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[ivwshane]

Sometimes I want to watch a short movie but none of the movie tags display the run time. I know the info is available on IMDB but how do you add it to the movie tag and if I can add it how can I update all existing movies and add it to new movies?

[Cmagic]

Do you mean movie Duration?
If so there is a tag called 'duration' that you can use to check the length of a movie.

C.

[ivwshane]

Yes duration. I see the tag but no info is populated in it?

[Cmagic]

That's strange since this tag should be populated automatically.
Can you try library->update library (from tags)?
Also, can you play your movies alright? And,what is their formats: mkv, mp4' avi?
Thanks.

[6233638]

I was just thinking this - it would be nice if the "Get Movie & TV Info..." option filled out the duration tag for ISO files. Anything I've ripped to MKV has duration, but most of the time I just rip to ISO now for convenience.
I was also wondering whether there was a way to only have duration show up in hours & minutes for films, rather than hours, minutes, seconds.

I also still haven't figured out the way expressions are handled, so that when I have:

[Name] ([Duration])
RatingStars()


It's showing:

Title ()
★★★★★

When there is no duration for the file.

[MrC]

Parens are special in the expression language.  Escape them with forward slashes.

[Name] /([Duration]/)

Here's an expression that will show hours/minutes for Movies:

   if(regex([Media Sub Type][Duration], /#^(?:Movie)(\d+):(\d+)(?::\d+)$#/), [R1]h [R2]m, [Duration])

Add an | operator to add more media sub types:

   if(regex([Media Sub Type][Duration], /#^(?:Movie|TV Show)(\d+):(\d+)(?::\d+)$#/), [R1]h [R2]m, [Duration])

[6233638]

Thank you. That's the problem with expressions - they seem very powerful, but it seems overly complex to get the results you want to appear.

My issue with the brackets was that they're showing up like this, however:



I want them visible when there is a value in the [Duration] tag, but hidden when it's empty. I'm quite sure it can be done, I just need to have the time to build up some understanding of how it works.

[MrC]

Use the Delimit() function for this:

Delimit([Duration],/), /()

[MrC]

Thank you. That's the problem with expressions - they seem very powerful, but it seems overly complex to get the results you want to appear.

The expression above is a little compex, I agree.  It has to take into account that there might or might not be an hour value.  You basically have two formats of Duration - raw and formatted.  You don't like the current formatted version, so we have to massage it.  There are other ways to do this, such as counting the number of : characters and when there are two, grabbing the first and second times components.  If that would be preferable to you:

if(compare(ListCount([Duration], :), =, 3), listitem([duration], 0, :) hr listitem([duration], 1, :) min, [Duration])

[6233638]

Perfect, thank you. I think I've said this before; MC18 seems very powerful - but a lot of the time, the interface feels like it was designed by programmers.
For people that work with regex every day, functions like that probably seem trivial, but it's been years since I last had to regex anything.

Now we just need it to fill out the duration tag when getting movie & tv info.

[MrC]

Good to hear it works for you.

Consider - you asking the software to do something which by nature is programming:

  If Media Type is Movie
     format duration without seconds
  else
     format duration normally

Can you devise a UI that avoids this?

[6233638]

Good to hear it works for you.

Consider - you asking the software to do something which by nature is programming:

  If Media Type is Movie
     format duration without seconds
  else
     format duration normally

Can you devise a UI that avoids this?

Please excuse the horrible UI (quick Photoshop of an existing UI) that wouldn't actually work in the real world and is the result of all of 60 seconds of thought... but something along these lines would make editing expressions a lot easier.



Actually, I bet something like iTunes' Smart Playlists tool, or Apple's Smart Mailbox tools are probably more like what I'm thinking of.

[kstuart]

Just FYI...

I always get Duration from measuring the file itself. (MediaInfo freeware program does this automatically)

If you get information online, you have significant possibility of false information.  Movies can have as much as a dozen different versions of different lengths - not only director's cuts, but also cuts to conform to laws in different countries, (and material added back for other countries with perceived greater interest).

Most online databases are "crowd sourced", eg IMDB has "run time" which is simply typed by the first guy who wants to fill in the blank field.   If he happens to be from a country where they cut out the scene where a character intentionally cuts open his hand (real example, btw), then the duration won't match your file...

[6233638]

I agree with what you're saying about online sources being unreliable, depending on the region (PAL vs NTSC) censorship in certain releases, extended editions etc. and it should absolutely not write into that field if it's a video file where MC18 can read the duration directly.

But having at least some approximation of time is a lot better than nothing - there is no duration for .iso files at all.

Duration for me really only has to be approximate when it comes to films - is this film less than 90 minutes, is it around 2 hours, or is it a really long film that is 3+ hours? (like Kingdom of Heaven where my Blu-ray is 3:09:33)

Sometimes I might not have time for a film that's over 2 hours long, and I want to watch something that's less than 90 minutes, for example.
Or I might have a spare couple of hours, and want to pick a title that is as close to that as possible.


And actually, just loading up Kingdom of Heaven to find that out, has let me see that the [Duration] field is actually not editable at all for iso files, so you can't even enter it manually if you wanted to right now. (I thought I might as well, considering I bothered to check it)

[ivwshane]

I havent tried any of the suggestions yet, but my files are indeed in ISO format.  does that mean there is no visible duration tag? That's what it sounds like from the above post.

[6233638]

I havent tried any of the suggestions yet, but my files are indeed in ISO format.  does that mean there is no visible duration tag? That's what it sounds like from the above post.

If you bring up the tag editor and "show all tags" duration is visible (and blank) but you are not able to edit it.
I don't think you can edit it for any files that are marked as being videos (or any files, I suppose) but I guess it was overlooked, because you wouldn't want to change the duration on anything else.

It seems that having editable [Duration] for ISO files should be a relatively easy thing to patch in (what do I know?) and if the sources they use for gathering Movie & TV info provide duration, then hopefully that can be automatically imported too.

And going a step further, you could import the length from whatever source they get the Movie & TV info from, and update it when you mount the image - but that seems like it would be a much bigger job, and unlikely to happen in MC18 at least.