Home movies not showing up after putting them on new external drive

Question

Home movies not showing up after putting them on new external drive

I read through a bunch of threads on here and nothing is helping. Ex: DVD library is no longer showing up in my… - Apple Community

I got a new external SSD and copied a bunch of movie files from my old hard drive to this new one.

I then opened the AppleTV app. All of my movie thumbnails were showing up, but the movies couldn't be found (as expected), so I proceeded to relink all of them.

As I relinked them, they one by one disappeared from the AppleTV library. Now they are nowhere to be found in the app. Even when I drag the movie file in from the hard drive the window highlights, but no movie shows up in AppleTV.

Why isn't is showing any of my movies anymore? They used to show up under the Home Movies library section.

I've opened the settings and Reset the Cache. I don't want to copy the movies into my Media folder. I want them to stay on an external drive. This was working fine before getting the new drive. Does the drive need to be formatted in a particular way?

MacBook Pro (M3 Max, 2023)

Posted on Nov 5, 2024 3:35 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 5, 2024 4:23 PM in response to zim_the_invader

Does the drive need to be formatted in a particular way?

The Mac needs to be able to read that drive; no other requirements.

If you only use this drive with a Mac, then HFS+ or APFS is fine. If you want other systems to connect directly with it too, then exFAT would be recommended.

For the Apple TV app to NOT copy the media files to a dedicated Media folder, change the app Settings by unchecking the box for that.

I can’t find a reason for disappearing titles in the app Library. I have never had that happen to me.

Check both Movies and Home Videos, in case the files weren’t tagged with meta data as you expected.

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Answer 2

Nov 6, 2024 4:23 PM in response to Urquhart1244

OK, I just tried specifying a new folder for my media location and checking the box for "Copy files to media folder when adding to Library."

Surprisingly, AppleTV is doing the following. It made folders within the new Media folder: "External-4TB/Movies-Videos/Music/Unknown Artist/Unknown Album" and loaded the MOVIE files in there!

What is going on? Why would it do this? These are .m4v video files that were categorized absolutely fine before.

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Answer 3

Nov 5, 2024 4:33 PM in response to Urquhart1244

I've checked everything. The only thing that has changed is the new external hard drive. I reformatted it for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when I hooked it up. Then relinked all the videos.

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