Data Pane

The data panes consist of four tabs: Info, Video, Advanced, Sorting and Chapters.

The Toggle button only toggles fields on the Info, Video and Chapters tabs.

Info tab

Most of the information on this tab is self-explanatory. A few notes:

Cover art - There are four ways to get cover art for the file
1. The result of a search (Amazon or tagChimp)
2. Yahoo Posters
3. From a file on your computer. You can either use the Select File button below the cover art, or drag the file onto the cover art picture.
4. You can drag and drop (or copy and paste) from a Website. A button is available to take you directly to the GetVideoArt website. Unless you're using IE 7 or later, you'll need to use copy and paste as drag and drop is not supported by this website.
Artist - There is a similar field on the Video tab called Cast. By using the "Link Artists <-> Actors" option these two fields will be kept in sync.
Genre - There is a listbox with standard genres. You can select multiple genres by using the control and/or shift keys, and if you do they will be listed separated by commas (e.g. Romantic, Comedy). You can also create your own genres to use by right clicking in the genres box. MetaX will remember this genre and it will appear in the list from then on. If you wish to clear the user created genres, there is an option to do so on the General preferences tab.
Descriptions - the short Description is what is displayed in iTunes, the long description is what is displayed on the Apple TV. I'm not sure which is used by Apple's Front Row. If the short description is greater than 255 characters it will not be displayed in iTunes. The Apple TV appears to only display the first 445 characters of the long description, but it varies depending on what other information is tagged in the file. MetaX will write however much you enter into these fields and will display it. This way you can create longer descriptions for use by other programs (such as MovieLibrary. If either of the two limits (255 or 445) is exceeded, the text in the box will turn blue and you will be notified that you have exceeded the limit. The actual number of characters in continually displayed, so you can see how much you need to trim.

Video Tab

There are several fields in the video tab that are required to have values. You must set a Video Kind (Movie, Music Video, Short Film, TV Show). If you select TV Show you must have a season number and an Episode #, both numeric.

Advanced Tab

I must admit I don't really know what these fields are used for. They were in the MetaX for the Mac program, so I have them as well.

Sorting Tab

These fields affect the way that the file is sorted in iTunes (not sure about Apple TV or Front Row). The columns on the left show the values currently set for the sortable fields, the columns on the right can be used to modify the fields that will be used to sort.

Chapters Tab

If you want to share your tagging information with tagChimp you will need to have chapter information with real titles (not Chapter 1, ...). It will not accept an entry without them.

Usually you will have chapters in the file created by your encoding tool (e.g. Handbrake), but the chapter titles will be non-descript (e.g. Chapter 1). Amazon.com does not carry chapter titles, but tagChimp usually does and can have durations as well. The tagChimp durations will override those in the file if there is a different number of chapters. If there are the same number of chapters, the file durations will be kept and only the titles will be copied over from tagChimp.

You can also manually edit the chapter info. You can click on a title or duration and enter it manually. You can also split a chapter (you will be given a slider to set where the split occurs), merge two chapters, delete a chapter or reset the chapters back to what was in the file.

Another way to get chapter information is by dragging and dropping or cutting and pasting text information that is in the format of a chapter per line, with each line having a chapter number followed by a "." followed by the chapter title, optionally followed by the duration in square brackets ([0:3:52]). The Barnes and Noble website is a good source for this information, so there is a B&N button on the chapters tab that will bring up the Barnes and Noble website in your browser searching for the movie title listed in the search box. You can then select the chapter information and drag and drop it into the chapters tab. If the number of chapters differs from those in the file, you will be asked if you want to override the file information. If you override the number of chapters, it will also use the duration information. If there is the same number of chapters in the text as in the file, it will only use the chapters and keep the durations present in the file. If you wish to override the durations as well, hold down the shift key when doing the drag and drop.

If you hold down the shift key when you click the B&N button, it will automatically get the chapter information. First it will display a list of the available entries, and when you click on one it will find the chapter information and enter it.