Duplicate TV Shows on iOS 5 devices

All of my shows conform to the show/season/sort show/sort artist/disc number/episode number expectations described above, and are still showing multiple times, with the bulk missing (everything after B) etc etc.

More importantly, having to combine seasons under 1 heading and other tricks and messing about to make this work does not really fit with the 'it just works' mantra espoused by Apple. At this point in time, homesharing an itunes library with an ios5 device 'just does not work'.

In an update to my problems, while films were fine and it was just TV shows which were an issue, having now added a new film, it has knocked all the covers out of whack in the movies section as well. This in my mind goes some way to confirming my thoughts that it is to do with the number of titles being shared, and the size of the library. Again, if Apple wants us to have extensive media librarys which we have bought and paid for from their online store, then this seems like a rather fundamental issue in terms of ease of use and consumer friendliness.

I expect this will get resolved in the next ios update, which given there have been a number of ios5 issues reported, not least of which is bricking ios devices, I would hope to see soon.

In the meantime this is reducing the functionality of the iPad quite dramatically, I have already migrated away from mobileme (now icloud) due to the unwanted and enforced changes there, and now ios5 has undermined my faith in their devices as well. I hope that Apple do resolve all of these issues, because otherwise their meteoric rise may well be close to an end and that would be sad.

Have you at any point used the Sort Artist field to attempt to merge tracks with guest artists into an album? Such things can get the lookup tables confused even though they might fix a visible problem elsewhere in the library. Alternatively are there any case inconsistencies in the Album or Artist fields? What happens if you remove both of the albums involved in the mix up, then reintroduce them one at a time? Are things OK when they are both removed, or does the problem just shift to another pair of albums?

tt2

I was having the same problem, before I upgraded my iPad 2 to iOS 5 TV Programmes were grouped as they appead in iTunes, post upgrade they were split out seemingly randomly. After fooling around with the many various combinations the one I have found that seems to group all shows correctly (like under iOS 4.x) is simply "Show".

To get this to work I removed ALL "Sort Xxxxxxxx" values, all "Album" values, all "Composer" values, but I suspect that the key field to ensure is blank is "Sort Album Artist". This seems to be the one that iOS 5 on the iPad is causing the randomness.

Hope this helps. Reply if I haven't made sense and I'll try to explain better as I know how frustrating this problem is!!

matthewcquirk wrote:

To get this to work I removed ALL "Sort Xxxxxxxx" values, all "Album" values, all "Composer" values, but I suspect that the key field to ensure is blank is "Sort Album Artist". This seems to be the one that iOS 5 on the iPad is causing the randomness.

Consistency is the key. All values that ought to be the same need to be the same. Your observation would suggest that Album Artist as ordered by Sort Album Artist is now taken into account in the grouping/ordering rules on iOS 5 when, presumably, it was ignored before.

tt2

I've been having the same issues, and managed to resolve it via the following:

1) Select all TV shows, and Bulk-Change tags ('Get Info' with all shows selected), clicking the checkbox but leaving the field beside it blank for all 'Sort XXX' fields

2) Setting the Episode ID value to a unique value *** ACROSS ALL TV SHOWS ***

This 2nd step I believe is the critical one, but it's possible the first was required too.

Unfortunately, just leaving Episode ID blank was not sufficient.

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I did some experiementation and found that if you set the episode IDs unique across just SHOWS then it didn't work. e.g.

Episode ID: 1 Show: TV Show A Name: A walk in the park

Episode ID: 2 Show: TV Show A Name: Up and down

Episode ID: 1 Show: TV Show B Name: Skateboard Park

^^^ this would result in eratic display of artwork and shows

If however, you set the Episode ID uniquely across ALL shows it worked. e.g.

Episode ID: 1 Show: TV Show A Name: A walk in the park

Episode ID: 2 Show: TV Show A Name: Up and down

Episode ID: 3 Show: TV Show B Name: Skateboard Park

^^^ Note the "3" being the 'first' episode of TV Show B

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For large libraries this is a pain, but I found this utility which can do it quickly with the right usage:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/download.php?sc=incrementnumbertags

1. Install it as per instructions

2. Open iTunes

2. Select ALL TV shows (switch to list view)

3. From 'Scripts' Menu in iTunes select 'Increment Number Tags'

4. Tick 'Episode ID' leaving default of '%n' in the field, and leave the other checkboxes unticked.

5. Click OK

NOTE: This will OVERWRITE your existing Episode IDs

This should go through all TV shows, and change the Episode ID value to a numeric value of 1 ... 2... 3 ... from the top to the bottom; thereby making the episode field unique.

If you add more TV shows, you will likely need to repeat this process to ensure the newly added entries have unique, non-blank values.

Hope this helps.

I'm also having the duplicate problem in home sharing and I have a large number of shows.

After I do a back up I'll try this.

For me, the problems noted happen on the iPad only over AirPlay ... AirPlay sorting works fine on the iPhone; this gives me the impression that it is an iPad software issu only.

I was having the same problem with TV Shows not being properly grouped on my iPad as they had been prior to iOS 5. After lots of experimenting I found the culprit to be on the "Sorting" tab of the Get Info screen. When importing my shows it was automatically populating the "Album Artist" field with the duration time of the show (ie. 1:00:01). Only the shows where this number was exactly the same were grouped together. I deleted this field altogether and now everything is grouped as it should be. I guess this is some sort of iOS 5 issue since I never had the problem before the upgrade despite that field containing different values.

Same issue here with Airplay/iOS5. Tried fiddling around with Sorting, Episode ID, etc... No success - and I don't want to update my entire library due to this issue. Hope a bug-fix will be released soon. Apple, please...

Hi all,

I was fiddling with this for more than an hour, fixing metadata all over the place. Finally, I saw a suggestion on another thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3379537?answerId=16525017022#16525017022

Basically, I went to the video settings on my ipad, removed my username and password and then went back to the shared library on my video app. Lo and behold, the duplicate entries had disappeared. Give it a try and see if that does the trick for you.

I've been fiddling for a while and finally found another solution that works.

I only see duplicate entries or incorrect shows grouped together if there are mutiple shows from the same series.

I already had the show name in the Info section under artist. I found that if I also added the show name in the "album artist" field it sorted and displayed the shows as I would have extpected.