EyeTV & Album Artwork

Does anybody know of a good way to automate EyeTV (or another service) to grab album art for my TV recordings before or immediately after the file is imported into iTunes?

Right now EyeTV just grabs a screenshot from the video and overlays some generic "EyeTV" text.


I use my Apple TV to view my recorded content, and I'm tired of the lame album art when scrolling through my new TV Shows that have been recorded.

For anybody interested - I have figured out a way to do this.

My workflow includes:

1. EyeTV automatic export to iTunes
2. iTunes smart playlist grabs any new TV Shows or Movies added in the last 24 hours
3. Automator App runs every morning and grabs all of the files listed in the smart playlist and sends them to iFlicks
4. iFlicks is set up in "iTunes Compatible", "Current Location", "Add to iTunes Off", and "Automatic Delete Off".

This will automatically update the album art, along with other nice metadata that wasn't necessarily captured by EyeTV when it was recorded.

iFlicks allows you to set unique rules to be used on any file during import, and I've had to do this several times for certain TV Shows in order to grab the correct metadata from thetvdb.com. For example, for episodes of The Office, you have to rename the show as "The Office (US)". You can also specify the exact album art to be used if you are not satisfied with the one iFlicks select. All of these rules are automatic as well, so it's truly a hands-off system.

But so far it works quite well. I'm happy with the solution.
Edited by drummerjoe - 11/5/12 at 9:34am

Cliff, I can post the details later tonight.

Below is the Applescript that I run.

Refresh2 = My Smart Playlist of videos imported from EyeTV in the last 7 days
CMD + A = selects all files in the playlist
CMD + Shift + f = Unique keyboard shortcut that I created to call the service "Automatically Update Metadata of Selected Tracks" which should have been installed automatically when you install iFlicks

---
on run {input, parameters}

tell application "iTunes"
activate
set the view of the front browser window to playlist "Refresh2"
delay 1.0

tell application "System Events"
key down {command}
keystroke "a"
key up {command}

delay 1.0

key down {command}
key down {shift}
keystroke "f"
key up {command}
key up {shift}

end tell

end tell
return input
end run
---

Very nice. I'm glad it worked for you!

Nice! I'll have to roll that update into my automator app later this weekend.

If I could figure out how to display rectangular tv show art on the Apple TV, it would make my week! But I think it's a lost cause. Every jailbreak and hack I can find just injects new apps onto the Apple TV and doesn't actually modify it.

Have you played around with a comskipper or anything like that?

Ok - good to know. I've read about it but it seemed to be quite a hassle with limited success.