HD-SD Tag: Having HD and SD movies in iTunes

When ripping movies, it can be a compromise about whether to go for a suitable file size and resolution for your iPhone or iPad versus being able to watch something in reasonable quality on your Mac or Apple TV box.

Well, now you can have your cake and eat it! If you download an HD movie in iTunes, it also comes with a SD version for your portable device. Well, when you rip your own, you can set them up in iTunes to mirror that functionality! Cool eh! Here's how:

BTW - big shout out to XeonSSX and his tutorial video on YouTube as well as trockenshaf who contributed a useful comment on that posting. This article is based on those ideas

To start, you will need;

• Subler (http://code.google.com/p/subler/)
• iTunes (already on your Mac OSX)

You will also need two copies of your movie of TV programme, one in a suitable HD format and one in the SD format you want for your portable device (my previous article has some help in getting to that stage).

(1) Open Subler. From the File > Open menu choose the two versions of the movie or TV program and open them up. In each version go to File / Import / Search Metadata Online... and find the movie information you are after

You will now have two Subler windows looking something like this:

(3) Set the windows side by side so you can see them both.

(4) In the HD window, select the menu icon from the bottom left hand corner of the screen

Then choose the "contentID" category

Once the contentID is displayed in Subler's main window, type in the number "287750828" (without the quote marks).

<UPDATE 17/02/2014 - with the metadata coming from iTunes, it should automatically set the ContentID. If not, then you can follow the procedure above and choose a random 8 digit number to assign it.>

(5) Repeat this process in the SD window.

(6) Go back to the HD window, and open "Other Settings". Make sure you set the "Media Kind" correctly and tick the "HD Video" box

(7) Repeat in the SD window, but don't tick the "HD Video" box

<UPDATE 17/02/2014 - the new version of Subler is a drop down box with either 720p or 1080p - but it's the same principle. Just set it to the correct HD setting, rather than ticking a box.>

(8) Save the changes File > Save

(9) Locate the files in Finder and drag them into your iTunes window (I like to have the view set in the section I am adding the files to so I can see what's going on)

<UPDATE 17/02/2014 - step (9) doesn't always work. You randomly get either the HD or SD version, but not both. This seems to be an iTunes 11 issue. Here's how to get round it:

(a) Copy the SD version over to iTunes (using the Import menu or dragging and dropping).
(b) Once this has copied over hold down the Alt / Option key and drag over the HD version. After a few seconds, the SD-HD icon will appear
(c) Right-click the movie and click on 'Consolidate files...'. This will then copy over the HD version of the movie into your iTunes folder.

Don't ask why this happens and why this fix works, all I know is it does!.>

(10) The files will be copied to iTunes and you will see the HD-SD tag displayed

<UPDATE 17/02/2014 - in iTunes 11 you can't see the HD-SD tag unless you look at the List view. This is super-annoying, but another 'improvement' Apple have made!

>

The HD copy will play on your Mac and Apple TV, the SD on your portable device!

I'm afraid I don't know any alternatives to Subler for Windows and Linux users. The important thing is to find software that alters that "contentID" tag.

If anyone finds something suitable, please let me know!