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[lepa]

Yes, I've been aiming to something like 300p also as MC seems to handle that size fine even though most of the time that size is also overkill for the purpose of the image

[Moe]

I just shrank all the images down to sane sizes.

I did archive the big images, should anyone want them https://moesrealm.com/MC/images/Big/

[wer]

I've been meaning to introduce proper caching for the images used in tooltips/Theater View, that should resolve those performance problems, I reckon.

On second thought, this is probably a good idea Hendrik.  I've found with more testing that the effect is actually cumulative.  So smaller images at first solves the problem, but then when you add in MORE small images it can come back.  It's a slippery slope with all those format icons and everything, you start to get a lot of small images.

[wer]

I'd be interested to hear what others are planning to do with Studio icons in their tooltips & theater views.

Starting out, I thought I would do this just because I thought it looked nice, but I've discovered several things and am having second thoughts.

1. There are a kajilion "studios" if you include the minor ones, and the ones for which graphics are missing far outnumber the studio images on Moe's site now.  So there would be a lot of hunting to generate new PNGs.

2. The information on TMDb is often wrong. Sometimes the contributor listed as the studio some fly by night home video company that once released the movie as a cheap dvd and had nothing to do with actually making the picture.

3. Even when the studio information is vaguely accurate, it's inconsistent.  Somtimes it's entered as Columbia, or Columbia Pictures, or Columbia Pictures Corporation, or Columbia Pictures Corp.  Some studios have 5 or 6 variations. So you either have to standardize the fields or make multiple PNGs.

4. And on top of that sometimes there's no right answer. In the modern area multiple studios (and I'm talking about the majors) will all put their stamp on the picture. How do you decide between MGM and Columbia? Some movies have so many vanity cards at the start you wonder when the movie will actually begin. If you keep them all, the icons won't fit!

So it's a real hodgepodge, much worse than I expected.

What are you all doing with it?

[greynolds]

I'd be interested to hear what others are planning to do with Studio icons in their tooltips & theater views.

Starting out, I thought I would do this just because I thought it looked nice, but I've discovered several things and am having second thoughts.

1. There are a kajilion "studios" if you include the minor ones, and the ones for which graphics are missing far outnumber the studio images on Moe's site now.  So there would be a lot of hunting to generate new PNGs.

2. The information on TMDb is often wrong. Sometimes the contributor listed as the studio some fly by night home video company that once released the movie as a cheap dvd and had nothing to do with actually making the picture.

3. Even when the studio information is vaguely accurate, it's inconsistent.  Somtimes it's entered as Columbia, or Columbia Pictures, or Columbia Pictures Corporation, or Columbia Pictures Corp.  Some studios have 5 or 6 variations. So you either have to standardize the fields or make multiple PNGs.

4. And on top of that sometimes there's no right answer. In the modern area multiple studios (and I'm talking about the majors) will all put their stamp on the picture. How do you decide between MGM and Columbia? Some movies have so many vanity cards at the start you wonder when the movie will actually begin. If you keep them all, the icons won't fit!

So it's a real hodgepodge, much worse than I expected.

What are you all doing with it?

For many of the reasons you cited, I've decided to not do anything with it.  The views already look really nice at this point, and that was my goal.  I haven't gotten around to adding the actor images either - I think I'm happy enough with just the list of actor names.

Partly due to the tools we have for editing the templates and no sort of a preview viewer, it's a surprising amount of work to get all the fields consistent (font size, colors, etc.), ensure that fields that don't have values don't chew up space, etc.

I've got a bunch of different views setup to filter my movies in various ways - I've got a "newly added" view, a "by genre" view, a "by series" view, and so on.  I use expressions for grouping so I can group my movies by series and control how they display (a movie that's part of a series gets a little folder icon prepended to the name so I know that when I select it, I'm going to drop down a level rather than go to the detail for a movie.  Unfortunately, since those expressions use one of the group functions, I can't declare a user defined field and reference that everywhere.  So when I decide to change the display expression, I have to go through and update it in a bunch of places.

Despite all of this, I'm really happy with the end result so far.  I still have some tweaking to do to get everything consistent, but it looks great so far and far better than the original stock views.

Also, I'm a software developer, not a UX expert, so I'm sure UX experts everywhere would be cringing if they saw what I've come up with so far. 

[lepa]

For me in studio logos in TheaterView are just visual thing. I just draw one or max first two and if I don't have the logo image and it is some of those I'm familiar with I just download the image from somewhere. I don't bother too much of those I haven't paid attention ever. So basically you could say that I just care those logos I remember from childhood movies. Maybe these are just those crappy VHS publisher logo I want to see 

[arcspin]

Great question,
I think Studio logos is a great idea but not very conformative to my other items in Theater view.
As it is now, I only have one line with studios by name and nothing else and if I ever need more space in Theater view the studio name is the first thing to go.

Studio logos are to wild and unpredictable for me to be used in an orderly fashion but I love it anyway and a colorful small studio logo is a beauty to behold.

[arcspin]

Help wanted.

How do I get this Expression limited to only show maximum 3 producers?

Code: [Select]

<font color="#ffffff size="90""><i>Replace([Producer],;,  / // )

[wer]

Look at the expression in the downloadable templates for Actor images.

[lepa]

Help wanted.

How do I get this Expression limited to only show maximum 3 producers?

Code: [Select]

<font color="#ffffff size="90""><i>Replace([Producer],;,  / // )

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/List_Manipulation_Functions#ListLimit
[Producer] is your List

[arcspin]

Thank you for the pointers,
Give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach a man to fish...
I'm throwing the fishing net all over the place and sometimes I catch a small fish ;o)

Ok, In an attempt to gain back some space in Theater view I have been experimenting with combining Director, Producer and Screenwriter in one single line.
With the limits of maximum 2 Directors, 2 Producers and 1 Screenwriter. To even more compress the information I have used icons for Director, Producer and Screenwriter instead of writing those out.

The code for Listlimit that I have manage to make is:

Code: [Select]

Listlimit([Director],2,0)
Not hard, but the separator between the names of the Directors are a ;
How can I have a / instead, that I have not yet figured out?

It is getting late over here and I have been working with this the entire evening.

What do you think of the "one line" approach?


Stay safe,

//arcspin

[lepa]

The code for Listlimit that I have manage to make is:

Code: [Select]

Listlimit([Director],2,0)
Not hard, but the separator between the names of the Directors are a ;

You can nest(?) expressions. So see what happen when you put your above expression inside Replace(source data, "replace what", "replace to") expression. You alse need to use escape character / if you plan to change ; to / so that MC understand that you want to print / and not to use it as escape character. So the inner expression will create string limited to 2 directors e.g "John Woo;John Ford" which is then used as a input for replace expression which will replace wanted characters from that "John Woo;John Ford" so end result which is printed to screen is  "John Woo / John Ford"

Spoiler: Replace(Listlimit([Director],2,0),;,/ // )

[wer]

Since others have been posting screenshots, I thought I would show my own modest efforts. Nothing too fancy, but I have plans for some more interesting data using some new expression language extensions being developed.

Anyway here it is:


I'm not entirely happy with the two rows of icons, but space was getting tight!

[lepa]

Looks really balanced and good. I like it a lot. Those greys in channel lines are big improvement. For me logos are also always double-edged sword. While they look nice it's hard to get in harmony with other elements.

Good work!

[wer]

Thanks, Lepa.  I experimented a lot to get those lines, with both graphics and typography.  I ended up doing typography because until we get vertical spacing control for graphics, you can't get the spacing even like this.

To do it right with a font, you have to use a special called an em-dash. Not all fonts have it, and some fonts have it but leave small gaps between the characters, which mars the appearance of the line.  This line comes out perfect, but the length varies with the font size so that's a hassle.

[lepa]

I started to paint lines in my channel images to gray and see what it comes.

I don't remember Tom Skerritt to look so old during Alien though...

[wer]

Yeah no kidding.  I've been pestering Zybex to augment the actor image download with a google image search including the year of the movie.  "Tom Skerritt 1979" give good results in google.  Maybe if enough people suggest this, he will take pity on us.

[arcspin]

Hello and sorry to bother you on this over here rainy day,
I've been playing around with having icons instead of explanatory text labels in theater view.

To try and gain even more space in Theater view I would like to add one current expression code string after another current expression code string but when I try to add one expression code string after another expression code string the whole expression gets messed up.
Is there a way of making a hard coded stop so a new expression code string takes on regardless of the previous expression code string?
There are a lot of math going on in these two expressions and is there a sort of  <//math> code that would effectively separate one code string from another?

See screenshot where I try to visualize what I would like to accomplish.

So this is the expression that I would like start with:

Code: [Select]

<font face="ToolTip01" size="160" color="#9496a3">Save(Math(Trunc(Replace([Aspect Ratio], :, // ) + .005, 2)), gAR)IfElse(Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1), , Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.38), M, Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.68), N,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.80), O,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.87), P,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 2.36), Q,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 2.40), R)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="160" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Width],1920,5),¥,IsEqual([Width],1360,5),¤,IsEqual([Width],888,5),£,IsEqual([FPS],25,2),¢,1,¡)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="130" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([File Type],mkv),î,IsEqual([File Type],ifo),W,IsEqual([File Type],bdmv),U)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="110" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Compression],div,8),ú,IsEqual([Compression],hevc,8),ü,IsEqual([Compression],h264,8),û,IsEqual([Compression],xvid,8),ă,IsEqual([Compression], vc-1,8),Ā,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg2,8),þ,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg1,8),ý,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg4),ÿ)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="110" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Compression],dts-hd ma,8),&,IsEqual([Compression],dts,8),#,IsEqual([Compression],ac3,8),z,IsEqual([Compression],pcm,8),/),IsEqual([Compression],mp3,8),*,IsEqual([Compression],flac,8),',IsEqual([Compression],aac,8),0,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg,8),z,IsEqual([Compression],vorbis,8),/,,IsEqual([Compression],truehd,8),x,IsEqual([Compression],opus,8),1,)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="125" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Channels],1,2),=,IsEqual([Channels],2,2),>,IsEqual([Channels],3,2),],IsEqual([Channels],4,2),?,IsEqual([Channels],5,2),^,IsEqual([Channels],6,2),‐,IsEqual([Channels],7,2),_,1,‑)<font face="ToolTip01" size="60" color="#FFD700">IfElse(IsEqual(ListItem([Compression], 1, +),Atmos),/  !,IsEqual(ListItem([Compression], 1, +),DTS:X),/  $)<//font>

And after that this is the expression that I would like to continue with:

Code: [Select]

<img src="tooltip:Size-512">If(!IsEmpty([File Size]),IfElse(IsEqual([File Size],15,3),<font color="#990000">,IsEqual([File Size],40,3),<font color="#FDDB2E">,IsEqual([File Size],100,3),<font color="#008000">) Replace([file size],/ GB),)<//font><font color="#9496a3"> GB<//font>      <img src="tooltip:Bitrate-512">If(IsEqual([Width],1920,5),If(!IsEmpty([Bitrate]),IfElse(IsEqual([Bitrate],16000,3),<font color="#990000">,IsEqual([Bitrate],40000,3),<font color="#FDDB2E">,IsEqual([Bitrate],100000,3),<font color="#008000">) math(round(math([bitrate] / 1000))),) <//font>,If(!IsEmpty([Bitrate]),IfElse(IsEqual([Bitrate],10000,3),<font color="#990000">,IsEqual([Bitrate],20000,3),<font color="#FDDB2E">,IsEqual([Bitrate],100000,3),<font color="#008000">) math(round(math([bitrate] / 1000))),)<//font>)<font color="#9496a3">Mbit<//font>

[lepa]

I think that you just missed one closing of font tag and that's why you get crap when you combined those two.
(Added one <//font> to below code)

Code: [Select]

<font face="ToolTip01" size="160" color="#9496a3">Save(Math(Trunc(Replace([Aspect Ratio], :, // ) + .005, 2)), gAR)IfElse(Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1), , Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.38), M, Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.68), N,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.80), O,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 1.87), P,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 2.36), Q,Compare(Load(gAR), <, 2.40), R)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="160" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Width],1920,5),¥,IsEqual([Width],1360,5),¤,IsEqual([Width],888,5),£,IsEqual([FPS],25,2),¢,1,¡)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="130" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([File Type],mkv),î,IsEqual([File Type],ifo),W,IsEqual([File Type],bdmv),U)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="110" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Compression],div,8),ú,IsEqual([Compression],hevc,8),ü,IsEqual([Compression],h264,8),û,IsEqual([Compression],xvid,8),ă,IsEqual([Compression], vc-1,8),Ā,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg2,8),þ,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg1,8),ý,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg4),ÿ)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="110" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Compression],dts-hd ma,8),&,IsEqual([Compression],dts,8),#,IsEqual([Compression],ac3,8),z,IsEqual([Compression],pcm,8),/),IsEqual([Compression],mp3,8),*,IsEqual([Compression],flac,8),',IsEqual([Compression],aac,8),0,IsEqual([Compression],mpeg,8),z,IsEqual([Compression],vorbis,8),/,,IsEqual([Compression],truehd,8),x,IsEqual([Compression],opus,8),1,)<//font>/  <font face="ToolTip01" size="125" color="#9496a3">IfElse(IsEqual([Channels],1,2),=,IsEqual([Channels],2,2),>,IsEqual([Channels],3,2),],IsEqual([Channels],4,2),?,IsEqual([Channels],5,2),^,IsEqual([Channels],6,2),‐,IsEqual([Channels],7,2),_,1,‑)<//font><font face="ToolTip01" size="60" color="#FFD700">IfElse(IsEqual(ListItem([Compression], 1, +),Atmos),/  !,IsEqual(ListItem([Compression], 1, +),DTS:X),/  $)<//font>

Code: [Select]

/  <img src="tooltip:Size-512">If(!IsEmpty([File Size]),IfElse(IsEqual([File Size],15,3),<font color="#990000">,IsEqual([File Size],40,3),<font color="#FDDB2E">,IsEqual([File Size],100,3),<font color="#008000">) Replace([file size],/ GB),)<//font><font color="#9496a3"> GB<//font>      <img src="tooltip:Bitrate-512">If(IsEqual([Width],1920,5),If(!IsEmpty([Bitrate]),IfElse(IsEqual([Bitrate],16000,3),<font color="#990000">,IsEqual([Bitrate],40000,3),<font color="#FDDB2E">,IsEqual([Bitrate],100000,3),<font color="#008000">) math(round(math([bitrate] / 1000))),) <//font>,If(!IsEmpty([Bitrate]),IfElse(IsEqual([Bitrate],10000,3),<font color="#990000">,IsEqual([Bitrate],20000,3),<font color="#FDDB2E">,IsEqual([Bitrate],100000,3),<font color="#008000">) math(round(math([bitrate] / 1000))),)<//font>)<font color="#9496a3">Mbit<//font>
These two babies should be joinable

[arcspin]

Alright, this works out just fine!

Thank you so much for helping me out with this one, it drove me crazy!

Have a great weekend!

[wer]

Is there a way of making a hard coded stop so a new expression code string takes on regardless of the previous expression code string?

No.  And please just say "expression" instead of "expression code string". 

MC's expression language has a lot of parentheses and brackets and commas, like many programming languages.  There's absolutely nothing you can do about it except to get your punctuation and syntax right.

I would suggest you download Notepad++ and use it to edit your expressions. This is an excellent text editor that also does syntax highlighting, so it will help you match up your closing paren with its opening paren, etc.  That sort of thing helps a lot.

[greynolds]

No.  And please just say "expression" instead of "expression code string". 

MC's expression language has a lot of parentheses and brackets and commas, like many programming language.  There's absolutely nothing you can do about it except to get your punctuation and syntax right.

I would suggest you download Notepad++ and use it to edit your expressions. This is an excellent text editor that also does syntax highlighting, so it will help you match up your closing paren with its opening paren, etc.  That sort of thing helps a lot.

I do wish that they used quotes more so that it would be possible to format expressions with newlines without messing up the output.

Agreed on the Notepad++ recommendation.  It's an extremely useful tool.

[MGD_King]

After seeing so many cool layouts everyone has shared, I'm thinking I may need add actor photos. But in all honesty, how difficult is this to accomplish?

[arcspin]

Well, I downloaded Notepad++ and tried to read some how to guides, the first thing that they say is to choose default language.
What is the Language of JRiver?

[wer]

You don't need one.  There actually is a language plugin for NPP for the JRiver Expression language; you'd have to google for it.

But it's not necessary.  In NPP, go to Preferences->Highlighting and make sure Smart Highlighting is turned on, along with highlight matching tags.  It will highlight matching parenthesis and such things.

There's lots of good information on how to use NPP on their website, and through google.

Update: I found this with a forum search:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=108016.0

[greynolds]

You don't need one.  There actually is a language plugin for NPP for the JRiver Expression language; you'd have to google for it.

But it's not necessary.  In NPP, go to Preferences->Highlighting and make sure Smart Highlighting is turned on, along with highlight matching tags.  It will highlight matching parenthesis and such things.

There's lots of good information on how to use NPP on their website, and through google.

If someone knows offhand where you can download the MC Expression Language definition file for NPP, I'm sure they'll post, or you could try a forum search.

That plugin will probably need to be updated to add the new functions that Matt added recently.

[wer]

That plugin will probably need to be updated to add the new functions that Matt added recently.

Well yes and no.  It will still work, it just won't highlight the new expressions as being part of the language.

Inside the language file, there's just a list of all the Expressions and Fields it's supposed to recognize.  Any time a new expression or a new database field is added, you'd have to update the file.

That said, doing so is not hard.  It's just a lot of very simple drudge work.  Maybe I'll do it and upload it if I get a chance.

[greynolds]

Well yes and no.  It will still work, it just won't highlight the new expressions as being part of the language.

Inside the language file, there's just a list of all the Expressions and Fields it's supposed to recognize.  Any time a new expression or a new database field is added, you'd have to update the file.

That said, doing so is not hard.  It's just a lot of very simple drudge work.

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting it would no longer work, just that it would be missing support for the new stuff.  I'm a software developer and use Notepad++ ALL the time, so not a newbie .

[wer]

That's fine, others are new to it and might not understand.

If I get a chance I'll take a crack at updating it for everyone.

[RoderickGI]

Updating the Notepad++ JRiver language file has been on my To-Do list for years. If you don't do it Wer, maybe I will. Maybe.

It needs its own thread and maybe a Wiki article, so all users can find it.

[wer]

I'm actually working on it now.

[RoderickGI]

Excellent.

[arcspin]

I need help writing an expression that removes everything between and including [ and ]

Now that we have the awesome McRatings that can create actors images with name and character the Actors name tag looks something likes this:
Jay Baruchel [Hiccup  Horrendous Haddock III (voice)]
Gerard Butler [Stoick the Vast (voice)]
and so on.

My expression for displaying actors in small view looks like this:

Code: [Select]

<font size="70">Replace([Actors],;,  / // )
How should this expression be written to only show the actors name and not the [character name]

(I have tried a couple of things with ListClean expressions to no avail)

See attachment in small view with the current expression


Thanx, and take care,

//arscpin

[wer]

Trivial.

listitem(list, position, delimiter)

So in your case, listitem(field,0,[)

The trick is realizing a list is just a string.  You can feed it any string and any character as a delimiter even if that was not how the string was intended or constructed.

If you have a series of such strings, organized into a delimited list, just nest another listitem statement to select one where I listed field.

[lepa]

Trivial.

listitem(list, position, delimiter)

So in your case, listitem(field,0,[)

The trick is realizing a list is just a string.  You can feed it any string and any character as a delimiter even if that was not how the string was intended or constructed.

If you have a series of such strings, organized into a delimited list, just nest another listitem statement to select one where I listed field.

It would work if there was only one item but actor list has multiple items e.g. "actor [as somebody];actor2 [as nobody]" and all the text between multiple [ and ] needs to be removed so at least I can't think anything else than regex studies to get this one tackled with current MC expression engine.

E: MCUtil's scriptor might have some templates for this kind of problem

[wer]

I thought he wanted to do it for an individual actor.

If he doesn't want any role information in there at all, the easy way would be to simply UNcheck the option in MCRatings that's putting it there, and overwrite the field.

If he wants both, have MCR write actors to a separate field.

Intentionally putting all that info in and then trying to take it all out doesn't make sense to me.

[lepa]

Dunno, Perhaps to have full presentation in large view and in small view only actor names to save some space.

[wer]

If both versions are desired, keeping them in two fields would be both easier and faster.

I wrote a regex that pulls the actors names from such a multi-part list:

([;]?\K[\w\s]+)(?=\s\[)   (Omit the "\K" if you want to keep the semicolons to insert into another list.

You can try getting this to work with MC's regex function.

[Moe]

After seeing so many cool layouts everyone has shared, I'm thinking I may need add actor photos. But in all honesty, how difficult is this to accomplish?

With MCRatings, it's very easy to accomplish this now. 

[arcspin]

Hello and thank you for responding,
Sorry for the late reply but nighttime arrived at home and I fell asleep ;o)

Yes lepa, you are correct.
In large view I have actors images created with MCRatings and in small view I have actors name in plain text and that text is shown like this = Sean Connery [James Bond]
And yes, to save space I would like to not having the actors role between the [and] shown in small view.
(See attachment in my last post to see how it looks right now in small view)

When using MCRatings the Actors fields are populated with actors name and role.
It is not like I have a choice, MCRatings writes the information to the Actors field and that information is needed there for running post processing scripts and creating actor images.
Using two fields might be a solution but I don't know how to do that because I don't know if JRiver allows to map the Actors field to a different field than Actors field during import?

Otherwise  I have to import movies several time, first import it in JRiver to get the basic metadata right, then import the actors and other fields again with MCRatings to be able to create actors images (and posters and other fields) and then again import with JRiver to be able to repopulate the actors field with actor names as the way JRiver wants. And every time I rerun MCRatings for that movie I would have to redo the import with JRiver all over again.


As I understand the situation now there is no easy way of having an expression that filters out the actors role between the [and] in the actors field and still showing the actors name.

[wer]

It is not like I have a choice, MCRatings writes the information to the Actors field and that information is needed there for running post processing scripts and creating actor images.

To be clear, you do have a choice.  You can choose in MCR to deactivate the roles feature.  It is not "required" for post processing.  The actor name can be superimposed on the image regardless, without the roles. It is only required if you want the role on the image as well.  If you choose to have the role on the image, but there are times you don't want to see it in MC, that will cause you some extra work, as described earlier.

Otherwise  I have to import movies several time, first import it in JRiver to get the basic metadata right, then import the actors and other fields again with MCRatings to be able to create actors images (and posters and other fields) and then again import with JRiver to be able to repopulate the actors field with actor names as the way JRiver wants. And every time I rerun MCRatings for that movie I would have to redo the import with JRiver all over again.

That's nonsense. You don't have to do it several times.  If you want BOTH versions, with and without actor name, you import exactly twice: once with the MCR Actors field mapped to the MC Actors field, and once with the MCR Actors field mapped to the alternate field in MC.  One time you have the role option on, the next off.  A couple of clicks and bit of processing. Done.

Then you can either tell MCR to not overwrite the Actors field, or you can let it overwrite and leave it pointing at the MC field that matches the way you leave the roles option in MCR. Who cares about re-importing the Actors field over and over? Do you expect the cast of a movie to change?  Maybe someone suddenly realized Chris Pratt was in Driving Miss Daisy.

If you don't want do do any of those things, you can download MCUtils and use its pscriptor.pl module to run regex against fields in the library to make modifications.

After all this it's still not clear if you actually WANT the role name sometimes or just think you have no choice, as you said.

The tools are the tools. Sometimes if you want every little thing just exactly the way you want, you're going to have to do some work.  Something this thread abundantly demonstrates.  Just look at all the time people have invested just to get nice looking tooltips.  I wrote a ridiculous expression that automatically resizes fonts in my file info panel because MC doesn't have any way to size text to fit automatically.  That's life.

[arcspin]

Hi and thank you for your response,

Yes, I do want both actors name and actors role superimposed onto the actors image and presented in large view but I only want the actors name in plain text presented in small view.

Mind you that English is not my native language and sometimes the words I write don’t come out right or get lost while typing.

The reason I wrote that I wanted to be able to re-import actors is because, as I understand it, pictures of actors that are not found during the initial import with McRatings are being replaced by a generic placeholder picture (that generic placeholder have then superimposed both actors name and actors role). During the course of time there might be an actual picture of that actor that McRatings recognizes and when a re-import is being done McRatings will replaces the generic placeholder picture with an actual picture of the actor and then also do the actor name and actor role post production onto the same picture.

I’m already doing some work and I’m currently using JRiver, McRatings and Swag of Tools to get where I am right now regarding my theater view. I do also try to pull my weight on this forum the best way I can and this weekend I did some beta testing together with jmone before he posted an updated version of Swag of Tools.

I’m however not a coder. I have never written code in my entire life and I’m frankly struggling a lot to grasp the logic of code writing. I have other skills but coding is not one of them.

Therefore I’m grateful for your and others input in presenting solutions and expressions that can be used and I’m hoping that my requests and questions not only helps me but also can inspire others in trying to customize their theater view as well as I have been inspired by you and others on this forum.

Indeed that’s life and I hope you all stay safe,

//arcspin

[wer]

I wouldn't expect the images to be updated much, but it might happen eventually.

The good thing is that image download is independent of writing values to MC.

Use MCR to write the actor data to two fields, once each way, as I said. Then configure MCR not to overwrite the Actors filed anymore.

You can then use MCR to fetch mew images whenever you want, but data in MC will remain intact.  Actor data won't change, only new images might be added to replace generic images.

Keep in mind it's still not easy.  To get MCR to download new images, you must delete the old ones. There's no way for you to know which would be updated, so you'd have to delete them all.  Ask Zybex on his thread about the procedure.

[arcspin]

Thanks, I will do some testing this weekend.

Regarding actors images this is what zybex wrote some time ago and is what I'm referring to.

""
Personally I like to update all data more often, perhaps once a month - TMDb is crowdsourced and has thousands of daily updates, not only to Ratings but to most of the other fields. Corrections to actor lists, updated trailers, better plot descriptions, etc. With actor images, it's also good to check once in a while to see if an Actor now has a profile picture - MCR replaces the placeholder with the new picture when available.""

[MGD_King]

With MCRatings, it's very easy to accomplish this now.

Moe, you're right! The latest version of MCRatings made it fairly easy! The hardest part I had was getting MC to query file names, but that was solved by just setting the Actor Name only (not their role) and creating folders for each movie based off of the TMDb ID.

Here's my end results! I've been waiting to show these off!

[lepa]

Looking good! Even I can read the actor names from my tiny TV 

[Moe]

Otherwise  I have to import movies several time, first import it in JRiver to get the basic metadata right, then import the actors and other fields again with MCRatings to be able to create actors images (and posters and other fields) and then again import with JRiver to be able to repopulate the actors field with actor names as the way JRiver wants. And every time I rerun MCRatings for that movie I would have to redo the import with JRiver all over again.

This would all be so much easier if you'd use MCUtils, but I know that you are adverse to that.

That said, instead of importing and re-importing, do this. Import to JRiver, and then copy your actors field (and any other field that will be overwritten by MCRatings) to a new field.  Then run MCRatings.  This way MCRatings won't overwrite anything and you won't have to re-import anything

[MGD_King]

This would all be so much easier if you'd use MCUtils, but I know that you are adverse to that.

That said, instead of importing and re-importing, do this. Import to JRiver, and then copy your actors field (and any other field that will be overwritten by MCRatings) to a new field.  Then run MCRatings.  This way MCRatings won't overwrite anything and you won't have to re-import anything

You can always tell MCRatings not to update the actor field on save. That's what I had to do for my actors field.

Is there a tutorial somewhere for MCUtils? If it's easier, I'd love to try it out but it seems clunky to me.

[MGD_King]

Looking good! Even I can read the actor names from my tiny TV 

Thanks! 

[arcspin]

Great theater view and tooltip MGD_King!
It got me thinking and I will try out some new ideas, specially having actor images in toooltip. That looked nice!



I have create some resolution icons and if anyone is interested in using them they are in the attached zip-file.


//arcspin