I have never been able to get my AppleTV to sync well. Years of using Infuse and it’s never worked well. iPad syncs perfectly but not AppleTV.
Latest versions of all OSes and Software
All files stored on a drive connected to my M2 MacBook Air and shared w/ SMB
Three devices… Mac, latest model iPad Pro, latest model AppleTV w/ 256GB storage.
All devices on same network, same iCloud account, iCloud disk enabled as applicable
iCloud sync and backup enabled everywhere
Hundreds of movies ALL with local metadata NFO files that all include cast details
Metadata fetching disabled everywhere
Drive containing the media is explicitly set to “Local” metadata everywhere
Mac looks perfect (of course since it’s the “master”)
iPad looks perfect
Apple TV has all of the movie and artwork and basic movie info like the title, duration, year… but most are missing the cast info (actors)
I’ve deleted the metadata on the AppleTV and let it reindex a thousand times and it simply never fully syncs / indexes. Cast is missing and all of my pinned items on the home are also missing (not sure if those are supposed to sync or not but they do seem to between Mac and iPad). It also often shows an error about indexing but not always. I’m at my wits end TBH.
AppleTV has buckets of free storage space so that’s not it.
I guess I should just give up and switch to using direct mode but that would mean losing a lot of great native organization features like Infuse collections and playlists and I’d rather not lose that. Also hate the idea of having to run a server. That’s why I chose infuse in the first place.
Thanks James. If it’s the NFO (I’m certain it’s not) why would the sync work perfectly on my iPad Pro? It’s only the AppleTV which keep only partially syncing. I noticed opening the app this morning (the following day) the library settings page says syncing w/ iCloud and spins for quite awhile before saying “Indexing failed for M2 MacBook Air”. Should I just keep trying to clear all metadata in settings and start over? Or maybe delete the app and reinstall?
Just a stab in the dark but I’ve seen it where when a device was on a different WiFi band from the source it’d have issues. Are all of your devices on the 2.4G band or all on the 5G band of your WiFi?
Also, on the ATV do you have the IP address for the MacBook like 192.168.1.1 or do you have someting like MacBookAir.local?
Thanks for the replies! I really really appreciate it. Would love to see if I can debug this and get the ATV indexing all my NFO info well from my Macbook Air external media drive.
@james I just made a folder with a subset of movies (only 30 instead of 1600+) as a test (so I can debug without waiting forever for every re-index). I made sure some of them were showing cast & crew and some were not. I disabled iCloud sync and backup because I don’t want it syncing the old folder of 1600+ movies. And it worked flawlessly. So I maybe the sheer size of the data is too much for the ATV to handle? It’s a 256GB model tho’ with almost nothing on it (handful of streaming apps, Paramount +, AppleTV+, etc.)
@NC_Bullseye My WiFi is 5G and the MacBook Air and ATV are both pretty new (latest ATV and M2 Air) so I assume they’re connecting via 5G. My share on the ATV is setup using SMB protocol and a named address like Macbook-Air.local. I will try the Mac’s IP address instead and see if that makes any difference. I also checked the storage and the ATV doesn’t show a total but it looks like roughly 2.5 GB… so only about 1% of available storage being used / 99% free space available.
@NC_Bullseye I logged into the router and it’s setup as 5GHz not 2.4 and not dual band so I don’t know how they could possibly be connecting via 2.4. The Mac is in fact connecting on 5Ghz (option clicked the wifi icon in the menubar to confirm). I don’t know how to confirm on the ATV but again I don’t even have a 2.4 network running.
That said I told Infuse on the ATV to forget my old share with the named address and setup a new custom share using the SMB and the IP of my Mac instead of macbook.local and it just finished indexing and it seems ti have finally worked! All the movies appear to have their cast info!
I had iCloud sync and Cloud backup disabled during the re-indexing process. Indexing took dramatically longer this time but it worked! All the NFO data seems to be there. So I think I finally succeeded. Still not sure what the problem was… if it was IP vs. MacBook.local or old Cloud / iCloud data or something?
So maybe the process is… get everything as I want on the Mac. Then delete not just the metadata from the other devices but also disable iCloud sync / Cloud backup. Then reindex. Then re-enable iCloud sync / Cloud backup. And maybe a IP address is better for the share?
I still think maybe direct mode w/ emby might be better long term. Seems like a very cumbersome process for a huge library with tons of local metadats / NFO files.
@NC_Bullseye@james So my gut is telling me the issue was a combination of using the Cloud backup feature in combination with a TON of local NFO metadata.
A few things I (think) I learned…
If you want to use NFO files exclusively it’s not enough to turn off Metadata scraping in Settings, you also have to “Favourite” the drive / folder containing your movies and right click / click and hold the Favourite and explicitly set that drive / folder to “Metadata: Local”
iCloud Sync and Cloud backup are two different things (as per the docs). Sync is primarily for settings, statuses, etc. Backup is for AppleTV only and it’s primarily for Library data (which I assume means metadata). And it only backups up once every 3 days. And it attempts to merge local and cloud info. So if doing a fresh re-indexing it’s probably best to turn that off first. Then turn it back on once everything looks good.
Beware that if you delete and reinstall the app the default settings is to have metadata scraping on and for all of sources to be set to “Metadata: Online” regardless of that setting (apparently). If doing a delete / reinstall / reindex make sure to change those defaults immediately.
Apparently an IP-based share is better than a name-based one but I’m not sure that was the crux of my issue. I think it was an old backup + incomplete local data.
So after spending literally hours reindexing ATV and iPad I somehow ended up with duplicate favorite folders in my shares and not I have to completely start all over again… again. I’m truly sorry but I’ve just about had it with this app,
Are you adding the shares to Infuse on the ATV after deleting the app and reinstalling and then adding the shares to Infuse on the iPad after you deleted the app and reinstalled it?
Thanks @NC_Bullseye and my apologies for the frustration. Yes something like that but I don’t recall the exact sequence to be honest. I added a new share at one point using my IP as you suggested. Then once I figured that the real issue was an out of date cloud backup I went back to a named dotlocal share as that’s my preference and I never had issues before over the years. And I guess BOTH shares (and their favourites) got synced to iCloud at some point even tho I had deleted the IP share in both the iPad and ATV. And yes I think I deleted the app on both devices, reinstalled on ATV. Reindexed. Then reinstalled the app on Ioad etc. Anyway even though the IP based share wasn’t there anymore on either device the favourites from both were still there. I.e. a “Media” folder favourite was showing as a duplicate on both devices. I deleted on “Media” favourite thinking it was the old one and the whole library started reindexing again. Argh. So ya I made a mess. I’ve deleted everything completely now (apps and all) and I’m just going to start over this weekend.
Just a suggestion I found to work when I had to start over with 4+ devices using Infuse. Delete all copies of Infuse, reinstall on one, enter the share info on that one device.
Then, go to the next device and install Infuse but DO NOT manually add shares, just launch Infuse after the reinstall and then go directly to the library settings page and wait, it should start to show it’s syncing with iCloud. That will add the shares you entered on the first device. Repeat this for each additional device.
When you actually enter shares on each device you’ll end up with duplicates since that’s part of the synced items.
Since I started this routine I’ve had zero problems with share dups.
Thanks so much. I suspect that exactly the issues I ran info… I deleted it on both ATV and iPad and then reinstalled in ATV and let it build and then installed on iPad and I think you’re right… I think I added the share again. So basically once one device is setup just install that app on the others and let it do its thing.
