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iTunes 10.4 comments field not accepting text

I'm running iTunes 10.4 on Lion. Since updating i can no longer copy text into the comments field of the ID3 tag. Any idea why/workarounds etc?

Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 24, 2011 4:36 AM

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Posted on Jul 24, 2011 6:25 AM

I ran into this as well; it seems to have to do with the character count. The fields "Comments" under the "Info" tab, and "Description" under the "Video" tab, are restricted to 255 characters. I believe they always have been, but as of 10.4, that limitation is hard coded into iTunes.


Try copy / pasting just a few characters; it should work, up to 255.


You can use a word proccessing program to check your count before you copy / paste, or a website like this one:


http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml


Hope that helps!

4 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jul 24, 2011 6:25 AM in response to St3vejames

I ran into this as well; it seems to have to do with the character count. The fields "Comments" under the "Info" tab, and "Description" under the "Video" tab, are restricted to 255 characters. I believe they always have been, but as of 10.4, that limitation is hard coded into iTunes.


Try copy / pasting just a few characters; it should work, up to 255.


You can use a word proccessing program to check your count before you copy / paste, or a website like this one:


http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml


Hope that helps!

Jul 25, 2011 7:47 PM in response to richardblyth83

This is a slightly more complicated issue. In iTunes video tags have a "short description" and a "long description."


The short answer:


What you want to edit is the long description, but there is no way to edit from within iTunes. I recommend the free program Metax, available here:

http://www.kerstetter.net/index.php/projects/software/metax

It allows you to edit the full meta data tag on your videos, including short and long description.


Longer answer:


The short description is probably the one you are most familiar with. You can access it under "Get info" under the Video tab, and select it as one of the columns in the main browsing window. This is the one with the 255 character limit. If you have an Apple TV this is the field it uses to show you the description of the video.


The long description is what your iPad or Front Row looks at and, as the name implies, allows for greater character count. This is where you would find that long synopsis or review of a movie you get from Apple. As of 10.4, there is no way to edit it from within iTunes, but you can take a look at it: there are a couple ways to do it. 1. Right click on a video, and look for "Show description;" 2. Make sure the "Description" column is visible (list view), but not sized to fit. Hover over the right hand side of the column, and look for an icon that looks like an "i" inside a circle. Either way will give you the long description in a separate window.


A few caveats: Bear in mind that although iTunes will show you a window with text in it, that text does not necessarily reflect the long description; I believe that if there is none, iTunes just shows you the short description. You can see how this can become...annoying. Until Apple decide to let us edit the long description directly from iTunes, we'll have to rely on third party apps like Metax, and scripts like Doug's AppleScripts. He has a few scripts to deal with descriptions over there, but I was having trouble with them under 10.4. YMMV.


There is also a quirk that has to do with playing the file once you've tagged it. I've been using Metax to tag my videos, and at first I was confused why the descriptions were not appearing on my iPad. The tags appeared to be there and correct, but nada. Either playing the first few seconds of the video or (if you've got say, a whole tv season to reset) selecting multiple files and hitting Reset Plays in the context menu.


There's lots more information out there about the long description, but here are a few links I found helpful in tagging my videos.


http://www.kerstetter.net/index.php/projects/software/metax

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=showdescription

http://blog.scroogieboy.com/2010/09/tagging-videos-for-itunes-part-1-movies.html

http://terrywhite.com/techblog/archives/2864

iTunes 10.4 comments field not accepting text

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