In Fixing up Files That Lostify Won’t Read, I talked about using AtomicParsley from the command line to strip existing metadata out of MP4 files.  This can be useful in situations where either an MP4 file contains tags that are somehow corrupt, or where bugs in AtomicParsley prevent it from correctly handling fragmented tags left over from past editing. Users have particularly encountered these issues when using the Cast Listing feature to embed (and later try to modify or remove) cast listings in Lostify.

While I am working on tracking down and fixing the related bugs in AtomicParsley, I decided to offer a more drag-and-drop solution for users who need to take this drastic action of stripping all existing metadata from an MP4 file.  So I put together Squeegify.  Sorry, I know the name is awful, and the icon’s not much better.

Squeegify, like Lostify, is typically launched by drag and drop. But in all other respects, it’s rather the opposite of its older sibling. Where Lostify presents a user interface and has numerous options, Squeegify does not (the only UI is its dock icon).  Where Lostify allows adding and editing metadata, Squeegify strips it out. Where Lostify can optionally overwrite existing files, Squeegify always outputs a fresh copy in the same directory as the original.

It really is a one-trick pony, but if you need to remove corrupt or otherwise unwanted metadata from an MP4 file, try Squeegify.

I’ve been in communication with a handful of users experiencing some technical issues with Lostify. While work is progressing on the next release, I’ve taken time out to put together a couple small utilities to try to help these folks work around the existing issues. This post is about one of these two new “workaround” utilities: MetaFreshen.

Lostify’s iTunes integration apparently fails for a handful of users. When you enable the feature to run Lostify from within iTunes, or to have Lostify add tagged tracks to iTunes automatically, these users begin getting errors like “Can’t get track 1 of library playlist 1 whose database ID of it = xxxxx”. Extensive efforts to debug this problem have proven fruitless; it appears to be a bug in iTunes’ AppleScript support. If this error happens to you frequently in Lostify, please let me know and I’d be glad to work with you to research the issue… but until we can discover the root cause and address it, I may have a temporary solution for you in the form of MetaFreshen.

MetaFreshen is an AppleScript that runs completely from within iTunes (thus working around the bug). It reads the full-length description out of the selected MP4 file(s) and set iTunes’ long description field appropriately. This means you can get the nifty little “i” button on your own movies and TV shows, not to mention descriptions that are over 255 characters. As you probably know, this is normally done by Lostify itself, but (as mentioned above) this is only useful in situations where that integration is failing for reasons unknown.

After downloading and unzipping MetaFreshen, simply install it in the ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts folder. You run the script by choosing MetaFreshen from the scripts menu inside iTunes. There is no user interface; it should simply run and quietly update the description for each selected file.  I hope it’s helpful to someone.