Taking too long to download info and poster

[waltdisneypixar]

hi

i've been using movie collector and now after checking this program, it seems it takes ages to downloas info and poster


anyone has the same feeling?


is is supposed to take too long?


P.S. congrats for the program

[buah]

No, I have never seen such a fast program. Simple as that. It must be something with your system configuration

[waltdisneypixar]

No, I have never seen such a fast program. Simple as that. It must be something with your system configuration

have you used movie collector?

[rick.ca]

Any discussion about how we "feel" about the speed of downloads (directly, or in comparison to an inferior program) is going to serve any purpose. Please start the program with the -debug switch, try some downloads and then post your log (see the help menu). Then we can tell you how our experience compares, and maybe detect a problem—if one exists.

[waltdisneypixar]

why does the program download all the posters and then show you all?

the wait is longer that way

[rick.ca]

What plugin are you referring to? All the ones I use stop and ask me to choose based on thumbnails. I'd actually prefer to be able to specify a maximum number and size, and let it download those automatically. I don't care how long it takes if there's no reason for me to wait.

[waltdisneypixar]

i use amazon for posters

i choose a film and it has to download 6 or more poster before showing me and then i have to choose

the wait is longer because it has to check all the posters in amazon.com

[rick.ca]

How would you choose if there were no thumbnails?

I think it's fine the way it is for downloading posters one-at-a-time. For downloading in batch mode, the behaviour of Silent Mode could be improved, as mentioned here.

[waltdisneypixar]

in movie collecor there are links, so you double click the link and if you like the poster, don't need to look for more

[rick.ca]

I can understand how that would work, but it's inconsistent with the approach taken in PVD. So, for example, there's no place within the current structure to record an image URL. If there were, I'd still want it to download thumbnails so it could display those instead of URL's. The time it takes to download thumbnails is a tiny price to pay for the basis it provides for choosing an image. But I still think the alternate approach I suggested—downloading a small number of full-size posters—is the most efficient one in terms of user interaction. It's impossible to determine the quality of a poster from a thumbnail. It's much faster to examine full size posters and delete the ones not wanted than to download one-at-a-time until something acceptable is found—and then still not be sure that's the best one.

[buah]

It's impossible to determine the quality of a poster from a thumbnail.

Integrated browser preview window, again, would be the most efficient solution?

[rick.ca]

Well, I'm certainly not going to disagree with that brilliant idea.

But that was suggested with one-at-a-time item selection (poster, or whatever) in mind. It probably can't fully replace the current means of selection (there may not always be a search results page to display), and it's clearly not the most efficient solution for bulk downloads. For that, the ability to specify parameters (e.g., number of images and size) allowing a poster plugin it run effectively in silent mode would be the most efficient solution. Where that fails, the most efficient second step (other than using an alternate plugin) would normally be a manual search using a browser (I normally use Web searches for this). This avoids wasting time tinkering with a plugin which is likely to fail again (e.g., if none of the top 3 posters were acceptable, checking the next 3 is likely a waste of time).

[zapras]

Silent mode isn't work for adding posters. I have about 600 movies to add. What should i do?

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

If you're patient (like a saint...I'm busy busy this week), I'll see if I can cobble something together.

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[SkinnyV]

I agree about it taking time. I just started transferring my movie collector database to PVD and decided to stop messing around trying to import all the cover from my old database (since there is really no automatic way to do it) and just imported the movie list so I could start fresh (some of my cover were bad quality). Before, if I wanted to do that on MC, I would have to go through all my movies but it would import the cover and movie info all at the same time and then it was done. I was stunned after going trough my 450 movies and getting the cover added to realize I needed to go trough all of that again to import the information as a separate process! I then redid it again to import from IMDB only to realized that it was only importing the IMDB url and not the info! Now I need to start again to get the info from allmymovie... I'm really not sure if I want to start over again clicking and selecting for 2 hours when it's all set up on movie collector, I thought I was doing a good thing switching over but now I don't know. Maybe there's something I'm missing but I can't see how people could have needed to stay hour in front of their computer clicking hundred of time per minute to add their movie...

[nostra]

realized that it was only importing the IMDB url and not the info

You probably have the old version of the plugin. Update the plugin, select all the movies and run imdb import again. If you have the right imdb URL for the records PVD will automatically get information for all movies selected without asking you anything. Pay attention that you can configure the plugin to get posters from IMDB as well. Another thing to take in account is: all plugins fill only empty fields by default, so if you want to update existing information you need to go to Tools -> Prefrences -> Plugins, select the imdb plugin and make all the fields in the list on the bottom you want to update  checked (not ticked).

[SkinnyV]

That would be weird as I have just download PVD less than 6 days ago... It's getting so frustrating, I just added about 300 movie, and it download poster and info on 2 different process with me required to select each one from a list and then it analyzed the media information and codec info and it just display the file info now and no movie descriptions at all! So I just wasted 2 day of clicking. I got to say I was excited to switch to a free software but it's either buggy or me not knowing enough.

[rick.ca]

Nothing you've said suggests you've encountered a bug. There's been lot's of challenges lately due to IMDb changing their website design—whenever they change something, the plugin has to be updated. But if you're checking for and installing program updates, that shouldn't be an issue either. If you run plugins in "Silent Mode," you'll not be presented with any prompts. If a plugin is not getting the information you think it should, it's probably because you haven't configured it properly. Sorry, without a better description of exactly what you're doing and what's happening, I can't be any more precise than that.