Screen shots (again)

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

Collecting people images of decent quality is a bit of an issue.  IMDB just doesn't cut it, and I don't see how that can be fixed...it's too difficult to program something that can get the 'best' picture, and image lists just mean you have to be there all the time.  The screen shot maker is my solution until there's an online source of images more specifically suited to PVD use.

1) If there was a pop-up menu in movie view, containing the list of cast members in a movie (ordered by name), the process would be simpler and faster.  Move over a screen shot, mouse right-click to get the menu and copy the screen shot to a person.  Large casts would be messy to deal with.  Moving the process to the screen shot maker would allow a scrollable list of cast member (lots of room in the dialog) and either drag / drop or an "copy to" button.  Another possibility would be to let the screen shot maker be invoked from PEOPLE view...might be the easiest, but the screen shot maker would have to be invoked for each person.

2) Could the image list in the screen shot maker allow moving images up and down in the list (even if no screen shots were made in that session, but there were images in the screen shot list)?  This would allow ordering of image lists into logical groups and allow the maintenance of those groups (ie. fan artwork could be added, then moved via the screen shot maker into the proper position).

3) A copy / paste with the clipboard would also be nice...take a screen shot, enhance in your favorite image editor, paste it back.  This can be duplicated by saving as files, then editing, so it's just a matter of efficiency...same as loading into people view...it can be done manually, but it's more painful.

Anything that can streamline my work flow is much appreciated.

[rick.ca]

Collecting people images of decent quality is a bit of an issue.  IMDB just doesn't cut it, and I don't see how that can be fixed...it's too difficult to program something that can get the 'best' picture, and image lists just mean you have to be there all the time.

I doubt this is true. The image currently retrieved by the plugin is the thumbnail that appears at the top of the person's IMDb page. The original image is also there—stored "beside" the thumbnail. For example...

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjA3MjczNzU1OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODM3OTc1Mg@@._V1._SX99_SY140_.jpg (thumbnail)
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjA3MjczNzU1OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODM3OTc1Mg@@._V1._SX284_SY400_.jpg (image)

Movie poster thumbnails and images appear to work exactly the same way. Some time ago the movie plugin was changed to get the image rather than the thumbnail. I'm sure the people plugin could be modifed do the same. While these images are not particularly large, they're a perfect size for the people pane.

Even if suitable images were could not be obtained by download, getting them from screen shots is far too a tedious process to interest many users. But this is one of many different things one might want to do with screen shots. Most of your suggestions would be useful if implemented in a more general way. That is...

• reordering of displayed images
• captions and/or tooltips for images
• cutting/pasting images to/from clipboard

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[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

IMDB has "tricked up" the process somewhat, if you look closely.  They post thumbnails, then quite often, post a thumb for the large image as well.  Not only that, but many images have several people in them (or even artwork), so the "usable" size is limited.  When they post 2 "identical" images, the 2nd image is ALWAYS the full-sized image...never the one in the "primary" position.

Ed Asner was the 2nd person name I typed in, and is a perfect example of what I mean:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000799/

I've looked at this quite a bit, and yes, the "large" images are perfect.  In fact that's the size I have my new skin sized for...I just can't get at them in a reasonable way.

[rick.ca]

I'm not trying to suggest there's an ideal image for every person on IMDb. For many, there's nothing at all. But for most of those that have a thumbnail, there's a more suitably sized image "behind" it. I see no reason to speculate they're replacing the original images with thumbnails. It's more likely the thumbnail-sized image is all they have in the first place. The point is, the plugin should be getting the original image, not the thumbnail.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

Examples from the first 100 people in my database:

http://www.imdb.com/media/nm0946148/ 'Weird Al' Yankovic  ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001173/ Aaron Eckhart         ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1594381/ Aaron Lazar             ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0479903/ Aaron Michael Lacey ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005455/ Aaron Spelling          ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list

Count of "good" images links ... 12
Total images                      ... 17

That pretty much matches up with the database overall...about 20% of the people have images, and about 30% of those don't follow the methodology you outlined. 

I don't think this, nor the frequent page format changes are coincidental.

Here's an example of the 2 identical images with the secondary image being the 'big one'....and there's quite a few of these too...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0409691/

The only way I can see IMDB large images being used is to have the program look at the full-image size and do a random download from the list if it's a thumb, and even then you'd need a 'reload / re-randomize' function when the image doesn't work out.

Meanwhile, 12% doesn't work for me.   It's a start, but nothing more.  From my testing, I can get that up to about 50% via internet downloads.  This doesn't resolve which "john smith" I'm loading into my database, so screen shots are the most reliable way.  With copy / paste from screen shot to people image the process could be reasonably effecient.

Mostly I collect older B-movies so the screen shot process is much more important to me than people who collect the current releases.  I have no doubt some people will have 50% of their cast filled with images via IMDB...thumbs or not.

[rick.ca]

I'm sure we're looking at the same phenomenon. To be sure, I did the same test on my database, and got similar results. Only 20 of the 100 had any images. But this doesn't mean anything close to what you're implying. There are 25,000+ people in my database. Most of them are obscure or non-actors for whom I don't want an image or I'm indifferent. There's an obvious correlation between the 20% for which IMDb has an image and those I want images for.

Of the 20 that had images, five did not have a larger image "behind" the thumbnail (i.e., the thumbnail and the image are one in the same). Examining at the photo galleries for these five revealed the reason. In every case, the head shot/thumbnail image was a crop of another image. So, I stand by what I said before. About 25% of the images available are going to be poor because they're cropped from other images. But 75% are going to be fine—if the plugin is fixed.

It was also interesting to note that of the five with the cropped images, in every case there was another full-sized image in the gallery that would have served well as a photo of the person. They may not have been head shots (some were, and were better—I suppose they were added later), but they were single portraits. Using these would be much easier and faster than creating a screen shot. As you probably know, these can't be copied directly from the gallery. But all that's needed is something that will display the URLs of media in a page (like Page Info or Ad Blocker in Firefox). Then the image can be opened in a separate tab and copied.

[nostra]

I agree with Rick, that your suggestion makes more sense if you separate it into several more abstract tasks. I will note these suggestions, but it is unlikely that they will be implemented soon. What I can do pretty fast and I will is improving the plugin to get full size images (I mean full size versions of the thumbnails).

You could also try getting people images from other sources. I get my posters and images mainly from Kinopoisk as they have a good quality selection of images in there database.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

If you turn off JavaScript, you can right-click-copy the IMDB images with firefox...probably IE too.  When I see what looks like a decent IMDB image in my database, I use the link to get the person page and load the one I like best.

I have apache and php (with interbase funtions) installed on my computer.  I also have a pile of images.  My plan is to use the server to sort through and load what images I have into the database (one or two per person).  That will cover off most of the important people, but there will still be a few that I'll want to get images for.  45 - 55% coverage is what I expect from this.

I'll try some of the other sources and see what results I get.  I've used other sources for posters, but ultimately have had to resort to googling for hundreds of the more obscure titles.  It's enough effort that I've saved copies of 3,000 poster files to ensure I don't have to do it twice.

If I need to, I can take screen shots, screen capture and load into people.  It's not real fast, but it's usable.

It should be noted that my suggestions are presented with an example so you fully understand the process I'm talking about.  If I leave my explanations at the abstract level you may have a different idea about what I'm talking about.  I spend a lot of time explaining programming issues to non-programmers, so I sometimes forget when I'm in the company of informed people.  Sorry if I "seemed" to be talking down to you.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

The ofdb.de script was the only one that looked promising...until I noticed it was loading the wrong images.  When run in batch mode it grabbed the wrong itemindex from the list, but worked properly with a single selection.  It appears that it didn't find a record for the first 2 people, then used the offset from the first record it did find, so it loaded images 2 records forward...aj cook into aj walker for example.

Over the last few months, the best site I've seen for person images is:
http://www.aveleyman.com/

Unfortunately you need to handle "post", redirect and what looks like session variables.  I don't know what the scripting language can handle, but if it can post, I'd be willing to try to script it.

[nostra]

Sorry if I "seemed" to be talking down to you.

No problem

Unfortunately you need to handle "post", redirect and what looks like session variables.  I don't know what the scripting language can handle, but if it can post, I'd be willing to try to script it.

You can easily post with scripts. Just return the right value using such code

Code: [Select]

function GetDownloadMethod : Byte;
begin
  Result := dmPost;
end;

[rick.ca]

If you turn off JavaScript, you can right-click-copy the IMDB images with firefox...probably IE too.

Thanks. That's much easier. I had set (Allow scripts to) Disable or replace context menus for something else, and then forgot about it. JavaScript is wonderful, but it's making things difficult for my tired old brain.

You could also try getting people images from other sources. I get my posters and images mainly from Kinopoisk as they have a good quality selection of images in there database.

And I suppose for the same reason, it never occurred to me images are the same in any language.

But I must be doing something wrong with the Kinopoisk script. It seems to consistently get the search page URL, where the target heads the list as the only "most likely" item, but is never selected. For example, it gets http://www.kinopoisk.ru/index.php?level=7&m_act%5Bwhat%5D=actor&m_act%5Bfind%5D=Adam+Arkin/ instead of http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/4/people/11757/. And therefore, of course, does not return a photo. I'm using kinopoisk_person.psf version 0.1.0.12.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

Hmmmm...  I did say that didn't I?

I have a significant list of sites to grab images from that I was going to download / rename files / upload to database, but since I have to program that anyway, I'll give the scripting language a try.  From what I've seen in the script forum, and in the script directory, it looks quite straight forward.

When a script has been completed, is there a way to provide extra information other than the url in the plug-ins directory?  For example, some of the sites have HUGE files and others contain nudity.  Something like "HiRes" / "PG rated"?

Anyway, this should keep me "out of your hair" for a while.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

One last thing before I get to work.

Can a script run SQL queries?  If I parse a page that say "john doe" in "some movie", can I check to see if the john doe in my database is in fact in that movie?

[nostra]

One last thing before I get to work.

Can a script run SQL queries?  If I parse a page that say "john doe" in "some movie", can I check to see if the john doe in my database is in fact in that movie?

No, scripts can't do that. With plugins you can execute SQL queries, but there is no possibility to retrieve selected items, so this functionality is only limited to writing to the database.