How do I organize movies in iTunes into specific categories?

Coming to the discussion a little late, but I have discovered a free app called Subler. Providing your movie file has the proper title, it will pull all the data for this movie either from iTunes or from the MovieDB, along with cover art. It also updates the description, genre, dates, cast, director, etc - pretty much everything you need to make the ripped film look identical to ones downloaded from the iTunes store.

It also solves the problem of Handbrake making everything look like a 'home movie'

I would highly recommend this to everyone - it is invaluable to me as I digitise my entire DVD collection.

One thing you can do is when you rigth click on a Movie and choose "Get Info" there are two fields you want to look at. First in the Optiont Tab you want to use the "Media Kind" drop down to choose the type of media the file is which will sort that file appropriatly. The second field is in the Info Tab and it's the Genre (there are some built in Genres or you can just type in whatever you want). This works for the AppleTV when using Home Sharing, when you go to Movies there will be a tab on the top to choose Genre and then you can just have your main Genre's such as Kid Movies and Adult Movies (there's no secondary sorting available from there).

For TV Shows I haven't found a solution that works for seperating Adult shows from Kid shows (I actually asked a similiar question in the forum as well). If I find anything I'll share it for sure since I know this is something that most people would like to have available.

This did the trick for me...thanks!

I can't edit anything when I go to the Options or Info tabs... any ideas?

The lack of organizational options is frustrating 😮

So it seems that any movies that I ripped using Handbrake I'm unable to edit the Options or Info tabs. Is there a way around this? Also, how in the world does iTunes determine if something is a Home Video versus a Movie? It seems completely arbitrary from what I can tell.

Nevermind, I figured it out. There was a permissions issue with the videos that I ripped using Handbrake. I had to grant my user account Read/Write permissions to the Movies & Home Videos folder and tell it to apply to all enclosed items then re-launch iTunes and was able to edit the Options & Info tabs.

Also, it appears that iTunes puts store purchased videos or digital downloads (that come with many physical movies now) into the Movies folder by default. Any ripped videos or personal videos taken on a phone, camera, etc appear to go to the Home Videos folder by default. This is a logical separation of video content to me so now that I understand it (I think) then I'll leave it alone for the time being.

Dryvlyne:

Were you able to edit the information on the “File” tab (open iTunes/select movie icon on top menu bar/ select a movie/press “Details” drop down menu then select the “File” option from that. I am able to edit the “Sorting” data (i.e. “Title” and “Sort as” and director info However, I was not able to edit any information on the “Files” Tab

John P

Hello there,

I just saw this post and because I was having the same problem. All of my videos I added on my apple tv appeared in one list from the Home videos menu. Computer>NameofComputer>HomeVideos>List. Heres my solution I found. I went into iTunes and edit the genre field of the particular movie. Whatever category you want to name it, kids, training videos, or whatever. So when you go to the menu in home video on the apple tv select display by genre from the home videos tab. Thats computer>nameofcomputer>homevideos>ByGenre from the top options. (Unwatched or By name or By Genre) You will see your video arranged by the entry name you typed from itunes genre field. I hope this help you all. Have a macnificent day! 🙂

If you have a lot of videos you might consider automating this. What I do is useVideoDrive to add/fix metadata:

1) Select the movies in iTunes I want to update the metadata and genre

2) In VideoDrive, select "Tag Videos" and click add metadata

3) All videos will be analysed and the right genre will be added together with artwork and descriptions from the web.

It's not a free tool but I believe there's a free trial. Its main purpose is to import video files in iTunes with it, but I've also been using it as an easy way to fix the metadata of my iTunes videos. If you're dealing with a lot of videos, it might be worth it in my opinion as doing it manually takes a long time and it's a very repetitive job.

I'm using the iVI application. It cost only 3$ and it is amazing. It finds automatically the metadata for your movie / tv series / maybe even song (i haven't tried that) and it uploads it on your iTunes library. You can put your own genres there (like i did) and everything will be sorted out the way you want. It's a really good application, that i never regret buying.

Here it is how it is after it is imported to my iTunes with all the metadata (outside box) and with my own genre category (inside box).

I'm using iVI (which i paid 3$) and i'm very happy with it, but this sounds very good as well.

I solved the problem by using Plex! So much better and user friendly. You iTunes techs should have a look!