INTERACT FORUM

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: TV Series Description  (Read 1206 times)

DanielBMe

  • World Citizen
  • ***
  • Posts: 184
TV Series Description
« on: November 22, 2013, 02:31:29 pm »

Just wondering if there's a way to display a description for a TV Series?  I have a number of tv series in MC and realized it would be nice if when I moved onto a tv series with the remote, if it could display a brief desc of what the tv series is about.  I didn't see anything in MC so thought I'd ask.

If it doesn't it would be nice if when you moved onto a tv series, the rest of the tv series on the screen faded out and a window opened up with a brief desc. 
Logged

fitbrit

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 4887
Re: TV Series Description
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2013, 02:58:42 pm »

I would love to see this as well. I have so many series that I gave up populating this field manually.
Logged

DanielBMe

  • World Citizen
  • ***
  • Posts: 184
Re: TV Series Description
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2013, 03:24:05 pm »

I just find that as I add a new series others in the household may not know what it's about so they have to either ask me or search on the web to read up on it.  Would be easier if there was a way to get a series description in somehow.
Logged

fitbrit

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 4887
Re: TV Series Description
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2013, 04:16:29 pm »

I just checked and thetvdb.com does have this information, so hopefully it might be added some day.
Logged

connersw

  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 661
Re: TV Series Description
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2013, 06:47:54 pm »

So I messed around with this a bit tonight.  It's not very elegant (and manual), but there are a couple ways to do it.

As Fitbrit said, you can get the info from TVDB.  Maybe we could have this info pulled automatically please? 
For now, I use the following Managed Link to access it:

Code: [Select]
<Link version="1.2">
<Item Name="Name">TVDB</Item>
<Item Name="Action">1</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://thetvdb.com/</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////thetvdb.com//?string=Hexify([Series])&amp;searchseriesid=&amp;tab=listseries&amp;function=Search</Item>
<Item Name="Filter">[Media Sub Type]=[TV Show]</Item>
</Link>


The first way I tried, I changed my Series view Details from Series -> Season to Expression -> Season using the Expression [Series]: [Series Description].  This works, but there is only room to display the first couple sentences of the description.  Some list styles look better than others too.  Perhaps you could mess with the skin to make it display more?

The other way that looks pretty decent was to add Series Description to the file info panel.  Tools -> Options -> Theater View -> Appearance -> Customize file info panel.  I added Series Description to the TV Show template, and I put it at the top of the list selecting Show: Always show and checking Hide when value is empty.  With this option, you need to click into the first Season to see it, but you would only have to tag the first Episode of the first Season with the Series Description. 

I'm sure there are others here that could probably clean this up better, but at least it's a start to show it is doable. 
Logged

fitbrit

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 4887
Re: TV Series Description
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2013, 10:26:20 pm »

Thanks, connersw. I wouldn't invest too much time into this. I know Matt has a long list of improvements to make, but I hope this will be automated during the MC19 lifespan. I've been (pleasantly, I suppose) bitten before by spending literally years doing manual tagging of huge numbers of video files, only to have MC gain the capability of doing it all automatically in one overnight session.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up