iPad is not showing TV Show titles in Video

I know this is a bit old, but I have found a way to get home sharing on the iPad to show titles.

Highlight all videos, right click and open "Get Info".

Change Media Kind to "Music Video"

All the films disappear from the Films section, but are visible by going to Music, and clicking on Music Videos in the top bar.

All the titles appear in the Videos app on iPad os 7.

Not perfect, but workable.

It's been almost 5 years, and there's still nothing I can do about this. I've used my iPhone 4 with this problem and it's still there on my new iPhone 6. Ridiculous

RohanZ wrote: It's been almost 5 years, and there's still nothing I can do about this. I've used my iPhone 4 with this problem and it's still there on my new iPhone 6. Ridiculous

Along with 100s of other long-standing bugs that they just don't care about in all of their products, apparently.

Oh well... Guess I'll be just using blank TV show things now 😝

I had the same problem, however it did show TV Show titles for *some* of the shows i put into iPad. So I compared those working and those not working, if i assign some text to the "director" fields, then it works for me.

so I am guessing the database of TV shows may not like "empty string" fields.

perhaps setting to some values will help in cases where TV Shows do not show title.

Thanks. I've been using the "Music Video" trick and that works for being able to see the titles.

However, if I stop watching mid-way the place I've stopped isn't being preserved, in spite of the fact that I have the "Remember " checkbox ticked in the Options area.

Any ideas on how to get the 'last watched at' spot remembered when viewing on the iPad? My current technique is to come over to iTunes on my computer, launch the movie ("music video") in iTunes and move the playhead to the spot where I left off on the iPad. That does get the video set to that location the next time viewed (on any device). But I'd prefer something less "computer dependent" -- i.e., something I could do just on the iPad.

johnmclee wrote:

...if i assign some text to the "director" fields, then it works for me.

I'm not spotting a field labeled "Director" (I see "composer" etc.). Can you post a screenshot of where, in iTunes, you're finding this field label? Thanks!

for TV shows, under tab [Sorting], there are: "titles", "show", "director" fields

johnmclee wrote:

for TV shows, under tab [Sorting], there are: "titles", "show", "director" fields

Uhm... It must be a different rev. of iTunes. This is what I find there, for an item I select in the "TV Shows" list (showing that I'm filling in all the available fields, to see what happens) :

my iTunes info screen, ver 12.1.2.27, i find that having no empty string solves for my case.

I recently had a related issue. When I added TV shows that I ripped from DVDs they all ended up in the same (unnamed) folder in my iPhone and iPad. They appeared correctly in iTunes, including the iTunes screen that showed the choices for loading video onto the iPad. However, after reading some of the comments, I noticed that all of the shows that sorted properly on my iOs devices, had the Director set equal to the name of the show on the sorting page (see above comment by johnmclee). So I put in a Director name equal to the name of the show and voilà, the problem went away. All shows were now properly sorted on the iOs devices. I have not tested whether any set of characters (other than a blank field) works. BTW, I also had to download 600x600 pixel artwork for them for that the artwork to show properly on the iOs devices, but that is another issue!

Yep andyf, that fixed it for me too. I have iOS 8.3, iTunes 12.1.2.27 (64-bit, Windows) and an iPhone 6. I'd ripped a few series of Breaking Bad from our original DVDs, added them with 'Add Folder to Library' and then used Get Info to change them from the default 'Home Video' to 'TV Programme'. I also entered the titles, series and episode numbers. The sync worked and the episodes were viewable on my phone but the Artwork and series title didn't show up. Filling in GetInfo -> Sorting -> Director with 'Breaking Bad' for each of the episodes fixed the titles. Why that should be so is a mystery but I've done it a few times now for additional BrBa series and the fix worked every time.

The Artwork fix also works, probably belongs in another thread as you said but... It seems that the artwork needs to be sized to the right proportions for the type of film/show which you're attaching it to. So, DVD cover-sized artwork will sync fine for a 'Film' and 600x600 pixel pictures works for TV shows. (It doesn't work the other way round: 600x600 pixel artwork doesn't sync to my phone for Films and DVD-cover jpegs don't sync for TV shows.) To convert a DVD cover jpeg downloaded from the web to 600x600: I opened it using Paint with right mouse click --> Edit, clicked 'Resize', chose 'Pixels' instead of 'Percentage' and unchecked 'Maintain Aspect Ratio'. Entered 600 for Horizontal and Vertical, saved the jpeg and dragged it into the GetInfo -> Artwork area. After the next sync, the image shows up fine on my phone for that TV show. A 600x600 picture resized from a DVD cover looks a bit stretched but works well enough for me -- if you can be bothered, you could probably play about with proportions + cropping to improve it.

What load of carp.

Why should I spend hours screwing about with strings and titles TO GET A PREVIEW IMAGE TO SHOW.

Is there an automatic way to get this EXPENSIVE LOAD OF CARP to work?

Thank you for helpful reply. I just updated to iOS 8.3 after staying on 7.1.3 for a long time, and I was horrified to find my meticulously organized TV Shows scattered on my iPhone with no apparent sorting or assigned artwork. Looks like I'll be spending a number of hours to update all my show's "Director" field to match the show name, and photoshopping the show's cover art to 600x600 squares.

I'd say I can't believe Apple overlooks bugs that cause extreme annoyances like this, but the truth is I've dealt with this a number of time before, especially relating to TV shows. For example, iTunes has gone back and forth between requiring or not requiring the user to fill in the "Track" number to match the Episode number for a TV Show in order to display the Episode number on your iOS device.

The guys behind the iOS updates at Apple must mean the company's classic motto "Think different" means "Don't think."

Adding a 600 x 600 pic to Artwork made no difference to some of my movies....

Changing Genres, Directors, switching from Movies to Home Movies, still fails to get a preview picture visible. Only grey blocks.

Any ideas?