To give updates the greatest chance of delivering successfully, users should try to comply with the ITC limitations outlined below.
Complying with these ITC limitations, updates can attempt delivery via two delivery methods: ITC scrape and Transporter.
If the outlined limitations are not complied with, an attempted update can only be delivered via Transporter or in the case of TV updates, they won't be able to deliver at all.
Please note: Specifically for TV titles, Apple only allows updates via ITC. Therefore, if a user's update does not comply with the ITC limitations for TV, the update will fail.
ITC Limitations
Below are our guidelines for sending updates via ITC per content type:
Please note: The year ranges below are not 100% confirmed by ITC. They are based on successful/failed past updates from users.
Movies:
- We have noticed that there are date limits in ITC. These are not hard rules, but we recommend adhering to the limitations we've encountered below:
Column (using export)
Date Limits
Example
EST daterange start date (column J)
1 year from current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2021
EST daterange end date (column K)
+12 years from current year
Current year = 2020, end date cannot pass 2032
VOD daterange start date (column P)
1 year from current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2021
VOD daterange end date (column Q)
+12 years from current year
Current year = 2020, end date cannot pass 2032
Price daterange start date (column G)
+3 years from the current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2023
Price daterange end date (column H)
+3 years from the current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2023
Physical release date (column U)
>= minimum is 1970, and +2 years from the current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2022
HD Physical release date (column V)
minimum is 2006, and +2 years from the current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2022
Pre Order daterange start date (column M)
1 year from current year
Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2021
Additional Limitations:
- Past dates cannot be delivered via ITC.
- Start dates for EST/VOD must be at least one day from the current day. Due to differing timezones, because some regions will be a day ahead no matter what, we set up this rule so that updates wouldn't fail due to a "start date cannot be in the past" error.
- REMOVE can only deliver via ITC delivery method. If REMOVE is included in an update that cannot deliver via ITC, then that update cannot deliver. This would occur if a user includes any dates that are beyond what ITC shows. For example, users can login to ITC and look at the drop-down list of selectable years, and see what the maximum years ITC offers are. In this scenario, the delivery method will have to be sent through Transporter, which is the XML delivery method for ITC, and REMOVE would not be able to be delivered.
TV:
-
HD Season, SD Season, and Episodic pricing options can vary by title. This can only be resolved by reaching out to your Apple representative.
-
We have noticed that there are date limits in ITC. These are not hard rules, but we recommend adhering to the limitations we've encountered below:
Column (using export) Date Limits Example EST daterange start date (column J) +1 year from the current year Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2021 Price daterange start date (column G) +5 years from the current year Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2025 Price daterange end date (column H) +5 years from the current year Current year = 2020, start date cannot pass 2025
For both Film and TV, new territory updates do not need to include pricing start/end dates. Users are more than welcome to include them in an update, but it only adds one more reason why an update might fail via ITC scrape.
Syncing IDs to STOREfront
If there were newly added vendor or apple IDs to ITC, we recommend using the sync title metadata tool in the Create Update 1.0 module. Sometimes the newly added IDs haven't been transferred to our database yet, which is where this tool would come into play.
For more information on Sync Title IDs click here.
Transporter Limitations
If iTunesConnect mode is offline for any reason, STOREFRONT will change its delivery to Transporter mode, which delivers metadata via XML file format. XML Delivery has some limitations for delivery, and STOREFRONT has been constructed to work around these unique limitations, but there are some things that cannot updated via XML mode:
- Any update where a field's metadata value is removed and not replaced.
- Any update with Allow for Pre-order set as Yes or No.
- If the title should be cleared for preorder please only include the Preorder start date in the correct column
- Any update with VOD pricing. While XML accepts the values 'New Release' and 'Library', XML does not support start and end dates for these prices.
- Any update with HD EST pricing but no SD EST pricing in the update or already available in ITC.
- All TV updates.
- Any update with Movies Anywhere metadata.
For a more in-depth overview of Transporter mode and how to deliver XML, please feel free to visit iTunes official documentation for Transporter mode.