iTunes movies metadata reset after download

Others have commented about this in connection with the new iTunes. For some reason it under given scenarios it seems to use an (internal?) reference to check with Apple's servers about metadata. It then changes the data in the iTunes library but if you have edited the metadata the copy stored in the file itself remains what you set and can be recovered. You can use a script to do this, but it is slow and a nuisance.

AppleScript: Refresh Selected iTunes Tags - http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000860.html

Send feedback to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

it would be a relief to get it fixed once and for all.

It doesn't resolve the situation. It recovers your edits until the next time iTunes checks back to Apple's servers.

As you suggest, I'll also send feedback via the link to Apple. I can't think why they'd leave this kind of thing unresolved - it really puts you off buying anything new.

Maybe it will be resolved on the by-and-by when the next iTunes iteration eventually comes out. That's how similar issues have been resolved in the past. Yes, people complain about it here once or twice a day but the forum is not flooded with complaints so that suggests to me there is some specific configuration causing this.

Is it really only brand new purchases affected and not old ones? (I have no iTunes purchases and run an older iTunes version, so I don't see any of this.)

Same thing here.

I've purchased a fair number of movies and change the meta-data on all of them. At a minimum I add the year to the title (e.g. "Wizard of Oz (1939)"). I often change the genre too because of Apple's Orwellian (anyone remember the 1984 Think Different ad?) choice to not recognize "War" as a genre etc.

As with you, periodically (when I download?) Apple reverts the metadata and all my changes disappear for purchased movies. My suspicion is that it has to do with conflicting titles in the iCloud sync process. Sounds like a good excuse but I would imagine Apple has the resources to solve it if they so choose - especially given the workaround that works for me.

The solution I've been using is to create a smart playlist folder that finds all purchased movies that don't have "(" in the title. Anything that shows up in this list has been changed by Apple. What's interesting is how to revert back to my changes - simply do a "Get Info" on the title and the info in the library instantly reverts to my changed version and it disappears from the playlist without me making any other changes.

Thanks for the script tip - I'll take a look.

PS - You have to do the Get Info one at a time for each title - bulk doesn't work

PPS - This has been going on for much longer than any current iTunes version. Probably on the order of 2 years or so for me.

They read theses posts so they know about this issue. My guess is this is something that if fixed we'd read in the update "...affects a small number of iTunes users...". But since it's been going on so long it seems unlikely they'll choose to fix it.

Agreed on the "don't purchase" option. I've got hundreds of movies and somewhere around 200 are from iTunes so when this happens - like it did for 89 movies in the last couple hours - it's a real pain. I'm really leaning to going back to ripping purchased DVDs - it's more work but when you're done you're done and you have a file that's useable outside iTunes and Apple can't mess with it.

I just tried the AppleScript linked above and it works great. Unless you're familiar with AppleScript disregard the ReadMe regarding putting it in a Library folder and open from iTunes. You need to run it manually. Select the titles affected and then run the script. It just cleaned up those 89 titles pretty quickly. It's basically just doing the "Get Info" but at least with the script you can do it as a batch vs one at a time.

The point is that there is no such thing as "right" metadata. It's extremely subjective which is the reason we search via Google now and not the old Yahoo navigation method ("Entertainment > Movies > ......" - showing my age here). Apple's own structure is internally inconsistent. If you start at "Sci-Fi" you'll find sub-categories of "Thriller" and "Horror" which are also their own top level categories. There's a top level genre called "Classics" - same issue. Apple has no business modifying the metadata in my library. If they don't want it to change then why is editing allowed (keep you're fingers crossed...). I really do find it odd that "War" is so prominently missing. It's not like it's a fringe category - one just needs to look at IMDB for evidence. Regardless of why they choose to do it though the point is they should not be imposing their way of thinking on me after the purchase. But they do and will continue to. So with that little rant behind me I'm outta here...

Cheers

Yes - it does work and has saved me a lot of grief. I've actually modified it to make it even easier. I'm going to try to paste in the script here but am not sure Apple will let it through. The way I identify tracks that have metadata corrupted by Apple is to add a special character ( "|" ) at the end of the "sort name". When Apple corrupts the metadata that character disappears. I have a standard playlist to which I add all tracks with metadata that I've modified and a smart playlist that looks for any tracks in that playlist but don't have the "|" in the "sort name". Anything in that playlist has been corrupted by Apple. This scripts fixes the tracks in that playlist.

Here's the script. If Apple doesn't let it through I'm not going to be posting or emailing it. Thanks much to the original author.

Cheers,

Steve

-----

(*

Refresh Selected Tags v1.0

June 6, 2006 (yes, that's 6/6/06)

http://marv.kordix.com

Modifed 25 Jul '14 by Steve

Does not require tracks be pre-selected

Instead it touches all tracks in special smart playlists.

Those playlists are setup to only contain tracks with metadata that I changed but Apple subsequently corrupted

Corrupted tracks identified by those missing a special character "|" that I added to the "sort name"

Created 3 playlists to test this. This script lets you select which one to check

If the selected playlist is not empty is will tell you how many there are and ask if you want to continue

If the playlist is empty the only option is to quit

This is rough code but it works

Next update will be to run this automatically on a schedule

Tip on how to do that here

http://www.peachpit.com/blogs/blog.aspx?uk=Mac-Productivity-Scheduling-AppleScri pts

*)

tell application "iTunes"

set initialFI to fixed indexing

set fixed indexing to true

set whichList to button returned of (display dialog "Which playlist?" buttons {"Edited Metadata", "Prot Movie No (", "Missing |"} default button 3)

set thePlayList to user playlist whichList

set numtracks to count of tracks of thePlayList

if numtracks < 1 then

(* quit *)

beep 1

set answer to button returned of (display dialog "NumTracks < 1" buttons {"Quit"} default button 1)

else

beep 1

set question to display dialog (numtracks as text) & " Tracks. Proceed?" buttons {"Yes", "No"} default button 1

set answer to button returned of question

if answer is equal to "Yes" then

set SelectedTracks to every track of thePlayList

repeat with CurrentTrack in SelectedTracks

if CurrentTrack's class is file track then

tell CurrentTrack

refresh CurrentTrack

end tell

end if

end repeat

end if

end if

set fixed indexing to initialFI

if answer is equal to "Yes" then

beep 1

display dialog "Finished Refresh" buttons {"Quit"} default button 1

end if

end tell

My "skills" are from 20+ years ago and only useful due to the ability to research which is how I came up with the above.

A very good place to find Applescript info for iTunes is

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

Glad the original works best for you - no need to make things any more complicated than they need to be. I prefer the update because for me the number of tracks can be quite large and running this script tells me right away if any are affected. For the past week I'd run it at night with nothing then yesterday it came back saying over 500 were corrupted which the script fixed. I ran it again just now and about 50 needed fixing. Go figure - just Apple's way of thanking us for using their store. I've come to the conclusion that it's not triggered by a download alone. Just buying something on the store seems to trigger it also (as it did for me yesterday). I am going to get rid of the dialog at the end though so that I can let it run without waiting for it to finish to dismiss the dialog which was mostly for debugging anyway.

I think this is a close to "fixing" this problem as we're ever going to get. It would be less annoying if I could believe there's a good reason Apple chooses not to fix it - say something like "We check your library for available downloads and need the original name to do that" but anyone who knows about databases etc can tell you the name of the entry is irrelevant - a separate ID for each entry is used that's not affected by the metadata.

Guess that just about wraps things up.

Regards,

Steve

.. Apple chooses not to fix it

Maybe Apple will fix it, they just don't see why they need to make a special release of iTunes 11 to deal with this. Of course pre-release testers are not supposed to post on this forum but I believe there is a pre-release of iTunes 12 and maybe it deals with it.

They might. But note the date on the original script - 2006. This problem has existed for years and many releases of iTunes based on personal experience.

I've been an Apple user since my first Mac IIsi in the 80's - not holding my breath on this one.

Steve

I don't think the script was written to address this issue. I use the script occasionally but that is because I also use a third party editor to change ID3 tags and I use it to get them to update in iTunes since iTunes will not otherwise notice they have been changed. I just remembered having it and could see it application here too which is why I recommended it.

I don't think this particular problem of tags reverting has existed for years. I have been on this forum for well on a decade now and I do not recall this being an issue until the last few months.

I know this thread is over a year old, but I'm so thankful to have found it. I haven't really done much altering of meta data of purchased iTunes content until recently. I first started tinkering after downloading some multi-episode Top Gear specials; for which if you keep iTunes meta data, the episodes all end up jumbled under Series: Top Gear/Season: No Season and nothing's in order, so I tinkered with the meta data to organize the episodes of each special. This was about a year ago and I had noticed iTunes reorganizing them on me, but didn't think too much of it as it was just a few titles, nor did I really make the connection back then that it happened when making purchases from the iTunes Store.

More recently, however, I've been buying a lot of Doctor Who specials and Classic Doctor Who specials. And like the Top Gear specials I bought last year, if I leave the iTunes meta data, everything's a complete and utter mess and it's impossible to find anything and watch the episodes sequentially (a must as classic Doctor Who is all multi-episode stories. So now, I'm really noticing the problem of the iTunes Store resetting the tags a lot more,

Thus I am very pleased to have found this thread. Now I can really classify the Dr Who episodes properly and use the script when iTunes Store messes them up.

Btw, I'm still using iTunes 11 (didn't actually upgrade from 10 until 12 was already out as I didn't like they way 11 initially displayed TV series). I did try 12, but had to revert to 11 after seeing 12 classify all my ripped content as "Home Movies" instead of "Movies" and "TV Series" (don't know if they've remedied this yet…not ready to try). So I don't know, either, if 12 fixes the problem raised by this thread (although, given my brief experience with 12, I'm thinking 'no').

Cheers!