Two Versions of a movie - only one can be spanned

informationen shared this problem 13 years ago
Solved

i got a move at the 12 days itunes feature and itunes loaded both versions (HD and SD, i only brought the HD) of the movie. So i have 2 files.


Tunespan seems to only see the HD version:


in finder after spanning the HD version it shows up like this:


i tunes you can switch the version (first screeshot). if you select "show in finder" it shows up the version you selected. But tunespan only finds the HD version, even if you reload Database after selecting the SD version in itunes.


Don't know if this can be fixed but wanted to report that.


In general tunespan works absolutely fine for me, many thanks.

Replies (3)

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Good catch, I will look into how I can solve this issue.


This is just one of those things I don't have in my library, so I never knew about the situation. Looks like I will need to get a video that has both SD and HD versions so that I can see how Apple lists the info in the "iTunes Music LIbrary.xml"


Thanks.

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So sorry it took me so long to look into this issue.


After 0.9.5 beta was released with a lot of rewriting and interface improvement, I finally took the time to sit down and figure this out, hoping to include a fix for this issue in 0.9.5.1 beta, but....


It turns out this is a limitation that iTunes is imposing and nothing (that I am aware of) can be done to properly span both SD and HD versions simultaneously through TuneSpan. I have included some very brief info about this limitation in the TuneSpan Help under the "Information about iTunes and its database." section.


But in more depth, here is what I discovered...


In the .xml library file that TuneSpan reads, iTunes only includes one listing for the movie. The information associated with the listing, such as the path and the flag whether it is HD or not is set depending on which version of the movie you have selected in iTunes. And when TuneSpan updates the path for the movie using the new spanning process in 0.9.5, the updated path only applies to the version of the movie that iTunes had selected at the time of the path. So, iTunes is internally keeping record of two locations, but TuneSpan has no way of being aware of both locations, or setting separate locations for each file simultaneously.


But, both versions of the movie can be spanned with a bit of manual assistance... if you are interested in doing this manual process, make sure to download the latest 0.9.5.1 beta (at http://tunespan.com or just get the latest on auto-update) which fixes a bug that could have caused problems with this technique.


So, after you have spanned one version of the movie, simply change the version in iTunes. So, say, if you have the "Default (HD)" selected, then select the "Standard Definition (SD)" for each movie you are spanning. Now, be sure to quit iTunes to ensure that the .xml database that TuneSpan reads has been updated with your changes.


Now, you can reload TuneSpan, either with the "Reload Database (shift+command+r)" option in the "Edit" menu, or by just quitting and relaunching TuneSpan to make sure the latest version of the .xml iTunes database is loaded.


At this point, TuneSpan will have updated the location for each of those movies with the path of the other version, and may consider them all restored, this is fine. Just select all your movies and span them.


Now, back in iTunes, you can change all of your movies back to whatever quality version you want to view them in and iTunes will know the spanned location for both versions. If you ever want to restore the movies to the original location or span them to another location, the some process will have to be performed.


Thanks so much for using TuneSpan, and so sorry this process couldn't be made easier.

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Everything I mentioned before still applies, but TuneSpan 0.9.6 beta (just released) brings a few minor changes that should make spanning multiple versions of a movie work better. TuneSpan is still only aware of whichever format is selected in iTunes, but TuneSpan will do a better job of switching between the formats as you change them in iTunes.

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