A little while ago I reviewed the app VideoDrive, which helped me to manage my 800+ TV show episodes. About a month ago the developer of a similar app, iFlicks, approached me via email and asked me to test out his application.

Needless to say, to have a dev ask me to do that honors me quite a bit and I promptly downloaded the app and gave it a swirl.

Result in a nutshell: for my day-to-day movie management I have switched to iFlicks. It suits some of my needs better than VideoDrive, but I need to stress that I regard both apps as superb. Which one you prefer depends on your personal workflow.

Setup

It took me a while to understand all the options iFlicks offers, so I will detail it here. I guess that my familiarity with VideoDrive blocked some of my thinking. The developer of iFlicks was very patient and helpful in explaining all the different settings to me.

You will probably need to install Perian to make sure QT and iFlicks can handle all your video formats.

First of all, you need to decide where you want to store your video files and in which format you want to store them. iFlicks can move your files to your preferred location, it can reference existing files and it can re-code files to a format that is supported by the iPod or Apple TV natively.

In my case, I have my video library on an external hard drive. I want them there and I don’t want to use reference files anymore. I want iTunes to use the files directly without going through a lengthy recoding process; I want them perfectly tagged without me having to fine tune information and I want all that automated. (I never claimed I am a user who can be easily satisfied ;) ).

In the preferences pane, iFlicks offers the following choices for import:

Interestingly, iFlicks offers you to set up your import in the preferences as well as in the main window. If you put your videos all in the same folder, you only need to set up your directories once. If you are a control freak like me who likes stuff neat, in separate folders and sub-folders, you will love the import options in the main window: the little menus on the left of the menu bar give you the exact same choices from within the main window, so if you are importing different episodes from different shows and/or seasons – and let’s throw in a movie for the fun of it – you can set the destination and format right from here. Convenience WIN! :)

Another word of caution: if you do not want your movie files to be moved into the iTunes library, you need to uncheck this preference in iTunes itself as well!

Why Quicktime format?

As you can see, I have chosen the option to put my files into a QT container. I’ve had some lengthy email discussions with the developer before I made that move. I usually encode my files as .m4v files, with high quality settings. I didn’t see how this option could add any value to my workflow. In addition, I was under the wrong impression that iFlicks would recode my files – and that was the last thing I wanted.

But the dev explained to me that iFlicks simply puts the existing movie file – may it be .avi, .mkv , .m4v or whatever you throw at it – into the QT container to make it a) readable for iTunes (if the format is not natively supported) and to store additional meta information. In the end, I benefit from more information to each episode, readability of the file by iTunes and QT alike and I can get rid of my ‘referencing’ habit.

Import

Now that you are all set you can start your import by simply dragging your video files onto the iFlicks icon in the dock or into the iFlicks window. Depending on the number of your files and the speed of your internet connection, it may take a couple of seconds up to a minute for iFlicks to get all the meta-information. It accesses themoviedb.org and TheTVDB.com – and this is were it beats VideoDrive for me. The information on those pages are much more detailed and up-to-date than the information on imdb.com, where VideoDrive gets the info from.

As you can see, iFlicks took the file name (I always name my files “SHOWNAME S0xExx NAME OF EPISODE”) and automatically obtained the relevant information. Generally this works out perfectly. But if you want, you can still make all the adjustments you like.

Select the file you want to edit and then hit the small toothed circle on the left of the bottom bar.

It will bring up a window showing all the detailed information which are going to be included in your file:

You can edit everything here. I, for one, don’t like that LOST is tagged as SciFi, so I remove that – and I add a cover image of my choice. You can either drag the image into the window or use the “+” button just beneath it to add a new image.

Of course you can also edit the information of multiple files at once! Select the files in the iFlicks main window and then hit that little gear wheel again. The window coming up will contain less information than that of a single file because it only shows the information all files have in common. You could change the season number for many files at once, for example. I use it to assign a new cover image to all LOST episodes from season 3 at once.

While iFlicks is usually pretty accurate in getting the show information, there may be times when you have to help the app pick the right show. I follow the new Battlestar Galactica but iFlicks doesn’t know that. So it picks the information for the original series.

Not good, but very easy to fix – in two ways, actually.

Approach 1: select the files in question from the main window, then hit the tiny arrow icon on the lower menu (third from right). It will bring up a window where you can chose from shows that are named alike. In my case, that would be “Battlestar Galactica (2003)”.

Approach 2: select the files in the main window, hit the gear wheel icon and type in the correct name in the “show” field, then hit the “Reload” button at the bottom of the window. This of course only makes sense when you know the correct name of the show. This second approach is also a time saver if you want to change more than just the name of the show – since you are already in the details window, you can make more changes right away for all marked files.

The same procedure applies to movie files.

If you told iFlicks to ask for every file where to save, it will pop up a window every time it tackles a new file. Another little window shows you the progress of the import.

If you already have files imported into iTunes that you want to tag, just use the script “Update selected using GUI” from the script menu. (Dev, could you please rename that to something like “…using iFlicks”? VideoDrive has a similar script name and it’s forever confusing ;) ). A window like the details windows pictured above pops up and lets you check and edit the data before the file is tagged. Neat.

Issues and benefits

Nothing is perfect, and so is this app. There are some minor difficulties which I am sure the developer will address sooner or later.

For one, while I was still using my Macbook 2Ghz CD 2GB RAM (late 2006), the app caused a high RPM on my fans. I have no idea why, I can only guess that the application needed more juice. On my iMac 2.4Ghz C2D 4GB RAM (not the newest 2009 model) it runs absolutely smoothly.

A quirk which I will report to the dev as soon as he’s back from vacation is that – if you have “Delete original files after import” enabled – iFlicks will move the original file into the trash even if it encountered an error during the import or tagging and therefore did not create a new file within a QT container. It will inform you about the error during the process so you will know that you should look into your trash before emptying it, but I’d prefer that iFlicks would leave the file in its place. Funnily enough, dragging the file into iFlicks once more usually leads to a perfect import.

If your movie library is rather large and on an external hard drive, importing and tagging files can take a while. I have some 920+ TV episodes by now (no, I didn’t get around watching all of them yet, I do have a life :P ), so my iTunes library file naturally is not the smallest either. I hope the dev will find a way to work faster with a library that large. It doesn’t take a  terrible lot longer, but of course I prefer faster to slower. VideoDrive has a small advantage here, it’s faster.

None of these issues is critical though, and the developer is very, very responsive. After testing the app for the first time I complained that there was no option to manually change the cover image. For me that is VERY important (hey, I am a designer and Apple user, how could I not go for the looks?!). Believe it or not, about a week later (or less?) he provided me with a new release that had that feature. Now, that’s what I call service. He’s just as responsive and helpful as the dev of VideoDrive, with the additional benefit that the iFlicks developer is German and can provide support in German and English – for only-German speakers this might be important (and I am wondering what use this report will be to them … *sigh* … I see a translation coming up behind me).

So, why use this app? Of course, you can import your files into iTunes manually, with VideoDrive or with some of the scripts that float around on the web. If your video library only consists of a few files (that can be read by iTunes), the manual approach will probably work best for you.

But if you have a large library and want all the available information stored alongside your files (without having to add them all manually), an app like iFlicks or VideoDrive is perfect for you. I love the tons of additional information I can get through iFlicks; that’s the main reason I prefer it now over VideoDrive. So, give it a try and see if it can something to your workflow.

Standard disclaimer: I am not associated with the dev or the company. I was approached to do a test and maybe a review. After my initial feedback, the dev was so nice to gift me a copy of iFlicks for the effort I had put in (really not that much) – which I really appreciate. I could do that more often :D

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