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[dasfoo]

Hi, the search function for downloading movie metadata works in most cases, but can be frustrating in specific circumstances, like when a movie has a common title.

Take the 1968 documentary "High School," for example. This movie has a TMDB listing, but entering only "High School" into the search field fails to find the TMDB listing for the correct movie. There are lots of incorrect results, however. Entering "High School 1968" finds only the Wikipedia entry -- dates seem to exclude all TMDB listings -- which doesn't include poster art or the same quality of metadata that TMDB does. Searching for "High School (1968)" finds the correct Wiki article again but a bunch of incorrect TMDB listings. Adding the director's name, like "High School (1968) Frederick Wiseman" doesn't refine the results meaningfully. Searching by TMDB ID or IMDB ID also doesn't narrow the search correctly.

Searching for "High School II," however, immediately finds the sequel's TMDB listing. I know the original movie's listing exists; getting the system to find it seems impossible.

It would be helpful if it was possible to search by ID in cases where keyword search is too vague, as well as improving the effectiveness of adding refining terms/years to narrow the search.

If there's already a trick to this that I'm missing, please let me know! Thanks.

[swiv3d]

Here is a link to that movie on TMDB website it might help you figure out how to reference it via MC.
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/60315-high-school

and a link to it in the IMDB
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064429/

Most of my movies have the  IMBD ID tag filled in. Try putting tt0064429 into the IMBD ID tag for the movie and then search.

[zybex]

Dasfoo,
I wrote a tool to help catalog JRiver movies by their IMDB ID:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119792.0.html

This allows you to easily tweak the title/year to get the proper movie info, or even add the IMDB ID which is *always* used to get/update the info. You can then save the updates back to JRiver and then do "Get Movie Info" to get the cover and additional details.

Even with the proper IMDB ID filled in, JRiver will sometimes fetches the wrong movie info. This is really frustrating, and due to that I usually disable the "overwrite" option in Get Movie Info so that it doesn't mess up what I know is already correct. With MCRatings, I now mostly update just the Cover using JRiver.

It would be nice if JRiver would match the TMBd results with the already filled-in IMDB ID field when doing Get Movie Info. Two ways to do it:
- TMDb has an API to get a movie by IMDB ID => this should be used if ID is filled in
- alternatively, when GetMovieInfo yields a list of possible results, JRiver should select the one matching the existing IMDB ID instead of just selecting the first result (which is what is does now).

Hopefully Matt can make this change?

[Matt]

Hopefully Matt can make this change?

I think that was a really good idea.

Coming next build:
Changed: When doing a movie lookup from themoviedb.org, the IMDBId will be used if it exists instead of searching on the name.

Thanks!

[zybex]

Awesome Matt, thanks!

A suggestion for implementation when using the search UI for manual/single movie lookup:
- if the typed text matches "tt\d+", do the lookup by IMDBId, else do a normal text lookup.

When doing single lookup, pre-fill the text field with the IMDBId if it exists, and with Title otherwise.
When doing bulk lookup, the same rule applies, but without the search UI.

[Hendrik]

When doing single lookup, pre-fill the text field with the IMDBId if it exists, and with Title otherwise.

I don't like that. If it matched a wrong movie during automatic lookup previously, you have to manually re-type the entire movie name to fix it. So it should retain the movie name in the field.

Matt, please also make sure a search by title can still be performed easily if a wrong IMDBId is present (a valid id for a different movie, not an invalid id).
Otherwise it becomes impossible to manually fix lookups.

As an idea, search for both title and IMDBId, and combine the results (filtering dupes of course). That way its always possible to switch to a different release of the same name, or other common mismatches.

[zybex]

Fixing it manually is always possible, you just need to clear the IMDB Id field. The problem is when we have all correct info including the ID and GetMovieInfo just overwrites it with wrong info.

Ideally we should have 3 options, perhaps as a selector on the search UI:
- search by IMDB
- search by title + year
- search by user-editable text (defaulting to movie title)

Title+Year is an excellent disambiguator when doing manual search and is supported by TMDb API, but currently JRiver only uses the title which often results in wrong matches.

[Hendrik]

Fixing it manually is always possible, you just need to clear the IMDB Id field. The problem is when we have all correct info including the ID and GetMovieInfo just overwrites it with wrong info.

Thats one more step then today, and extremly unintuitive, so clearly we're moving backwards right there. Not everyone uses outside batch tools.

The UI should also stay relatively simple. The user should be perfectly capable of selecting from one of a few matches to pick the right one himself. Date information is often not available unless a lookup had already been performed, same goes for IMDBId - or outside tools provided them, which is not typical.

Here is a few reasons why I don't like some of the proposed things:
- Its absolutely crucial that title searches still work so that wrong information can be corrected without manually having to clear fields the user might not even know are related
- The user is not very likely to have memorized a IMDB Id, therefor typing it into the search dialog is not very likely. If they want such a use-case, they could also just type it into the Tag, and then perform the lookup, because that works now when Matt added it.

[Matt]

Matt, please also make sure a search by title can still be performed easily if a wrong IMDBId is present (a valid id for a different movie, not an invalid id).
Otherwise it becomes impossible to manually fix lookups.

Good idea Hendrik.  I'm making that change now.

[zybex]

The UI should also stay relatively simple. The user should be perfectly capable of selecting from one of a few matches to pick the right one himself.

Agreed. But as the original post on this thread says, sometimes it's not even possible to make it fetch the right movie even when you know all the details.

Another idea: allowing limited expression language in the search box, like typing "[IMDB Id]" or "[Name]" ? IT could still detect a ttxxxx string to use the proper TMDb API. This would be for advanced users only, and current UI behavior would remain unchanged.

[zybex]

- The user is not very likely to have memorized a IMDB Id, therefor typing it into the search dialog is not very likely. If they want such a use-case, they could also just type it into the Tag, and then perform the lookup, because that works now when Matt added it.

The proposed selector would not need the user to type it, it would be a simple radio button selector (greyed out if no IMDb ID available). Alternatively, typing [IMDb ID] could also work as I suggested.

We're mixing 2 concepts:
- bulk search: here JR can easily use the IMDB Id if available, and Title+Year otherwise, and just select the first/most likely hit. No problem
- Single movie update: here JR always opens the UI, so I was trying to have a way to have the same logic as for bulk update there. The default search when using the UI should match the bulk search result, showing additional results that the user can select.

As an idea, search for both title and IMDBId, and combine the results (filtering dupes of course). That way its always possible to switch to a different release of the same name, or other common mismatches.

Exactly, this would work.

[zybex]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for implementing this. I was testing it, and it looks like the IMDB result is placed last, after the results from "search by name". This makes it pointless (in particular when doing batch get-movie-info) since another by-name result is always picked instead of the ID result.
Can you please place the search-by-ID result on top?

[Ekpen]

Thanks for implementing this. I was testing it, and it looks like the IMDB result is placed last, after the results from "search by name". This makes it pointless (in particular when doing batch get-movie-info) since another by-name result is always picked instead of the ID result.
Can you please place the search-by-ID result on top?

+1
Thanks
George

[Matt]

Coming next build:
Changed: Movie lookups that match the IMDBId will sort to the top of the list.