so it might be a bit hit and miss, I don’t think you’ve access to that info in iTunes or on the iPod.
As always, bug reports and feedback are always welcome by email to videotag @ this site address.
1st July 2008 – Ver 0.32
My dev PC is up and running again so for clarity I’ve released version 0.32 which removes the need for zlib.
30th June 2008 – Ver 0.31r
OK, I messed up. When I built my custom atomicparsley, I left the zlib stuff in, and as I have the zlib dll in my path it worked fine for me. Due to a rather massive reinstall on my dev computer here, I can’t change any code currently, so I’ve uploaded a new installer that drops the dll in the install directory to get round the problem for now. Once my computer is back to life I’ll drop the zlib stuff and recompile AP.
10th June 2008 – Ver 0.31
The 8 day week bug really has gone now.
This release adds video content ratings (PG, R, NC-17 etc), these content rating show up as cool little icons in iTunes when they are set.
7th June 2007 – Ver 0.30
First and most importantly, I’ve fixed that annoying progress bar flicker when running VideoTag under Vista.
Also, thanks to StarChild via email, I’ve hopfully squashed a bug where 8 days was sometimes added instead of 7 days when the “add a week” function was used (edit: This is still a bug, I’m working to track it down). StarChild also suggest I make my donate button a bit more obvious so it’s now at the top of the page.
After receiving quite a bit of email about VideoTag, I’ve added more of the tags that AtomicParsley provides as an “Extra” tab. The main development that allowed this is that I’ve started looking at and fixing bugs in the AP source itself. Having looked at the source, I’ve now imposed length limits in VT to fall in line with AP’s limits (i.e. 254 characters for strings).
So far I’ve not managed to get the MPAA and US ratings into VT, due to them being done in a strange way, but I’ll be look at that once I squash any bugs in this release.
The extensive list of extra tags that VT now supports are Genre, Artist, Composer, Album, Disk, Track, Copyright, Comment and Network; though I can’t fathom why they are used by people in video files, I’ve had enough email to put it in just to make you all happy 🙂 If there’s anything missing, let me know.
Another important change this version is multi-file editing. You can select more than one file in the list (using the usual CTRL or SHIFT keys), right click and “Edit” them, and change them all at once. I figured this might come in handy for batch setting the new tags in the extra tab.
Artwork is coming soon I hope.
29th Mar 2008 – Ver 0.25
I’ve done some research into the command line and path length problems and I’ve set some limits internally in VideoTag to help prevent odd behavior by AtomicParsley. VideoTag now limits show titles and show names to 1000 characters each and any and all paths to a maximum of 254 characters. If any paths (input or output) are longer, videotag will refuse to write with an error suggesting you rename your files or move them higher in the directory tree.
17th Mar 2008 – Ver 0.24
Thanks to Obeegee over at the ilounge forums, I’ve tracked down a bug. It seems that using long paths for your source and destination videos leads to AtomicParsley ignoring some of the commands that VideoTag passes it and so videotag seems to behave oddly (such as saving videofile-temp.mp4 type filenames instead of what you asked for them to be saves as). This seems to be a bug in atomicparsley for win32 so there’s not much I can do. I have tried to work around it by making the command options videotag passes as short as possible but atomic parsley crashes all over the place if you try to use the short form command line parameters that are in the help (e.g. -s instead of –title results in “invalid options -s” despite it being listed in the –longhelp). Anyhoo, in V0.24, I’ve shaved maybe 10 characters off the command line, meaning 10 more characters for us before running into the problem.
I intend in the future to determine the exact number of characters that causes the problem so I can have it create an error in videotag so you’ll know what’s happening.
28th Jan 2008 – Ver 0.23
Added saving and loading of itunes tags, I’ve found this useful in certain circumstances, but for the most part its not. I’ll document it at some later time as it’s kind of complicated.
Added an (imperfect) “Convert to title case” button for the title field.
Added “Rename files in the format <episode – title>” option when writing tagged files.
Fixed the bug where only clicking the “Add a week” button and nothing else would not save the date change.
14th Jan 2008 – Ver 0.22
Changed the date handling to use Windows local settings instead of just the European date format. Internation iPod owners / iTunes users rejoyce.
8th Jan 2008 – Ver 0.21
Added some error trapping and streamlined the code somewhat.
Added an “add week to last episodes broadcast date” button to speed up entry of broadcast dates. Useful for iPod owners.
All loaded files without an itunes Stik tag are assumed to be TV Shows instead of unknown
Fixed bug where you could drag non-video files onto the application
Fixed bug where dragging video files would not active that save and write tags controls
5th Jan 2008 – Ver 0.2
Added meaningful progress bars and threading to stop seeming hang on write of MP4 files
Added choice of itunes stik tag instead of forcing all to be “TV Show”, now we have Movie, Normal, Music Video and TV Show for ipod sorting
Fixed the “double dot” filename issue
Added the re-parse menu item. Occasionally something b0rks when reading long lists of videos or tv shows. One seems not to have any tags, you can now re-parse it instead of going finding it again with the open MP4 dialog
28th Dec 2007 – Ver 0.1
Initial Release