[m021478]

I wanted to find out what strategies some of you have found helpful to streamline and simplify the process of organizing and syncing your iTunes media to your iPhone (or iPod Touch/Video iPod, as well as to your Apple TV if you have one).

I figured I would start this thread by posting what I've found to be one of the most useful tips for streamlining said process, and then perhaps anyone who has any good tips to share might reply and spread the wealth of their knowledge...

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My organizational dilemmas with iTunes seem revolve around syncing/organizing my videos...I often have two copies of a particular movie/TV show (one that's optimized for the iPhone, and one that's optimized for the ATV). I also use iTunes to store and view movies I've downloaded off the internet (from YouTube, etc...), and these video files don't really look too hot when viewed on my 50" Plasma, so I prefer not to have these synced to the ATV (I'd rather use the ATV's built-in YouTube Browser as needed). All this leads to a massive collection of videos with little to no organization, which makes syncing, organizing, and even just finding a particular video a real pain in the butt...

HERE IS ONE OF THE BEST TIPS FOUND that changed the way I organize and sync to my iPhone and/or my ATV:

I'd previously kept all of my iTunes videos (that weren't purchased through the iTunes Store, obviously) clumped together in one huge list that was accessible from the 'Movies' section of iTunes (which is the default section of the iTunes library that newly added videos are added). This quickly became a major pain - having to scroll through hundreds and hundreds of movies, web-video clips, untagged TV shows, etc...to find what I wanted to watch, or to check files that I wanted synced to one device or another...

One of the less hyped features of iTunes 8 is the ability to change the "Media Kind" of a particular video file, and the tip that has changed absolutely everything for me is as follows:

1. Select all of your YouTube videos (for example) from your huge list of video in the 'Movies' section of your iTunes library, then choose the 'File>Get Info' menu item (Cmd+I on Mac; Ctrl+I on Windows)...
2. Click the 'Options' tab of the Info window, and change the "Media Kind" to "TV Shows".
3. Then, using the YouTube video we've just selected as our example here, change over to the 'Video' tab of the Info window and change the 'Show' to something like 'YouTube Videos'.
4. You can then optionally flip over to the "Info" tab of this Info window and drop in an image file into the blank area next to "artwork"
5. And, before you do any of this, if you have the iTunes Preferences settings configured to "Keep iTunes Library Organized", then doing this will also move the actual YouTube Video and place them neatly into their own little Sub-Folder named "YouTube Videos" within you iTunes/Music/TV Shows folder.

View the screenshot below to see the results of the aforementioned strategy for organizing videos within iTunes:

You will see that I have several regular-old TV shows appearing in the list just as anyone would who purchased some shows from the iTunes Store, but you will also notice shows called "YouTube Clips", "JibJab", "Politics", "Educational", "iPhone Essentials", etc...

This is a brilliant way of keeping all of your similar videos files organized into "Virtual Folders", AND PERHAPS MORE IMPORTANTLY, it makes syncing specific groups of videos to your iPhone or Apple TV as simple as can be, because you can simply specify within the iPhone/ATV sync settings which specific TV shows you want to sync, and which ones you don't...

In the screenshot below, you will notice a show called "iPhone Essentials"...this is the show name that I've applied to the JibJab, YouTube, Educational, etc. shows that I definitely want to have with me on my iPhone...I have dozens and dozens of web videos within the YouTube Clips 'Show' directory, but not all of them are things I want synced to my iPhone...hence, I created the "iPhone Essentials" show directory which is basically a drop box for any movies I definitely want on my iPhone



Anyone care to share any of their Killer Strategies for Organizing iTunes Media for iPhone/Apple TV Syncing?

[Wiskedjak]

I usually just optimize video for the iPhone and watch the same files on the ATV. For me, iPhone quality video on the ATV is acceptable.

[Cold Warrior]

I have only the ATV. I enabled ssh, installed Perian, installed ATVFiles, and just copy the .avi or other non-iTunes video directly to the ATV for playback.

[Big-C]

I use the process the OP does, however I just use the Applescript "Set Video Kind of Selected." This allows you to select all you recently added content in bulk, run the applescript, and it coverts everything for you. Same as your manual process, so I don't know if you'd gain much by using it.

Like Wiskedjak, I just keep 1 copy of the show, optimized for the iPhone. I have a 48" lcd tv and I find the quality just fine (not amazingly great, but good enough for me).

The thing I'd like to figure out is this:

I have more content than will fit on my appletv, so I don't sync anything other than photo's and music, and simply stream my shows over the network when I want to watch something. Never a problem, except for this:

I can't let appletv Automatic Sync, otherwise it just spends days and nights moving content around (I have 2 appletv's, causing twice the fun). Every time I add a new movie/tv show, my network gets saturated with show management from the appletv, making it impossible to stream reliably over the network. Bah!

So I have to have it on Custom Sync, and I have to remember to manually sync each time I add new content - which of course I never remember to do!

Anyone know a solution?

[m021478]

Originally Posted by Big-C 

So I have to have it on Custom Sync, and I have to remember to manually sync each time I add new content - which of course I never remember to do! Anyone know a solution?

I was under the impression that if you enabled custom sync, any TV Shows, Podcasts, Movies, and Photos you mark as checked in the ATV sync tabs winds up getting copied to the ATV's 80GB/140GB hard drive, but everything that you have not checked still remains available to the ATV, it just has to be streamed from iTunes to the ATV in order to be able to view it...You just have to make sure to keep iTunes constantly running at all times, then you should be set...or am I mistaken??

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BACK TO THE ORIGINAL POST TOPIC... Anyone else care to share any of their strategies for organizing videos in iTunes?

[Big-C]

You are correct in that the items I select NOT TO SYNC (Movies, TV Shows) are kept on my Mac and would therefore are streamed when I watch them, but the problem is that when I add a new movie to iTunes, it doesn't update the list of movies on the ATV - I have to manually push the sync button from my computer to make that new movie/tv title show up on the ATV.

Anyway, didn't mean to hijack your thread; Other than organizing everything as TV shows like you pointed out above, I'm not sure what else you could do to organize things. I'll be watching this post for other people's idea's though!