Adding movies, etc.

[Anson]

isntall the latest update 0.9.9.13!

yes, thanks to your fast actions.
a few hours ago it was still 12 and that version wasn't very old either yesterday :-)

I now have installed the new version 0.9.9.13 and on a new database, I no longer get conversion errors when I add movies.

But when one problem is solved in any software, i always find two others :-)
eg that I have to manually refresh the list of movies with F5 after changing the filter settings (why doesn't that happen automatically?) and that most movies which i add with "new movie master" are added twice :-(

Reading in the WIKI explained that the latter happens when the spelling of title, original title and the spelling on the internet (eg in IMDB) don't match 100% exactly. but I couldn't find info on what it means to click checkmarks once (grey) or twice (white) in a movie selection dialog.

example: adding any title with a "different" spelling results in two entries with the original title (selected from the list), one with the typed title (as I would expect) and an URL "www.imdb.com/..." and a second entry which uses the original title as title and an URL "imdb.com/..." (added 10 seconds after the first). I also noticed that the effect might be related with the checkmarks on the movie selection dialog since it seems to happen only when a checkmark was clicked twice (making it white and not only grey).

my guess: only one checkmark can be grey and that is the entry which gets the typed title while all other checkmarks can only be white and their entries get their title set from the original titles to avoid having several identical titles. this is probably the intended behavior ?
and now the error: when there is no grey checkmark because of selecting only one checkmark and clicking it twice, PVD first (erronously) treats the selected movie like a grey one (adding it with the typed title) and then does the normal work of adding it with the original title as title like it does for all white checkmarks.

Restore the backup from 0.9.9.11 ...
If you do not have a valid backup: ...instructions...

thanks for these instructions.
I don't know yet whether i need them (please note that i had written "using (of course after a backup :-) the old database"), but they give a lot of insight anyway :-)

ps: after typing this lengthy text and doing experiments for the above theories, i saw the new posts when previewing my own post ... seems to be best for me to stay with version 11 for a few hours and export my database which was created with v11, and then reimport it with v14 !?
besides some own or modified fields (like title) which fields do i need to export (to CSV) to uniquely identify movies for recreating the database? In theory a single URL should do but i probably have to use some dummy title too ?

[rick.ca]

seems to be best for me to stay with version 11 for a few hours and export my database which was created with v11, and then reimport it with v14 !?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There was a problem with v12. You need to install v13, and load a database that has never been opened in v12 (i.e., your v11 backup). Is that not what you did, and is it not now working fine? There should be no need to export and reimport.

I couldn't find info on what it means to click checkmarks once (grey) or twice (white) in a movie selection dialog.

I've never understood what those are for either, so thanks for the research. And yes, it seems you've properly identified a bug. But there's a little more to it... I had great fun adding Inglourious Basterds as "Inglorious Bastards" according to the various circumstances you outline. I found the duplication only occurs when the field overwrite setting for Title is not set in preferences. It will create one record with the name provided, and another with the correct one identified in the search. If the field is set to be overwritten, however, the second download just overwrites the first. This too, of course, is undesirable—the second download is just a waste of time.

So I have to agree this is a bug, but I still don't understand the intended purpose of the checkboxes. If I want to be able to enter a Title different from the Original title, I have to set the overwrite for Title off. Then, if I just ignore those check boxes (i.e., double-click on the correct movie or select it and click on enter), it works fine. Greying the boxes doesn't seem to do anything different. Checking them causes a duplication.

So it's one of those bugs where the solution is, "Don't do that!" 

But hopefully nostra will find a way to clean it up so others don't fall in the same trap.

[Anson]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There was a problem with v12.

not only that, but i read the following as being another problem if the database was created with v11 and this is just exactly what should apply to me ...

Normally the database should be OK if you have always upgraded it instead of creating a new database in each version (and I assume you did upgraded). The problem only aquires with database files first created in 0.9.9.11.

since i didn't add much info myself besides creating a list of movies and all those entries are missing posters because of the faulty old IMDB plugin, i have to update everything anyway. Maybe I even will finish writing my own IMDB2PVD converter to import "mymovies(all)" and preserve even the additional info from notes and which I added by putting the same movie in several categories like "box3" (for the media location), "Godzilla" or "007" (for lists of related movies), "to_see", "wish", etc :-)

I couldn't find info on what it means to click checkmarks once (grey) or twice (white) in a movie selection dialog.

I've never understood what those are for either, so thanks for the research.

hehe, i like puzzles :-)

And yes, it seems you've properly identified a bug.

i like it even more if i really could help

...only occurs when the field overwrite setting for Title is not set...

it took me ages (hours) to find why i couldn't set title to something else than the original title

I still don't understand the intended purpose of the checkboxes.

i think that the intended purpose might be to enable you to select whether you want the typed title or the original title for each new movie, without setting the options to different values temporarily. and this feature might be really powerful in those few circumstances where you want to add a movie with your own title, find several matching movies, and then can select which movies should be "batch-processed" for import with the original title while keeping the differently typed title for exactly one of them.
I don't know whether those forced original titles (for all movies but one) are important at all. I can imagine cases easily where i want to import all those matching movies with my own typed title, either to select and keep one of them later and delete the others, or to adjust all titles later. But most of the time, people probably want to add only a single movie and should be aware of what "grey vs. white" means :-)

Now (after we know all this) there is one really important missing feature in the selection from multiple matching movies and also later in the PVD database itself (when importing from IMDB; i don't know the details for other services): the titles shown are only titles with years, but missing other critical important info which is shown on the original selectionpage on the web, like what that shown title is, eg title (yyyy) for cinema movies, title (yyyy) (TV) for TV movies, title (yyyy) (V) for video movies, "title" (yyyy) for series, or title (yyyy) (VG) for videogames. The IMDB also has a suffix for the year (yyyy/I), (yyyy/II), etc if there are two identically written titles in the same year and that is missing too in the selection list. Currently, I first have to open the webpage for each of them to check.

To know what i mean, just use "new movie master" to add "predator" or "alien" from IMDB and enjoy the videogames :-) or try adding "Around the World in 80 Days" from 1989 or "Dinotopia" from 2002 (btw: the latter also shows another problem: if the internet offers the wrong poster by default, I have no option in PVD to select another picture from IMDB, either immediately or as separate picture import).


To leave the original thread subject even more, here are two other bugs (hehe, as promised: one solved, two new found :-) which i found while experimenting on a temporary database in version 0.9.9.13:

I created the new database by seleting "open..." and then typing "test" (lowercase). This resulted in a database to be created with the name "TEST" (uppercase, and more important: without suffix .PVD). Until here, it's only a feature and would be a matter of personal preference whether databases without suffix are allowed (it only makes it harder to find it later when trying to open it again), BUT: PVD creates backups of this database "TEST" with the name "TEST.PVD.BAK" instead of only appending ".BAK" to the database name. What would happen when you have one database "TEST" and one database "TEST.PVD"? There would probably be only one BAK file for the most recently used database ...

The second bug is not serious but annoying: if i use "new movie master" to add a movie and then cancel the selection dialog for multiple matches, the typed name of the movie is added to the database and shown in the list of movies: original title empty, year empty, title as typed, dates for added and modified set properly. Shouldn't "cancel" mean to do nothing and add nothing so that i don't have to look for it and delete it afterwards ?


ps: PVD in general is a really nice program, and what i write is only meant to help with some "details". If I wouldn't like PVD, I wouldn't care to test and post at all. If something is written too long or is too complicated to implement now, etc, simply skip it and put it behind the end of the todo list :-)

[Post edited for readability—using quote and horizontal rule tools provided.]

[rick.ca]

The problem [the corruption of the database by 0.9.9.12] only acquires with database files first created in 0.9.9.11.

Does that help? If all databases first created with 0.9.9.11 are now unusable in 0.9.9.13, then we have a huge problem. !'m quite sure this is not the case.

Maybe I even will finish writing my own IMDB2PVD converter to import "mymovies(all)"...

If you want to start over, that's up you, but you don't have to. The import plugin will add information to specific fields in existing records, and add new records if they don't exist. Just cut & paste a My Movies table into Excel, clean it up, and import. Be sure to include the year—that helps a lot in ensuring proper matches to existing records.

I don't know whether those forced original titles (for all movies but one) are important at all. I can imagine cases easily where i want to import all those matching movies with my own typed title, either to select and keep one of them later and delete the others, or to adjust all titles later. But most of the time, people probably want to add only a single movie and should be aware of what "grey vs. white" means :-)

Can you give me an example of the case you're imagining? I can't think of anything, and am therefore inclined to think the ability to add multiple movies causes more confusion (and bugs!) than it's worth. Without it, the behaviour of keeping or replacing the title is controlled by the overwrite fields option. I think it appropriate this is an option rather than being specified for each download—I prefer to do the download as quickly as possible, and trust the consistent result. If I don't like it, I can change it after the download. I don't set my titles to be overwritten, BTW, but still sometimes change it. That's either because the title I used was simply incorrect (e.g., misspelled) or I realize only after seeing the poster the appropriate AKA is something different (e.g., the English release name of a foreign title).

Now (after we know all this) there is one really important missing feature in the selection from multiple matching movies and also later in the PVD database itself (when importing from IMDB; i don't know the details for other services): the titles shown are only titles with years, but missing other critical important info which is shown on the original selectionpage on the web, like what that shown title is, eg title (yyyy) for cinema movies, title (yyyy) (TV) for TV movies, title (yyyy) (V) for video movies, "title" (yyyy) for series, or title (yyyy) (VG) for videogames. The IMDB also has a suffix for the year (yyyy/I), (yyyy/II), etc if there are two identically written titles in the same year and that is missing too in the selection list. Currently, I first have to open the webpage for each of them to check.

I agree—for IMDb, those suffixes are important and should be included in the selection dialog. They should not be appended to the title or otherwise added to the database, however. If the attribute is relevant, it should be included in the data downloaded anyway. BTW, the purpose of this dialog is to resolve ambiguity in a title that should at least be close to being correct. It's not intended to be a search for when you can only guess the title. So if Alien (1979) is what you want, it will appear at the top of the list. Better yet, if your were to create a record with the title and year, their would be no ambiguity and the information would be downloaded directly. If Alien vs. Predator (2004) is what you want, don't enter "Alien." But I pick this this example to illustrate something else. "Alien vs. Predator" is apparently the unambiguous name of a 1993 video game, and that will be downloaded directly if that is what is entered. If you can't recall the actual name of the movie is AVP: Alien vs. Predator, enter "Alien vs. Predator x." Including the "x" will force the selection dialog to appear.

if the internet offers the wrong poster by default, I have no option in PVD to select another picture from IMDB, either immediately or as separate picture import

Getting posters is not what the movie information plugins are for—there are poster plugins for that. The poster retrieved from the IMDb is a rather low resolution image used for the thumbnail on the movie main page. There was a time when it wasn't even downloaded. But we thought it would be helpful in verifying the intended movie was downloaded, and to serve as a poster if nothing else could be found (tip: set the poster overwrite to "grey"—so the plugin will download this poster only if one doesn't already exist).

I created the new database by seleting "open..." and then typing "test" (lowercase). This resulted in a database to be created with the name "TEST" (uppercase, and more important: without suffix .PVD).

I suppose the filename that appears in the titlebar should include the extension, but—as is the Windows convention—all files have an extension whether one is specified or not. If you check in Windows Explorer, you'll see your file is named TEST.PVD (and it's backup will be TEST.PVD.BAK). If you reload the file, I'm sure the extension will appear in the titlebar.

Shouldn't "cancel" mean to do nothing and add nothing so that i don't have to look for it and delete it afterwards ?

No. Assuming there was a reason NMM was used in the first place, you still may want to do something with this record. You could, for example, revise the title (to make it less ambiguous) and/or add the year, then run the plugin again (i.e., with the record selected, not using NMM).

ps: PVD in general is a really nice program, and what i write is only meant to help with some "details". If I wouldn't like PVD, I wouldn't care to test and post at all. If something is written too long or is too complicated to implement now, etc, simply skip it and put it behind the end of the todo list :-)

Don't be discouraged if the "one solved, two new found" thing doesn't seem to be working.    We appreciate your input. The program wouldn't be as good as it is if some users did not take the time to test it thoroughly and discuss their findings.

[Anson]

If all databases first created with 0.9.9.11 are now unusable in 0.9.9.13, then we have a huge problem. !'m quite sure this is not the case.

true, but since i didn't add much info of my own yet (besides the list of movies itself and some titles chosen from the aka instead of using the original title), at least *I* don't have to take a risk and can start over with a newly created database in v13 or v14, importing a CSV with only title/otitle/year/URL.

btw: which are the minimum fields needed by PVD to get uniquely identified movies when importing a CSV?
when i have a list of URLs, that should be good enough to get exactly the movies i want by using an import plugin (filling the title and/or otitle and a year, and without need to search or get a selection dialog), but I don't think that PVD likes a database with only URLs in it and neither title nor otitle (or the same dummy title "xyz" for all of the movies).

Most databases use a primary key, or they need to generate one from other fields. In PVD, the index is optional. Thus:
- which fields does PVD use to uniquely identify a record? Is that the original title plus the year? If yes, then what about movies like "Dinotopia (2002)" (there are two of them!), or a movie and a videogame with the same title and year?
info for people who don't know IMDB closely: they make "title (year)" unique by adding unique info either to the title (using "title" for series), and/or after the year (like mini, TV, V, VG), and if all this is not enough by adding an index to the year (like yyyy/I, yyyy/II, etc). similarly, an index is added to actors/directors/etc with the same name. Thus it would be really nice if I could use such additional info on searches, and if PVD (or the IMDB plugin) would be able to store such info in some field or custom field (the plugin seems to store other IMDB specific info in custom fields too, like top250).
- is there any method to specify an URL in addition to or instead of a title/otitle/year when adding movies? It would be nice to be able adding new movies (eg with "new movie master") when i found them on some website, by just doing a cut&paste of the URL ... (it would be pure luxury to have a browser plugin that allows for a single click to add the current URL as new movie to PVD :-)

I'll give an example here in more detail (so that you don't have to do all this yourself :-), for different attempts to add one specific of the two Dinotopia movies:
1. specifying just Dinotopia as original title in "new movie master" presents a selection dialog with two of the list's entries being identical Dinotopia (2002) and showing nothing else (like aka titles, additional suffix, index, etc), which requires me to open the browser and check each of them. btw: doing similar work on people is easier since the IMDB people plugin also omitts the index, but at least lists all the additional info which is presented on the selection webpage.
2. specifying the exact "Dinotopia" (2002/II) as original title in "new movie master" avoids the selection dialog and immediately downloads the correct movie. This also sets the title to "Dinotopia" (2002/II) and the original title to Dinotopia (i have set options to overwrite the original title on doing IMDB imports to keep titles current in cases like "Bond 23", and set the option to not overwrite the title). Thus the unique original title is lost and only preserved in the title (caused by the import plugin and not by PVD itself; but as i understand, original titles in PVD never should have a year included?)
3. creating a new record with a dummy title xxx and the correct URL (without dummy title, nothing is stored when i try to "apply changes" to the edit, and i even don't get a warning about it), followed by doing the import manually. This works but requires several steps and causes problems when I first add several movies with URLs and identical dummy titles and then update all of them (occasionally presenting me with a "what should I do, apply changes to xxx or add a new movie?")
4. specifying the exact URL of the movie in a line between "original title" and "Files(s)" in "new movie master" avoids the selection dialog and immediately downloads the correct movie. ... hehe, I started dreaming after doing experiments 1-3 :-)


to sum it up: when i have a list of URLs (no matter whether i have titles and years too), it probably would be best to import them from a CSV which holds pairs of "dummytitleNNNNNNN" for the "original title" field and "http://www.imdb.com/title/ttNNNNNNN/" for the "URL" field, plus more optional fields like my own titles, wish/seen status, etc !?!

[Anson]

i had this written as "ps", but since i just got the answer, i write it here as intro:

ps: how large may a post be in this forum ? :-)     .... just got the answer and had to split this post ...
and how many new subjects do we have in this thread about one specific error in v12 ? But maybe (at least in this case) better fill this thread with loosely related subjects instead of filling the forum with lots of separate threads ...

... my own IMDB2PVD converter ...
Just cut & paste a My Movies table into Excel, clean it up, and import.

Exactly that "just clean it up" is the reason for my converter: as I already wrote in my old post, i stored info like DVD location, seen/wish status, "belongs to 007 series" in mymovies by creating one or more additional entries for the same movie in categories like "box3", "to_see", "wish" and "007", thus producing a mymovies.html list of 5 MB with thousands of entries :-)

I don't know whether those forced original titles (for all movies but one) are important at all. I can imagine cases easily where i want to import all those matching movies with my own typed title, either to select and keep one of them later and delete the others, or to adjust all titles later.

Can you give me an example of the case you're imagining?

example for "adjust all titles later": When I want to add the Alien/Predator/AVP series, I might first type "alien" as title and import all found movies. If the plugin replaces the title with the original titles, I would have to take notes first and then flip back and forth in the list of movies, or use filters for "last added" etc. But by using the search term which i gave as title, i would have them together with the same (incorrect) title and would be able to easier edit this set of movies (changing titles of movies i want to keep in the list, deleting the videogames, etc).
example for "to select and keep one of them later": When I want to add only one movie but find several, it might be nice to import all of them first, all of them with the same title which i typed, and then later browse them in PVD instead of having to open a browser for each of them on the selection page. Since I delete all but one anyway, it makes no sense to select first which one should get the typed title, then browse them while (mostly) having the original titles, and last (after deleting all but one) renaming the remaining movie again.

But most of the time, people probably want to add only a single movie and should be aware of what "grey vs. white" means :-)

... inclined to think the ability to add multiple movies causes more confusion (and bugs!) than it's worth.

seems as if we agree :-)

I prefer to do the download as quickly as possible, and trust the consistent result.

same for me ... but i trust no fully automatic systems for selecting something.
that's also a reason why i would like to be able to add movies by URL instead of title: finding a new title should be easiest when i can use all options of the internet database where i want to get the info from. When i finally found the title i want, i cut&paste the URL and create the PVD entry (see above: editing and using a dummytitle should not be needed, but using new movie master with an URL or even a browser addon would be nice).

If I don't like it, I can change it after the download. I don't set my titles to be overwritten, BTW, but still sometimes change it. That's either because the title I used was simply incorrect (e.g., misspelled) or I realize only after seeing the poster the appropriate AKA is something different (e.g., the English release name of a foreign title).

I use local titles, but want a consistent database with unique titles, and thus stick to the original titles from the IMDB and also would like to keep their standard for making the original titles really unique in case of multiple movies in the same year, movies with the same name and year as series, videogames, etc. I don't change the titles "only sometimes", but for 99% of the movies since I want to use the local (German) titles as titles, and thus had to clear the "overwrite titles" flag too.

When working with local titles, there are two missing features which might be done in future versions:
- searching for German titles works when the "also search aka" flag is set, but it is very hard work to find the matching title from the selection list since that selection list doesn't include the additional info (like complete aka etc) which the IMDB offers on their own webpages. Using the website for searching and then importing the movie by using the URL would be a lot easier, if there were a simple method to "add by URL" in PVD.
- after importing a movie, i have to find the complete German AKA with correct spelling in the list of aka. currently this aka field is empty for many movies although the list exists on the website (BUG!). and if it exists in PVD, it doesn't include the additional info like languages or versions to which the aka apply. it would be really nice if i had that info and even would be able to mark one or more of the aka titles to be used as title, instead of having to cut&paste them from the aka field to the title field.

I agree—for IMDb, those suffixes are important and should be included in the selection dialog. They should not be appended to the title or otherwise added to the database, however. If the attribute is relevant, it should be included in the data downloaded anyway.

the keyword seems to be "should" ... currently, the IMDB plugin stores not enough info to keep (or recreate) a unique title for later use.
recently, additional "fun" info like "top250" can be stored in custom fields, but the type of record (videogame, series, etc) or the additional index to non-unique "title (year)" records are lost. this probably will make it also difficult to properly clean up the database and find real duplicates and remove them automatically.

BTW, the purpose of this dialog is to resolve ambiguity in a title that should at least be close to being correct. It's not intended to be a search for when you can only guess the title. So if Alien (1979) is what you want, it will appear at the top of the list. Better yet, if your were to create a record with the title and year, their would be no ambiguity and the information would be downloaded directly.

which gets us back to what i wrote above: doing a search first on the website and then import a specific movie with some simpler means than is currently possible.

currently, I would have to do that search for a German title on the web, then copy the English unique title, paste it in "new movie master" as original title, also cut&paste the German aka in "new movie master" as title, and then download info. If i didn't get the German aka before download, i will have to search through the aka list if it is available at all (or better yet go back to the website and look for the German aka directly since i get akas there with info on country/release etc), then cut that too and paste it in the title field in PVD. And since the English unique title was only in the original title, and won't be copied automatically to the title when i use an aka there, it will be lost ...
no wonder that the "new movie master" is often used as a tool to search and add a movie in one step.

If Alien vs. Predator (2004) is what you want, don't enter "Alien." But I pick this this example to illustrate something else. "Alien vs. Predator" is apparently the unambiguous name of a 1993 video game, and that will be downloaded directly if that is what is entered. If you can't recall the actual name of the movie is AVP: Alien vs. Predator, enter "Alien vs. Predator x." Including the "x" will force the selection dialog to appear.

nice idea and hints, but it doesn't always work as expected :-(
I just tried to use the new movie master for "Alien vs. Predator (2004)" and got a list of 14 entries to select from, and also "AVP Alien vs Predator (2004)" still gives a list of 12 selections, and who will be able to get the punctuation right for all movies? you never know the official IMDB spelling of titles which include any special chars like ":", ",", ".", "-", etc.
As last attempt in this series, I used "AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)" as original title and it was imported automatically, only to ask me in the end whether to use an existing entry or create a new one (I had done these tests on an empty database, but one of the first partial matches had stayed in the database when i used "cancel" on the new movie master)

the IMDB website separates all those suggested selections by "most popular", "full match", "partial match", etc, but in addition to the missing suffixes like (VG), also those categories are not shown. Thus it probably is really easiest to use the web to get to an URL instead of a title and use that URL for adding the movie (see several times above :-)

if the internet offers the wrong poster by default, I have no option in PVD to select another picture from IMDB, either immediately or as separate picture import

Getting posters is not what the movie information plugins are for—there are poster plugins for that. The poster retrieved from the IMDb is a rather low resolution image used for the thumbnail on the movie main page. There was a time when it wasn't even downloaded.

The IMDB offers lots of fullsize pictures for movies, including posters, and sometimes even for different language versions of that movie. It would be nice to have a separate plugin to get them, in addition to the amazon and other plugins which do a lot of guesswork on titles and mostly offer pictures to sell DVDs and box sets instead of offering posters for movies.

when I used v11, the IMDB plugin seemed to try in vain to download posters, but the most current IMDB plugin downloads posters nicely, and not only thumbnails. it seems to follow the link of the thumbnail and download the fullsize version of it from the picture collection. There are some movies which have only thumbnail sized "fullsize pictures", but when you check them at the website, those movies are mostly old and/or have no or a small selection of pictures at all (might also be related to copyright, if lowres thumbs are OK and no fullsize poster is publicly available).
Thus it should now be worthwhile to write poster plugins (for movies and also for people) for IMDB ...

I created the new database by seleting "open..." and then typing "test" (lowercase). This resulted in a database to be created with the name "TEST" (uppercase, and more important: without suffix .PVD).

I suppose the filename that appears in the titlebar should include the extension, but—as is the Windows convention—all files have an extension whether one is specified or not. If you check in Windows Explorer, you'll see your file is named TEST.PVD (and it's backup will be TEST.PVD.BAK). If you reload the file, I'm sure the extension will appear in the titlebar.

sorry, you are wrong. you easily can create files in windows which have no suffix, eg by typing "echo x > y" on a commandline, or by entering a filename without suffix in some programs' fileselect boxes (just try what I wrote: use "open..." in PVD and type "test" as database name; to be sure I just did it again, typed "xy" and created a new database "XY" without suffix). maybe you can set flags in your program code to enforce fileselect boxes delivering only names with some (default) suffix, and maybe that depends on the version of windows too, but in general the fileselect only returns a string and the program has to care for it to be a valid filename with a desired suffix.
on VERY old computers with DOS or the first versions of windows, it is a bit different. there you always had only those 8.3 filenames, with 8 bytes reserved for the name and 3 for a suffix (even if it is empty/unused, which was possible even in those times). But starting with the "long filenames" in windows you now can have any string as filename, including as many or as few dots as you want (even two like TEST.PVD.BAK, none like TEST, or something like "what you always wanted to know .....mpg" :-), and also suffixes of any length (like .jpeg instead of .jpg).
hehe, a question for endless discussion: what would be the "suffix" on the name "TEST.PVD.BAK"? would it be a name "TEST.PVD" with suffix "BAK" or a name "TEST" with suffix "PVD.BAK"? *I* would say neither, but a filename "TEST.PVD.BAK" with no suffix, since my windows has no file association defined for any of those two suffixes (pvd.bak or bak)

I looked at the filenames only in windows explorer (hehe, i didn't look at the titlebar at all before you said that the filename is there too :-) and i have set the explorer to show all filenames with suffixes, all hidden and system names, etc. thus the database really was named "TEST" only and its automatic backup was named "TEST.PVD.BAK". btw: the title bar doesn't include a suffix for the database name, eg for my current "testmult.pvd" it only shows "Personal Video Database (testmult) - Movies"

new details on this bug: when you use "new...", PVD (or the new-fileselectbox) automatically adds .PVD to what you typed, if it doesn't yet have a defined suffix (watch out, typing xx.txt creates a database with the name xx.txt and no .pvd suffix), but if you use "open..." and enter some string, that string will always be taken as it is and no .PVD will be appended.
Besides this difference with the suffix, BOTH options can be used for identical purposes: "new..." and "open..." BOTH create a new database and open it when the file doesn't exist yet, and BOTH will only open and not create a new database if the database already exists. in none of these tests did i get any warning or error like "database not found" when using "open..." with a nonexisting name or "database already exists, open it?" when using "new..." on an existing name.

Shouldn't "cancel" mean to do nothing and add nothing so that i don't have to look for it and delete it afterwards ?

No. Assuming there was a reason NMM was used in the first place, you still may want to do something with this record. You could, for example, revise the title (to make it less ambiguous) and/or add the year, then run the plugin again (i.e., with the record selected, not using NMM).

probably a personal preference ...
Assuming there was a reason i canceled NMM in the last place, I don't want to search my database for "leftovers".
If i would want to do something with this record, for example revise the title and/or add the year to incrementally narrow down a search, i would in the first place have created a record instead of using NMM. But if i wanted to use NMM, I probably would have copied the title which I entered in NMM, and then be able to start NMM over and over, pasting and modifying the title every time, and then end up with a dozen incomplete records from all those canceled calls of NMM.

Don't be discouraged if the "one solved, two new found" thing doesn't seem to be working. 

that never happened ... (should i use ":-)" or ":-(" here ? :-)
i rather get the impression that the number increments over time: "1 solved, N found"

[patch]

The IMDB offers lots of fullsize pictures for movies, including posters, .....
Thus it should now be worthwhile to write poster plugins (for movies and also for people) for IMDB ...

Agree

I created the new database by seleting "open..." and then typing "test" (lowercase). This resulted in a database to be created with the name "TEST" (uppercase, and more important: without suffix .PVD).

I suppose the filename that appears in the titlebar should include the extension, but—as is the Windows convention—all files have an extension whether one is specified or not. If you check in Windows Explorer, you'll see your file is named TEST.PVD (and it's backup will be TEST.PVD.BAK). If you reload the file, I'm sure the extension will appear in the titlebar.

sorry, you are wrong.

....

hehe, a question for endless discussion: what would be the "suffix" on the name "TEST.PVD.BAK"? would it be a name "TEST.PVD" with suffix "BAK" or a name "TEST" with suffix "PVD.BAK"? *I* would say neither, but a filename "TEST.PVD.BAK" with no suffix, since my windows has no file association defined for any of those two suffixes (pvd.bak or bak)

Behaviour depends on if windows is configured to show known suffixes or not.
If it is configured to show suffixes, then you need to enter them. If it is configured to hide known suffixes then application defaults are generally applied.

File type (suffix) is always the characters after the last period "." (but you may need to configure windows to show it to see it).

[rick.ca]

I'm not sure where to begin...

You do a very good job of figuring out how things work. That's good, because PVD is a powerful and in some ways complex program. I think you're moving a little too quickly from understanding how something works to judging how it should work. Your suggestions are welcome, but try to bear in mind you're not the first one to figure out how something works and consider how it might be better. All that your talking about here has been discussed in the past, and most of it has seen program changes and refinements based on those discussions.

It's helpful (for those of us who are so full of questions) to understand PVD is running on a Firebird RDBMS. Records in the movie table are referenced by MID—a field maintained and strictly controlled by the software and Firebird. The process of ensuring duplicates are not created is entirely up to the user and the program logic. The latter will use the title, original title, year, and perhaps the URL to make that determination. Inherent in that logic are assumptions about how much ambiguity needs to be removed. For example, given the same title and year, a match will be assumed—even though it's possible the items are unique. Often the user is asked to resolve an ambiguity.

So? Don't worry about how the program is going to create a unique record—that's beyond your control. Don't change Original title—that's meant to be, well, the original title (and it's probably pointless for any of us to second guess IMDb's determination of what that is). Use Title however you like—probably "localized," and so the records visually distinct in the list. How that's done is a matter of personal choice. I remove prefixes, structure the name so movie series appear in order and display the list as Title (Year). Don't use dummy names for titles—you'll just screw-up the program's attempts to avoid adding duplicates. Yes, include the URL if you can (that eliminates the plugin's need to do a search), but this has nothing to do with the creating of a record.

Use NMM for the purpose for which it was intended and nothing more. It might be best to use New until you fully appreciate how things work. That way, you'll see whether the record is already in the database (when the database is large, it usually is, because it's in someone's filmography or it's connected with another movie). You'll see how adding the year will resolve ambiguity, and adding the URL will eliminate the need for a search. NMM is intended as a convenience for adding one movie. If it's not a convenience, don't use it. In other words, if you need to see the IMDb search page, then use the IMDb search page (you can use a Web search to get there).

If I wanted to add both Dinotopia's, I would do this (I know nothing about the title, other than two of them exist): Add "Dinotopia" using New. An invisible record in my database appears (this is not unusual—there are 28,000 people in my database, some of whom are associated with this title). Great—that means I already have the URL and there's no need for a search. Download. I was hoping IMDb would provide me with a Connection (and a URL) to the second one, but it doesn't. So I add another "Dinotopia" and update it. The search presents two "Dinotopia (2002)"s at the top of the list. Being fearless, I guess (correctly, of course). Alternatively, I could have used the search page. Now that I've got both records, I see one is a mini series and the other is a series. In PVD, the fact one is a series distinguishes it from the other, but I might change the titles to "Dinotopia: The Series" and "Dinotopia: The Mini-series."

after importing a movie, i have to find the complete German AKA with correct spelling in the list of aka. currently this aka field is empty for many movies although the list exists on the website (BUG!). and if it exists in PVD, it doesn't include the additional info like languages or versions to which the aka apply.

I assume you're using the AKA search option. I believe this searching the AKA site to find the title, but the plugin is still downloading the information from the main site. It, of course doesn't include the full AKA listing—that's the purpose of the AKA site. If you need it, you can access the AKA site using a Web search. See Localized IMDb search.

the keyword seems to be "should" ... currently, the IMDB plugin stores not enough info to keep (or recreate) a unique title for later use. recently, additional "fun" info like "top250" can be stored in custom fields, but the type of record (videogame, series, etc) or the additional index to non-unique "title (year)" records are lost. this probably will make it also difficult to properly clean up the database and find real duplicates and remove them automatically.

I stand by the point I was making—appending additional information to Title would be pointless and contrary to its purpose (as mentioned above). I would agree there may be some merit in downloading this information to a new Type field. It might be a little tricky, as all that is appended to the title is TV, V or VG. In some cases (only for TV, it seems) additional information (like "TV series 2000-2003") appears as a subtitle. I suppose the best way to do it would be to get the subtitle if it exists, and otherwise the appendage.

when I used v11, the IMDB plugin seemed to try in vain to download posters, but the most current IMDB plugin downloads posters nicely, and not only thumbnails. it seems to follow the link of the thumbnail and download the fullsize version of it from the picture collection.

I'm well aware of how it works—it was my suggestion to use the full image rather than the thumbnail. But I see no need to go beyond that. Compared to other sources, the IMDb images are inconsistent (and include a lot of crap) and of marginal quality. In short, it's not suitable for an automated plugin. Given the nature of the images there, you pretty much have to go there and look. Web search is the appropriate tool for that.

sorry, you are wrong.

Amazing! That's never happened before.

Or now—you're misinterpreting what I said. Of course it's possible to create a file without an extension in Windows. I said the Windows convention is that applications should ensure the appropriate extension is included. Thus, standard file save dialogs do not normally require an extension be provided—a default will be assigned. So the bug is that the program fails to add the PVD extension if an apparent extension is provided. This shouldn't happen—databases obviously should not be named "Test.TXT" but it should be possible to use something like "Test.abc" (without it becoming an "ABC" file). Hmmm... I see that does work properly—the filename becomes test.abc.pvd. But "Test.exe" becomes test.exe. It seems if a registered type is specified that is used, and if not, "PVD" is added. Definitely a bug, but one of those ones where we can say, "(Until the next release) don't do that!"

BTW, I just had to try... executing "test.exe" does nothing.

But maybe (at least in this case) better fill this thread with loosely related subjects instead of filling the forum with lots of separate threads...

Perhaps, but there's a cost—I doubt anyone else will bother reading this. [Edit: except for patch, who has posted while I type.] If there is some part of this that requires more discussion and is of interest to others, we can alway quote parts of this into new topics. You may need to do that if you expect nostra to find and act on your bug reports. As I've indicated, I don't think either of the two you've found are urgent—they can wait until the next update. And then there's the feature request to add a Type field. I suspect that will be added to one of his mysterious (and lengthy) TODO lists—and may happen some day.

[rick.ca]

Behaviour depends on if windows is configured to show known suffixes or not.
If it is configured to show suffixes, then you need to enter them. If it is configured to hide known suffixes then application defaults are generally applied.

The Hide extensions of known file types Windows setting is just a display setting and has no bearing on how the file save dialog works. If you test it, you'll see it works as I describe in my last post. What I'm not sure of (and I doubt it matters) is whether it's treating all registered file types differently, or just some specific ones.

[Anson]

-- I'm not sure where to begin...
-- maybe (at least in this case) better fill this thread with loosely related subjects ...
-- If there is some part of this that requires more discussion and is of interest to others, we can alway quote parts of this into new topics.

That's what i meant ... doing several separate precise threads for important parts, and keeping lengthy posts to a single thread which others are able to ignore if not interested.

You do a very good job of figuring out how things work. That's good, because PVD is a powerful and in some ways complex program. I think you're moving a little too quickly from understanding how something works to judging how it should work. Your suggestions are welcome, but try to bear in mind you're not the first one to figure out how something works and consider how it might be better.

in some cases, i have a strong opinion on how something should work (or at least how it shouldn't work), like the problem with the suffix, but in most other cases it is only what I myself expect (and then i am surprised when it is different) or what i would think would work best for me. a few things are also caused by the complexity and missing info (missing meaning "i couldn't find it" :-) like what you explain below on how PVD probably identifies unique records (which i find important since uniqueness appears at several places like on entering new movies, cleaning up the database, etc). thus please take it only as impressions of someone using it and being surprised sometimes, and as I wrote in another post "if it doesn't apply or is too complicated, skip it or move it behind the end of the todo list" ...

All that your talking about here has been discussed in the past, and most of it has seen program changes and refinements based on those discussions.

I read forums for quite some time, and also looked at the wiki etc, but the amount of data is overwhelming and many threads in forums start on problems with old versions. too bad when i skipped such threads while there might be nice info which applies to new versions at their ends. thus i decided at some time to stop reading only and tried starting to use PVD :-)

I don't think either of the two bugs you've found are urgent—they can wait until the next update.

of course not — of course :-)
for me, priorities on bugs are:
- find how to reproduce it and whether it is a bug at all
- find how it might be caused and what can be done against it
- know the bug and avoid it if possible, waiting for a fix in some future release
and only for program-breaking bugs (like conversion errors on the database :-) I expect a fix (or other reaction like a "reroll") really fast (as fast as one can expect from voluntary work on a free program :-)

back to bugs and features ...

So the bug is that the program fails to add the PVD extension if an apparent extension is provided. This shouldn't happen—databases obviously should not be named "Test.TXT" but it should be possible to use something like "Test.abc" (without it becoming an "ABC" file). Hmmm... I see that does work properly—the filename becomes test.abc.pvd. But "Test.exe" becomes test.exe.

sorry, you didn't get the whole point of what i wrote ...
I just tried the name "new.abc" and it stayed that way, NOT appending .PVD !!!
(you probably use "new..." while i am talking about what happens when you use "open...")

The problem is that both "new..." and "open..." can be used for creating a new database and for opening an existing database. while "new..." appends (with additional conditions like already registered suffixes etc) the .PVD suffix if a new database is created like you said, using "open..." to create a new database NEVER adds the .PVD suffix, neither on a name like "new.txt" nor "new.abc" nor on a word without any suffix or dot in it like "TEST".

I don't care much whether .PVD is appended to the names of new databases or not, but i think it should be done consistently, either in both "new..." and "open..." or in neither of them, and I am confused a bit that there are two commands for the same purpose (to create a database if it didn't exist as well as to open it if it exists or was created). if "new..." would only create a new database and open that database but not open existing databases, and "open..." would only open existing databases, there would be no such problem with the suffixes.

Thus i would consider the bug/feature/problem to be that "new..." doesn't give a warning when used for an existing database and instead quietly opens the existing database (hehe, at least it doesn't silently purge it and create a new one), and that "open..." also accepts typing errors and creates a new database if the user didn't intend to (why would he have used "open" instead of "new" in the first place) instead of giving an error or at least a warning that the selected name doesn't exist.

my suggestion for a fix: either implement the above restrictions for "new..." (don't open existing databases or at least warn) and "open..." (don't create new databases or at least warn), or merge the two commands to a single "open/new" command which behaves like it currently does. For security reasons, I would prefer the former (two commands with warnings).

BTW, I just had to try... executing "test.exe" does nothing.

never believe what someone else tells you :-)

Code: [Select]

C:\PVD\_mydata_>test.exe
Program too big to fit in memory

C:\PVD\_mydata_>


It's helpful (for those of us who are so full of questions) to understand PVD is running ...
Records in the movie table are referenced by MID—a field maintained and strictly controlled by the software and Firebird...

yes, those are the basics I want to know. Even if not in great detail, i immediately get a better understanding of lots of software (not only on PVD) when i get some foundation to build my guesses and beliefs on :-)

The process of ensuring duplicates are not created is entirely up to the user and the program logic. The latter will use the title, original title, year, and perhaps the URL to make that determination. ...... Often the user is asked to resolve an ambiguity.

Since I want to use PVD to take care of many tasks and make work easier for me, I want to be asked to do decisions as rarely as possible, even more so when doing "batch work" (working or updating lots of movies at once). That's why i tried so hard to learn about uniqueness, and/or to try and create uniqueness with the methods available in PVD.
I am also a bit spoiled by the IMDB which on one hand created some rules to make all titles unique while on the other hand not caring at all for duplicate entries in mymovies. I didn't like all of these rules, but it was a framework to build on.

Don't change Original title—that's meant to be, well, the original title (and it's probably pointless for any of us to second guess IMDb's determination of what that is).

Since i don't live in the USA (not even in an English speaking country) or in many other countries which produce movies, I used the original title (from IMDB) almost not at all, except for having unique identification of one movie. and the rules for those names on IMDB are relatively simple: it is the title in the language of the film's original country of production (transcribed if chinese etc), followed by the year of first release (not production), with additional markers for the type and in a few cases with an index added to the year. But since i didn't use it much, the only important thing for me was its uniqueness, and that is partially lost on the PVD's original titles (without year/index and flags).

But you got me thinking .... For other users who don't use IMDB as their main or only source, this uniqueness probably is less important and might not apply at all if the different services use completely different standards to find original names.

Use Title however you like—probably "localized," and so the records visually distinct in the list. How that's done is a matter of personal choice. I remove prefixes, structure the name so movie series appear in order and display the list as Title (Year).

I probably will use the title only for storing the "german original title" and put other info in custom fields, eg for media location and movie series ... it would be nice if i could setup several schemes for "tree view nodes" to easily and quickly switch between them and not have to go through preferences to change that, for viewing lists sorted by movie series name and sequence (eg 007, Godzilla), or theme series and sequence (eg "other japanese monster movies" :-) or sorted by folder/box where i keep the DVD, etc. And the same might also be an idea for a set of advanced searches, to be able to select a subset of movies and display them in a nice tree :-)
... but i just started experimenting with what might suit me best among the currently available options.

but there is one problem with the title field: when i have movie connections to series, the title of the series and the episode number are included in the link, and PVD puts them in the original title and in the title. when i update this record, the plugin will change the original title to the episode title (or i have to switch that off every time i update an episode) and thus series title and episode numbers are lost from that one field. When i also put the german title in the title field, all this additional info would be gone from the other field too and thus be lost completely.

another problem with those links from connection info probably has been discussed already a hundred times, but i just stumbled about it and almost broke my leg :-) ... when i have a series added to PVD and there is some movie connection to episodes of that series, it would be nice to have them point into the series and not create "virtual movie entries" (and an option could select whether PVD might create a partial tree for conections to a series which doesn't exist yet), else i will end up with dozens or hundreds of simpsons and south park episodes in the main movie list. That applies even more if i already have nicely prepared a series (with all details, posters, whatever) and those connections still point to "virtual movie entries" for the episodes which have no info at all besides a title and an URL. ... I know that those features are deeply connected to the database structure and also to all related plugins and are not easy to do, but I hope such features might be somewhere down (but not too far :-) on the todo list for some future versions?

Don't use dummy names for titles—you'll just screw-up the program's attempts to avoid adding duplicates. Yes, include the URL if you can (that eliminates the plugin's need to do a search), but this has nothing to do with the creating of a record.

it has not ? ... I tried creating a new record with only an URL and neither title nor original title, and it didn't work. on doing the "apply changes", the edit session was closed and nothing happened. the record was lost. (btw: i see it as missing feature when i am not warned about losing a record with possibly lots of data because of having neither title nor original title.)

thus: how do i create (or import) a new record with an URL to get all details from a plugin later, when i may not use "dummynames"? Do I really have to cut&paste the URL and also cut&paste the correct corresponding title, only to be able to apply the changes to the record and a moment later overwrite the title i just copied when using a plugin on that URL ?
That's why i had thought about how a dummyname should look like:
- never look like a real movie title (thus ""dummyname")
- never look like other dummynames (thus adding the number from the URL)
- not be a title (which i spare from overwriting in plugins)
- be an original title (which will be updated from a plugin)

It might be best to use New until you fully appreciate how things work. That way, you'll see whether the record is already in the database (when the database is large, it usually is, because it's in someone's filmography or it's connected with another movie).

that's how i added most movies until now: first added one single movie, then followed connections to movies i knew (have as DVD, taped, or wishlists, etc), update those records too, follow more connections ... but since i have many more movies than i thought and already partially have sorted them (using categories in IMDB for remembering storage locations), i wanted to try the other approach of using the URLs from mymovies, importing them all (together with some fields and custom fields, like wish, seen and storagebox) and then let PVD work by its own, updating all records.

You'll see how adding the year will resolve ambiguity, and adding the URL will eliminate the need for a search. NMM is intended as a convenience for adding one movie. If it's not a convenience, don't use it. In other words, if you need to see the IMDb search page, then use the IMDb search page (you can use a Web search to get there).

no objections :-) but after looking it up on the web, do i really have to manually start creating a record, fill it with an URL and a title (and possibly a year too) which will be overwritten soon, apply the changes, and then use one or more plugins, or wouldn't NMM be the ideal tool to add a move when i feed it an URL (just like i can feed it a title or a file now) ?

currently this aka field is empty for many movies although the list exists on the website (BUG!). and if it exists in PVD, it doesn't include the additional info like languages or versions to which the aka apply.

yes, i use the AKA search option.
and no, the info i was missing was not only available on the AKA site, but every movie now seems to have one page .../releaseinfo with all releasedates and all AKA names.

example: there are five movies in the old "planet of the apes" series of movies. four of them have their aka field filled after using the IMDB plugin, but "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)" only has an empty aka field although there is aka information (just like on the other four) at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068408/releaseinfo.
can you please check whether you get the same result (or non-result) ?

... appending additional information to Title would be pointless and contrary to its purpose (as mentioned above). I would agree there may be some merit in downloading this information to a new Type field.

agreed ... i never meant to ask for it to be saved at a specific location, but only to please preserve the info somewhere so that it can later be used again, eg to search/filter on the type or recreate movietitle strings with an export filter ... and i think it is at least as valuable as the top250 or similar info which currenly already can be stored to custom fields.

It might be a little tricky, as all that is appended to the title is TV, V or VG. In some cases (only for TV, it seems) additional information (like "TV series 2000-2003") appears as a subtitle. I suppose the best way to do it would be to get the subtitle if it exists, and otherwise the appendage.

some time ago, they have changed the display on some pages. the internal titles themselves should still always be formatted with (TV) appended, or with "title" instead of title for series, etc, but to make it prettier, it might be displayed differently on some pages, like a subtitle "TV series 2000-2003".

the unique name should not be too "tricky" exactly because of what you say: all that is appended to the title is almost only (TV), (V) or (VG). in addition to these three flags they used to have another flag (mini) for TV miniseries, and series are not marked with an appended flag but by putting the title in quotation marks ("series") which automatically implies that it is a TV series and thus (TV) is omitted from the "series" (TV) (although i think that was a bad design decision since cinema series like Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) are now only listed as movie and not as series, thus not being able to have episode titles for them; but that has no influence on the uniqueness of the title). The most difficult part might be to determine whether to store an additional index (roman numerals which are appended to the year (yyyy/II) if everything else would not be unique) to the same or yet another custom field, or maybe simply copy everything behind the title (year, optional index and optional suffix) to a custom field just like they appear (with parentheses etc).

maybe we should talk about the details (name of field, what to store, etc) later and someplace else if someone has decided to implement something. For now, I only wanted to try convincing somebody that such a feature (storing unique identifiers which are available anyway) would be useful at all.

[rick.ca]

my suggestion for a fix: either implement the above restrictions for "new..." (don't open existing databases or at least warn) and "open..." (don't create new databases or at least warn), or merge the two commands to a single "open/new" command which behaves like it currently does. For security reasons, I would prefer the former (two commands with warnings).

In short, New and Open should generally function as most Windows users would expect them to. More specifically, periods should be allowed in filenames, and only PVD extensions should be allowed. In other words, New should only be able to create PVD files, and Open should only be able to see PVD files.

That's why i tried so hard to learn about uniqueness, and/or to try and create uniqueness with the methods available in PVD.

Well, then, I probably shouldn't say it, but... you're only scratching the surface. PVD is a relational database. If you're using in the way most of us do, for each movie you add something in the order of 100 related movies (depending on your configuration and types of movies) are added as "invisible" records. These are all the movies in the filmographies of the people in the movie you added. The program manages to do that without bothering you about very real issues of uniqueness and duplication. If you really are concerned about this and don't mind being bothered, there are some "Adding records" settings at Preferences - Miscellaneous.

it would be nice if i could setup several schemes for "tree view nodes" to easily and quickly switch between them and not have to go through preferences to change that, for viewing lists sorted by movie series name and sequence (eg 007, Godzilla), or theme series and sequence (eg "other japanese monster movies" :-) or sorted by folder/box where i keep the DVD, etc.

The ability to save multi-level grouping configurations would be nice, and has been requested. It's not necessary for single level groupings, however. For any field that can be grouped, just right-click on the field data in the movie panel and select Group movies by...

but there is one problem with the title field: when i have movie connections to series, the title of the series and the episode number are included in the link, and PVD puts them in the original title and in the title.

You've lost me. Please provide an example.

That applies even more if i already have nicely prepared a series (with all details, posters, whatever) and those connections still point to "virtual movie entries" for the episodes which have no info at all besides a title and an URL.

With this much I can agree, but I'm not familiar with the issues. In an effort to limit the number of (invisible) movies in my database, I download only "Followed by" connections. If you're concerned about this, I suggest you do some thorough testing to determine what exactly is happening and what the issues are. For example, does it make any difference if the series referred to already exists in the database when the movie with the connection to it is added? If the series exists, are the "virtual entries" detected as duplicates and remove by Optimize database?

(btw: i see it as missing feature when i am not warned about losing a record with possibly lots of data because of having neither title nor original title.)

I think it's intuitively obvious a title has to be entered to create a record. Technically, it's not required—so I'm sure it's by design. It would be pointless to provide warnings for every mistake a beginner might make as they are learning the program—especially if, like this, it's an error they're unlikely to make twice. We considered administering an electric shock whenever an error like this is made, but decided data loss works just as well.

thus: how do i create (or import) a new record with an URL to get all details from a plugin later, when i may not use "dummynames"?

Please consider what I've already said. Title can be whatever you want. AFAIK, if you provide a valid URL, it can be gibberish and the correct record will be retrieved. I'm not positive (I'm not in the habit of testing things that make no sense to me), but I would be concerned using a identical dummy name might screw up the programs attempts to avoid duplicates. Or, as I think you mentioned, it would result in the program asking you to resolve the ambiguity. So why do it?

i wanted to try the other approach of using the URLs from mymovies, importing them all (together with some fields and custom fields, like wish, seen and storagebox) and then let PVD work by its own, updating all records.

Yes, that would be a much more sensible approach. It don't think you're going to find an easy way to to get the URL's from My Movies. But it doesn't matter. As I mentioned before, using the exact IMDb title and year will result in near 100% accurate searches.

no objections :-) but after looking it up on the web, do i really have to manually start creating a record, fill it with an URL and a title (and possibly a year too) which will be overwritten soon, apply the changes, and then use one or more plugins, or wouldn't NMM be the ideal tool to add a move when i feed it an URL (just like i can feed it a title or a file now) ?

It would save you from typing a name—or a dummy name—like "X". Wow.

For the kind of thing you're talking about—whether it be adding a movie from a URL or a title found on the web, what would actually be useful is an "Add this to PVD" browser add-on. Close, but not quite the same thing, is the existing Add movie from clipboard function provided by the tray menu. I see it uses NMM, so that might be reason enough to add the URL to NMM.

the info i was missing was not only available on the AKA site, but every movie now seems to have one page .../releaseinfo with all releasedates and all AKA names.

If you look at your log, you'll see the plugin is getting to /releaseinfo#akas from a link on the main page. For Conquest, the link is missing. Unfortunately, the proper function of the plugin depends on the consistency integrity of the IMDb pages. It could be changed to check that page for all movies, but that would slow things down.

the internal titles themselves should still always be formatted with (TV) appended, or with "title" instead of title for series, etc, but to make it prettier, it might be displayed differently on some pages, like a subtitle "TV series 2000-2003".

The subtitles can be easily identified in the HTML as (for example) <span class="tv-extra">TV series</span>. Other types (according to this guide) are "TV movie" and "TV miniseries." The plugin can add "TV series" for series just shown in quotations with no suffix.

[patch]

I tried creating a new record with only an URL and neither title nor original title, and it didn't work. on doing the "apply changes", the edit session was closed and nothing happened. the record was lost.

Agree this is counter intuitive & workarounds using dummy titles to create record without confusing PVD matching logic would just add to the confusion.
All other fields can be left blank, so if these are different, blank entries should generate a warning.

I suspect it is there because the pluggin assume a title is available. (eg create record, delete both titles & add url -> plugin errors).

A good solution / feature request would be supporting url in "add from clip board".

[rick.ca]

Agree this is counter intuitive & workarounds using dummy titles to create record without confusing PVD matching logic would just add to the confusion. All other fields can be left blank, so if these are different, blank entries should generate a warning.

What's clearly counter-intuitive is the idea of creating a record with no name. When I used the word "intuitive," the context was not just the program, but record keeping in general. I think most people can appreciate the consequences of putting a paper document in an unmarked folder and filing the folder in a random location in a filing cabinet. Why would their expectations be any different here? A title is needed 100% of the time if there is to be any hope of finding the record after it's saved. I think a polite warning is counter-productive in the cases where a smack in the head is called for. But I suppose that's just me.

[patch]

A title is needed 100% of the time if there is to be any hope of finding the record after it's saved.

No
It has a creation date and unique internal id so can readily be displayed and found.
Although the issue is, if a valid url to imdb is supplied, then there is no reason why PVD could not fill the other fields in (other than it does not currently support it).

[rick.ca]

Technically, it's not required—so I'm sure it's by design.

I think that was clear enough. If the ability to add a record from a URL is provided, I'm sure it will be done via NMM or some mechanism where the user will not need to initialize a record. If you want to do this now, you can open a new movie record, paste in the URL and type an "X" for the title, then save and download. I don't find typing the "X" particularly demanding. The idea the program should allow a user to create a record without a name, or warn them they're attempting to do so is silly.

[Anson]

I tried creating a new record with only an URL and neither title nor original title, and it didn't work.

Agree this is counter intuitive & workarounds using dummy titles to create record without confusing PVD matching logic would just add to the confusion.

The problem is probably this "internal index and matching" which rick described somewhere above. PVD has to do something like that and probably needs either title or original title to do it, and thus can't add an url without at least one of those other two fields.

A good solution / feature request would be supporting url in "add from clip board".

That would work nicely for my purpose:
- go to the website and search for a movie
- copy the URL
- either "add URL from clipboard" or add an URL with the "new movie master"

But it also would have to take care of exactly the same problem (not having a title), and thus be no "standalone" solution without other related changes to handling records without titles and/or at least internally use a dummytitle derived from the url or something.

Since i like experiments, i once created a new record with the url as title, but that crashed the IMDB plugin (some endless searches with repeating parts of that url, etc). But maybe that could be a method to "add movies by URL" if plugins would check whether a title looks like an URL. then PVD itself wouldn't have to take care of titles too much and the work would be done by the plugin ... (just an idea; might also be total crap since i have no idea how all this big software package looks internally)

[rick.ca]

The problem is probably this "internal index and matching" which rick described somewhere above. PVD has to do something like that and probably needs either title or original title to do it, and thus can't add an url without at least one of those other two fields.

Yes, as I've said several times, it's by design. For the methods of adding a movie we've been talking about, the program needs to check for duplicates and determine how they will be handled, run a search to find the online source, etc. The fact there is nothing in the current design for adding a record by URL alone doesn't mean there's anything complicated about it. In fact, it should be considerably simpler. If there is already an invisible record with the same URL, then it will be made visible and updated. If not, a new record will be created and all the information (including title) filled from the download (since all the user has is a URL, there is no concern about overwriting existing user information).

The point is, until the adding of a movie by URL alone is provided for in the design, you have to respect the design. If you have a URL, by all means use it. But the only way to do so is to add it to an existing record. Existing records, by design, must have titles. If and when the capability to add a record from a URL alone is added, it will not involve the user in creating a new record. The program will use the URL to download the information and create a record. If the download fails, the process will likely be aborted and no record will be created.

[Anson]

What's clearly counter-intuitive is the idea of creating a record with no name. When I used the word "intuitive," the context was not just the program, but record keeping in general. I think most people can appreciate the consequences of putting a paper document in an unmarked folder and filing the folder in a random location in a filing cabinet. Why would their expectations be any different here?

it should be different because we work with computers and not with pen&paper and a physical storage. On a computer you have many options to file something and search for it besides a title, eg an advanced search for

Code: [Select]

URL IS NOT NULL
and
ORIGINAL TITLE IS NULLand then fill that data by using a plugin.

If you have a secretary in your office, it would be counter-intuitive to give him/her a note with a reference number for some document in another office, and him/her telling you that he/she can't get the info and copy it for you unless you go there first yourself and copy the title of the document to the note first, or at least write anything there which looks like a title (which later is not needed at all when retrieving the info by use of the document's reference number). It would be really blond secretaries (sorry for not being PC :-) who can't do that themselves and require the boss to give such a title just to temporarily file the note in their hand until the real document is retrieved (by ignoring that title and looking at the reference number only) and replaces all data on the note.

I think a polite warning is counter-productive in the cases where a smack in the head is called for. But I suppose that's just me.

I just tried ...
- if i input all data for a movie and leave the title fields empty, the record and all the work is lost. that would be a really big smack with a hammer.
- if i already have a record, i can change everything and even delete both titles as well as year and ID, and it will still be saved! Thus: why shouldn't an (optically identical) record be saved and give a hammer-smack when i write all the info for the first time?

It has a creation date and unique internal id so can readily be displayed and found.

although i agree with the rest of the post (see my suggestion above for searching for the record), there seems to be no unique statical internal ID which can be shown to users in any kind of way. that would be what i have looked for, but as i understood from another post, such IDs are generated some kind of dynamically by using info like title and date.

If you want to do this now, you can open a new movie record, paste in the URL and type an "X" for the title, then save and download. I don't find typing the "X" particularly demanding.

when i suggested using dummynames, you didn't like that idea, and the "X" is just that: a dummyname. In addition, using the same name "X" for all movies leads to problems, not only when importing a CSV file with a lot of URLs but also because of endless questions whether the existing entries for "XxX" and similar were meant.
That's why i had suggested in a previous post how to create dummytitles for importing URLs from a CSV: "dummytitleNNNNNNN" with NNNNNNN being the number from the IMDB URLs (of course, this is only practical when i do it automatically, eg with my new "myvovies to pvd" converter which works now :-).

The idea the program should allow a user to create a record without a name, or warn them they're attempting to do so is silly.

when i can delete the title later (i have tested that), it is silly if i can't download info including correct title without first creating a new record with any (even incorrect) title.
When accidentally forgetting to enter a required field (or even more so, when that field seems to be not so required in the end), it is common practise and politeness to not smack users with a hammer and deleting/ignoring the info they have entered correctly, but warn them instead. I consider this behavior in PVD to be a bug and not only a feature. (and i consider the fact that it is required at all to be only a featuire and not a bug)

[Anson]

If you have a URL, by all means use it. But the only way to do so is to add it to an existing record. Existing records, by design, must have titles.

not exactly...
you can delete titles from existing records. they only need to have a title to create them.

edit: just did an additional experiment with strange outcome:
import from CSV: only an URL field -> a new record is generated with no title and no URL