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JStream or JLake - hey, it's not JRiver

MultiChannelRatings (could be abbreviated somehow...)

EZRatings or EZUpdater - boring, but to the point

Keep MCRatings - plenty of tools starting with MC out there

Other - please let me know

[zybex]

Hi Le Mans,
Well, my reasoning on that was that it was kind of redundant to add [Director] to all names on the Director field, same for [Producer].
You can just adjust your expression in MCRatings to fetch the correct picture like so:

<img src=\\my\profile\pics\[director] /[Director/].png>

For movies where Director is a list, the expression needs to be split first which complicates a bit (similar to Actors).

I made a proposal to Matt about a new expression language function that would make this kind of list-splitting and processing much easier:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,124543.msg862439.html#msg862439

With that, the Actors expression to fetch pictures for ALL actors at once would be just like:

transform(<img src=\\my\profile\pics\[L1].png>,,[Actors])

And the directors would be:

transform(<img src=\\my\profile\pics\[L1] \[Director\].png>,,[Director])

... but perhaps Matt didn't see the value in that.

[arcspin]

Great work Zybex,
If the expression language do get implemented in future updates it will be the sole reason for me to start using my already paid version 26 of MC.

Please let us know when that happens as I'm patiently waiting for an update so I can get a stable routine going implementing pictures for actors, producers, directors and so on into my theater view.



Take care,

//arcspin

[arcspin]

Hi,
I have updated JRiver to MC 26 in preparation before adding pictures of actors, directors, and so on to my Theater view.

What is the proper work flow for implementing expressions and other tasks to get pictures of cast and crew in Theater view?
I have made a post-processing command in MCRatings v3.0.4 that don't seem to work as the actors and directors are not sorted in their respective folder.

Code: [Select]

c:\scripts\caption.bat $image $name $role "$namerole.png" $type

Is there a proper way of doing this or are we still waiting for Matt and others to first add functionality to JRiver MC 26?


Best regards,
//arcspin



Caption.bat code below:

Code: [Select]

@echo off
rem call script from MCRatings with:
rem c:\scripts\caption.bat $image $name $role "$namerole.png" $type

rem check if output file already exists, skip processing if so
if exist %4 goto end

if "%5"=="CREW" goto crew

rem CAST image processing - green Character name
magick %1 -gravity center -extent 2:3 -resize 130x195 ^
  "(" -size 130x -background none -fill white -pointsize 16 -gravity northwest -font Segoe-UI-SemiBold caption:%2 ")" ^
  "(" -size 130x -background none -fill lightgreen -pointsize 14 -gravity northwest -font Segoe-UI-Italic caption:%3 ")" ^
  -append %4
goto end

:crew
rem CREW image processing - yellow Job title
magick %1 -gravity center -extent 2:3 -resize 130x195 ^
  "(" -size 130x -background none -fill white -pointsize 16 -gravity northwest -font Segoe-UI-SemiBold caption:%2 ")" ^
  "(" -size 130x -background none -fill yellow -pointsize 14 -gravity northwest -font Segoe-UI-Italic caption:%3 ")" ^
  -append %4

:end
rem delete original file so that MCRatings downloads it again for the same actor/different role
del %1

[zybex]

Arcspin,
There's a post on this thread by Thorsten with the Expression he's using to show the actor thumbnails. You just need to change the folder he used to the folder where you have your own images (the download folder from MCRatings). Other posts in this thread have the remaining details, but here's a synopsis:

- enable the option "Add Role to Actor Names" in MCR's misc settings
- setup the Cast/Crew download folder in MCR, enable the "save as PNG" option
- Get Movie Info for the movies you want - make sure to SAVE the changes (Actor names will now include their role too)
- use the expression from Thorsten's post, make sure to change the folder to match your own

That's it. You should now have actor thumbnails.
If you want the actor name/role to also show up on the picture itself, you'll need to setup the post-processing with ImageMagick as described on this thread.

[arcspin]

Hi and thanx for the explanation.
It works out just fine and I now have 10 beautiful actors on display for each movie!

//arcspin

[arcspin]

Hi again,
Before I dive into batch fetching pictures with some added post-processing I would like to ask if you have any update regarding the discovered bugs?
(I have 1000+ movies and do not want to start something that I have to redo later.)

The bugs being:
MCR don't play nice with "" and '' like Ansel Elgort [Miles "Baby"] or Mako Iwamatsu [Akiro 'The Wizard'] and the same goes with actors name that starts with an apostrophe, like Álvaro Monje.

"If a movie has the same actor in multiple roles, only the first is fetched."

"f I run the script with my whole collection of 700 films at once, it only gets the first movie(role) of each actor. E.g. "Sylvester Stallone [Rocky Balboa Jr.]" but not "Sylvester Stallone [Barney]" from Expendibles."


Proposed solutions:
"The actor is listed once, with multiple roles listed with a slash separator."

"I made a proposal to Matt about a new expression language function",
Could it be of any help if I and others made a reply to that thread to get Matt;s attention?

I do appreciate your time and effort you have put into MCR and are grateful for your work!
My Theater view are looking better than ever!

Stay safe,

//arcspin

[zybex]

Hi Arcspin,
Yes, I've been procrastinating but it's time to fix these issues. I've already fixed some of them, and will work on the rest this next weekend. I'm also adding a couple of minor features that were requested, such as saving Actors to different folders according to their name (like A/B/C...).

Regarding the ListTransform() expression language function, it didn't seem to get much traction from Matt, though it would be super useful. Feel free to vote for it in that thread.

[arcspin]

Good news indeed,
I have posted a plea to Matt to look into your suggestions.
I hope others with more gravitas also makes a case for your suggestions.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,124543.50.html

I have found another bug of sorts.
Adam Driver in Star Wars is listed in MCRatings as Adam Driver [Kylo Ren / Ben Solo] but is named in his picture as "Adam Driver [Kylo Ren].png" and therefor not showing up in Theater View.


//arcspin

[zybex]

I have found another bug of sorts.
Adam Driver in Star Wars is listed in MCRatings as Adam Driver [Kylo Ren / Ben Solo] but is named in his picture as "Adam Driver [Kylo Ren].png" and therefor not showing up in Theater View.

This was known, it's already fixed and will be on next release. A filename cannot have slashes, so I've replaced them with commas.

[arcspin]

Hi,
I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about the cinematographer Roger Deakins.
It got me thinking if McRatings could fetch the name of the cinematographer as well?

Have a great Saturday,

//arcspin

[zybex]

MCRatings already pulls a LOT of information from TMDB. But it's actually too much to put up on the UI.

Check this Cast/Crew page, for instance:
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/335984-blade-runner-2049/cast?language=en-US

All those 800+ job roles come in the data MCR pulls from TMDB. Currently it only uses a few key roles (Director, Producer, Writers, Actors...). It's very easy to add more (like the Director of Photography), but I don't want to end up with hundreds of data columns in the UI, it would become unusable. So I need to decide which are the most important ones, and the problem is different people want different things. Of course, no one cares about the Grips, the Foley Mixer, the coffee boy, etc... but even so, there are too many roles to put up on the UI.

I may eventually add a way to select which roles are desired, even if they don't show up on the UI/datagrid, or perhaps a Crew/Cast Browser (like the Poster Browser) which would show everything and automatically select whatever fields the user considers important. That's something on the backburner...

[wer]

Hi Zybex,

Do you think you could update MCRatings to also get "Aspect Ratio" from IMDB?  That's something that's very helpful to have.

People have been trying to pull it from Mediainfo, but that doesn't take matted presentations into account, so the info is almost never correct.

Thanks for the great utility!

-Will

[zybex]

MCR currently doesn't fetch any info from IMDB, only from TMDB and OpenMovieDB. Neither of these have the AR available.

IMDB doesn't provide an API to get data (only for movie studios and such). It's easy to scrape the info from their pages but that breaks easily each time they change their page layout (even non-visible changes might break scraping), so it requires constant tool updates to keep it working. Also, it's against their ToS (so it's illegal). Despite this there are many tools out there doing page scraping from IMDB.

Third problem is the AR mentioned on IMDB [usually] refers to the initial theatrical release. Your particular copy/rip of the movie might be in a different format. The same movie can be released in multiple ARs to confirm to different media types (DVD/BluRay/Web/IMAX/etc), different world region standards, adapted-for-TV conversions, etc. Nowadays it's more standartized, but for older movies (10+) it's rather meaningless. You want to know the AR for YOUR copy, so MediaInfo is actually the right source for that.

EDIT: To detect the actual AR of media with black bars, you need to run the video through a filter/detector. FFMPEG can do this:
https://takla.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/ffmpeg-autocrop-bash-script-function/
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#cropdetect
http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-140177.html

[wer]

Ah, I was looking at your data sources and must have got my I's and T's muddled, sorry.  TMDB doesn't even have AR.

[wer]

Hi Zybex,

I'm been messing around with the actor image generation...

I don't put a bunch of junk in the root directory of my drive, so I relocated the scripts directory for the imagemagick post-processing, and I noticed that the preference for the location of the post-processing script silently chokes if the path contains a space.  No error, just a failure to execute.

It also seems that within the poster browser, there is no way to select or confirm the CURRENT poster.  The only way I could find to keep the current poster is to X out of the poster browser, and then right click to revert the poster field.  Did I miss something?  It would be nice if there were a "Keep the current poster" link, like there is select for all the new ones.

-Will

[wer]

If you'll permit me one more comment/suggestion...

The image retrieval capabilities of MCRatings are awesome.  I love it.  The poster browser is insanely great, and the actor image retrieval, especially integrated with ImageMagick, is beyond wonderful.  It adds so much to MC to be able to get those images in there.  Thank you so much for all your work on this.

My suggestion has to do with actor image retrieval.  The images (for understandable reasons) are generally current images of the actors.  But the thing is, I hate seeing a picture of an 85 year old Tom Skerritt in my Alien metadata when he was 45 in that movie.  Or likewise seeing a pic of a 57 year old Jodie Foster when she was 13 when she made Taxi Driver.

What about having a browser for Actor images, that populates with a google image search for the actor along with the year the movie was made (since MCRatings knows that year)?  So a search for "Jodie Foster 1976" would produce images from that year, and the user could just pick one from the browser. A little automagic resize and away we go.  This could be accessed by clicking on the Actors field in MCRatings, after it has finished its initial retrieval, as happens now with posters.

Since MCRatings already has the ability to incorporate the role into the image name, there would be no issue with having several different pictures of the actor, at several different ages, each as they appeared that specific film, since they would be separated by the role info.

It seems to me this would make the image info much more accurate and pleasing...

What do you think?

Thanks again,

Will

[zybex]

(...) I noticed that the preference for the location of the post-processing script silently chokes if the path contains a space.  No error, just a failure to execute.

I just tested and it works fine. Are you pointing it to the Tooltip folder of JRiver? If so, the problem is likely to be related to folder permissions - MCRatings is not running as Administrator, so it cannot write any file there. If that's the case, you have 2 options:
- run MCRatings as Administrator
- [Preferred] change the folder permissions to add Write/Modify permission for your users, or All Users

It would be nice if there were a "Keep the current poster" link, like there is select for all the new ones.

Good idea, thanks for the suggestion. I'll add it.

[lepa]

I think I saw at TMDb forums some time ago that there was also a discussion about character based images and that support for that was being considered

[zybex]

The image retrieval capabilities of MCRatings are awesome.  I love it.  The poster browser is insanely great, and the actor image retrieval, especially integrated with ImageMagick, is beyond wonderful.  It adds so much to MC to be able to get those images in there.  Thank you so much for all your work on this.

Thanks, you're welcome Props also to my friend Xpto who did an awesome amount of testing and nagged me until I fixed all issues 

What about having a browser for Actor images, that populates with a google image search for the actor along with the year the movie was made (since MCRatings knows that year)?

Hmm. Interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would work consistently for most actors. I tried a few google image searches and, while we mostly get expected results for the well known mainstream actors, results usually suck for everyone else. As Lepa said, the ideal would be for TMDB to have such a facility where users could upload those contemporary pics. Let's wait to see if that happens.

[wer]

I just tested and it works fine. Are you pointing it to the Tooltip folder of JRiver?

No I'm taking about the location of the BAT file.  App is run as administrator.  The BAT file is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Image Processing Apps\Scripts\caption.bat

If I use that path, it won't execute.  If I use the SFN equivalent, C:\Progra~2\ImageP~1\Scripts\caption.bat then it will.  Simple as that. No other changes.

[wer]

Hmm. Interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would work consistently for most actors. I tried a few google image searches and, while we mostly get expected results for the well known mainstream actors, results usually suck for everyone else. As Lepa said, the ideal would be for TMDB to have such a facility where users could upload those contemporary pics. Let's wait to see if that happens.

I guess it depends who you test.  I've been shocked at the gaps in the tmdb/omdb images.
Gary Lockwood, one of the 2 stars of 2001 is not there.  Yaphet Kotto of Alien and Live and Let Die and Homicide (tv) is not there.  I have lots and lots of actors, significant ones, who are just missing.

When that happens, a google search always returns something usable.  If the search is "imdb actor name" a good image is almost always the first result.

When a Director image is missing, as happens a lot, it throws off the formatting of templates.  It might be nice if there were an option to generate a silhouette image for cast/crew when the search fails.  With these new templates, actors without an image aren't in the film at all apparently.

Regarding age appropriate photos, from what I saw, those conversations on tmdb are years old and were rejected, so I don't think it's happening.  We're on our own.

I suppose one could manually run the convert.bat script for every missing image against a manually downloaded photo, but since there's no easy way to extract the individual actor/role names from the MC field, that will be a lot of manual typing.

Re the google search, I don't think the spotty results you saw matter much, because it's only used as a refinement after grabbing tmdb.  If it were the primary, consistency would be a problem. 

But what I'm suggesting is: oh, this tmdb image is bad or missing, let's see if a refinement search does better.... Ah, there's a good one, use that one!  Or, nope, nothing better, I guess I'm stuck.

It never makes things worse, it can only make things better.

[zybex]

Ah, ok. You need to add quotes around the path+script name to tell windows that it's a single thing, or else windows breaks it up on the spaces and tries to execute "c:\program.exe" with the rest as arguments:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Image Processing Apps\Scripts\caption.bat" arg1 arg2 arg3

For the same reason, some arguments also need quotes when they include spaces - MCR automatically adds them in most cases.

[zybex]

I guess it depends who you test.  I've been shocked at the gaps in the tmdb/omdb images.

TMDB is crowdsourced, you can create an account an upload pics. Then MCR picks them up

It might be nice if there were an option to generate a silhouette image for cast/crew when the search fails.

That's doable. The only snag I see is that, once MCR creates the placeholder image, on subsequent runs it won't be able to easily detect that that person is a placeholder - so if a new profile pic is available for it, it won't be easy to detect that it should now be downloaded/replaced. I'll consider this problem.

But what I'm suggesting is: oh, this tmdb image is bad or missing, let's see if a refinement search does better.... Ah, there's a good one, use that one!  Or, nope, nothing better, I guess I'm stuck.

OK, that's reasonable. But in general I try to avoid scraping info out of webpages (without an API) because it breaks easily when they make minor layout changes. We'll see what happens (spoken with an orange accent)

[wer]

Ah, ok. You need to add quotes around the path+script name to tell windows that it's a single thing, or else windows breaks it up on the spaces and tries to execute "c:\program.exe" with the rest as arguments:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Image Processing Apps\Scripts\caption.bat" arg1 arg2 arg3

For the same reason, some arguments also need quotes when they include spaces - MCR automatically adds them in most cases.

I know all about quotes. The reason it stood out to me was because the save actors/crew thumbnails location has no problem with spaces, and they don't need to be quoted.  In the post processing command box, since you're passing variables, I assumed that the app would recognize the leading part as the executable and pass it to the shell appropriately.  Bad assumption     ALthough MCRatings is unquestionably better documented than MC itself, it might not hurt to put a notation near the dialog on in the help that the user may have to include quotes in the path.

The only place I see discussion of actually using that option, how to with ImageMagick, mentioned is in your post here on the forum, and the issue "doesn't come up" there because you use C:\Scripts\convert.bat.  A nice short name with no spaces.  That post would be good info to include in the settings help.

But that's a minor point.  The documentation/help included with MCRatings is very good, and you deserve nothing but kudos.

[wer]

That's doable. The only snag I see is that, once MCR creates the placeholder image, on subsequent runs it won't be able to easily detect that that person is a placeholder - so if a new profile pic is available for it, it won't be easy to detect that it should now be downloaded/replaced. I'll consider this problem.

Yes, this had occurred to me.  But I was thinking about it in the context of the refinement search, so it's something of a 2-fer.  The refinement search must by definition have the ability to re-fetch and overwrite.  If someone sees bad images, or no images, they'll run a refinement search.

Conversely, think about the case when the refinement search does not exist (like now).  Once someone has run an MCRatings search against their movie, are they going to run it a second time? I doubt it.  What more is there to do, so why would they.  And you already have a note (in the convert.bat as I recall) admonishing the user they need to delete the original image if they want to reprocess it.  So I consider this a non-issue.  Mostly people won't try a second time, and if they do, they can just delete the silhouette images first, which is easy to do by just looking at the thumbnails in the folder itself.

[wer]

Just as a nota bene for people, if you want your actor/role names CENTERED when you superimpose them on the images (which I think looks much better) you just have to change the gravity to "north" in the caption lines in the convert.bat file.  So you would change lines to look like the following:

  "(" -size 130x -background none -fill white -pointsize 16 -gravity north -font Segoe-UI-SemiBold caption:%2 ")" ^


Do NOT change the lines that begin "magick %1".

[zybex]

The only place I see discussion of actually using that option, how to with ImageMagick, mentioned is in your post here on the forum, and the issue "doesn't come up" there because you use C:\Scripts\convert.bat.  A nice short name with no spaces.  That post would be good info to include in the settings help.

Yes, the documentation is lacking on that front, it's on the TODO list. I have some changes coming on the post-processing flow, so I'll update the documentation after that.

[lepa]

Regarding age appropriate photos, from what I saw, those conversations on tmdb are years old and were rejected, so I don't think it's happening.  We're on our own.

Oh, screw that then. I though it might have discussed after the website upgrade but didn't check the dates I guess

[arcspin]

  "(" -size 130x -background none -fill white -pointsize 16 -gravity north -font Segoe-UI-SemiBold caption:%2 ")" ^

Great advise, it looks better!

To follow up and to have both text lines centered you have to erase "west" from the second line as well in the code.
(just to be more specific for anyone wanting to try this)

"(" -size 130x -background none -fill yellow -pointsize 14 -gravity north -font Segoe-UI-Italic caption:%3 ")" ^

[wer]

All the lines that look like the one I posted need to be modified.  I didn't want to repost Zybex's entire script.

[lepa]

There seems to be some action on character images front
https://www.themoviedb.org/talk/5e9fd5d9db72c00019eefe2e

[wer]

I just looked at it.  I'm not optimistic.

Their plan is ambitious, to create a whole new structure centered around characters, info about the character, everyone who's ever played the character, etc.  it's ambitious, and therefore might take a long time to implement.  And then because it's crowdsourced, it could take a longer time to get a suitable amount of data in it. 

It wouldn't surprise me if it's a year or more before it begins to become useful.

Google image search is available now.

[zybex]

It wouldn't surprise me if it's a year or more before it begins to become useful.
Google image search is available now.

You're assuming it would take me less than a year

[wer]

I have faith in you Zybex!

(Although it has been a month with that bug where you only get the first image of an actor when downloading multiple films!) 

I have faith in you!

[zybex]

(Although it has been a month with that bug where you only get the first image of an actor when downloading multiple films!) 

Working on it. I said I would release a fix last week but didn't have the time. I'm planning on working on it today.
My day job has kept me quite busy lately (thankfully, but you might get lucky and they'll just layoff everyone ). Weekends are spent half working, half sitting in zombie mode with the brain turned off...

EDIT: the fix is also taking longer because I realized I need to rework part of the post-processing code instead of just applying a band-aid.

[wer]

Haha... No worries! 

I assume you're on the traditional programmer's diet of Coke and Cheetos, to keep you going?  If not, you may find it provides a productivity boost.

[zybex]

MCRatings v3.1 released!

This release fixes a number of reported issues and adds some goodies. Some notes on this release:

Fixes:
This fixes reported issues with Actor profile downloads: names with quotes, actors with multiple roles/jobs, actor on multiple movies, etc.

Post-processing:
IMPORTANT: the post-processing flow is a bit changed. If you were using the Caption.bat script I provided before, please update it to the attached version and change the PP script command to:

Code: [Select]

c:\scripts\caption.bat $image $name $role $typeThis script also handles UTF8 characters in names, such as chinese/japanese/other chars.
MCR now knows if a given image is already post-processed, so it won't try to re-download/re-process it again.

Placeholders for missing actor pics:
MCR now adds a placeholder for missing cast/crew (option can be disabled). There's a male and a female placeholder, and you can customize them by just replacing the avatar PNG files in %localAppData%\MCRatings folder.
MCR can detect when a given image is a Placeholder and, when a picture becomes available on TMDb, it will replace it (when you do GET Info).

Folder structure for actors/posters:
MCR can now put downloaded posters/actors into different folders, with a customizable folder structure. This is achieved by using $tags in the Poster/Actor download path provided in Settings. The $tags were already available for the post-processing script, but now can be used for the folder Paths as well. To view a list of available tags, just right-click on top of the Path or Post-Processing boxes.
You can use $tag[index] or $tag[index,len] to get a substring of the $tag value. This is useful, for instance, to split Actors into folders named from A to Z (all actors starting with A go into "\A" subfolder, etc).
Examples:
c:\media\actors                      : put all files in the same folder
c:\media\actors\$name[0]       : put actors in an A-Z subfolder
c:\media\posters\$year           : divide posters by movie Year
c:\media\posters\$year[2,2]    : divide posters by last 2 digits of Year
c:\media\$tmdb\actors            : one folder per movie ID, subfolder \Actors

Other:
Added a TMDB ID column: you may need to create a field for it in JRiver and map it in MCR settings.
Ctrl+Click on the column opens the TMDB page, similar to imdb/trailer/file columns

TODO:
update the Documentation on GitHub, with more details on Post-processing and $tags.

Changelist:
NEW: Add placeholders for cast/crew with missing profile picture
NEW: detect and replace placeholders when image becomes available
NEW: Male/female placeholder customization (just replace default PNG files)
NEW: Poster Browser: Toggle placeholders display in Cast view
NEW: Poster Browser: Select/Select+Lock of current poster (left side)
NEW: Support $tags on Poster/Actor destination folders to split by year/tmdb/letter/etc
NEW: Support for $tag[index] and $tag[index,length] to get substrings of $tag
NEW: Option to ignore articles when sorting by Title; artile list is customizable
NEW: Add TMDbID column. CTRL+Click to open TMDb page.
FIX: handling of Actors with double-quotes in the role/name, eg: "Ansel Elgort [Miles "Baby"]"
FIX: handling of Actors with multiple roles, eg: "Actor Name [Role1 / Role2 / Role3]"
FIX: download of same actor for multiple movies/roles/jobs
FIX: occasional exception on download to TEMP folder
FIX: other minor fixes
other: avoid re-downloading Actor/Poster images
other: avoid reprocessing Actor/Poster images

Zybex

[arcspin]

A quick hot wash up,
Pictures are sorted in the correct folder (a-z)
The pictures however do not have any postscript, even though I did replace the caption.bat and PP script.

When I Get movie info the actors are sorted in the correct folder but as an .jpg.
When I do another Get movie info there is another picture saved for that actor but this time in .png.
Non with actors name and role added.

See screen shots.

It's getting late over here and I just wanted to leave a quick bug report.


Thanx for the update!

//arcspin

[wer]

Zybex, you're awesome!

The fixes for the actor images work great, just what I would have done myself.  I was actually eager beaver enough that I tried out the new version before your post here, so I of course found the PP script had to be modified. But then I came back here and you had posted the script above, so all's good.

I haven't tried out the new functionalities yet, but just the fix for the actors multiple roles and missing images is much appreciated!  And I see you took my gravity recommendation.

Thanks again!

-Will

[zybex]

Arcspin,
Can you please find the MCR debug log and send it to me via pastebin.com or filebin.com?
The log is in the %temp%\MCRatings folder.

Edit: also try deleting the JPG/PNG files and GET again.

[zybex]

Arcspin, are you sure there are no labels?
The white part under the picture is actually transparent, and the actor name is in White. Since your Windows Explorer also has a white background, you won't see the text, but it's there. Try to open the picture in a viewer with a non-white background to check, or just change the colors in the Caption.bat script.

The behavior your describe is normal - the Actor is downloaded as a JPG, then converted to PNG, then post-processed. Check the spinner on the lower-right corner of MCR to confirm that it has finished all tasks.

Here's how it looks like with a black background:

[zybex]

I haven't tried out the new functionalities yet, but just the fix for the actors multiple roles and missing images is much appreciated!  And I see you took my gravity recommendation.

It does look better centered I don't like how it looks with longer names/roles, but aside from using a smaller font there's not much we can do.
Let me know if you see any issue similar to Arcspin's.

[wer]

I do not have Arcspin's problem.

I've tried it out now and looked up quite a lot of movies. Everything worked extremely well, and I only see one small issue.

When handling characters with quotes in the name, there's a problem.  Aliens has a character with the nickname "Newt" with the word surrounded in double quotes, and TMDb presents it with the double-quote character.  The double-quote character is of course not valid for filenames.

When MCR pushes the information into MC, it seems to sanitize the double-quotes with single quotes.  This is the correct thing to do.  (If you're not doing it, MC does it for you, because the Actor's field in MC has 'Newt')

However, when saving the image files to disc, instead of replacing the " character with ' MCR replaces it with _

Now the field in MC and the filename don't match, and you have broken links.   The single-quote character needs to be used for filenames as well.

The same problem happens when an actor plays 2 roles in a movie.  For example in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, TMDb list Andy Serkis as two characters:   Kong, Lumpy
...with a comma in between them.  Also an invalid character.

MCR sanitizes the comma to an underscore in the filename, but inserts the comma as-is into MC.  The correct thing to do would be to sanitize the comma to a semi-colon  ;  in both places.  Equivalent meaning with no problems.

Can this be a quick fix?

[zybex]

It's a simple fix but it will have to wait for tomorrow.
Strange, I'm sure I tested both those scenarios...

Double quotes are valid in filenames, but Magick didn't handle them well so I'm replacing with single quotes.
Commas are also OK, I'm replacing slashes with commas. Semicolon is the list divider in MC, so I can't use it.

Both changes are supposed to be in sync in filenames and in the data written to MC.

[wer]

You're right about commas, but double quotes are not valid in filenames on Windows.  Windows will accept quotes as part of a path to enclose spaces, but you cannot insert a double-quote into an actual file name.

MCR is replacing commas in filenames even though they're valid, so I guess I didn't bother to check!

So commas should be included in the filename.

I'd forgotten that you're pushing actor names into an MC list.  That means if you find TMDb using a semicolon to separate parts/names (I wouldn't put it past them) you would also have to sanitize that to a comma in both places.  Is that being done already?

[arcspin]

Good morning,
No, there is no text below the picture (see attachement)

Same thing happens when I delete pictures (jpg & png) and do GET again.
First time I do GET there is: Denzel Washington [Robert 'Bobby' Trench].jpg
Second time I do GET there is: Denzel Washington [Robert 'Bobby' Trench].png


LOG FILE is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9zzyaggzbfurehy/MCRatings.20200426.log?dl=0

LOG FILE in zip conatainer is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/155b4l157lawpah/MCRatings.20200426.zip?dl=0

Cheers,

//arcspin

[zybex]

Hi Arcspin, good morning!
Thanks for the logs, hundreds of Exceptions there

I think your NAS is renaming my PNG files to JPG before MCR can convert them. Here's how it works:
1. MCR downloads an Actor.JPG to %temp%
2. MCR moves Actor.JPG to H:\JRiver\Actors.PNG (because you have the "save as PNG" on - but this is still in fact a JPG file)
3. MCR converts H:\JRiver\Actors.PNG to an actual PNG file (renames original to .TMP, writes a new .PNG, deletes the .TMP)
4. MCR calls post-processing script

So at no point does MCR write a JPG file to the target folder. I think your NAS looks at the just written PNG in step 2, recognizes that it's in fact a JPG and immediately renames it. When MCR goes to step 3, the PNG is now missing so it fails. On the second run, the NAS cannot rename it again bacause there's already a JPG there, so you end up with both files.

I'll make a change to convert the JPG file while it's still in %TEMP%, before copying to the destination folder.

[zybex]

You're right about commas, but double quotes are not valid in filenames on Windows.

Right, that's why I'm replacing them - I shouldn't be posting at 1am, brain is already off

I'd forgotten that you're pushing actor names into an MC list.  That means if you find TMDb using a semicolon to separate parts/names (I wouldn't put it past them) you would also have to sanitize that to a comma in both places.  Is that being done already?

Yes, that's being done.

[zybex]

Published MCRatings v3.1.1:

- FIX: consistent handling of invalid chars in filenames for Actor/Roles
- Change: Convert images to PNG before copying to target folder (prevent NAS auto-renaming)

This should fix both reported issues above. Thanks for feedback!

[arcspin]

I have tried out the updated MCRating
I'm sorry to say, but now no pictures of actors show up in Theater View.
BUT, they seem to be stuck in the Temp/MCRating folder.

See Screenshot.

Log file in .zip is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xqd70gwn259e0e/MCRatings.20200427.zip?dl=0


This is strange!