Artwork & Metadata Requirements, Delivery, Regional Information

Regional requirements for transactional movie and TV content

You must meet the following regional requirements for your content to be available on the Apple TV app.

Transactional movie content regional requirements


Colombia

To make your content available in Colombia, you must provide the country of origin for your movies. Use the <countries_of_origin> tag when you deliver the metadata for a movie.

Europe

To make your content available in certain European countries, you must provide the country of origin (<countries_of_origin>), production country (<production_countries>), and the original spoken locale (<original_spoken_locale>) for your movies.

The following countries require these fields:

Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), Croatia (HR), Cyprus (CY), Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Estonia (EE), Finland (FI), France (FR), Germany (DE), Greece (GR), Hungary (HU), Iceland (IS), Ireland (IE), Italy (IT), Latvia (LV), Liechtenstein (LI), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Malta (MT), Netherlands (NL), Norway (NO), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI), Spain (ES), Sweden (SE), and United Kingdom (GB).

India

The following rules apply to all movies that are available in India:

  • Copyright information delivered using the <copyright_cline> tag in the metadata must use the following wording: “Statutory declaration under section 52A of the Copyright Act, 1957 (as amended): We, [name of copyright holder] located at [insert address] hereby declare that we are the owners of the copyright for distributing this cinematography film, having secured necessary consent and license from the producer of the film.” The copyright information can be set under the <video> level or within a <region> block delivered specifically for India. For examples, see Regional Requirements under India. The copyright can also be added in iTunes Connect in the Art by Country/Region tab.
  • Movies sold in India that contain a smoking and/or drinking alcohol health warning, should be tagged with a textless master reason code. To indicate that the film contains this burned-in text, a new attribute has been added for the source video. The tag is <attribute name="image.textless_master.reason_code"> and the allowed value is india_health_warning. This attribute is only allowed on data files with a “source” role. For an XML example, see Regional Requirements under India.

Russia

In addition to the minimum language assets described in the Minimum Storefront Requirements table, you must provide the following for each movie available in Russia:

  • A localized piece of poster art with all wording in Russian. This includes the film title and actors’ names, if present.
  • Localized title and synopsis written in Russian. This should be tagged with the correct Russian locale. See the Multiple-Language Film Metadata Example for more information on delivering localized metadata.
  • Chapter titles must be localized in Russian. For example, “Chapter 1” becomes “глава 1”. If the chapter title does not contain words, use numbers. For example: 1, 2, 3, and so on.
  • A localized preview with Russian language (audio or subtitled). The trailer must comply with the Trailers and Clips section of the Apple Transactional Movies Style Guide.

Switzerland

To make content available in Switzerland, you need to provide an ISAN or V-ISAN for certain titles if the movie is over 60 minutes long and meets one of the following criteria:

  • The movie was released on the Apple TV app or iTunes Store (EST or VOD) after January 1, 2017.
  • The film has been registered with the ISAN organization and assigned an ISAN or V-ISAN.

For a previously delivered movie that does not have an ISAN value, you can send a metadata update and deliver the value in the <isan> tag, or you can add the ISAN value using iTunes Connect. If an ISAN value has already been delivered and you need to update it, edit it in iTunes Connect on the Worldwide Metadata tab for the movie.

United States

Closed captions are required for all U.S. feature deliveries, including shorts and concert films. The only movies that are exempt from closed captions are:

  • Movies that are in English and have never been broadcast in the United States. These should be delivered with SDH and the NEVER_IN_US reason code.
  • Movies that are in English and have been broadcast in the United States but never with captions. These should be delivered with SDH and IN_US_NO_CAPTIONS reason code.
  • Movies that are not in English and have never been broadcast in the United States don’t need captions. These movies will need either English subtitles or SDH. Use the reason code NO_CC_SDH_FOREIGN_LANGUAGE_ENGLISH_SUBS for these movies.

Transactional TV content regional requirements

United States

Closed captions are required for all U.S. episode deliveries, including promotional and bonus content.

The only episodes that are exempt from closed captions are those that are not in English and have never been broadcast in the United States. However, these TV episodes will need burned-in English subtitles. Use the reason code NO_CC_SDH_FOREIGN_LANGUAGE_ENGLISH_SUBS for these episodes.

France, Germany, and United Kingdom

To make your content available in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, you must provide the country of origin (<countries_of_origin>), production country (<production_countries>), and the original spoken locale (<original_spoken_locale>) for your TV content.

These fields are required for TV episodes and seasons. Bonus episodes are included.