MetaX is a Windows program for tagging movie and TV episode files with metadata: titles, descriptions, cast, genres, ratings, season and episode numbers, chapters and cover art. iTunes, Apple TV and other media players read those tags when they list a library. A file tagged in MetaX therefore appears with its poster and episode details instead of a bare filename. The program is shareware: an unregistered copy can tag five files, and further tagging needs a registration code.
MetaX opens MP4, M4V, MOV, MKV, ASF, WMV and AVI files. AVI is the weak spot, because the format cannot hold most tags, cover art included.
Searching online databases for tags
MetaX fills in tags by looking a title up in online sources. MetaX can match movies and series against TheTVDB, TheMovieDB, iTunes and IMDb. You can also run separate poster and cover-art searches. The first search term comes from the existing title tag or, if that is empty, from the filename without its path and extension. With autosearch on, the lookup starts as soon as you open or select a file. Otherwise, you press Go.
Results appear in a list. Choosing one copies its data into the tag panes. You can still edit every field by hand before writing anything. Each field also has a checkbox. Checking a field locks it against overwriting. This lets you take the description from one result and the cast or artwork from another. You can switch sources on or off and put them in a preferred order. You can also change the lookup language for TheMovieDB and TheTVDB.
MetaX can also read existing catalog data instead of searching online. It imports MyMovies XML files and NFO files kept beside the video, including the cover image stored with them.
Editing the tag panes
The tags are spread across tabs. Info holds the title, artist, genres, short and long descriptions and cover art. Video sets the media kind (movie, TV show, music video or short film) along with the show name, season and episode. Sorting controls the sort names iTunes uses, so a title can be filed differently from how it is displayed. Character counters warn when a description is longer than iTunes or Apple TV will display.
When you select several files together, MetaX shows only the fields they share. An edit there applies to all of them. Presets do something similar for series work: save the fields common to a show, apply them to every episode, then fill in the details that differ.
Ratings for parental controls
MetaX writes content ratings that media players use for parental controls. Along with standard ratings, it can set country-specific ratings for the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Ireland. The preferences decide which countries’ ratings are offered.
Tagging a whole TV season
Episodes are the case MetaX handles in bulk. You open all the files of a series and give each its season and episode number. You then select them together, search for the show name and pick the TheTVDB result. MetaX then applies each episode’s own title, description and artwork in one pass, even across several seasons.
Numbering is often automatic. When filenames follow a pattern such as S01E04, MetaX reads the season and episode from the name. You set the pattern as a regular expression in the preferences, so MetaX can recognize other naming schemes, such as 1×04, too.
Cover art and chapters
Cover art can come from a search result, a poster search, an image file on disk, a picture dragged or pasted from a web page, or a frame grabbed from the video itself.
The Chapters tab works with the chapter markers stored in a file. You can replace generic titles such as “Chapter 1” with real names. To do this, paste a numbered list of titles, with optional durations, or load a chapters XML file. Chapters can also be renamed, split at a point chosen with a slider, merged, deleted or reset to the file’s originals.
Writing files and renaming
Opened files sit in a write queue that shows each file’s status. MetaX writes only checked fields. A field that is checked but empty removes that tag from the file. MetaX can store every write in an archive. You can later restore all of a file’s fields from that archive.
Several preferences change what happens around the write:
- Filenames and titles can be rebuilt from tag data using placeholders for title, year, series, season, episode number and episode title.
- The untagged original can be kept as a backup, and tagged files can be moved to another folder, optionally deleting the source.
- Files can be optimized for streaming over a network, at the cost of a longer write.
- Tagged files can be sent to iTunes and to the MovieLibrary database automatically.
- For unattended runs, MetaX can answer confirmations itself and shut the computer down when the queue finishes.
An existing set of tags can also be copied in bulk. Copy Tags scans another folder for untagged files whose names match tagged ones, previews the changes and then transfers the tags.
