[SOLVED] Import from IMDB Not Working

[rick.ca]

Thanks. That fixed the episodes issue. Unfortunately, it also caused and revealed more issues.

1. Names with accented characters are not being handled correctly. See the attached list. These are people added by updating movie records with the plugin. In most cases, the person already exists in their proper name, so these are duplicates (and both appear in the credits of the movie updated).

2. The new option to Download episode data for roles is simply including any parenthetical data with the role, while not selecting the option excludes it. This works fine for credits in series, but it also affects movies. The second and third attachments illustrate the effect on 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the parenthetical data and without. This is a good news/bad news story. The bad news is important information like "(voice)" is omitted. In this case, I might guess Douglas Rain played the voice of HAL 9000, not the computer itself. But with it omitted from the role of "Mission controller," I might not realize that was a voice role. The good news is it gets rid of those stupid "(as [actor's alternate name])" comments. For me, the good outweighs the bad, but this is adds yet another reason why the ability to handle multiple plugin configurations is required (i.e., IMDb-movies and IMDb-series). (No, this is not a request, but would be nice to have in version 1.)

3. If this new option is applied to movies (i.e., to retain "(voice)" and other useful parenthetical comments), it inserts a large space (34 spaces for the ones I checked) between the role and the comment—as illustrated in the second shot.

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[Hyomil]

I'm having a problem, too, I think with the plugin, with adding credits in People View (using 0.3.0.2).  To use Jeeja Yanin http://imdb.com/name/nm2925876 as an example again, if I delete one of the two credits and then import with the plugin, it doesn't get added back.

1.  Happens with Merge Filmography both checked and unchecked.  (The Filmography box is a gray check.) 
2.  If I delete both credits, then they're both added back due to the 'fill if empty' behavior, as you'd expect.
3.  The second credit does get added back if the Filmography box is a black check and Merge Filmography is unchecked, also as you'd expect.
4.  The surprising case is that if Filmography is a black check and Merge Filmography is checked, then the plugin behaves correctly--adding any missing movies from IMDb and leaving movies not on IMDb alone.  I tested this by adding a credit "Test" to the list and, upon importing, the missing movie was added back and "Test" was not overwritten.  From what I've read, it shouldn't be necessary to configure the plugin this way to get it working, as Merge Filmography can have undesirable behaviors.

It is actually like this: one of the titles and year should match. It causes problems if year differs or both titles do not match. Not setting "Merge filmography" prevents the program from adding 2 records for the same movie/person from different sources with different (wrong) year/title/original title, so it really helps if you do not check this option.

5. The Merge filmography option causes credits to be added to movies when the People records (and their filmographies) are updated. You don't want to do this if using the "actors from main page only" option to restrict the number of actor credits to 15 (recommended to prevent a huge number of minor actors from being added to the database).

[rick.ca]

From what I've read, it shouldn't be necessary to configure the plugin this way to get it working, as Merge Filmography can have undesirable behaviors.

I don't understand. From what you're describing, it seems everything is working exactly per design. If there is a problem, is it not that "Merge Filmography can have undesirable behaviors"? ASAIK, those behaviours have more to do with the inherent difficulty in combining credits data from different sources, which is the only purpose I can think of for the option. If IMDb is the only source, it makes more sense just to update filmographies so they are complete. That's the result you get if the option is not selected—the filmography is simply replaced with the current version.

[nostra]

1. Names with accented characters are not being handled correctly. See the attached list. These are people added by updating movie records with the plugin. In most cases, the person already exists in their proper name, so these are duplicates (and both appear in the credits of the movie updated).

Fixed

3. If this new option is applied to movies (i.e., to retain "(voice)" and other useful parenthetical comments), it inserts a large space (34 spaces for the ones I checked) between the role and the comment—as illustrated in the second shot.

Fixed

2. The new option to Download episode data for roles is simply including any parenthetical data with the role, while not selecting the option excludes it. This works fine for credits in series, but it also affects movies. The second and third attachments illustrate the effect on 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the parenthetical data and without. This is a good news/bad news story. The bad news is important information like "(voice)" is omitted. In this case, I might guess Douglas Rain played the voice of HAL 9000, not the computer itself. But with it omitted from the role of "Mission controller," I might not realize that was a voice role. The good news is it gets rid of those stupid "(as [actor's alternate name])" comments. For me, the good outweighs the bad, but this is adds yet another reason why the ability to handle multiple plugin configurations is required (i.e., IMDb-movies and IMDb-series). (No, this is not a request, but would be nice to have in version 1.)

Sorry, but I do not think that I will have time to solve this issue any time soon (not even in 1.0)

[rick.ca]

Thanks for the quick fix.

Sorry, but I do not think that I will have time to solve this issue any time soon (not even in 1.0)

Is it more involved than compiling a separate imdb2.dll that uses imdbconf2.cfg, and is otherwise identical to imdb.dll? That's all I need to maintain different configurations for movies and series. That's what I do now, but it only works for overwrite settings (because those are saved in pvdconf.ini?). The settings saved in imdbconf.cfg are, of course, shared by the two DLL's.

[nostra]

Oh, I thought about an abstract solution for all scripts and plugins.

Of course, you can have a second version of the plugin, but the bad thing is that I will need to compile it twice on each update

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[rick.ca]

Thanks! I'll try not to ask for an imdb3.dll.