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Author Topic: is media sub type still locked down?  (Read 8298 times)

jondavis

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is media sub type still locked down?
« on: October 24, 2015, 10:11:14 pm »

is media sub type still locked down

I wanted to add Documentary to the list but can't seem to find a way to do that.
Guess I will use educational if I have to.
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~OHM~

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2015, 12:08:44 am »

at this time there is no way to add your own media type or sub type....
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JimH

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2015, 02:05:53 am »

is media sub type still locked down

I wanted to add Documentary to the list but can't seem to find a way to do that.
Guess I will use educational if I have to.
I'll see if we can add it.  They're used differently, so it's not always possible.

Under which media type?
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Hendrik

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2015, 03:12:20 am »

Media Sub Type is not meant to be a replacement for Genre. You can use Genre to freely organize your data appropriately.
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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2015, 08:50:58 am »

I'll see if we can add it.  They're used differently, so it's not always possible.

Under which media type?
for me...I've asked before

Movie  sub type would be Children (or something to that affect)
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2015, 09:50:12 am »

Media Sub Type is not meant to be a replacement for Genre. You can use Genre to freely organize your data appropriately.

I find that both Documentary and Kids/Children work best as a [Genre] instead of a [Media Sub Type].

That way, the automatic metadata lookup still works, but you can still sort them into special views. I describe my system for those exact use-cases here:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=98306.msg680185#msg680185

You might want to take a look. It works splendidly.
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jondavis

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #6 on: October 25, 2015, 12:18:02 pm »

Those instructions I'm sure would be great if I knew how to code things or at least understand a little of what I'm doing.

So is a Documentary supposed to fall under movies as genre or should I use the educational tag or does it matter?
I mean I have like documentaries like:
Music
Wildlife
History
Political
Comedy Acts
Movies
Christian
Astronomy
Aliens
Economy
Health

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ferday

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #7 on: October 25, 2015, 01:12:06 pm »

It doesn't matter, since you can view any way you want

One way is to make a sub genre tag, which would contain things like history or aliens

Another is to put in the genre field: documentary\alien

This automatically sub genres alien as part of documentary
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2015, 01:23:13 pm »

It doesn't matter, since you can view any way you want

One way is to make a sub genre tag, which would contain things like history or aliens

Another is to put in the genre field: documentary\alien

This automatically sub genres alien as part of documentary

[Genre] can also contain multiple values.  So you can just add Documentary (when it doesn't fill automatically, as will often be the case) to the others, like:
Alien; Documenrary

The [Media Sub Type] tag should match what it actually is, so if it is a Movie (like Citizenfour) it should be tagged as a movie, and if it is an episode of a show (like an episode of NOVA or Horizon) then it should be tagged as a TV Show.  As I said above, that way the automatic metadata lookup features still work.  And, for most documentary movies, at least, tmdb typically has that as one of the added Genres automatically, so they sort properly without manual tagging of any kind.
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jondavis

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #9 on: October 25, 2015, 02:03:10 pm »

Ok, starting to get it.
I was first going to switch Documentary to Education but was looking at glynor's help page (thanks!) and figured out you can make a new Movie category and remove Documentary from movies using:
-[Genre]=[Documentary]
With that I should be able to make some new categories and sort things better.
Now to figure out if I want sub genre's or just add all the sub categories under one genre.
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blgentry

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #10 on: October 25, 2015, 03:29:26 pm »

I've been thinking about this a lot and just did some experiments.  I think Genre will definitely work for this for sure.  But it seems a little clumsy to me because, while Genre is a list type, it's edit type is Standard.  Which means you can't select genre from a multi-check list in the Tagging Pane like you can with other List type fields, which have their edit type set to List.  You can choose from a check box list in a Pane, but then you can only choose ONE value!  To enter documentary as a second Genre (say Comedy and Documentary), you have to use the semi-colon style and enter it manually:  Comedy;Documentary  .  Clumsy for editing if you're going to be doing it often, or selectively, as opposed to just a couple of large batches.

I think a few other methods bear consideration:

1.  Super Genre:  Make a new field called [Super Genre] where you put these types of things.  Documentary, Kids, etc, could all be a Super Genre, and retain the regular Genre tag.  You could easily build views based upon the value of Super Genre or a lack of value of Super Genre.  In some cases it might make a lot of sense to just match on [Super Genre]="" (empty) and only show items that have no Super Genre set.
2.  Keywords.  Keywords are a list type, with list editing.  It would be very easy to edit using keywords because you could click a check box to select Documentary (or Kids, etc).  Again, views could easily reference Keywords.  You would have to specifically provide the keywords you want to exclude though:  -[Keywords]=Documentary -[Keywords]=Kids  .
3.  How about just a field called "Exceptions".  Fill in Exceptions with anything you want, and build your views to (normally) ignore anything that has Exceptions set.  Again, Exceptions could be Documentary, Kids, News, or anything else you don't want in your "normal everyday" views.

I lean towards #1 above (Super Genre) because it seems to make the most sense in terms of classification.  But I can see doing any of these methods and having success.  All of these are easier to edit because you have either multi-checkbox fields, or new fields that you can easily edit using checkboxes.  Both easier than editing Genre with more than one value.

This is another one of those personal preference things.  I'm just sharing my ideas.  :)

Brian.
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #11 on: October 25, 2015, 06:22:44 pm »

But it seems a little clumsy to me because, while Genre is a list type, it's edit type is Standard.  Which means you can't select genre from a multi-check list in the Tagging Pane like you can with other List type fields, which have their edit type set to List.

Yes. This is true.

For my use, it is almost never a big deal because:
* Almost everything I add to these Genres I add through Tag On Import rules, and then the subsequent Genres (which get looked up automatically) add to it.
* When I have to tag something manually (usually a movie that doesn't automatically get the "Documentary" Genre from tmdb lookup, though that is rare), I just blow away the existing Genres and set it how I want it, and then re-do the Lookup manually.

But, in truth, once you set up the Tag on Import rules, I find I essentially never have to touch the files. Movies almost always have the proper "Documentary" tag in tmdb. For my Kids movies, I don't tag them manually with a "Kids" Genre, but use a more clever "Files to Display" rule for that View instead:

Code: [Select]
[Media Sub Type]=[Movie] (([Genre]=[Animation],[Kids],[Family] -[MPAA Rating]="13" -[MPAA Rating]="R" -[MPAA Rating]=[]) or [MPAA Rating]=[G]) ~sort=[Name],[Disc #]
That rule automatically includes:
* ALL Movies rated G
* Any movie rated PG which is in the Animation, Kids, or Family Genres

Which basically works for my needs. If I really need to add one, I can by manually tagging it [Genre] = "Kids", but I can't remember the last time I had to do that.

However... If this suggestion of mine was implemented, it would make that issue a thing of the past:
I don't know if you were looking for little features or big features, but here's one I've wanted (and gotten a bunch of +1s on before) for a good, long while.  It is a little thing, really (no comment on the PITA level because who knows):

Allow us to Control-Click in the Panes to multi-select (ala List Type Fields) on any string-type field, and then just write the results to the field semicolon-delimited.

[Artist] and [Genre] are special, as you know.  This is good, because it makes it easy to re-tag an improper [Genre] and [Artist] as needed, while still allowing people to use Multiple Genres and Artists as wanted, without messing up Tagging for the more common case.  But, it is annoying when you DO want to edit these fields to include multiple Genres or Artists, of course.  This would be a simple and intuitive compromise.  (In fact, I know I accidentally do it over and over expecting it to work, and I think in previous threads, others did too.)

You can even make the regular List-Type fields work the opposite way, clearing previous contents if you control-click in the panes, if you don't think that'd be confusing (but it might be).
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blgentry

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #12 on: October 25, 2015, 06:37:16 pm »

However... If this suggestion of mine was implemented, it would make that issue a thing of the past:

It's funny I tried the same thing when testing this.  :)

Two side notes:

1.  How in the world do you find old posts of yours like this one?  I have trouble finding anything more than a week old that I don't have some pretty specific keywords to match on.
2.  Nice to see you posting again after your vacation.  You've been missed. 

Brian.
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #13 on: October 25, 2015, 08:12:33 pm »

2.  Nice to see you posting again after your vacation.  You've been missed. 

I've been busy at work paying the price for leaving for two weeks.  :-\
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JimH

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #14 on: October 26, 2015, 02:11:38 am »

If you visit your profile, you can see your posts.
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Matt

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #15 on: October 26, 2015, 08:04:52 am »

Jim asked me to take a look at this thread, but it's not at all clear to me that anything should change.

The list for media subtype is limited.  That's because we need to have predictable values for certain things in the program.

Using Genre (or another field) is a good suggestion.
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #16 on: October 26, 2015, 10:20:19 am »

If you visit your profile, you can see your posts.

Yep. I also use a few additional methods to find old postings:

* If I know who posted it, or someone who commented in the thread, it really helps to use the advanced search and narrow it down by username.
* In the advanced search, you can change the default sorting. I find Recent First usually works better if I'm looking for something complicated.
* Also, you can filter it to only show results from certain boards. I often do this unchecking everything but one or two boards to narrow the results.
* Google works too. I search using Google with "site:yabb.jriver.com" tacked onto the search all the time.
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #17 on: October 26, 2015, 10:23:26 am »

Jim asked me to take a look at this thread, but it's not at all clear to me that anything should change.

If you're looking for something to change, I'd LOVE this:

Allow us to Control-Click in the Panes to multi-select (ala List Type Fields) on any string-type field, and then just write the results to the field semicolon-delimited.

[Artist] and [Genre] are special, as you know.  This is good, because it makes it easy to re-tag an improper [Genre] and [Artist] as needed, while still allowing people to use Multiple Genres and Artists as wanted, without messing up Tagging for the more common case.  But, it is annoying when you DO want to edit these fields to include multiple Genres or Artists, of course.  This would be a simple and intuitive compromise.  (In fact, I know I accidentally do it over and over expecting it to work, and I think in previous threads, others did too.)

You can even make the regular List-Type fields work the opposite way, clearing previous contents if you control-click in the panes, if you don't think that'd be confusing (but it might be).

Brian's comment above was true. It works to use Genre, but it has some annoying side effects because Genre (like Artist) is one of those "special" list type fields (list type display, string type editor).

I want Genre to behave like a string type field for Music, but not for Video.  Enabling Control-Click ticking when doing tagging in the Panes would fix it completely.

In fact, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, but... If you do the latter part and have holding Control "reverse" the normal behavior (so on List-Type fields, hold control and click to make it behave like a string-type field and replace contents) then I'd be okay with making [Artist] and [Genre] into bog-standard List Type fields, and getting rid of the "weirdness" of those fields.

Others might scream, but with the control-click fix, I wouldn't.
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ferday

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #18 on: October 26, 2015, 10:40:07 am »

If you visit your profile, you can see your posts.

I have a huge Evernote folder for interesting interact threads, glynor and MrC have the big sub folders LOL


On topic, I'd +1 glynor's suggestion...
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Matt

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #19 on: October 26, 2015, 11:14:30 am »

Next build:
Changed: Holding Ctrl while clicking pane tag checkboxes will enter "list" mode so that you can select multiple genres, etc.
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fitbrit

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #20 on: October 26, 2015, 03:24:41 pm »

Next build:
Changed: Holding Ctrl while clicking pane tag checkboxes will enter "list" mode so that you can select multiple genres, etc.

Yay!
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jondavis

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #21 on: October 26, 2015, 07:21:49 pm »

Next build:
Changed: Holding Ctrl while clicking pane tag checkboxes will enter "list" mode so that you can select multiple genres, etc.

Can't wait!
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glynor

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Re: is media sub type still locked down?
« Reply #22 on: October 26, 2015, 07:23:04 pm »

Next build:
Changed: Holding Ctrl while clicking pane tag checkboxes will enter "list" mode so that you can select multiple genres, etc.

Enthusiastic fist pumping!!!
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