iTunes is a great media management tool on Mac which can store your music and videos. The only issue is that the supported format is limited and your personal videos need to be converted to that format.
iFlicks 2 is a great supportive software for the iTunes media management, which you can get from Mac App Store. It is not only a video file converter but also updates the metadata so you can get a great look for your videos in iTunes.
[youtube src=”G-iDE4Wzu64″ title=”iFlicks 2 Video Review” duration=”T7M58S”]
iFlicks 2 has some great features which you need to manage your video collection. Lets take a looks at some of the features of iFlicks 2.
Video File Conversion
iFlicks 2 can convert any video in iTunes supportive format and the conversion process is very fast. There are some pre defined formats in the application, which can be used to convert video files.
I like the iTunes Compatible mode, which converts the video in M4V format.
It doesn’t try to convert the full video, it just tries to put the actual file in different container so that iTunes can understand the format. It doesn’t loose the quality of the videos and save a lot of time.
M4V is like a shell over the original videos and takes very less time for most of the formats.
I have used the conversion for MKV and AVI formats. MKV conversion is really fast, it is almost as good as having MP4 file.
It takes less than a minute to convert 700MB file MKV file in M4V format, which is best in most of the video conversion software.
AVI format takes some time to be converted but its not in range of 30-40 min, most of the files can be converted within 20 min range.
There are other formats also like iPad, iPhone, Apple TV compatible formats. If you own those devices, you can use those formats.
Metadata Update
iFlicks 2 supports the auto update to metadata. It supports Movies and TV Shows, gets the square artwork from Squared TV.
Good thing is that the metadata is lineup for iTunes and it can make your videos look great in iTunes.
You have the complete control of the metadata and can also update it before finalizing the video file conversion.
It has full support for Artwork and not only it automatically fetch the artwork, it also provides lot of options, so that you can select which one to use.
It adds all the actors, tags, genres for the video and adds them automatically to iTunes.
If you use it to get the metadata for the TV shows, you need to make sure that the show name is understandable. The preferred name is “showname.season.episode”, but you can have some close variations and it is able to understand.
[box]If you have many shows than check the Mac Automator Service to rename multiple files.[/box]
But if you do not get the automatic metadata update than just update the name and you can refresh the metadata.
Metadata is fetched from The Movies Database, Online TV Database and as long as name is matched correctly, it will fetch the correct metadata.
Preferences
It has some general settings, which can be set once, and every conversion will use these settings.
You can set the default preset, optimize for streaming, and add it to iTunes after conversion.
You can also set it to delete the source file, which will move the source file to trash. I like to use this setting with Add to iTunes settings, as the file has already been copied into iTunes.
You can select the default language and country for content rating, which is good if you want to use anything other than English and USA for those.
Rules
This is one of the best features of iFlicks 2, you can setup rules to do almost anything.
Like, you want to set the filenames in some order or want to name to be in certain way, you can set the rule to do it.
For example, I use DLNA media server to stream my media in my house and want my TV Shows to have episode number in the name of the episode.
I have setup a rule and now every episode I convert with iFlicks 2, will have episode number to it. It helps to sort it correctly on the DLNA client.
It uses the similar structure as Mac Automator, so if you are familiar with Mac Automator, you can edit the rules easily.
Watch Folders
Another nice feature is automation through watch folder. You can add videos in those watch folder and it will be automatically converted.
You can add multiple watch folder and automate your conversion efforts. All the automatic conversion can be handled through Rules.
iFlicks 2 Apple Script Support
If you still want to do more with the application, you can use Apple scripts to do it.
Though it might not be useful for everybody but it has complete support for Apple script, which can be used to customize most of the work.
With all these features iFlicks 2 is a great video file conversion software and metadata editor for iTunes. If you are looking to manage your personal collection, than get it from Mac App Store.
