What is MetaMovie used for?
MetaMovie is a tool, to add so called "meta information" or "tags" to your movie files. This movie information are processed by iTunes, AppleTV or iOS-devices and presented to the user. Especially the cover arts give your movies a professional touch.
I see French or German descriptions instead of English, what can I do?
Go to the Preference dialog in the MetaMovie menu. Here you can select your country and language. If your country or language is not avalable, MetaMovie falls back to USA and English.
What do I have to regard before coping iTunes meta data?
Usually you use "Save" to copy the iTunes-information to your movie file directly. In some cases, it can happen, that the original movie file is damaged by the modification. In that cases, especially for your first movies, it is always a good idea, to use "Save as" instead. Here you select a new location and name for the movie file. The original movie file is copied to that location first. The new copy of your movie is tagged afterwards and the original file is not changed anyway.
Unfortunately there are quite a lot of mpeg4 convertes and not all of them write correct mp4-tags. If you have problems with MetaMovie and your mp4-files please use my support and report your issue. That is my only chance to improve the compatibility of MetaMovie.
What film formats can I use?
The two MPEG4-file fomats mp4 and m4v are supported. For iTunes, we recommend you to use the m4v-format. Other formats like mov, mkv and ogg are not supported.
Can I tag the movie files of my iTunes library?
Yes you can. You find the movie files in your "Music" folder. Go down the path "iTunes/iTunes Music(or Media)/Movies". Drop the movie from here to MetaMovie an tag it. You will not see the result directly in iTunes, because iTunes caches the movie information. Play the movie in iTunes or press "cmd-i" to refresh the information. Make sure, that the option "No renaming" is activated in the preferences, because MetaMovie is not alowed to rename files outside the "Movies" folder. If you will modify all your movies it's an good advice to have a backup of your movies.
How can I use custom filenames for my movie files?
MetaMovie supports automatic renaming to iTunes like filenames or your own custom filename format after saving the metadata. For security-reasons you must select your working directory in the preferences first, where your movie files are located in, e.g. "Movies“. Then your files will be renamed after tagging. Renaming files outside of your working directory is not allowed.
I have always the wrong movie rating (US-rating mpaa). What can I do?
Go to the Preference dialog in the MetaMovie menu. Here you can select your country. This setting determine the movie rating. If your country is not avalable, MetaMovie falls back to MPAA-rating.
The movie title is not found in the TMDb?
If TMDb doesn't find your movie title please try the following hints:
- if a wrong movie is found, add the release year of the movie, separated from the title by a #-sign
- remove all special characters like dashes, commas and colons
- use key words only
How can I select more than one file in the movie list?
Press the Cmd-key while selecting files in the movie list with sequential mouse clicks. Hold the Shift-key to mark ranges.
How can I search the Internet Movie Database?
The search window accepts also the movie-ID of the IMDb (The Internet Movie Database). The IMDb-ID looks like "tt+digits", e.g. "tt0379786". You find the IMDb-ID in the URL of your browser, e.g. "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/".
What does the color of the status LED in the movie list mean?
A red status LED means that your file contains at least no title and genre. You can’t save any meta information to your file now. Fill these two fields and the status LED turns yellow. Now you can save the movie information to the file. After successfully saving the information the status LED turns green.
How can I fill only empty edit fields in the main window with TMDb-Information?
Switch the overwrite mode to "Add" in the TMDb search drawer. Clear the edit fields in the main window, you want to be set with new values. Then press "Copy" in the TMDb search drawer.
How can I use a picture of a web site as cover?
Open your browser and search for a cover image. Click that image and drag it to the cover area of MetaMovie while pressing the left mous button down. Release the button and the selected image becoms the new cover of the active file in the movie list. Alternatively you can use Cut & Paste. Select the image in the web browser and select "Copy" (cmd-c). Click on the cover window in MetaMovie and select "Paste" (cmd-v).
How can I use an image file as cover?
Click on the image file in the finder window. Drag the file to the cover area of MetaMovie. The image file becomes the new cover of your move.
How can I search the chapterdb.org?
At first you must select the option "chapterdb.org" in the chapter generation drop down box of the main window. Then the reload buttons in the chapter section becomes active. Press the reload button to load a suitable chapter file from the chapterdb. MetaMovie searches on chapterdb by using the actual string in the title field. If MetaMovie find some matching chapter inormation, the chapters are loaded in the background. The chapter status LED turns green. If MetaMovie doesn’t find anything on chapterdb.org, the status LED keeps red. A yellow status LED indicates, that the original file contains already valid chapter information.
To start a manual search on the chapterdb.org website, press on the slogan „powered by chapterdb.org“. Your browser will be opened with the chapter search results for your movie. Select the chapter list with the correct movie length. You find the length of your movie in the chapter section of the main window. Click on the matching movie title and then the chapterdb.org site switches to the selected chapter list. To download the capters, press the green download button in the upper right corner. Select XML-format and the chapter information is downloaded to your download folder. Now use the „Open chapters“ menu button of the file menu to start the open panel in your download folder. Select the file with the format "your movie title.chapters.xml". Press the "Open" button of the open panel. As soon as MetaMovie loaded the chapters file successfully the chapter status LED turns green.
How do I find subtitles for my movie?
Before you can load any subtitile information, MetaMovie needs to know, what movie you are editing currently. To retrieve the information, search for the movie information in the search drawer first. Press „Copy“ to transfer the information to the main window. The reload button is enabled now. Press the reload button to start a subtitle search on the opensubtitles database. If MetaMovie gets a valid response, the subtitle file is retrieved from the database and the subtitle status LED turns green. If there is no valid subtitle file for your movie, the LED is still red. A yellow LED indicates, that your original file contains already a valid subtitle set in your language.
If MetaMovie doesn’t find a suitable subtitle file, you can start your own search. Press on the slogan „powered by opensubtitles.org“ to open the website in your browser with the search results for your movie title and language. Select a subtitle file in the „.srt“-format and download it e.g. to your download folder. Now you can load the file via the „open Subtitles“ menu button of the file menu. As soon as the subtitle file is successfully loaded, the subtitle status LED turns green. If your subtitles are displayed to early or to late you can synchronize them via the „Offset“ edit field in the subtitle section in the main window. Enter a positiv value in seconds, if the subtitles are displayed to early or a negative, if they are shown to late. Sometimes the subtitles are from a different movie version, e.g. directors cut. Then you must find the correct subtitle file. You can use any subtitle portal, offering subtitles in the „srt"-format.
iTunes sort the movies for "The" and "A"
If you don't want all movies starting with "The" and "A" at the beginning one after another, you can activate an option for ignoring articles in the Preference settings.
What do the red characters in the short description mean?
The short description is limited to 255 characters in iTunes. All characters beyond 255 are stripped. Shorten your text so that no red characters are visible.
How can I prevent MetaMovie to overwrite existing chapters?
Select "no chapters“ as the automatic chapter generation option. If your movie contains chapters, MetaMove chose this option automatically.
How do I select the movie genre?
MetaMovie always tries to find the best matching iTunes movie genre. iTunes supports only a limited set of movie genre names. You can select new genre names like "Crime" in the genre selection box. If you do so, iTunes doesn't show a special icon for that genre in some views. So we recommend you to stay at the iTunes genres.
How should the movie filenames look like to extract information from the filenames?
MetaMovie is able to extract movie title, release year and genre from the movie filename. To do this, the file name has to be in the following format: "movietitle - year, genre.m4v", e.g. "Spys like us - USA 1985, Comedy.m4v". Use the menu button "Split title" to copy the information from the file name to the edit fields.
How can I transfer the movie information from one file to another?
Select the source file in the movie list of MetaMovie. Select the menu item or toolbar button "Copy all“ (alt-cmd-c). Now select the destination file in the movie list and select "Paste all“ (alt-cmd-v) in the edit menu . After that press "Save".
How can I copy the EPEG-Information from an EyeTV file?
At first drag your empty m4v-movie file to the movie list of MetaMovie. After that drop the Eye TV file (.eyetv or .eyetvsched) on the cover area of MetaMovie. Then all EPEG information is copied to the main window.
How can I use an Eye TV file in the movie list?
To use an EyeTV-file in the movie list, create a hidden m4v file within the Eye TV package. To acheive this, you can select a movie in the Eye TV movie archive and select "prepare for iPone" in the right mouse button menu or select the corresponding icon in the toolbar. After finishing the preparation für iPone, drag the Eye TV file to the movie list of MetaMovie and the hidden m4v file of the EyeTV-package becomes the movie file to be edited. Press "Save as" to copy it to any location you want.
If you want to have all Eye TV files prepared with m4v-files, then select "Preferences/iPhone" and activate the option "Access for iPhone".