ios 8.2 tv shows not getting grouped / sorted properly

Is this happening with paid TV shows from iTunes?

No, paid TV shows from iTunes have these fields populated. It's with stuff people have obtained elsewhere, in my case rips from DVD box sets I own. iTunes on my Mac doesn't care, it's the Video app in iOS having this odd behaviour change. If there was a logic behind it, okay, but to suddenly sort on the director field for a TV programme makes zero sense, even as an option, really.

Thanks. It's either a deliberate attempt to curtail non apple content or something overlooked in the last iPad update... I guess I will wait for the next update before going through all my shows and updating the directors tab...

I've never seen this behaviour on iPad until now. You may be right about motivation, but it seems rather petty unless it's a bone for American TV studios. I only have a few shows on my iDevices at any given time, so I'm only making the change as needed myself.

Same here. All grouped fine in iTunes, but on the phone (6+ 128 8.2) all shows are under 1 show (within that 1 show, they are grouped by season though).

Just figured this out as well. For some reason Apple likes to mess up the video app in many of the iOS updates right from the first iPod touch I had. I use my iPad for TV show viewing quite a bit while travelling. I have pretty much given up on having TV Show artwork on the iPad because I am not going to edit the art to be the right size. I really wish they would fix the "continuous playback" bug for TV shows as well. It really messes up my watched counts if I fall asleep and I'm not awake to stop it.

Now I have to edit just about 4500 TV show episodes to put something in the Sort Director field to get them to show up properly in my iPad. Then I find iTunes has a bug that will not let you edit multiple m4v files, it throws an error it can't edit more than one kind of media, even though they are all the same kind.😕 I have now enlisted the help of iDentify and Applescripts to try to make my TV Show library work with my iPad.

I will be sending yet another note to https://www.apple.com/feedback/ although I'm doupting if that helps anymore.

Im sorry, I must be dumb or something and missed it, but I, having the same problem and was wondering which metadata fields need to be filled out?

Assuming you're using the latest version of iTunes, the Director field on the Sort tab needs to be the same as the show title on the same tab. You may also need to make Episode ID the same as Episode Number on the initial information screen.

Yeahhhhhhh I'm not doing that individually for each of my shows. I guess I'll wait for the next update. I sent feedback on this to Apple feedback. Let's see what They'll do...

is it messing with apple tv?

Also, are you adding to the director field via iTunes or a metadata app?

and... in the directors field are you putting something like "Vikings" (for all seasons) or Vikings Season 1, Vikings Season 2" (depending on the season?)

Cheers

In iTunes on my MacBook, My TV Shows, Episode List, (select all and right click) Get Info, Sorting tab, director - I just wrote in Mixed

Clicked ok to apply this, waited for it to apply to all 527 of my tv shows, then opened the Videos app on my iPad and all were showing under the show names rather than seasons 🙂

Simple solution but a very stupid spanner to throw in the spokes Apple 😝

What version of itunes are you using? Coz on the sorting tab there is no directors field. Only had sort by show, sort by artist, sort by composer and stuff. Did you click specifically on the tab?

Thanks Jim, that's another IOS bug needing a painful workaround!

Actually Stephen I don't think it's that hard. If in View Options you show Column File -> Kind, you can the click on that to sort TV programmes by that type. Selecting only one type at a time (my 550 TV programmes only have 3 types so it isn't arduous) you can then pull up the info window and type in a blanket Director to apply to all files of that Type.

Mind you I haven't tried it as I have got my iPad sorted out for now and am about to go on holiday so I don't want to risk a mess up!

Yes it is hard when all my TV Shows which were all m4v, listed under "Kind" as MPEG-4 Video File, which were converted using the same software and settings, and still iTunes will report an error it "can't edit more than one kind of media file". It doesn't happen with all, but you try to find the ones it will not work with when trying to edit the tags of 2-300 files at a time, and they are all the same "Kind". When iTunes first started throwing this error back at me the first thing I started looking at was the video format of the files, I do have both m4v as well as mp4 files, but all the files I was trying to edit were the same kind.

After looking around here I have found this is also a reported bug found in iTunes 12. These are videos I have ripped myself but there is something with them iTunes doesn't like. And it may only be one file in 2-300 that causes the issue, even though the same software was used to make them as well as add and edit the tags. The easiest fix was to find a tag editor that is not as picky as iTunes.