Krutsch

Q: iTunes movie genres reverting?

I have a growing collection of iTunes movies from both iTunes store purchases, as well as digital downloads bundled with discs.

 

Apple likes to categorize just about everythign into "Action & Adventure".  I have changed the genre on some of the purchased movies to things like "Kids & Family", "Thriller" or "Sci-Fi & Fantasy".

 

Every once in a while, I will restart iTunes on my Mac Mini and notice that genres have reverted back to (probably) their defaults.  When I look at the "Get Info" data for a reverted video, I notice that the genre I've changed it to (e.g. "Kids & Family") is correctly listed there, but the movie is grouped into the "Action & Adventure" genre within iTunes.  Interestingly, I will change nothing in the Get Info dialog, click on OK and the movie magically appears in the genre category I "moved it to".

 

Music tracks do this, as well, but let's just focus on Movies; does anyone know of a work around to stop this annoying behavior from iTunes?

 

Thanks, in advance.

Posted on May 25, 2014 10:46 PM

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Q: iTunes movie genres reverting?

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  • by Andy Gooda,

    Andy Gooda Andy Gooda May 26, 2014 1:32 AM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 1:32 AM in response to Krutsch

    I'm also having the same problem. I only have the problem with Movies purchased in iTunes. Movies add myself stay in the correct Genre.

    It must have something to do with bought movies renewing their data from the itunes store.

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch May 26, 2014 8:25 AM in response to Andy Gooda
    Level 1 (9 points)
    May 26, 2014 8:25 AM in response to Andy Gooda

    I'm sorry you are having the same issues, but feel vidicated that I am not alone with these challenges.  I really like the Apple eco-system for media, and this is definitely a 1st-world problem, but is very annoying nonetheless.

     

    On the music side, I went into my iTunes account "Purchases" link and set as Hidden all of my iTunes store music purchases.  I just did this last night and we'll see if this helps with my music problems (which have been endless, since signing up for iTunes Match - which I disconnected from all of my devices awhile back).

     

    I have a number of movie sound tracks that keep reverting to "Compilation" and changing genre; I went through these and correct them all, after hiding them in the store.  We'll see.  If this works, I may do the same with Movies.

     

    TV shows have (mostly) worked really well because I rarely need to edit the meta data for these (exceptions being some recent episodes were missing the season number, which screws up how they sort in Apple TV).  I fixed some of these last night (Ghost in the Shell: Arise) and we'll see if they stick.

     

    I would be OK with hiding songs and movies, but TV shows are really nice in the cloud, since new episodes update frequently.

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch May 29, 2014 6:18 AM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (9 points)
    May 29, 2014 6:18 AM in response to Krutsch

    Just an update, with my music collection: after hiding all of my tracks in the cloud I am no longer seeing arbitrary changes to metadata on music tracks.  I will continue to monitor and see if this persists and report back.

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch Jun 4, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jun 4, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Krutsch

    So far, so good... with music, anway.  I've hidden all of my iTunes purchases and my meta data edits remain untouched.

     

    I'm trying to decide if I want to do the same with movies; as I describe above, movies are still updating themselves to default meta data values (most) everytime I restart iTunes.

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch Jun 4, 2014 7:51 PM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jun 4, 2014 7:51 PM in response to Krutsch

    Spoke too soon; I just checked and Tangerine Dream "Stratosfear" changed genre on its own, again.  I verified that this album is a hidden iTunes purchase.  This album seems to be particularly problematic.

     

    Hmmm... Genius and Match are both disabled and the tracks are hidden in the store.  What gives?

     

    What's interesting is that this never happens with "Matched AAC" files, from when I was using iTunes Match; only with purchased files.

     

    I have 2,450 purchased tracks from iTunes... may be time to delete some entirely and replace others with tracks ripped from used CD from Amazon.

  • by stash1,

    stash1 stash1 Jun 4, 2014 8:10 PM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jun 4, 2014 8:10 PM in response to Krutsch

    I'm having this identical issue with my iTunes library.

     

    I am accustomed to removing the 'Composer' field from my music, and I also like to remove extraneous comments on the song names like "(feat. so-and-so)" and "(Bonus Track)".

     

    Since the last couple iTunes updates, I find my metadata has been not-so-helpfully reverted to the original information that accompanied the files when they were downloaded from the iTunes Store. I've tried various combinations of enabling/disabling "Show iTunes in the Cloud Purchases," "Provide information to Apple about this library" and so forth, with little success.

     

    Needless to say, I'm getting *really* tired of having to go through my entire library and re-do all the changes I'd originally made to the files.

     

    If this is a bug, it'd be handy if it was patched up soon. If this is on purpose, I'd have to ask WHY?

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch Jun 5, 2014 1:00 PM in response to stash1
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jun 5, 2014 1:00 PM in response to stash1

    Yes... I've tried all of things you mention and nothing seems to help.

     

    I am puzzled and I wish there was a fix or a work-around.

  • by Trent Curtis,

    Trent Curtis Trent Curtis Jun 5, 2014 10:20 PM in response to stash1
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jun 5, 2014 10:20 PM in response to stash1

    I'm having the same problem. I always delete everything in the "Album Artist" field because it ends up sorting music in ways I don't like. Lately, however, I've found this info. "magically" reappearing. I've gone through and deleted all of it again, but it will reappear yet again.

     

    I've turned off Genius, anything related to sharing info with Apple, etc., but they still keep changing.

     

    I even tried locking the files, making them read-only thinking that would prevent any changes unless I manually unlocked them. But no, Apple seems to have found a way to turn read-only into read-only-unless-we-want-to-mess-you-up.

     

    At this point, I give up. They've messed up iTunes one too many times. I'm in the process of switching to JRiver's Media Center v. 19.

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch Jun 6, 2014 6:20 AM in response to Trent Curtis
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jun 6, 2014 6:20 AM in response to Trent Curtis

    Trent Curtis wrote:

     

    <snip, snip>

     

    At this point, I give up. They've messed up iTunes one too many times. I'm in the process of switching to JRiver's Media Center v. 19.

     

    I tried JRMC on my Mac it is was way too buggy for real use.  If you have a PC, it might be an alternative.  But even on the PC, where it works really well, I missed iTunes - and my Mac.  The JRMC user interface is just awful, IMO.

     

    I think the real solution is to stop buying music from iTunes.  None of my ripped CD tracks exhibit this behavior; only purchased AAC from iTunes.  Same goes for movies.

  • by Trent Curtis,

    Trent Curtis Trent Curtis Jun 6, 2014 8:47 AM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jun 6, 2014 8:47 AM in response to Krutsch

    Which version of Media Center did you use? I'm using the latest, and I don't find it buggy. It takes some getting used to, but it's actually very sophisticated, especially compared to iTunes.

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Jun 6, 2014 9:31 AM in response to Krutsch
    Level 9 (54,543 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 6, 2014 9:31 AM in response to Krutsch

    If you're willing to experiment what happens if you change something completely on a purchased track such as artist?  Can iTunes still track it down to change genre?

     

    Have you checked the modification date/time on a file you have edited?  Is the file really being changed when you edit metadata or are the tags simply updating in iTunes database but not the metadata written to the file?

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch Jun 6, 2014 11:45 AM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jun 6, 2014 11:45 AM in response to Limnos

    iTunes media has an embedded content ID; it's not just looking at meta data and matching.

     

    FWIW, I've seen tracks revert genre, album title, artist and composer fields on their own.

  • by Trent Curtis,

    Trent Curtis Trent Curtis Jun 6, 2014 11:53 AM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jun 6, 2014 11:53 AM in response to Krutsch

    Same here. I've deleted every bit of data in the "Album Artists" fields, changed genres, renamed albums, etc. -- and then it will all revert back on purchased items.

  • by Krutsch,

    Krutsch Krutsch Jun 10, 2014 12:40 PM in response to Krutsch
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jun 10, 2014 12:40 PM in response to Krutsch

    Partial solution to the movies problem.

     

    It turns out that all you need to do is open the movie's properties (i.e. COMMAND-i) and the movies will revert to it's modified meta data within the iTunes database.  In other words, iTunes will read or re-read the meta data from the file, based on your previous edits, and overwrite the values retrieved from the cloud (at least, I am guessing that is what happens).

     

    To do this fast, I created a Smart Playlist for my Purchased movies, then display the playlist in List view, open the first movie with COMMAND-i and then simply click Next, Next, Next... through the list.  Still annoying, but a LOT less annoying that trying to figure what's changed on your own.

     

    Really annoying that iTunes would download updated meta data and then overwrite what is listed already.

     

    WAKE UP APPLE...!

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