1. How does VideoDrive add metadata to my videos?
VideoDrive is ideally suited to add additional information (metadata) to your videos, including the name, genre, release date, viewers rating, description and much more. There are two ways to add this information: automatically and manually. When adding metadata automatically, VideoDrive analyzes your video file names, folder structure and QuickTime annotations to determine the right information. Additionally, VideoDrive will look on the Internet to get missing information. Alternatively, you can use the Metadata Editor: you are in control of specifying every piece of information.
2. How does VideoDrive process movies when using Automatic Metadata?
Next, the name will be cleaned (if the option ‘clean file and folder names’ is checked) and used to browse for additional metadata online (if the ‘Search Online’ options are checked) . If your file or folder names are heavily polluted it is possible that VideoDrive will identify the movie incorrectly and retrieve the wrong metadata. Therefore, it is best to enable the option to ‘ask confirmation before saving information found online’. When all videos are imported and online information is retrieved, VideoDrive will present you with the found information where you have to ability to accept, reject, edit or search again.
3. How does VideoDrive process TV shows when using Automatic Metadata?
Videos will be identified as TV Shows if and only if season and episode numbering is present in the file name or folder name. The numbering must be present in the file name in one of the supported formats (for example S01E04, 01x04 or 01-04 to indicate episode 4 of season 1; or 01.01.2001 to indicate the air date). The part before the numbering is considered to be the show name, the part after the numbering is the episode name. Note that if show or episode name are ‘polluted’ with unwanted text fragments, the option ‘clean up file and folder names’ allows to clean these fragments out.
As an example, consider the following videos that are to be imported. They will all be added as Movies, except the four Lost episodes and the one Prison Break episode, which will be identified correctly as TV Shows.
If the file name does not contain enough information to correctly identify TV Shows, there is an alternative. If the name of the folder the video is stored in, contains the word ‘Season’ the video will also be identified as a TV Show. In that case, the show name is taken from the folder one level up, the season number is retrieved from the folder and the episode number is determined by counting the files in the folder. In the example below, the six videos will be added as episodes 1 to 6 of season 1 of Prison Break. The name of the episodes will be equal to the respective file names. Any possible season or episode information in the name will be disregarded (e.g. video S01E03 will be added as episode 5 instead of episode 3 because it is the fifth file).
As a conclusion: make sure your TV Shows contain correct season and episode information in their file name, or put them in a subfolder starting with the name ‘Season’ and make sure they are ordered correctly according to their name in Finder. If you have to start renaming all your videos, consider using the ‘Manual Metadata’ option of VideoDrive as it will most likely be less work.
4. How does VideoDrive process videos when using Manual Metadata?
If you want full control over the information that is added to your videos, you can use the ‘Use manual metadata’ option. Click the ‘Metadata Editor’ button to add all information for the videos you are about to add. Note that all videos you are going to add will end up with the same data (except for their name of course). You can also enable automatic season and episode numbering. VideoDrive will number your TV Shows according to how they are arranged in Finder. Each new subfolder is seen as a new season, and each video file as a new episode. They are numbered according to their alphabetical order in Finder. For instance, a video named ‘Lost S2E5.avi’ will only be numbered as season 2, episode 5, if it is the fifth video in the second folder it encounters.
5. How do Metadata Presets work?
If you find yourself typing in the same metadata in the Metadata Editor, or you want to make sure that all episodes of your TV shows get the same metadata and artwork, you’ll fine Presets very handy!
Creating presets: save the info you added in the Metadata Editor as a preset by clicking ‘save as preset’. Or save the metadata found online by clicking ‘save as preset’ when VideoDrive asks you to confirm the found metadata. These presets are dynamic: the next time they are loaded, VideoDrive will check for online updates and also download the individual TV show episodes (if applicable).
Loading presets: manually load presets in the Metadata Editor by clicking ‘load preset’. Or if you use automatic metadata, VideoDrive can load the correct preset by itself. For this, it compares the name of the preset with the name of the video you are processing. Note that only presets saved in the Presets folder (located in Application Support/VideoDrive) can be loaded automatically.
6. Can VideoDrive add individual descriptions for each TV Show episode?
Yes. Select ‘Automatic Metadata’ in the VideoDrive Preferences. Click the ‘Automatic Preferecnes’ button and make sure the option ‘Search for individual TV Show episode information’ on the TV Show Preferences tab is checked.
