Lostify 0.7
I’ve just posted Lostify 0.7 for your utility and (if you’re a bit obsessive like me) enjoyment. The principal new feature is full support for cast & crew lists. These show up in iTunes when you click the “i” button next to the description of a movie or TV show. They also show up on the Apple TV, so you can see a little summary of the cast/crew while you’re deciding which movie to watch. There were a handful of other improvements and fixes, but I’ll refer you to the release notes for those.
I had hoped to provide support for embedding artwork in this release, but I haven’t finished it yet. I’m planning on that being the principal feature of the next release. Until then, folks will have to continue using other means to embed artwork.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for the new version.
I’ve unfortunately discovered a bug: the description appears to cut out at 255 characters.
In 0.6, I could add extremely long descriptions and Lostify didn’t bat an eyelid. Now, I can paste the info in, but once I click on Apply and check the result in iTunes, only 255 characters made it through.
When I open the same file again in Lostify, only 255 characters are shown…
I’ve tried it with or without a cast list and come up with the same problem
September 21st, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Steve,
Thanks for pointing this out. I modified the logic a bit when dealing with long descriptions, but this limitation was not intentional… sounds like I just overlooked something. Hopefully I can clear it up this weekend and post a new build.
UPDATE: I am unable to reproduce this problem. I have tried various ways of setting descriptions of up to 480 characters, and everything seems to work fine for me. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? If so, can you please forward me exact steps to reproduce the issue, including (1) which version of iTunes and (2) OS X you’re using; and (3) which options are set in Lostify (presumably version 0.7)?
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Hi there,
I think I also may have found a bug but it may be limited to how AtomicParsley writes out the file. Here is the quote:
“AtomicParsley failed to process the file “filename.m4v”. AtomicParsley error: An atom was detected that presents as larger than filesize. Aborting. atom free is 4294967162 bytes long which is greater than the filesize of 1256668248 (1)”
It goes on to say that no valid mp4 titles are found.
This has happened only on a few titles within my collection, and only seems to happen when the description or cast field is edited.
Otherwise, it works flawlessly. Many thanks for the new release and I hope that artwork will come sooner rather than later
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
First, thanks for this invaluable app.
Coincidently I keyed in descriptions for the first time earlier today for many movies, and they are way longer than 255 characters. No problem whatsoever. My setup are all up-to-date.
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Vizr: I have started seeing this too. It happens in AtomicParsley–I believe it’s a bug where it incorrectly calculates how to shuffle metadata around to try to avoid rewriting the entire file. It only happens when Lostify instructs it to overwrite/rewrite the original file, and that occurs in the following situations:
(1) Output mode = Same (Backup, then overwrite original)
(2) Output mode = Same (Just overwrite original)
(3) Any time Lostify is run from the iTunes Script menu
It also usually only happens when you’re modifying a file that already contains some metadata. If you encounter this error and are prevented from adding or modifying the tags you need to, try changing your output mode to “Same (Trash original & replace)”, and then running Lostify on the file directly (i.e. not from within iTunes).
I have already posted about this bug in the AtomicParsley forums, but haven’t heard anything back yet.
Lowell
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Ahhh, I see now. I changed my output mode and now it works perfectly. Many thanks.
Just a point of interest on this, I had written metadata to all my files using Lostify 0.6.1 so unfortunately I don’t think the problem can be caused by having metadata already in the atom tree.
If Lostify 0.7 is using a newer SVN revision of AtomicParsley, then perhaps the problem could be isolated to any changes made between Lostify 0.6.1 and 0.7?
November 12th, 2007 at 1:29 am
I was having the same problem as Vizr, but now after opening Lostify through Finder rather than iTunes and not allowing it to simply overwrite my video files, I immediately get an Applescript Error: Finder got an error: Can’t make file “My Book:All iTunes Files:All mp3s, pray on iTunes:Movies:How I Met Your Mother - S03E07 - Dowisetrepia.mp4″ into type reference. (-1700)
I tried all 3 ways to keep the file destination the same.
When picking to make a new file with a suffix, I get the error: Finder got an error: Can’t make alias “My Book:All iTunes Files:All mp3s, pray on iTunes:Movies:Don’t know.mp4″ into type reference. (-1700)
November 12th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I’ve been using Lostify for a long time now and I’m very happy to see how it’s come along over this time, but the recent issue with error messages experienced by Vizr is affecting me too causing me some grief. I updated to 0.7 and realized that there were these problems, so went back to using 0.6.1 and all was well again. Unfortunately I reinstalled my system and had to re-download Lostify, but 0.6.1 isn’t available anywhere.
At least while there are issues with AtomicParsley, could you relist 0.6.1 as a download on your website so that I can continue to use it with iTunes as seamlessly as I had before?
Thank you.
November 12th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Yes, it seems the latest SVN build of AtomicParsley (which is included in Lostify 0.7) is pretty buggy when it comes to rewriting existing files, which is critical to the iTunes integration. I’m currently investigating fixes and workarounds for this, but in the mean time I have restored some previous versions of Lostify and made them available from the Version History page. Hope this helps!
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Hello,
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!
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
consumer: thanks for the feedback, and especially for providing such a detailed set of steps describing your issues. And while I agree the results you note may seem odd, at the same time they are all predictable. Let me explain what is happening:
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.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Quick question regarding the long descriptions. I can enter them and get them to show up fine in iTunes, but once I have my files all set I like to transfer them to my other mac at home which I use as a backup media server. When I import those files into iTunes on the home computer, my “i” icon disappears and my description is truncated. What I’m trying to figure out is why I’m losing my long description in the transfer process from one computer to another. I read that the long description is not actually part of the mp4 meta standard, so are my long descriptions being kept somewhere else?
Thanks
January 7th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Kevin,
The long descriptions are still embedded in the MP4 file; iTunes just refuses to read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, this is a bug in iTunes.
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I just tried this program for the first time. It will be great to get ratings into the movies I have added so the kids cannot watch them on Apple TV! The one problem I have found is that after running the file through Lostify, I cannot add Artwork to the movie. I tunes will act like it is adding it, then goes to a with cover. When I inspect the file again, the artwork is gone. Any suggestions?
May 4th, 2008 at 4:12 am
The situation with the description/long description in iTunes is patently odd…. You actually *can* set the long description via AppleScript using the iTunes dictionary, and it will work flawlessly in terms of presenting the small “i” and showing the full length of the description.
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.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I use the “lock” settings all the time to keep TV Show titles and episode conventions the same, but they would be even more useful if I could save them as “presets” for different kinds of batch conversions. For example, I would lock in batch conversions for:
1) Son’s soccer team movies
2) Daughter’s flute recital movies
3) Archived home movies
Thanks!
May 20th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Would it be too difficult to put a lock function on the Rating field? I import a lot of TV episodes I’ve ripped of my DVD collection and all of them have the same rating…
Thanks in advance and thank you for the awesome program.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
mshoger… the Rating field does have a lock… I guess it’s not obvious, though. The rating field and the “rating annotation” field are stored in the same metadata field in the file, so I considered them one field for locking purposes. Therefore the lock to the right of the annotation field locks both the rating and the annotation.