Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sspeed]

Hi,

I have a big movie DVD collection (+4000) and I don't want to rip them. Nevertheless I would like to know how can I use JRiver for managing my DVD collection (ie. enjoy the movie browsing without linking films with video files).
Thanks for your suport

[MrC]

You have two choices here:

   - You can insert each of the 4000 DVDs and MC will catalog these
   - You can use a spreadsheet that catalogs your DVDs and have it converted to an MPL which you can import into MC

A number of users here have used other DVD management software and have converted and imported the catalogs.

I've written several conversion utilities to help some of these users.

Do you have your collection online in some form?

[sspeed]

No, I made a personal catalogue for my DVD collection, but I don't care to add manually every movie to JRiver. The only thing is I don't find how to do. (sorry, I am not a native english speaker)

[MrC]

Please describe as best you can your personal catalog.  You can use your native language if that will help, and we'll use Google Translate to help us.

[sspeed]

No problem for writing in english.
Actually I have an excel file with all original titles, release year, director, ..., and even imdb IDs. And sorry, your first answer mentioned the "speadsheet" and I just understand now that it is exactly what I want.
Then, how can we convert a spreadsheet (with which data?) into an importable file?

[MrC]

If you can zip and attach it here, I'll take a look at conversion into an MPL that you can import.

Question: do you intend to update this spreadsheet again, and use it as the Master, or will MC be your new primary tool (MC can export a CSV file, so you're safe getting the data back out).  I ask, because this has consequences on whether or not dummy files are required (MC is file-based, so it really wants external files on disk to match entries inside the Library, but they are not required if you're only planning on doing the import once).

[sspeed]

If you can zip and attach it here, I'll take a look at conversion into an MPL that you can import.

My spreadsheet with 4000 lines was too big for attachment, here is a light version with the 100 first movies.

Question: do you intend to update this spreadsheet again, and use it as the Master, or will MC be your new primary tool (MC can export a CSV

I intend to update the speadsheet, but I don't mind to update several versions of the list (eg. my main evolutive spreadsheet and a simplified CSV version for MC, if it is possible).

[MrC]

Ok, that's fine.

That's a pretty nice, and comprehensive data set.

It is rather easy to convert this to an MPL, which MC could then import.  However, there are some mapping issues from your fields to MCs fields, and the data types you use vs. MC's data types for certain fields (you use commas to delimit your list items, MC uses semicolons for delimiters by default).

Have you considered which columns you want imported?  if you want all of them, you'll have to create fields for each of those that don't already exist in MC, and you'll have to either rename your columns or we'll have to create a mapping (and in some cases data conversions).

If you are going to be updating this file, and aren't going to use MC primarily as your data management entity, do you really want all the fields imported, and do you want to bother going through the conversion / import process over and over again?

[sspeed]

Do you have an example of MPL file?

I am not worried by the updating process. If I understand the MPL syntax and the effect on MC, I could define after the best way to update the data on MC (for example with a ad-hoc program for generate automatically the MPL from the data). Perhaps I will choose to manage my data directly from MC, depending on my feedback of using MC. For the moment I'm not sure, I just want to test the MC movie interface in importing my own catalog.

[raldo]

This is sort of a related question:

I'd like to delete some movies physically from disk but I'd like to keep the records of those movies in the MC database.

Could I use the method you're discussing in this thread?

I.e:
o export an MPL of all the movies.
o Delete the movies in the MC library and on Disk.
o Import MPL

[MrC]

@sspeed - you can see an MPL by creating one.  Select a couple of files, and do a File > Export Playlist, and select the MPL format, and select the Output Range: Selection option at the bottom.

We need to be concerned about the import process via MPL in your case, since you don't have backing files.  Each file-less import you do will create duplicate entries in MC (since MC uses the Filepath as the unique per-file external identifier), whereas if you have dummy files you can repeat the import time and again, and this will only update the tag values.

@raldo - probably your best bet would be to export an MPL of the movies you want to delete, and then remove the Field=Filename entry from each Item inside the playlist, and then you can delete the MC items and do a File > Import Playlist of the MPLs.  Now, you'll have file-less entries.

Enough folks have wanted to import data into MC via a spreadsheet, that I'm thinking it might be worth making a general conversion, dummy file creation, and import script.  I can cobble pieces from my amg.pl and discogs.pl scripts as all the guts are in place (CSV conversion, MPL creation and/or automatic updates via MCWS, and field mapping).  This would allow you to setup your Field mappings (your spreadsheet column name to a stock or custom MC field)

[raldo]

@raldo - probably your best bet would be to export an MPL of the movies you want to delete, and then remove the Field=Filename entry from each Item inside the playlist, and then you can delete the MC items and do a File > Import Playlist of the MPLs.  Now, you'll have file-less entries.

Yup, that works. Thanks!