A faster H.264 and MP4 tag editor for iTunes and ATV files?

Sounds fishy to me as editing tags on my Mac takes seconds, no delay at all, even when adding images to movies.

You may have other issues with your machine or iTunes install.

Try itunes itself. File/Get info or ctrl + i.

It's likely not itunes nor the software that you are using that is causing this delay then.

Different sorts of files store tags in different ways, some files can accept the artwork instantaneously whereas others (and I think files encoded with mpstreamclip do this, for example) will take much longer as it seems the whole file needs to be re-written again.

Ian, what format are your movies in? I've found it impossible for iTunes (7.6.2) to add artwork to MP4 files.

It's more likely to be a particular type of mp4 that give you problems. mp4's generally have no problems with artwork.

Are you using 64 bit containers, AAC & AC3.

I'm not sure what you mean by "type" of MP4 as it's just a container. In my experience, iTunes can't seem to handle adding artwork to MP4 files with AC-3 audio. I've seen this reported in several fora. No errors are reported, you click OK and nothing happens. That's why I use MetaX to add the artwork.

Getting back to the OP with regard to taking a long time to write the tags. With MP4 files, the entire file has to be rewritten (at least in some circumstances). I just changed the artwork using iTunes, on an MP4 file (with AAC audio) and it took over a minute for it to save the artwork. MOV files don't seem to have that problem.

InsanelyOne wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "type" of MP4 as it's just a container.

That was the point I was trying to make, it can have many different things inside it and hence mp4's can behave in different ways.

........With MP4 files, the entire file has to be rewritten (at least in some circumstances).

Yes, happens to me with some mp4's and not with others.

I also think it also depends on how you add it in iTunes and how you have your iTunes library organised.

Selecting the Artwork tab and pasting will add it to the original file, taking some time (although my MP can add it 10x quicker than it took on my MDD). Selecting multiple movies, or episodes of Lost say, performing Get Info and adding in the small artwork box there may just add it to the iTunes library XML. Google around for numerous posts on general technical forums (MacTech, MacWorld) where this has been meticulously documented.

I'm one for embedding the artwork in the movie file. So that if / when I Finder copy the file to another Mac, the artwork is still available.

No, I'm not suggesting that at all, I was replying to another poster who said they couldn't add artwork to an mp4 at all.

Your equipment likely has nothing to do with this, I have a dual 4 core 3 Ghz Xeon CPU and I too have a considerable wait sometimes adding artwork to some files.

mp4 containers can hold either mpeg4/2 or mpeg4/10, (simple mpeg4 and AVC) and each compression type has a whole array of complexity types associated with it, much the same can be said for audio in the mp4 container.

What I'm saying is that some mp4's will take time to add artwork, some will do it straight away and there are situations where some mp4's won't take artwork. It isn't your system, your hardware or anything you are doing wrong, it's the way it is.

It seems like the third party tag editors actually re-encode the video; they usually seem to create a new file in the process of editing the tag.

What the third party tag editors offer that iTunes doesn't is batch editing of the Video tags which allow a converted video to be tagged as a "TV Show", rather than the default "Movie", along with the the name of the show and season info.

I recommend MetaX for tagging. I never have a single problem with using it and is great. The only thing I dont use MetaX for is the artwork they provide. I get mine from www.getvideoartwork.com. It looks really great on the ATV

lance

I have a problems adding tags to video files created using VisualHub (.avi files converted to appleTV mp4 files). This is on a minimac. It can literally take 2-5 minutes to save the tags and often the album art will not save no matter what I do. Once I save it one time, I can go back and change it and re-save very quickly. I assume that VisualHub doesn't create empty spots for tags or somethign like that but once they are created, then iTunes will change them quickly. But I cannot figure out how to get all the files to accept the album art. About 1 out of 5 won't accept album art regardless of what I do.