Thanks in advance and thank you for the awesome program.

Thanks!

The problem seems to be when setting this in the tags themselves, and is probably related to iTunes not reading it back in properly.

I’ve been using an Applescript for my TV Show tagging workflow for a year or so now, and all the long descriptions come through fine…. In my case, I actually use one source description field parsed from a text file… I place the whole description “as-is” into the “Long Description” field, and truncate it at the nearest sentence-end to 250 characters to fit it into the normal “Description” field. I have noticed that if I set *just* the “Long Description” field without putting anything into the “Description” field, then the “i” does not appear.

I do use Lostify and AtomicParsley for movies (the cast and crew list is a very nice addition), and the occasional one-offs that aren’t worth running through my scripts, and have otherwise noticed the same problems as noted above.

- Rob: When adding artwork via iTunes, it will often add this as an *additional* piece of artwork, keeping the existing frame-shot already in place. You can confirm this by opening the file via “Get Info” and checking the “Artwork” tab. You’ll probably see TWO images. Just delete the one you don’t want.

To fix this for a large number of files, select all of the tracks, choose “Get Info” and then paste the artwork into the edit info dialog box — this will *overwrite* any artwork already in place, rather than adding it.

If you install Lostify on your “backup media server”, activate its iTunes integration, and invoke it from within iTunes on this machine, it should be able to read the whole, untruncated tags out of the MP4 files, and then tell iTunes about the long description in just the right way. It’s unfortunate that we have to deal with this iTunes misbehavior, but until/unless Apple decides to fix it, there’s not much to do about it.

There are two things you need to understand about adding files to iTunes yourself. First, the only time it will have an “i” button is if the file has a cast listing. (Just having a description won’t cut it.) Second, iTunes will only ever read 255 characters of your description, regardless of how long it actually is. Why is iTunes limited in these ways? Who knows; ask the engineers at Apple.

So after your step 5 above, you got the “i” button because you had a cast listing, but iTunes only read 255 characters of your description. The description was not truncated in the file (Lostify embedded the whole thing); iTunes simply refused to read the whole thing. And when you deleted the cast listing, that’s why iTunes stopped showing the “i”.

This is the whole reason for Lostify’s iTunes integration. When you have Lostify add the file to iTunes, it doesn’t just add the file… it then uses AppleScript to set the full-length description in the iTunes database and make the “i” appear. Likewise, if you’ve got a file in iTunes which you know has a full-length description, but where only 255 characters are showing, you can invoke Lostify from iTunes’ Script menu. Lostify will read and display the full-length description from within the file, and when you click Apply, Lostify will (in addition to writing any modified tags to the file) then talk back to iTunes and ensure the whole description and the “i” show up.

Summary: If you want full-length descriptions and ‘i’ buttons to appear in iTunes, iTunes won’t get you there on its own. You must either use Lostify’s iTunes integration, or else use another Applescript-based tool (there are several) to accomplish the same thing once the file is has already been added. I wish it weren’t such a pain, but the only recourse is to send feedback to Apple and try to get them to clean up the way iTunes works in this regard.

I had the same problem as Steve regarding a 255 character limit for the Long Description, but figured out a work-around after a lot of fussing about. (I do not know if this is an AtomicParsley-related issue or not.)

My workflow: Lostify Version 0.7.0 (0.7.0) - OS 10.4.10 PPC

1. Drag mp4 file onto Lostify applet icon (I never invoke from within iTunes)
2. Add Description & Cast and Crew info
3. Apply (with -tagged)
4. Drag file into open iTunes 7.4.2 Library pane
5. Click the “i” for Long Description, the result is the Description truncated to 255 characters, with the Cast & Crew portion shown okay

When I drag the video file back into Lostify, the description field still shows all the text I originally inputted, but iTunes does not see it. So I thought perhaps the new Cast & Crew notes were messing things up, so I deleted the movie file from the iTunes library, and opened it up in Lostify. After deleting the Cast & Crew info I brought it back into iTunes, but this time I lost the “i” (still not there after an iTunes restart). OOPS! When I go back and add some Cast & Crew notes again, the “i” comes back and I am able to see the Long Description again (but the 255 character limit for the rest of the description is back).

So, what is going on?
Further trial-and-error results in success…

Select from Options “Automatically add files to iTunes”
Thats it. It solves both my 255 character in the description problem, yet also allows the Cast & Crew information. Why? I have no idea, but when I drag the file into iTunes, things go wonky, but when I let Lostify add the movie to iTunes it works.

cheers!

p.s., thanks for sharing the application!