Use iFlicks to Fully Integrate Your Video Library with iTunes

If you do a lot of video or TV watching on your computer, chances are you may have purchased either a single episode of a television series or a movie via the iTunes Store. If so, then you're comfortable with the idea of having your video collection alongside your music collection in iTunes.

However, if you've never purchased a video from the iTunes Store, or if you get your movies or television shows elsewhere, then you're probably looking for a simple way to accomplish this. Even more, you're likely on the lookout for an easy way to edit video meta data, add artwork, and more.

Thanks to a program called iFlicks, this wish list item may just about be checked off.

The iFlicks software is a companion to iTunes, and works on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, along with iTunes (obviously), QuickTime and the Perian codec addon (which allows QuickTime to play many codecs and formats which would otherwise be unsupported). With those requirements installed, however, iFlicks lets you do a whole lot.

You can...

1. Import your video collection into iTunes. In addition to simply adding a movie/TV show to your iTunes Library, you can convert the video, then have it added automatically to your base video library, or to a specific playlist.

2. Convert your videos to different formats (right from the Scripts menu), with simple presets for your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV. This feature supports the iPod Nano (3rd and 4th generation), the iPod Classic (5th and 6th generation) and the iPhone (the original iPhone as well as the newer iPhone 3G), as well as the iPod Touch.

3. Update the metadata of the video. You can do this by hand, or with automatic metadata entry via themoviedb.org or TVDB.com integration. These websites are fantastic databases with open API's, which allow programs like iFlicks to browse their listings, then copy the metadata (even artwork!), and add it to the video file, which makes for a pleasant browsing experience as well as easy sorting/grouping.

4. Script your own. In addition to the features already accessible via the standard iFlicks, you can script your own shortcuts. The iFlicks developer includes a set of example scripts, from which you can get ideas, modify and tweak to fit your individual needs. Or you can, of course, use them as they are.

All in all, iFlicks is a pretty impressive little addon to iTunes. It fits right into iTunes, can be accessed easily and at all times through the Scripts menu, and the look and feel of its interface, of course, fit right into the iTunes and Mac look and feel. It really does feel like it's a part of the original program, and for an addon to be this integrated tells me the author spent a lot of time getting things "just right," so in this regard I say bravo! The only thing that would bother me were I a full-time, hardcore iTunes user is that iFlicks is currently very much in beta. It was certainly stable for me, and I love the features, but the beta you download today will stop working in 30 days. This of course means a newer version should be downloadable, but for those looking to download and simply use, it will require forced downloads at a later date to continue using it. Still, I think that little bit of inconvenience is well worth the features iFlicks brings to the table.