How to change the season/episode number of multiple TV shows?

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Level 1

5 points

How to change the season/episode number of multiple TV shows?

Here's the deal. I've got the complete series of one of my favorite TV shows sitting in my iTunes library only organized by name. I'd like to order them by episode number. Now I already know how to individually edit their season number, show name, etc., but the problem is that there's 200-odd episodes in the series, and going through every single one to number them one at a time is a pain.

I've looked high and low through iTunes and I don't see an option to number all the episodes automatically. So I'm looking for third-party software or a native program to windows I can use. Is there some application I can download that could allow me to select the episode files and then number them all at once? Failing that, is there any other method I could use to do this? It would save a lot of time on my part.

Much appreciated.

Posted on Mar 7, 2014 2:08 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

Mar 7, 2014 2:25 PM in response to Valior

If you have the data "somewhere" I can probably cook up a script to copy it somewhere else, however using Get Info and the Next/Last buttons to step through a set of files and then type a two or three digit number isn't that hard to do. The group edits for things like album, artist, show and season number don't take too long.

See my scripts page for some examples.

As for organizing TV shows here are some thoughts...

In principle TV Shows are grouped on the Show field and within a show sub-grouped on Season No. In practice recent builds of iTunes and/or Apple TV firmware seem to be taking account of Album, Artist & Album Artist in certain views. For consistency I would suggest the following approach:

Show = Album = <Show Name>
e.g. "30 Rock"
Artist = Album Artist = <Show Name> Cast (or something like that)
e.g. "30 Rock Cast"
Season No. = <Season No.> or <Blank> (Separate seasons or all listed together)
e.g. 1-3
Episode ID = s##e## (This field, sorted alphabetically, controls order)
e.g. s01e01 - s03e58 (use s##e### when >99 episodes)
Episode No. = Track No. = <Absolute Episode No.>
(Can also be per season, but abs. is better) e.g. 1 - 58
Disc No. = <Season No.> (Can be set even if merging seasons)
e.g. 1-3

Taking this approach you can always merge or split into individual seasons simply by clearing or setting the Season No. field.

For general tips on organizing media in iTunes see Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

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Answer 2

Valior Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 7, 2014 2:31 PM in response to turingtest2

I know it's not too much of an inconvienience, but I often like transferring all my old DVD series collections onto iTunes, and then putting them on an EHD for a rainy day. It's repetitive and irritating and I've hit this problem enough times, so I'm just looking for a more time-efficient method.

As for scripts, I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with using them. Can you give me a brief intro?

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