Unable to get on iPad my TV Show from my shared Library

This is a LONG solution, but it seems to have worked for me (iTunes 10.6.3, iPad 2 iOS 5.1.1)

To resolve issues where TV Shows do not display in the correct order (or are missing) when using iTunes Sharing with an iPad:

There are so many variables, it is difficult to say which exact tags you need to modify for your given situation, but here is what I have discovered today as I had time to sit down and try to figure it out. I've also noticed unless you have ALL your shows in iTunes set up correctly, you will still have issues viewing them on the iPad (example: I tried organizing just one TV Show that I wanted to watch, but noticed it showed up correctly but others were still in random orders and other shows still didn't show up in the iPad list until I corrected all of them).

TV Shows seem to be sorted by: Show Name, Season, Episode ID/Episode #, then Name.

*I personally find this redundant and confusing, I don't see the point of having both an Episode ID and Episode # since I find I must set them both the same in order to achieve proper sort order on the iPad, but who cares, since it works, right? So, on to the tweaking of the tags.

There is a web site that has an infinite number of very helpful scripts and apps to automate some of these tedious chores; I'm not "Doug" but I'm forever grateful to whomever he is for providing all of these online, and I have been able to successfully use his scripts to create some of my own as well: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

1. Open iTunes on your computer.

2. Make sure TV Shows are appearing in the TV Shows category (not under Movies).

Solution: Select all TV Shows from within the Movies category, Right-click and Get Info, Options Tab: Change Media Kind to TV Show, Click OK to apply.

3. Click TV Shows in the left pane to see them all in one list.

*I find it helpful to also enable View-Column Browser-Shows so that they sort by Show as well (if you don't have the Show tags labeled yet, don't worry, they will start sorting by Show as you enter the information).

4. Select all episodes of one season of one show (For example: if you have King of the Hill Season 1, hilight Episodes 1-12).

5. Right-click, Get Info and modify the following tags (verify the box next to each has been checked, meaning all your selected items will have the same information applied to them)

Info Tab:

verify Genre is TV Show

Video Tab:

set Show to the name of the TV Show (ex: The Big Bang Theory)

set Season Number to the numerical value of the TV Show (ex: 1)

Sorting Tab:

set Sort Album to appropriate season number

set Sort Show to the name of the TV Show (omitting leading words such as A, An, The to allow proper alphabetical sorting…hence the purpose of the Sorting field options) For example, if the show you are adding is The Big Bang Theory, you would enter Big Bang Theory here, leaving out "The" so that it sorts under "B" for Big instead of "T" for The.

Options Tab:

verify Media Kind is TV Show

optional: designate whether this is part of a compilation, and whether you want iTunes to remember the position you left off watching or if you prefer each show to start from the beginning each time it is played

Click OK to apply these changes.

Now we need to get the numerical order set up properly so that Seasons will contain their Episodes and such.

1. Set the Episode Numbers in the proper order for each Season (otherwise, they will be sorted by the Name field, alphabetically, which is pretty useless for watching TV Seasons).

   Use Increment Number Tags.app (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=incrementnumbertags) and once you've copied the selected shows for the season to the temporary playlist, enable viewing the Episode ID and Episode Number columns in the playlist so you can verify it is working properly.

2. Set the Episode Number to the numerical order of the shows (Episode ID: 1 and Episode #: 1 for the first show in season 1, etc).

   Sorry, Doug doesn't have this one on his site, or I couldn't find it, so here's mine: http://stewartlane.com/scripts/EpIDtoEpNum.scpt)

3. Remove the episodes from the temporary playlist (don't worry, they'll remain in your library under TV Shows properly numbered in order) and drag the next set of shows for the next season to the temporary playlist
4. Repeat until you've renumbered all your episodes for all your seasons for all your shows (yes, this is tedious).

Now open the Videos app on your iPad, and go to Shared and select your Shared Library. Tap TV Shows and provided all the tags are set up properly, you should see just the individual seasons as "albums" and they should be in alpha-numerical order based on what you put in the Sort Show and Sort Album fields, and numerically in order by Episode Number/ID.

I also initially had issues viewing them on the iPhone 4S (no longer have anyone with a 4 in the house) but redundandtly applying the numerical values is what seemed to fix that problem on my 4S, which is why I included it (but like I said, there are so many different tags that seem to do different jobs on different devices, who knows lol! I'd love to have a "how to tag iTunes correctly" book...perhaps I'll Google it and see if one exists, this has all been trial and error so far). Also, setting the item as TV Show in the info tab is what makes them show up under TV Shows instead of Movies in the device lists (AppleTV and iPad have their own lists for this, I noticed on iPhone I had to scroll down to the end of the Movies in one big list before I hit the TV Shows list below it, presumably done that way due to screen real estate on the smaller iPhone screen compared to iPad/ATV.

If you figure out what fixes yours, please comment back and let me know, I'm flabberghasted by iTunes tagging LOL!!

I just found this web site while Google for iTunes Tagging, and this person seems to have the reundunancy in the Episode ID/Number as well (it is terribly confusing to me why there is a need for two fields with the same data, especially when one is a longer field suited for text strings lol who knows)

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-managin g-itunes-videos/

Nothing like replying to your own reply, but I don't see an option to edit my previous response, and I'm getting tired so don't feel like searching endlessly for one 🙂

I decided to test a few variations, and this is what I came up with so far:

For reference, I'm using:

iPad 2 with 5.1.1

iTunes 10.6.3 on Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1

Shows seem to sort by the Show, then Season Number, then according to the article I linked above from iLounge, supposedly by Episode Number regardless of what is entered in the Episode ID field. However, using the above mentioned devices/software versions, I find this is not the case. If I enter only the Episode Number, and leave Episode ID blank, my Home Shared TV Shows appear on my iPad in alphabetical order by whatever is entered in the Show field. If I remove the information in the Episode Number field (or ignore it, regardless of what number this field contains; tried it both ways, doesn't make any difference) and I enter the Episode Number in the Episode ID field in the proper order the shows are supposed to display in, then it seems to display in that order on the iPad.

This is why I concluded in my original post that the Episode ID and Episode Number should be the same, because it matters on some devices, but not others, and on the iPad specifically (at least the iPad 2 on 5.1.1 using Home Share from my Mac) it only shows up in correct sequence if the Episode ID field is used to determine the show sequence.

iTunes is quite robust, and it seems perhaps software developers are working on different areas of the same software, resulting in inconsistencies in how the information is handled. I have yet to find something that works exactly the same across all devices LOL 🙂 At least for now, my shows are sequenced correctly on my iPad as well as AppleTV, so I can live with a little oddity in redundancy between data fields, I suppose (suppressing my inner OCD screaming otherwise ha!)

L.R.S.

This was most helpful, thanks a lot.

Gary

Glad I could help, it's just what worked for me. Wish I could have been more help to the OP but maybe someone can figure it out. Cheers!