Lostify 0.6 Released
Lostify 0.6 is now available from the Downloads page. It is the first release to feature iTunes integration and support for some international movie & TV ratings. Keep reading for a full description of all the new features and changes…
This version has taken me a lot longer than I had anticipated, both because some of the work just took longer than I thought, and because I had quite a number of personal challenges that severely limited the time I could spend on the project. However, I am very happy to report that development of 0.6 has wrapped up. Here (in brief) are the changes that were made:
- Added option to back up original file before overwriting
- Added option to automatically add tagged tracks to iTunes
- Added option to invoke Lostify from iTunes Script menu
- Automatically add the “i” button in iTunes for pop-up descriptions
- Added support for movie and TV ratings from those countries supported by iTunes (AU, CA, IE, NZ, UK, US)
- Added support for ratings annotations, i.e. often the rationale behind the rating
- Streamlined popup alerts; show application status through badges on the dock icon rather than alert boxes
- Added additional error checking to detect when tagging may have gone wrong
- Improved and corrected parsing of existing metadata
- Incorporated new build of AtomicParsley with improved support for Apple TV compatible movies
Please download it and take it for a spin… I hope it works for you!
June 7th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Hi there
I downloaded the latest version of Lostify with great anticipation however, something doesn’t appear to be right: when I go to File > Open, I get this error message: “AppleScript Error -1708″.
I tried to delete the lostify preferences and get rid of the old version but I still get this error message.
Am I not doing something I should do or is there a glitch with the application?
Thanks for all your time and help.
Steve
June 7th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Oops, dumb mistake. I have corrected it and posted a new build (same filename/url). If anybody else who was an early downloader gets this issue, try downloading the latest version.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:06 am
As far as I can tell, it now works flawlessly. Thank you so much. The little ‘i’ in the Description is a real bonus and accessing Lostify straight from within iTunes is just icing on the cake.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:16 am
The green check-mark badge remains in my dock after quitting Lostify - after successfully tagging a video. Shouldn’t the dock icon revert to having no badge after quitting the app?
Thanks for the update! Sweet!
June 7th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Great to see a new version of this excellent app.
Keep up the great work and thanks!
June 7th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
JL- yeah, I would have expected the dock to revert the icon when you quit. If it doesn’t… I suppose I can do it explicitly. That’ll be in the next round of tweaks (this weekend).
June 7th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Love the program (although I wish it didn’t have to copy the entire movie) but one thing I noticed when I tried the new version the first time–I got an AppleScript timeout. Now, I’m using this on an old, slow, grape iMac that serves my AppleTV so it’s not the best test unit, but just thought you should know…
June 9th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Hi,
Love this tool, but i have one request.
Can you add a progress bar to the app, so that when it’s processing a file we know how much is done?
Cheers
June 12th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Just wondering I have looked forward to this release since I read you were doing the update. I downloaded it today did a couple of tv shows and then. Dropped them into iTunes and was disapointed to see that I did not have the little “i” in the description. Just wondered if i was doing somthing wrong.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Kyle - to get the “i” button, you have to take advantage of Lostify’s iTunes integration (available in the Options drawer). Either use Lostify to add the file(s) to iTunes in the first place, or once the file is already in iTunes, enable the Lostify… script in the iTunes script menu, and then invoke Lostify on the tracks from within iTunes. Either way, you should get the description button.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Having used Lostify 0.6 a fair bit now, I’ve discovered a strange anomaly: when using Lostify to add metadata to a file from within iTunes, it appears to copy the file twice and then bin them (I have it set to move the original to the trash). Looking at the finder, I can see two files being generated (it also takes twice as long as it does when Lostify is used as a standalone application).
This process is inconsistent as it doesn’t happen all the time. Also, this never happens when using Lostify outside of iTunes. I’ve ended up using it independently of iTunes and then reinvoking it from iTunes in order to get the ‘i’.
Any idea why this is happening?
July 10th, 2007 at 8:41 am
I love this app - just 1 question.. when you say added support for other ratings (IE, UK, NZ, etc…) How would I add let’s say a rating of 12A to a film? (I live in the UK you see)
July 12th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Christian… Open the Options panel, and change the default country for ratings to United Kingdom. Then the UK ratings show up on the rating list instead of US ratings.
July 18th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Thanks! Straight after I wrote that post I decided to see what happened if I clicked the “options” and there it was - sorry to trouble you - Although, I do have a few questions:
1 - What is a “whacked bookmark”?
2 - Is there any difference between setting a film as “Movie” or “Short Film”?
3 - What is the purpose of the “Network” tag and where does it show up in iTunes, is anywhere?
4 - What is the purpose of the “Encoding Tool” tag and where does it show up in iTunes, is anywhere?
5 - What is the purpose of the “Rating Annotation” tag and where does it show up in iTunes, is anywhere?
Thanks for reading (and for answering, depending on whether you do or not),
Chris.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Chris…
1 - I don’t know what a “whacked bookmark” is. It was one of the options available for the File Kind in AtomicParsley, so I just made it available in Lostify too. But I’ve never seen one “in the wild.”
2 - Not within iTunes, to my knowledge. This metadata (the File Kind) is actually a numeric code embedded in the MP4 file, known as the “stik” value. When Lostify and AtomicParsley say “Movie”, they really mean stik=0. When they say “Short Film”, they mean stik=9. However, (a) iTunes calls either one of these “Movie”, so it doesn’t seem to make much difference there; and (b) the iTunes Store sells at least some full-length films tagged with stik=9, so “Short Film” is probably not an apt descriptor anyway.
3 & 4 - Network and Encoding Tool show up when you Get Info for a track in iTunes, and then go to the “Summary” tab.
5 - The Rating Annotation is my name for the MPAA’s “Rating Reason”, i.e. the rationale behind the rating. For example, something might be PG-13 “for intense action violence, disturbing images and some thematic elements”. Currently, this information is not displayed anywhere in iTunes or Apple TV that I’m aware of. However, if you purchase movies from the iTunes Store, the rating annotation is set in them (or at least some of them), so I have provided a way to set this information in your own files too–just in case this piece of information is exposed in a future version of iTunes or Apple TV.
Sorry for the ?ber-long delay in the answer! But they are all good questions.