IPad – iTunes share Library not Loading Correctly

It's all about the metadata ‚ the track information stored in each media file.

A while back I had this problem with TV Shows ripped from DVD not displaying correctly, or not in the proper sort order, on my iPad. When I compared the metadata for my home-brewed files with those from files of episodes purchased from the the iTunes store, I discovered some differences. The solution that worked for me was to correct the metadata using the info pane for the media files in iTunes.

To get started, open iTunes, select one of the TV episode files that's giving you problems, and press ⌘ + i (or choose Get Info from the file menu).

Start with the Info tab. Ideally your metadata will look something like this, with obvious differences (unless your file happens to be the same episode of The Big Bang Theory):

Note that the track number corresponds to the episode number

Not all devices use the Info metadata for sorting though, your next stop is the Video tab:

Episode ID could also be expressed as S2E8 but I prefer the cleaner, numerical method.

Next, visit the Options tab to confirm that the Media Type is set to TV Show:

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To assure consistency, you can select multiple files and edit common fields, such as Album (in the Info tab) or Show (in the Video tab) all at once.

Finally, it's sometimes useful to make change the criteria that iTunes uses to sort your media. You have guessed by now that the Sorting tab is the key to this operation:

In the example above, alphabetical sorts by episode will place this episode with the L episodes, not in the T's. This is useful for Movies, shows or bands beginning with The.

The laborious process of manually entering metadata for TV Episodes is the main reason for my using iVI to import DVDs.

I have sometimes have similar issues accessing iTunes libraries from AppleTVs. Sometimes I have better luck using a WiFi rather than Ethernet connection.

Also, have you tried assigning your AppleTVs static IP addresses (assuming you use DHCP?)