Use embedded metadata to categorize items in Library

I have always used Subler (galad87 / Subler / wiki / Home — Bitbucket) to add metadata and artwork to my MP4 files. Infuse recognises some of this data but misses out media type (TV Shows, Movies etc) and TV show/Season/Episode data. If Infuse could recognise this data whilst adding it to the library in infuse TVos it would be very helpful.

Please, please, please??

Thank you.

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Hi all!

I have a carefully curated library with ~600 movies imported into iTunes. Embedded metadata, streams fully compatible with modern Apple devices, the whole shebang. I can play content directly with Apple built-in apps on iPad Pro and Apple TV 4k. Still, I want to use something like Infuse because, well, those stock apps suck.

The reason I’m writing is that for the life of me I can’t get Infuse to scan these movies without issues. I’d like to understand the logic here:

  • If I enable “Embedded Metadata” but disable “Metadata Fetching”, all movies are annoyingly scanned as “Other”. As if Infuse was blatantly ignoring the “Media Kind” metadata which is correctly set as “Movie”. Worse, when I tap a movie, the embedded cover isn’t shown, but rather a thumbnail of the video – I suspect this is precisely because it was detected as “Other”.

  • If I enable “Embedded Metadata” and “Metadata Fetching”, all movies are detected correctly as movies, but the metadata is inconsistent. In some cases, Infuse will ignore the embedded stuff and prioritize external data. This mostly happens to movies with the same title – Infuse will stick with the first hit from TMDb (I guess) and completely ignore my data. Sometimes it gets the wrong year. In all cases, the dashboard will show my embedded covers, but when I tap a movie, it will display a downloaded cover.

All I want is a way to browse my iTunes library as-is. Is that even possible? Speaking of which, can Infuse support that? I mean directly accessing iTunes without resorting to SMB. I don’t believe I’m the only user managing a library with iTunes…

Thanks in advance!

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If the files have DRM then Infuse won’t be able to play them. Show iTunes Videos not working

Should have clarified this: I’m talking about my own rips/remuxes. All media is as compatible as it gets.

Not 100% sure if this addresses your question but in the upcoming features it addresses “Support iTunes file/folder TV show organization”

You can track it here Upcoming Features (updated 7/19/24)

I don’t think so – that’s probably support for loading files of TV episodes as they are organized by iTunes, not accessing the iTunes library directly, which is what I’d love to have.

Unfortunately, Infuse is not able to connect to iTunes directly to access your media. The connection will need to be done over SMB, or one of the other options.

In order to use Infuse’s library features, you will need to keep the Metadata Fetching option enabled. This can be used with the Embedded Metadata option, and Infuse will only fetch online info to fill in any missing gaps. However, fetching embedded metadata can be pretty slow, so we almost always recommend keeping this off unless you have a specific need.

If you find Infuse has matched a few of your titles incorrectly, you can use the Edit option to search for the correct title. A bit more info on doing this can be found here.

I don’t really need to fetch any metadata. But that’s the main issue: whenever I disable fetching metadata, every movie I have is detected as “Other”. Why is that happening? I’d have to review and match all ~600 movies manually! Doesn’t make much sense.

Is this a bug or by design? You can see the metadata from one my movies in the attached screenshot (using Subler), which was detected as “Other”. It would seem this always happens whenever local metadata is used. Can’t you decide the type of media using that “Media Kind” property?

Unfortunately, Infuse does not currently recognize the ‘Media Kind’ tag.

It seems like a reasonable idea, so I’m going to move this over to suggestions for now.

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This would be great!!!
So we can „create“ TV-Shows without the need of the TVDB ??

Excellent. This would avoid the need to fetch any metadata and allow us to rely exclusively on local metadata.

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Any updates?

Welcome to the forum!

You can see what new features are in the queue here Upcoming Features (updated 7/19/24)

Hello,

I have seen similar posts to this topic. I too am coming from an iTunes large library and looking to switch to infuse.

All of my media already has all required sorting information in standard metadata tags.
I would like to Not use the infuse function for auto-downloading any metadata and rather simply switch on the embedded metadata option and have it all work.
Like another post I saw, all of my media already has gone through Subler and had completely accurate metadata set in all of the standard tags.
So everything is already marked as Movie or TV Show or home movie etc. Can Infuse recognize that?
All of the TV shows are already marked with a series name, season number, and episode number. Can Infuse recognize that?

Just like the other post, I do not want to resort to writing custom scripts to generate xml files, or rename all of my files to the Infuse naming format, or even group everything into folder structures. All of that information is already in the standard metadata tags.

Infuse can already read some metadata tags. Can these few extra tags be added so that users with existing, large, curated, cleanly tagged libraries do not have to perform any additional steps for Infuse to properly ingest the media; it could just work.

I am happy to provide specifics regarding the tags (buy they are just the standards recognized by iTunes) and work with testing or whatever is needed.

Thank you

Ben

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Could you list the tags? I think it would be helpful. The subler page doesn’t list them neither in docs nor FAQs section. Probably because they are long standardized so they are well known, but it would be helpful anyway I think.

I also don’t understand why this is hard.

Hello,

Some Meta Tag information.

I provide two examples, one TV show and one movie.

(note, this relates to h264 mp4 video files. I have not had time to examine h265, mkv container, or other options. However, as the primary topic is transferring from iTunes, that would be h264 mp4 anyway)

I tried to list the common tags. First, subler is used to identify and tag the file. Those common subler tags are listing under the Subler Common Tags heading.
Then, just for reference, the VLC Common Tags section shows how VLC recognized those subler tags. (inside brackets are how vlc labels it)
Then, how iTunes recognizes the tags.

After that, I identified what I would think are the few critical tags that would provide the most usefulness.

By supporting the standard/critical tags, Infuse could easily categorize the display of media based on embedded metadata only.

This would allow users to disable metadata fetching and leverage years of their work organizing their collection how they see fit. There are many examples of shows and movies that do not work well with auto-metadata fetching and must be manually adjusted. These manual adjustments should be saved as metadata in the file in a standard way (such as subler, vlc, and itunes all recognize) and be read by other programs such as Infuse.

Also, there are many Infuse customers that do not have the luxury of seemingly unlimited internet bandwidth and may be on metered connections, or even in a remote location without internet. Those customer do not deserve to be excluded. Fetching metadata is not something they want, or can, do. Infuse is a great tool that allows alternatives to streaming media for the vast number of people without access to luxury bandwidth by creating a local network video system. The metadata feature of Infuse should follow this concept.

Infuse being able to support existing metadata would be a valuable feature for many customers. I would even be happy if that feature is behind the Infuse paywall.

Thank you

** TV SHOW EXAMPLE **

  • Subler Common Tags *
    Name: The Interview
    Artist: MASH
    Album Artist: M
    ASH
    Album: MASH, Season 4
    Media Kind: TV Show
    Genre: Comedy
    Release Date: 1976-02-24
    Track #: 24/0
    TV Show: M
    ASH
    TV Episode #: 24
    TV Network: CBS
    TV Episode ID: 424
    TV Season: 4
    Description: Clete Roberts introduces this segment as…
    Long Description: Clete Roberts introduces this segment as…
    Series Description: The 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is stuck in…
    Rating: USA TV: TV-PG
    Cast: Jamie Farr, Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, William…
    Director: Larry Gelbart
    Screenwriters: Larry Gelbart
    {and an embedded image for cover art}

  • VLC Common Tags *
    Name [Title]: The Interview
    Artist [Artist]: MASH
    Release Date [Date]: 1976-02-24 [1976]
    TV Show [Artist]: M
    ASH
    TV Episode # [Track number]: 24
    Description: Clete Roberts introduces this segment as…
    {and an embedded image for cover art}

  • iTunes Common Tags *
    Name [title]: The Interview
    [sort as]: Interview
    Album Artist [album artist]: MASH
    Media Kind [media kind]: TV Show
    Genre [genre]: Comedy
    Release Date [release date]: 1976-02-24
    [year]: [1976]
    Track # [track]: 24/0 [24]
    TV Show [show]: M
    ASH
    [sort as]: MAS*H
    TV Episode # [episode]: 24
    TV Episode ID [episode id]: 424
    TV Season [season]: 4
    Description [Short Description]: Clete Roberts introduces this segment as…
    Long Description [Full Description]: Clete Roberts introduces this segment as…
    {and an embedded image for cover art}

** MOVIE EXAMPLE **

  • Subler Tags *
    Name: The Ring
    Artist: Alfred Hitchcock
    Media Kind: Movie
    HD Video: 1080p
    Genre: Mystery
    Release Date: 1927-10-01
    Description: Both Jack Sander and Bob…
    Long Description: Both Jack Sander and Bob…
    Studio: British International Pictures
    Cast: Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, Ian…
    Director: Alfred Hitchcock
    Producers: John Maxwell
    Screenwriters: Alfred Hitchcock
    Sort Name: Hitchcock 1927
    {and an embedded image for cover art}

  • iTunes Tags *
    Name [title]: The Ring
    [sort as]: Hitchcock 1927
    Artist: Alfred Hitchcock
    Media Kind [media kind]: Movie
    HD Video: 1080p
    Genre [genre]: Mystery
    Release Date [year]: 1927-10-01 [1927]
    Description [Short Description]: Both Jack Sander and Bob…
    Long Description [Full Description]: Both Jack Sander and Bob…
    Studio [studio]: British International Pictures
    Cast [actors]: Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, Ian…
    Director [director]: Alfred Hitchcock
    [sort as]: Alfred Hitchcock
    Producers [producer]: John Maxwell
    Screenwriters [screenwriter]: Alfred Hitchcock
    Sort Name: Hitchcock 1927
    {and an embedded image for cover art}

** CRITICAL TAGS **

  • Critical Tags *
    Name [title]: The Interview
    [sort as]: Interview
    Media Kind [media kind]: TV Show
    media kind: { Music Video | Movie | Home Video | TV Show | Podcast }
    Genre [genre]: Mystery
    Release Date [release date]: 1976-02-24
    TV Show [show]: MASH
    [sort as]: M
    ASH
    TV Episode # [episode]: 24
    TV Season [season]: 4
    {and an embedded image for cover art}

Hi @james. Was there any fixes? I have the same issue, I have a iTunes folder with TV show / Season subfolders and embedded iTunes style metadata in each episode video.

I also have both options enabled. The result is seasons missing, unknown TV shows in library, mess.
If I force use local metadata on favourite folder, seasons info get lost, and episode names are like “S01 4”, not the “title” in file’s metadata.

Do you support iTunes style metadata parsing? My use case is coming from perfectly organised iTunes TV/Movies collection, I used Home Sharing till now.

I am loving all the improvements to Infuse 4 for tvOS and iOS. But as most of TV and Films have embedded metadata.

Would it be possible for Infuse to read more than just the ep name / synopsis from the file itself? Things like cast list, background image, sort info etc.

Also, as most of TV shows where originally tagged for iTunes they have square artwork. Would it possible for Infuse to support different shaped artwork?

Keep up the good work and looking forward to 4.1 :slight_smile:

I just downloaded Infuse because Home Sharing has become intolerably unreliable. Like in a few other threads I have a substantial library all tagged by Subler for iTunes.

Infuse is still ignoring the vast majority of embedded metadata and dumping everything in to “other.” I guess this was never fixed? All the info I found on these forums are more than a year and a half old. Is it somehow not possible to read all the data correctly? The online metadata isn’t recognizing anything either.

I’m not about to rename hundreds of file and completely overhaul my file structure. I’m trying to limit the amount of hassle I’m dealing with.

Any info would be great. Thanks!

Kinda starting to feel like this issue is either not fixable or any sort of priority. That’s a shame, I was really hoping for a better player for the Apple TV.