Well you see, I think that's where the problem exists period. It's with multiple file names under one database. Movies that posses similiar yet slight different file names are seperated by the '|' under 1 database.
This is not a "problem," it's by design. Most users have legitimate reasons for having multiple files associated with one record and therefore require this behaviour. If two files represent two different versions of the same movie, then you have a choice—leave them both referenced to the same record, or create separate records for them.
You CAN NOT hit the 'PLAY' key and have the movie 'PLAY', it errors out, and the movies will not play.
What do you play videos with? This should work fine. The files are passed to the player as a playlist. This obviously works well for multi-part movies (i.e., CD1, CD2, etc.). It can also be used for multiple versions—send all versions to the player, then use the player to select which version to play.
Yet I still cannot have them Sorted or Grouped according to 'File Path'.
The purpose of this program, in part, is to be a video manager. It performs that function very well, without the need for all the same functions being duplicated in the file system. I appreciate you have already developed a system for managing your videos within the file system. But to expect to have your system imposed on the program is not reasonable. Nor is it in your own best interests. You practice of moving files around is inefficient, error-prone and could cause significant problems for maintaining your PVD database. It's important to use a sensible and consistent filing system, but once a video is "filed," leave it alone and let PVD manage things.
Why will the Advanced Sort option not work uising 'File Path' and *.* as the file criteria...
There is no ability to sort by path because this would not be useful or necessary for most users. You can, however, use simple or advanced search with
File path. This should provide you with a convenient means to restrict the list to in a particular directory of your file system. From there, your file names probably start with
Title, so the result is exactly the same.
Reading your first post, it seems you're not using
Advanced Search properly. Click on the operator between the two boxes to select it. But a simple search is probably all you need. Just setting it to
File path and entering "Good" will display all the movies in your "Good" directory. And anything with "Good" in the title, but this isn't the preferred solution anyway...
I place about 30 Gb of movies into each directory that contains other directories based on the way I rated the movie myself;
such as Good, Fair, and, Time_Waster.
I suggest you move this function from the file system into the database. You could use
Rating for this, mapping Good, Fair, and Time_Waster to 8, 6 and 4 stars (which could then be fine-tuned in the future). If you want to maintain your classification system, you could do so with a
custom select-list or, as buah suggests, using an existing field for the same purpose. This has the distinct advantage of being able to set the values initially with the MME. Setting initial values to
Rating and/or a custom field would require an import (a bit of work, but not bad for a one-time conversion).
