TV Shows Not Grouped by Season on Apple TV

I have a similar issue, I think. I've ripped my "Coupling" DVDs to iTunes. I have tagged them all and they all show up as separate seasons in iTunes under TV Shows. On the iPhone, under iPod-->Videos I see a single group for Coupling. But when I go in there, I see them in order with no sub-sorting by season. So I get:

Season 1, Episode 1
Season 2, Episode 1
Season 3, Episode 1
Season 4, Episode 1
Season 1, Episode 2
Season 2, Episode 2
...

In stead of 1,1, 2,1, 3,1, etc., I want 1,1, 1,2, 1,3, 1,4.

There has to be an easy way to do this!

Sigh...

Trust me - I've researched this same problem and have a solution - read this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10692934&#10692934

When the OP starts looking at her Sorting tags - She's probably going to see that the Sort Show Tag has been set to Twilight Zone for all of the episodes- which the Apple TV is seeing - causing all of the episodes to be placed into one Bucket. Breaking The Sort Show tag into seperate identifers by season will force the Apple TV to break out these tags as well (or - if possible - she could remove the sort show and all other sort tags all-together to force the apple TV to go off the regular Show / Season / Episode tags)

My TV epsiodes (Family Guy, South Park, Supernatural, The Office, The Office (BBC) all have the sort tags removed to force the apple tv to go to the regular (non-sort) tags.

There's a way to change the view by re-tagging your episodes. Right click each file and choose the "Info" item - click on the sorting tab - In the sort Show - Use Twilight Zone - Season # - then uniquely tag each indivudual show with it's episode name (I'm not sure of the field for this - as I'm away from my itunes library).

Remember to re-sync the apple tv (even if your not copying anything over to the apple tv and using streaming only) - as it will pick up the new tags only after re-syncing.

how is changing the sort tags going to resolve the problem the OP has?
they are already sorted correctly as the OP said, what the issue is that they are listed in a long list starting from season 1 on the appletv.

your sort solution isn't going to change that.

what the OP wants is for each season to be listed seprately on the main tv shows list.

yes i see your solution was for movies though, and not specifically TV Shows?
have you actually used this specifically for tv shows ?

all my tv shows have nothing in the "sort show" tag and all episodes are still grouped together in the one "tv show" sub-menu (and ordered correctly per-season).

Chenks wrote:
yes i see your solution was for movies though, and not specifically TV Shows?
have you actually used this specifically for tv shows ?

all my tv shows have nothing in the "sort show" tag and all episodes are still grouped together in the one "tv show" sub-menu (and ordered correctly per-season).

The post above addresses your first question - I have tested this on TV shows.

Since you've removed (or never used) the sort show tags - the Apple TV falls back to using the regular Show and Season tags to sort your Apple TV view.

For some reason - the apple TV prefers to use the sorting tags (when they are defined) over the regular info tags of show / season in both TV show views and movie views.

The OP's view in Itunes is probably sorted by the normal "Show" tag - which means this is why she's got the itunes view the way she likes it. Itunes, however, doesn't show the sorting tags in the Itunes view of tv shows (by default) - so its very easy to have this problem. If the OP were to add the Sort Show tag to her itunes view and sort by this (instead of show) - she should see the exact same view she sees on the apple tv.

Ahh - yes - I've seen this problem as well. Itunes is unable to change sorting tags. The only way I've known how to fix it is to use a separate program to edit these tags. I use MetaX to do this (note - if you use MetaX - you should check the preferences and uncheck the settings for "save originals in recycle bin" or "save originals in deleted directory" - these options actually create copies of your files and takes way to long).

I'm unsure if Apple is aware of this problem.

I've checked my sorting tags and my regular tags and have the following set (and TV shows show up OK in AppleTV - non-synced/I am streaming):

For sorting Tags - I only use the Sort Show tag and the sort name tag - and I never use the season identifier (so for Family Guy - my Sort tag is only "Family Guy" - for Sopranos - my sort tag is "Sopranos, The" - For the office - it is "Office, The." The sort name tag is a duplicate of the specific show's title
For my regular tags (Show, season, etc) - I use the name of the show in normal format (Family Guy, The Office, The Sopranos). Season is the number of the season (1,2,3,etc)Album = Name of the Show + Season number (The Office - Season 1, The Office - Season 2, Family Guy - Season 1), the album artist is a repeat of the show name (The Office, Family Guy, The Sopranos)

Message was edited by: Ted C

Ted,

Thanks for the playlist idea. Using them for video files honestly never occurred to me!

I apologize for the off-topic post. I found this page via Google and should have known better to look at which forum I was in before posting.

Thanks again,
Romeyn

Cindyjk wrote:
Is there a way I can set it up this way? Thank you!

no, there is no way to change the view

that would also change the OPs itunes view though, which i believe is not desired.

Changing the Sort tags under the sorting tab does not change the season / show / episode (name) tags - they are seperate.