This the way I do it. I thought I would share it with you, it might help I don't know.
On average I enter movies by bunches of 50 or so.
I use excel because it's much faster to type the movie title, hit enter, and so on. I also add media label (number of the dvd the movie is on) but that's just because of the way my collection is organised.
This is how I generally work too. I'm lazy so my list is usually a lot bigger before I get around to updating...
I then import the excel list into PVD.
It is very easy to find the movies I have just entered because I sort by date added.
I then select them all with the the shift key, and use IMDB import to harvest the information from IMDB.
I use Amazon and google image to find posters but that's another subject.
It looks like this is the best way. It's a pity this can't be done directly from PVD as easily as entering it into excel.
ie. Type the title hit enter, type the next title hit enter etc. At the end of typing download data from IMDB etc.
I don't know if this helped you, but I don't see any problem with this way of bulk data entry, and didn't find anything quicker.
Yes it has helped. Looks like excel method is currently the best way....
enter data via the keyboard rather than importing, you'll find Grid View (removed from 0.9.7.x, planned for 1.0.x) will provide a natural solution for you. Entering data there will be similar to entering it in Excel.
Hopefully Grid view will solve a lot of my issues.
It seems convoluted to have to enter your movies into excel to then have to import them into a movie database program.
Yes, but no one has suggested doing that. Excel is a useful tool because, as long as you can get the data into it, you can create a list which can then be imported into the database.
It just seem odd to me that an external tool (excel) is better at getting data into a database tool. To me data entry should be a fundamental function and as simple as entering the data into excel.
Usually, data needs to be typed at some stage.
Typing movie titles directly into PVD and then importing extra info from IMDB requires less steps than opening excel, typing movie titles in, saving file, opening PVD, importing excel file, filtering the list so I know what I have just imported, then get extra info from IMDB
The "data entry mode" entry mode I described in my original post is a suggested way that it could be done if data entry was unified into PVD. It would keep new records separated until the final download from IMDB. I don't know what the grid view is or how it works, but it sounds promising.
I'll try bookmarking method as well.
I use excel because it's much faster to type the movie title, hit enter, and so on.
Assuming you're still cataloguing the rips you've burnt to DVD, you might consider...
Open a DOS window at your DVD drive. Insert a DVD, and run dir >> rips on c:\anywhere\dvd.txt. Repeat for as many DVD's as you want to catalog. Import the resulting text file to Excel. Parse the movie titles from the filenames, and copy the media label to each line.
Nice...
Any coders want to have a go so it recognises when new media is inserted and ejects the DVD when done writing the entry?
I'll try, but I'm not much of a coder.
Also, should you not be importing File Path at the same time? Then you would be able to Play or Read file information after inserting the DVD, but would not have scan the entire DVD.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this??
Cheers
PH