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[zybex]

Release v3.2 renames the tool and includes the following changes:

• New: Context menu option "Revert All Except This Column"
• New: Enable TMDb source for Studios (Producer Companies)
• New: Context menu options for Save cell/column/selected/all movies
• Changed: Save button now defaults to saving Selected movies only; SHIFT+Click to save all

Previous announcements - threads may contain relevant info for starting up with this tool:
v1/v2: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119792.0.html
v3.0: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,124516.0.html
v3.1: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,124516.msg866064.html#msg866064

Links: Screenshots - Quick Start - User Guide - Source code
Download: latest version

[zybex]

v3.2.1 published:
- support for new list separator (just semicolon without space)

ZRatings supports both list formats. On the UI, lists are displayed with a space after the semicolon.

[wer]

Thanks, Zybex!

<dreams of google image search for actors>   

[wer]

Would you mind clarifying the new saving functionality?

There's a notation in this thread that says:
"Changed: Save button now defaults to saving Selected movies only; SHIFT+Click to save all"

But the documentation says:
"Press "Save to JRiver" once you are satisfied with the changes. Note that this button does not require selection of rows; all changed rows will be sent to JRiver."

And of course there are the new context menu options for selective saving...

If the Shift+Click notation is right, perhaps a small text label under the Save to JRiver button indicating that would be helpful? I see you have hover text, but some people might not hover or notice...

Thanks!

[zybex]

Sorry, I missed this post.
The documentation is now incorrect, I need to update it. The button now just saves the selected movies (or the currently highlighted one if there are no selected movies). SHIFT+Click on the button saves all movies, regardless of selection (old behaviour).

I agree, perhaps a counter on the button itself to indicate what will be saved - though this would basically be the number of selected movies, or 1.

[wer]

I've been using the app with no problems at all, but today I encountered one.

Data retrieval works fine, but it will not save changes for the movie "I, Robot", a new movie I added today.

I get an error message: Error saving changed movies to JRiver. 1 Movies still have unsaved changes.

Everything worked fine yesterday.  Is there a log or something that can provide useful info?

Some (at least) of the info is ending up in the MC database, but I don't know what's failing or causing the error. As an example, Studios and Tagline fields are saved, Rotten Tomatoes is not saved.

[JimH]

Read only file?

[zybex]

Hi Wer,
The unsaved fields remain orange/green in the grid, so you can tell which one(s) failed. Please let me know what they are, and what the content is.

A couple of possibilities come to mind:
- Poster saving is failing due to write permissions/write error on the movie folder, or invalid Poster Folder specified in settings;
- Some field is failing due to wrong data type; for instance, if the field is set as Numeric in JRiver but the value in ZR is not a number; or field type is Date but value is not a valid Date (perhaps your Region/Date format in windows can also interfere with this, not sure now)

Logs are in %TEMP%\ZRatings folder, please check them to see if there's some Exception logged.
If you're still stuck let me know and I'll send you a debug build with more logging in that section.

[wer]

The hint about the unsaved fields staying green put me on the right track, thanks. (But you can't see it when you only have 1 movie in the list unless you do a right-click select none, as the highlight of the row obscures it).

No exceptions in the log file I can see.

The field that is failing is Genre, but the circumstances are strange but I think I know why it fails.  I have Genre remapped to FilmGenre, and FilmGenre is a validated list with only certain acceptable values.  The behavior I normally see is that if the app tries to write an unacceptable value as a list element in FilmGenre, that value is just skipped, and the other acceptable values/elements are written.

But here's the results I get, trying to save "Love Actually" and "RockNRolla"
Love Actually Genre= Comedy; Romance; Drama
RockNRolla Genre= Action; Crime; Thriller

The Love Actually write succeeds, the RockNRolla write fails.

But why?  Romance is not a valid category for my collection.  The Love Actually write succeeds anyway, and the Comedy and Drama values are written.

RockNRolla fails, I think, because NONE of those values are allowed. My "Action" category is actually named "Action/Adventure" and so it's not a match.  As long as one element of the list can be written, the app thinks things are ok. But if zero elements pass validation, it gives an error.  (And because of the way the error presents, and how you have to search to find the cause, it can be a bit confusing obviously.)

I'm of two minds as to whether this is desirable behavior or not. A reasonable argument can be made both ways about trying to write to a validated list.  Perhaps an option about whether to warn on this condition might be good.

I've added the info of several hundred movies with the app, and have never encountered this error until the last few days (exactly twice), which I guess is just luck, with whatever values submitters have been slopping in to the Genre field.

[zybex]

Interesting.
ZR just tries to write the value to MC, and MC responds with True/False. So it seems it responds with False for your RockNRolla example, but true otherwise. This is not something I can change in ZR.

An alternative would be to let ZR write to the Genre field, and then have your FilmGenre field be an expression to convert Genre into the categories you want to see. The expression would however be a bit ugly, something like:

Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace([genre], Action, Action//Adventure), Romance,), Crime,), Thriller,)  ... and so on

You might need to remove duplicates when merging genres:
ListClean(Replace(Replace(Replace(Replace([genre], Action, Action//Adventure), Adventure, Action//Adventure), Crime, Crime//Thriller), Thriller, Crime//Thriller), 1)

If you're only having problems on a few movies, perhaps it's not worth the trouble.

[arcspin]

Hi Zybex,
I have had to reinstall my Windows computer and reinstall ZRatings, that went well.

After installing I copied all of my previous files and folders from the folder: "C:\Users\arcsp\AppData\Local\ZRatings" to my new local folder.

Question, is it necessary  to copy over the folder: "cache"
I guess the folder "posters" is critical to copy over?


Best regards,

//arcspin

[zybex]

Hi Arcspin,
All subfolders there are Cache folders for different types of data, there's no need to copy any of them.
You should copy the config files though (settings.xml, stats.json and lockedFields.*.json if present)

[arcspin]

Thank you.

Now I have a problem.

I see that there are no actors names och actors role names under the actor pictures as it were before I reinstalled my computer.
(The pictures are captured and stored correctly, it is just the namnes that are missing)

Can there be anything wrong in my settings.bat.

I attach the settings.bat (as a .txt file) and a screenshot of my settings page for clues to why it doesn't work now.

edit:
I attach a screen shot of what´s in the folder: C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Local\ZRatings

//arcspin

[zybex]

I assume you called it "caption.bat" and not "settings.bat"

Check these things:
- is the caption.bat in c:\scripts folder?
- is "magick" in the PATH ? Open a cmd prompt and type "magick" - it should print the Usage help. If it says "not recognized", then you need to add Magick's folder to the PATH.
- check ZRatings logs in %TEMP%\ZRatings folder for more clues

[arcspin]

Thanks for a swift response.
Yes, the file is named, caption.bat and is in the c:\scripts folder

'magick' is not recognized.

What do you mean by "Magick's folder to the PATH."

Do i have to download this:
https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php#windows

ImageMagick-7.0.10-35-Q16-HDRI-x64-dll.exe   Win64 dynamic at 16 bits-per-pixel component

[zybex]

Yes, you need to install that one - ImageMagick is the image manipulation app that ZRatings' script calls to overlay the names on the pictures.
If you get an option during installation to "add Magick to PATH", make sure to select it.

[arcspin]

Yes, sorry about this I just found your post regarding Magick.
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,124516.0.html

Last question, how do I get the names to appear on movies that I already have gone thru zratings?
(can I run the caption.bat script on the movies that I already have run thru Zratings.)


Again, sorry to bother you

[zybex]

No bother at all!
You can just delete the pics which are missing the names and then re-run Zratings on those movies. I suggest you sort the files by date and delete all modified since you reinstalled.

Since you have subfolders on the Actors, you can do this by:
- go to the Actors folder on Explorer
- search for *.png
- switch to Details view using the toolbar
- sort by date by clicking the date column

[arcspin]

G R E A T 

Finally, Now I lay me down to sleep!

The HTPC is back on track after a nasty blue screen of death experience.
Thank you for the tip on how to sort .png in "Actors" folder.

Have a great weekend!

[jackd7630]

Thanks you for this great program
I have a bug with the field for ZRATING Name Runtime and for JRiver name duration
Before i use ZRATING , JRiver runtime is 1:38:32
After i used ZRATING , in ZRATING, runtime is 98 and when i save movie, after, JRiver runtime is  1:39
Is there a tip in zrating to convert 98minutes to 1h38mn00s
How i can change duration now because this field is protected in JRiver
thank you in advance for your answer
Regards

[zybex]

Hi Jack,

The [Duration] field is a read-only field that stores the actual duration of the video file you have. The value is set when the file is imported; different users might have different versions with different duration for the same movie.

ZRatings' Runtime is the official/theatrical runtime for the movie from IMDb/TMDb, which might not be the same as the one you have (for instance, you might have an Extended version of the film).

ZRatings should not overwrite [Duration] (you should not map Runtime to that field), but apparently MC allows it if you set it like that. You should create a new string field called [Runtime] and map ZRatings' Runtime to that field. You can then display [Duration] or [Runtime] according to your needs. I usually display [Duration] on my tooltip, which is the actual duration of the version I have; the official Runtime is less useful. Alternatively, you can just disable the Runtime field in ZRatings, if you don't want it.

To fix the Durations that ZRatings already overwrote... try doing Library Tools -> "Update Library (from tags)".

[jackd7630]

Ok ZYBEX. Thank you very much for your explanations and good continuation

[Mans]

Greatday Zybex,

Hoping you're doing fine sir,

Sorry if the following question has been asked before:

I'm trying to figure out how to also display the images of those Director, Writer and Producer fields.
The respective JRiver fields are populated and the images of these are within the Actors folder, amongst the actors.
But not showing up, I've got the expressions set to display the [Director].png

I'm guessing it has to do with the added "[Director]" text which isn't present within the field, but has been created within the name of the image at the time imported by ZRatings.
How should i make this work, as just adding [Director] to the expression will not work due the nature of the square brackets.

Thanks for your help again :-)

[zybex]

Hi Mans,
The square brackets are a special character for MC, so they just need to be escaped for MC to interpret them literally. The is done with the fwd-slash, so writing "/[" produces a literal "[".
For instance, if the [Director] field has "Steven Spielberg" and the filename is called "Steven Spielberg [Director].png", you need to refer to it as "[Director] /[Director/].png".

Img tag for file in Tooltip: folder (.png extension must be excluded):

Code: [Select]

<img src="tooltip:[Director] /[Director/]">
Img tag for file in another folder:

Code: [Select]

<img src="c:\path\to\thumbnails\[Director] /[Director/].png">
Happy holidays

[Mans]

Great and works like a charm !
Another thanks sir, very nice program :-)

Enjoy the Christmas time.

[marko]

I need a little help with my OCD here. Apologies in advance if this has already been covered...

Under "Misc" options, I want to include the actors roles in each movie. It's a great option that allows us to see who played who from Theater View.

However, under "Poster" options, I only have "Actor/Crew" thumbs enabled, all being saved to the "Actors" folder in my MC "Coverart" folder. Here's the thing though... with that "Roles" option ticked, that actors folder contains, for example, 18 Liam Neeson images, 16 Will Smith images, 16 Leornardo di Caprio images, and so on, with, atm, over 15,000 images in that actors folder.

At the moment, I am not actually doing anything with these images.
When I eventually get around to it, will I really need all those duplicate images caused by the various roles an individual actor may have played?
Is it possible to keep the "roles" information, but only store one image file per actor?

-marko

[zybex]

Hi Marko,

The filename is tied to the contents of the [Actors] field. If you enable the option "Add role to actor names" (eg, "Keanu Reeves [Neo]") then the filename for the thumbnail will also have that same name, so that you can use [Actors] directly in an expression to fetch the correct image. This is meant to be used with the Postprocessing option to have the Actor and Role name stamped on the respective image.

If you disable that option, the filename will be only "Keanu Reeves.png", shared by all movies as long as the output folder is not depending on the movie title. For instance, if you set it up to save to "c:\Media\Actors" then there will be only one image per actor; but if you save to "c:\media\actors\$imdb", then each movie will have its own folder, so actors will be duplicated in different folders.

Perhaps I should add support for an extra [Actor Roles] field to allow having less images but still keep the Role info.

Br,
Pedro

[Outlaw Audio]

Hi Zybex,
Ive dabbled with MCRatings and now ZRatings for its scraping of the RottomTomatoes, Metacritic and Tagline tags.  Everything else is well handled by MCUtils.  However, I have two questions

Does ZRatings handle TV Shows?  If not, any plans to add this?
Does ZRatings have the ability to store Actors in unique folders attached to the directory the movie is stored in and not in a common folder?
     For example, the movie is "1917"  The movie is stored in \\NAS\Movies\1917
     As subdirectors within that main folder are:
                \.Actors
                \.Crew
                \.Posters
     I want to store the actor images in \\NAS\Movies\1917\.Actors

[arcspin]

Perhaps I should add support for an extra [Actor Roles] field to allow having less images but still keep the Role info.

That would be awesome.
The name and the role info is crucial to have beneath the actors picture but if there would be some way of decreasing the number of jpg and at the same time not lose information or the ability to set colors to each name/role, that would be great. I for one have the name in white and the role in yellow beneath each jpg.


I just did a count of how many pictures i have and I ended up having  37 925 images sorted in alphabetical folders.
(Just thought of the time it would take me to do an entire rescanning and importing a new system of pictures)
Yikes, that could take some time!

[zybex]

Does ZRatings handle TV Shows?  If not, any plans to add this?

Just movies, no TVShows for now. Not sure when I'll have the time to add that... I want to completely rework the UI to make it more flexible and add TVShow support, and possibly even interfacing with MCUtils, but that will take time that I don't have right now.

Does ZRatings have the ability to store Actors in unique folders attached to the directory the movie is stored in and not in a common folder?

Yes, but I just released a new version with a bug fix that was preventing this to work
Please get the latest 3.2.3, and set the Poster folder to "$moviedir\.Posters", and the Actors dir to "$moviedir\.$type". This $type variable is actually CREW or CAST, so not exactly what you want but close.

You can also use the Postprocessing script to have it copy the downloaded images to wherever you like!

[Outlaw Audio]

awesome!  Thanks

[zybex]

That would be awesome.
The name and the role info is crucial to have beneath the actors picture but if there would be some way of decreasing the number of jpg and at the same time not lose information or the ability to set colors to each name/role, that would be great. I for one have the name in white and the role in yellow beneath each jpg.

I'll add it soon.
As for the colors, you just need to change them on the magik script that is referenced on the PostProcessing setting (usually caption.bat). Edit the script with notepad++ and change the colors there. The colors are written in plain english (green, white, yellow...)

[lepa]

I'm getting errors when trying to move posters to my poster folder. Source file (on server) is accessible. Destination is D:\audio\MC28\Data\Tooltip\Posters and also write accessible eg with explorer. I think that this used to work also after I changed from MC27 to M28 (the folder change).  From log it seems that target folder is to blame...

Code: [Select]

  <ShowSmallThumbnails>true</ShowSmallThumbnails>
  <SavePosterCommonFolder>true</SavePosterCommonFolder>
  <SavePosterMovieFolder>true</SavePosterMovieFolder>
  <PosterFilterLanguage>true</PosterFilterLanguage>
  <PosterSortVotes>false</PosterSortVotes>
  <LoadFullSizePoster>true</LoadFullSizePoster>
  <PosterFolder>D:\audio\MC28\Data\Tooltip\Posters</PosterFolder>
  <RunPosterScript>false</RunPosterScript>
  <PosterScript />
  <FileFilter>[Media Sub Type]=Movie</FileFilter>

12.40.23.628  EXCEPTION: syncPoster: Exception copying poster file!
Source: J:\Movies\B\Bicentennial Man (1999).jpg
Target:
   System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: path1
   at System.IO.Path.Combine(String path1, String path2)
   at MCRatings.MCRatingsUI.syncPoster(MovieInfo m, String& newPath)

[lepa]

Tried now with older 3.1 release and it worked with same config files so maybe something is broken with latest release.

This is a cool feature as there is too many places where MC is too eager to access files when I have my big server sleeping. Movie browsing got much more better with this transfer. if only something similar could be done for series...

[zybex]

Hi Lepa,
I can't reproduce this, so I sent you a debug version via PM to try to root cause the issue.

[zybex]

v3.3 published:
- Add [Actor Roles] field support
- Fix exception when moving/syncing Poster location in some movies

Thanks to Lepa for reporting the crash and helping test a fix!
the new [Actor Roles] field is disabled by default - you need to create the field in MC and then enable the field in ZRatings' settings. This will store the list of Roles corresponding to each of the Actors.

[Inquisition]

I use this helpful tool long time now since it was available here.

But now version 3.3 my bitdefender antivirus goes crazy and kill this exe file everytime I extract it from zip.

I know it's false alarm but could you look what's the matter could be?
Telling bitdefender not to react on zratings don't work good.

[JimH]

I use this helpful tool long time now since it was available here.

But now version 3.3 my bitdefender antivirus goes crazy and kill this exe file everytime I extract it from zip.

I know it's false alarm but could you look what's the matter could be?
Telling bitdefender not to react on zratings don't work good.

Uninstall Bitdefender and report the problem to them.  Windows Defender is enough.

[zybex]

This is ridiculous 

The current release is now flagged by no less than 35 Antivirus products! Most of the hits are "generic/malware/suspect/PUA/variant/etc", but there's a few there accusing it of being a Trojan or CoinMiner. Symantec claims "high confidence" 

I recompiled the current code with just a change from v3.3 to v3.3.1 - suddenly only 16 detect something.

Then I removed the AutoUpgrade checks, the Google Analytics and the Sound effects downloader - still, 10 hits, but now most of them are the same "variant.bulz" which apparently means they think the app is bundling some component/app inside it (it's not)

Lastly, I added a digital signature to the .EXE (self-signed, as a proper one is paid) - and it's down to 8, including BitDefender (this tells you how "good" it is - it's the only big name in that list, but is apparently using the same crappy DB as those other unknown ones)

No matter what I do I can't get it to go lower than this. The problem is that these AVs use heuristics (probability) to flag some application, and once they add it to their databases it's extremely hard to remove, because they just add a very small snippet of the EXE (16 bytes or so) and then flag any future EXE that has that same signature/sequence of bytes. So I would need a full rewrite of the app to get out of their idiotic DB. Or, I would need to contact each one to ask them to review the application, complaining about the false positive.

I'm really not willing to do that. The source code is published - anyone can just pull it, inspect it, and compile from source (I know not everyone can do that, but that's the premise of open source - *some* people will do that).

I also cannot ask you to trust some random stranger on the internet. If you are comfortable enough with that, just add an exception on your AV to ZRatrings.EXE. But it's your call.
What I usually do is disable the flagging of "Potentially Unwanted Applications" (PUA) - most AVs have an option for this. PUAs are anything that is not really dangerous, but unwanted mostly in an enterprise setting; think Password Recovery apps, apps that make funny sounds (joke apps), etc - these are usually fine at home.

Here's some info on "bundled apps" PUA - these guys flag an app as PUA just because the developer is distributing it as a single EXE...
https://www.f-secure.com/sw-desc/application_bundler.shtml

[Inquisition]

dont change your program this way. 

its definitely a fault of bitdefender. I posted it here maybe someone has same and maybe an solution.

Exception doesn't work surely, sometimes it works, next start of zratings bitdefender crys.

heuristic is always off by me, makes most time more problems then it helps.

the last zratings didn't care bitdefender.



Jims proposal is an solution for sure, but it couldnt be the right answer "drop it and use something other".     I pay for bitdefender so i dont drop it because of one wrong alarm.

i messaged to them the wrong alarm, so lets see if something happens.

[lepa]

Hi zybex,
Would it be possibly for you to add also fetching of short description from omdb. It would be helpful in theaterview to be able to select between the two to control the space. (Sometimes normal description is a novel which potentially breaks aesthetics in theater view)

[zybex]

I've published v3.4, adding the 'Short Plot' field from OMDb. You can have both the normal Description and the ShortPlot, though they cannot both come from OMDb (to avoid having to do 2 API calls). If you enable the OMDB ShotPlot, then the Description has to come from TMDb. If both Description and ShortPlot are enabled, the code puts the shorter of them into the ShortPlot field.

I've made a few changes to try to reduce the number of AV false positives, with mixed success. Bitdefender and few others still flag a generic trojan, but many others no longer do. Here's the Virustotal results - 8 detections at the time of this writing.

Changelog and download
code changes

This releases disables the soundFX gag and the Google Analytics. AutoUpgrade remains enabled.

[lepa]

Thanks! Not sure if that double API call will be that much an issue, I mean 500 per day is still quite much. I'd prefer to get both from imdb as I already can get tmdb plot from MC or MCUtils BUT can live with toggling the settings between runs.

With new version I got some problems with cover arts. Can't save any updates for the movies which have cover art update incoming. Could it be the virus protection again kicking to teeth?

[zybex]

With new version I got some problems with cover arts. Can't save any updates for the movies which have cover art update incoming. Could it be the virus protection again kicking to teeth?

Hmm, unlikely. Can you please find the ZRatings.log and see if there's any error/exception logged?
Log should be in your %TEMP%\ZRatings folder.

[zybex]

The movie poster issue is now fixed in v3.4.1, it was caused by the change from HTTP to HTTPS.

[zybex]

After Defender started flagging ZRatings again as malware, I submitted a 'bad detection' report to Microsoft. They've now confirmed that it's safe:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/submission/6e4605b1-b71a-454c-9573-96bb00e8dfe0

"Analyst comments:
At this time, the submitted files do not meet our criteria for malware or potentially unwanted applications. The detection has been removed. "

I hope this alleviates concerns some of you may have had

EDIT: Apparently the link above only works on my microsoft account. I attached the page below.

[arcspin]

Great to hear, cause this was getting annoying to say the least.
I still get false positive, today at 10.09 a.m., so it might take some time for the updates to be pushed out.

This is what windows think it is
"Trojan:Win32/AgentTesla!ml"



To prevent defender to find the false positive on the next search I delete the Detection History folder per instructions below:
(I don't know if that is necessary but I do it anyway)

"""
Windows Defender is defaulted to scan its own "Scans/History". Resulting in the discovery of the malware over and over again. 
Even though, other scanners see no evidence of the malware on the PC.       It doesn't exist!

Until Microsoft sees fit to fix this problem,  you can prevent the repeating error indication, by deleting the items that are described in Windows Defender Protection History.
You can delete them by accessing their files, that are located in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Scans\History\Service.
In the "Service" folder, find and delete "Detection History".

Note:  ProgramData is a hidden file. In order to access it, the "Hidden Items" option in "File Explorer" must be checked. 
Find the "Hidden Items" check box under the "View Tab".
And, the first time that you access "Scans", you must select "continue", to obtain the permission.
"""

Here´s the link:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/all/windows-defender-identifies-the-same-pup-as-a/63f17794-3815-4784-b9cd-c6059c8e0828




Thanks for keeping ZRatings up and running!

Best wishes,

[zybex]

Thanks Arcspin,
Here's a couple of alternative methods to stop the nagging:

1. Add the ZRatings.exe file (or folder) to Defender's exclusion list:
Virus & Thread Protection -> Manage Settings -> Add Or Remove Exclusions -> Add An Exclusion -> select the ZRating's file or folder

2. After ZRatings.exe is detected and quarantined, tell Defender to allow and whitelist the file:
Virus & Thread Protection -> Protection History -> click on ZRatings "threat" -> select Action: "Allow" to restore and whitelist the file

Unfortunately it's likely that each new version I publish will follow the same pattern

[zybex]

This is what windows think it is
"Trojan:Win32/AgentTesla!ml"

The "!ml" at the end means "Machine Learning". It means the detection is not of an exact known virus, but instead is just based on a probability of this file being a virus when compared to the behavior/patterns of other known viruses. The ML method is still IMHO extremely error prone and unreliable and flags way too much stuff simply because the file is not signed by one of the major publishers. I tend to disregard almost all detections of this type (after some due diligence).

[JimH]

After Defender started flagging ZRatings again as malware, I submitted a 'bad detection' report to Microsoft. They've now confirmed that it's safe:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/submission/6e4605b1-b71a-454c-9573-96bb00e8dfe0

"Analyst comments:
At this time, the submitted files do not meet our criteria for malware or potentially unwanted applications. The detection has been removed. "

No apology?