Okay, I’m pretty stoked with myself. I figured this one out all by myself and it worked. It doesn’t take long, and maybe I’ll post some of the images I use when I get the rest done, or if anyone else comes up with some images let me know. But what am I talking about? The new iTunes 8 has some cool features that I’m really digging and one is to group according to genre. When I looked in my movies I was to find a little surprise. I saw on the top a feature to group according to genre. But then a mess. Apple only made artwork for so many genres and I like a bit more organization than the next guy. So how could I add some? Simple.
First, here is what you see:
i need a war genre
So first let’s design a new one. I’m not going to go too much into depth on this, if you have a design skill use it, otherwise when I make mine available take those or if anyone else offers new art and I’m sure I won’t be the only one to figure this out, hopefully there will be others.
So to get the art I right click the iTunes.app and hit “show package contents”
second one down is the Show Package Contents
and navigate to Contents/Resources inside we find the jpgs we will use and the plist we need to edit. First the art. Open that image in an image editor, I prefer Photoshop. and do as you please. Here is my new War Genre.
Now save out the new jpg with the naming convention used, so I named mine genre-militaryM.jpg (the large M is for Movie, i noticed different sizes for music.)
and then place that file into the folder we found the other jpgs. Open the genres.plist in a property list editor. I just copied one of the previous genres and changed as I need it. Save it. (I would save a copy backedup somewhere in case my hack destroys the program in which case I’m NOT responsible. This works fine so far on my machine but it’s your decision to go thru a program and add code and what not. Don’t blame me. okay, disclaimer is done.)
And viola you have your own genre art.
War Genre is added.
Edited (For further clarification):
I kinda rushed this thing as soon as I got home from work. I know what it’s like when it seems something is missing, so let me help you guys out. When I right clicked the “genres.plist” i was given the option of opening it in “Property List Editor (default)”. It’s a part of the developer kit from apple. but you can open it in a text editor as well.
In the text editor you will see a bunch of code, but it’s real easy to add to it. What we want is something that matches either the square or movies string depending on which type of art we are messing with. In my example I wanted to add the Military string, so I’ll just take one of the other movie strings and copy/paste it in.
matchStringromance
resourceFilegenre-romanceM.jpg
kindmovie
Make sure you have it from the dict to end dict parts. So all I need to do is in the copied part, I replace the key parts I need. The first string (Match String) is looking for the first word. And the second is our image. The third, which is only on the movies I think, is if it’s a movie. So I put in:
matchStringmilitary
resourceFilegenre-militaryM.jpg
kindmovie
and it’s done. I hope that helps, if not just let me know. This is the my first time sharing one of my little hacks, so sometimes it’s easy to overlook something. Also, one more time, ENSURE YOU BACK UP THE PLIST. It also might be a good idea to keep a back up of your new plist and images in case a future iTunes overwrites them.
Enjoy.
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