Thanks Neil and Ronni for your comments Ronni said (in email prior to this one from Neil) "Just to make sure you are clear what the iTunes Library files you are thinking of restoring are." Key point! I am NOT sure of where the problem lies or what the iTunes files do. Thus I will take Ronni's final recommendation to restore the whole iTunes folder from Time Machine. (I might experiment with some individual files first.) I will do some further research to improve my understanding of the processes. Thanks also to Ronni for her explanation of the three files I mentioned, and why the XML file is not backed up.
Neil, I apologise for not making a clear explanation of the problem. I will spell it out here and hope it is helpful and explain why your suggestions don't seem to be relevant in my case. I have purchased music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books and iTunesU items from Apple. These all appear in their respective "libraries" accessed in the left column of iTunes. Each library can be viewed with four options: song list, album list, grid , and cover flow. All my purchased items live in their default Media files on the internal drive of the iMac. Because they are "physical" files, they can be seen with Finder in their respective folders under 'Music' etc. I also have a collection of movies sourced from camcorder, DVDs, eyeTV, etc. These are all stored on an external hard drive. To view them on Apple TV, I copy the LINK (not the gigabyte files) to iTunes. This is a standard documented facility. All these linked files display in the iTunes app - I generally use the "song list" option to see what is there as the sort columns are useful. Because they are not physical files within the iTunes folder hierarchy, they obviously cannot be viewed by Finder in the Media folder area. I have added some of my personal movies to the iTunesU and Podcast libraries to keep the subject matter together. This is convenient when navigating Apple TV so that all "astronomy" videos, for example, are in the same menu with the purchased Apple iTunesU lessons. The standard "album" tag in iTunes songs (or movies) denotes the parent folder for the iTunesU "Collection" - that is, the individual course or subject. I do all my tag editing within iTunes using standard Apple methods. Possibly a third party tagging app could amend tags directly at source which would avoid the subsequent pain I've endured. iTunes will not permit a file to be option-copied as a duplicate. No messages, just no action. This can be handy as a pointer that the file must exist in iTunes somewhere. I linked (option copied) 3 movies from the external drive to iTunes. Default copy location is the Movie library. I normally edit the tags within iTunes as appropriate, but this time I left the "album" field blank. So somewhere in iTunes is a blank folder with 3 virtual movie files, all tagged as iTunesU items. There is no selectable "blank" collection when scanning the iTunes lists, and hence the movie files cannot be selected and tags edited. The files are there somewhere because they display on the Apple TV menu as a separate group without a collection title. Being efficient, iTunes had written the (blank) tags back to the files on the external hard drive. During testing I physically copied one of the movies to iTunes. This file was not visible in the iTunes app, but now being a "real" file inside iTunes media, it could be located by Finder in the Media folder. Because it had a blank tag, Apple created a default collection folder called "Unknown iTunesU" with the movie in it. Finder could see it and I later deleted this one copy. The 3 movies were deleted from the external drive using Finder. I can replace them later from backups and do the tags more carefully next time. Today I did a complete power shut down of iMac and Apple TV, unplugging all cords and disconnecting all peripherals, but this didn't remove the invisible folder and links. To have a clean database and app I need to delete the blank folder and 3 phantom movies in Tunes - probably by replacing the complete iTunes folder from Time Machine. Immediate restoration from Time Machine is not critical technically, but I shouldn't make any additions to iTunes until the issue is resolved. Thanks again to Ronni and Neil Cheers Alan On 26/04/2012, at 9:47 AM, Neil Houghton wrote: Hi Alan, These are just my "thoughts" on how I would first try to do this - I am far from an iTunes expert so I can't say that it would necessarily work ;o) As you know iTunes normally creates Artist folders and album folders you can see in Finder. My experience has been that if you change the artist or Album Tags for an album then iTunes will change the folders accordingly. So I would try and get to the point of being able to edit the tags in iTunes. I'm a little confused by one aspect of your post - on one hand you say: > The problem is how to REMOVE them from the unnamed iTunesU > collection as they don't display in iTunes or Finder. But then you say: > 1. I deleted the three incorrectly tagged movies from the external Firewire > drive. > 2. I deleted the full movie copy and its parent folder "Unknown iTunes U" > located under the normal "iTunes U" folder in iTunes Media. So how are you deleting them if you can't see them in Finder? Anyway, if you can "see" the movie files to delete them you should be able to "see" them to add them to the iTunes library? Since they are not currently showing in your iTunes library (because of the incorrect tagging) my first approach would be to use the iTunes "add to library" command and then navigate to where the movies are (you must know this or how could you delete them?) Onve you have added them, then you can edit the tags in itunes to get the result you want regarding organisation. Another alternative would be to select the movie file (again you must be able to select them to delete them?) and then right-click and use the "open with" to open the file in iTunes - then edit the Tags in iTunes. Or am I missing something? - quite possible ;o) Cheers Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: n...@possumology.com on 26/4/12 1:12 AM, Alan Smith at sma...@iinet.net.au wrote: > Hi Ronni > > This summarises the problem and action taken. iTunes "should" have > pointers to two movies in an external drive plus a full copy of a third movie > in the iTunesU library. These movies could not be located in the iTunes app > because I tagged them incorrectly. They display in the Apple TV menu so they > are in iTunes somewhere. I deleted some files/folders via Finder associated > with the full copy movie but am concerned that iTunes still has links > internally. > > I would like some guidance on proposed steps 5 to 7 below. > > 1. I deleted the three incorrectly tagged movies from the external Firewire > drive. > 2. I deleted the full movie copy and its parent folder "Unknown iTunes U" > located under the normal "iTunes U" folder in iTunes Media. > 3. I re-installed one movie and option-copied it to iTunes (and successfully > re-tagged it as an iTunesU file). > 4. iTunes app shut down and re-started. Apple TV still lists the three > (deleted) movies in its iTunesU menu. > 5. Tomorrow I propose re-installing two iTunes database files from Time > Machine on the premise that link data to external files has to be stored > somewhere. Files are "iTunes Library.itl" and "iTunes Library Extras.itdb". > The time shown in the date-modified field corresponds to the time I copied the > movies. > 6. A third iTunes database file "iTunes Music Library.xml" does not seem to > exist in Time Machine. The time shown in the date-modified field corresponds > to the time I copied the movies. Absence in T.M. is a worry! > 7. I have closed and restarted the iTunes app during the above steps but have > not done done a full power shut down of the iMac or Apple TV. Will do this > before trying the (partial) T.M. restore. Way too late to do it tonight. > > Cheers > Alan > > > > On 25/04/2012, at 4:47 PM, Alan Smith wrote: > > Hi Ronni > > As explained, I keep special movies in the iTunesU category. This is a > parallel level to "Movies" (or "TV Shows") categories. It works well- when > properly tagged. The problem is how to REMOVE them from the unnamed iTunesU > collection as they don't display in iTunes or Finder. I understand the > structure and tagging of the Movie and TV categories. Just to terrify you a > little - I also have one group of movies I keep in the Podcast category, but > nothing to do with the current problem! > > Cheers > Alan > > > On 25/04/2012, at 4:31 PM, Ronda Brown wrote: > > Hi Alan, > > Under Library in iTunes, the movies should show in “Movies” not iTunesU > shouldn’t they? > Perhaps that is why you are receiving “unknown iTunesU structure” in iTunes. > > All my iMovie or iPhoto slideshow movies & other movies, show in Movies in > iTunes and in Finder are located: > /Users/ronni/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Movies/xxxxx > > Movies generally just need the Title tag, and TV shows need Show, Season > Number, and Episode Number tags to keep them grouped together. > > Cheers, > Ronni > > 17" MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-Core i7 “Thunderbolt" > 2.3GHz / 8GB / 750GB @ 7200rpm HD > > OS X 10.7.3 Lion > Windows 7 Ultimate (under sufferance) > > > On 25/04/2012, at 3:02 PM, Alan Smith wrote: > >> Using iMac with OS X 10.6.8 and iTunes 10.6.1. >> >> I made a mistake while editing tags on 3 movies and now they are invisible in >> iTunes to both eyeballing and spotlight searching. >> >> Movies were created in iMovie and exported to an external Firewire drive. I >> normally Option-Copy links into iTunes so movies can be viewed on Apple TV >> without creating a physical copy of the movie. Copied movies appear by >> default in the Films library of iTunes. For this type of movie I change tags >> and classify the Media Kind as iTunesU. My mistake was to leave the Album >> tag blank, which I think is used to name the Collection field within iTunesU. >> >> iTunes tag data seems to have been written back to the real file on the >> Firewire drive. I can't re-do the links as iTunes ignores the file as if it >> already exists. No file path data shows in Finder for these linked movies. >> I copied a physical file into iTunes, but this is invisible too. However >> the physical file reveals a path in Finder ... ~/music /itunes /itunes media >> /itunesU /unknown iTunesU /filename. This Unknown iTunesU folder does not >> display as an iTuneU collection header. >> >> Movies can be seen in Apple TV. (!) This just shows the text "3 episodes" >> without a Collection title on a separate line to other iTunesU Collections. >> This infers I have an un-named Collection in iTunesU, but - - -. >> >> How can I access the movies in iTunes to fix the tags? How can I delete the >> invisible Unknown iTunesU structure in iTunes? I have older backups of the >> movies (with no iTunes tags) so they could replace the Firewire drive copies >> if necessary. >> >> Yes, another example of rushing a 5 minute task and spending hours to repair >> the damage. >> >> Regards, Alan >> >> Alan Smith >> iMac 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 4M - OSX 10.6.8 >> iPad2; ATV2 >> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
