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Author Topic: Movie Database Development  (Read 15907 times)

grahamdoggart

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Movie Database Development
« on: July 25, 2008, 03:31:20 pm »

I am very new to MC 12 and I am HUGELY impressed.  I have never found such a fantastically user-friendly piece of software for audio management.  Everything I could possibly think of is available within the software package.

Now, there are two things I feel are required to have this software take over from Microsoft or Apple.  Firstly, the theater view needs tweaked so that it is easy to have additional data such as album titles and track data directly when moving around your files and to have the option of a now playing part of the window that is always on.

Secondly, and much more importantly, it needs a functional and automatic movie database set up.  If a person could rip his movie onto the computer and have it automatically detailed with cover art and detailed information regarding the film in question (IMDB) and the DVD release itself (AMAZON US, UK etc.) and that information was easily legible somewhere on the theater view as well as in normal view then I think this software would take leaps and bounds and take over from the big boys.

I have put this post in the main part of the forum and not the developer/3rd party plugin part simply because I personally believe that if it was part of the mainstream software the team involved would prosper immensley.

The only software that comes close to this sort of functionality in my opinion is libra [http://www.getlibra.com] which allows you to catalogue stuff and link it to a digital file.  People pay thousands for hard-wired home theater set ups with DVDs ripped onto servers.

JRiver could offer practically the same for a few dollars. Fantastic!!

I am more than happy to work on creating the functionality and, considering the number of posts requesting this sort of functionality I am sure the team are on it!

If anyone could let me know what is planned or what help is required to setup this - of course if the Media Center 12 team do not want to go this route then I would happily work on the 3rd party plugin.

All data gratefully received.

GD :)



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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2008, 07:48:36 pm »

Welcome to the board :)

I'm making my own local film database for the few hundred DVDs I've got... and let me say, it's slow and tedious work indeed. I use data mainly from IMDb and AMG so, without a lookup plugin or the like, it's basically a copy paste job for each individual film. And even then it's stored in the library only which scares me just a bit :P

I would like to see MC take a few steps in video cataloguing. Right now the team's fairly focused on new audio developments (see online distribution threads) but I'm sure videos and photos will receive similar attention in time.
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cncb

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2008, 08:14:38 pm »

I wrote a little tool that imports data from DVDProfiler.  I could share this after a little tweaking if there is any interest.
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zxsix

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2008, 09:17:40 pm »

Do you have to put the movies in DVDProfiler software first, or your tool just grabs the data from DVDProfiler's database by matching the Name field?
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cncb

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2008, 09:39:30 pm »

Do you have to put the movies in DVDProfiler software first, or your tool just grabs the data from DVDProfiler's database by matching the Name field?

Yes, you have to use the DVDProfiler software and export your collection to XML.  There is no way that I know of to get at the online database.
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2008, 11:23:52 pm »

Oh, what a timely post! I've been thinking about this, but from a somewhat different angle. I, too, am hugely impressed with MC. But, for many of the same reasons, I love using Personal Video Database [http://www.videodb.info/forum_en] for maintaining my video information. PVD is freeware built on Firebird RDBMS. It downloads information and images from IMDb and other sources, and presents that information nicely. Most importantly (for me) it does a very good job relating all the people associated with the movies. I'm tempted to argue it's the best video database software available, but that would be way off-topic...

My point is, after seeing what PVD can do with it's focused task, I find it impossible to believe MC could ever come close to providing the same functionality. So I wonder what the prospects are for the two moving closer together, for the sharing of data, for some sort of "convergence." It would be wonderful if there was a tagging convention for video files like ID3 for music files. Then we could expect all such software, whatever it's primary purpose, could read and write to tags and thereby share information. But, it doesn't look like we're going to see that any time soon. I imagine it would be easy for MC developers to write code that reads movie information from a SQL database, but it's unreasonable to expect they would do that for one obscure program (Libra, DVDProfiler or PVD).

While I don't have a clue how to do it, I suppose exporting to, and importing from XML might be the best available solution. I note that PVD will export to XML. Maybe cncb can point me in the right direction for learning how to import that into MC.

BTW, darichman, "a copy paste job for each individual film"?  :o Stop that right now!!! Use PVD.  ;D BTW, I've configured PVD to download information from IMDb, a synopsis, categories and an additional rating from AMG, and a poster from Amazon. It's all automatic.
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hit_ny

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2008, 04:09:48 am »

It downloads information and images from IMDb and other sources, and presents that information nicely. Most importantly (for me) it does a very good job relating all the people associated with the movies. I'm tempted to argue it's the best video database software available, but that would be way off-topic...

My point is, after seeing what PVD can do with it's focused task, I find it impossible to believe MC could ever come close to providing the same functionality. So I wonder what the prospects are for the two moving closer together, for the sharing of data, for some sort of "convergence."

Is it only the integration with online sources that makes videodb so good ?

or is it also functionality too ?

It would be interesting to hear where you think MC could improve.

MC targets, Audio, Video, Images as well as 'others'.

The idea is a similar interface regardless.

Naturally this puts constraints on over specialising in one format at the expense of another, a delicate balancing act which to date has been maintained IMO.

Now you could get best of breed for each media type but then you would have 'x' apps to manage it all instead of just the one :)
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2008, 05:41:51 pm »

Quote
Is it only the integration with online sources that makes videodb so good ?

I didn't mean to imply PVD is perfect in this regard, or this is all it's good at. Many here ask, "Can't MC just pull the video information from IMDb?" I'm not a programmer, but it's obviously easy to do. My experience with PVD, however, suggests the issue is much broader than that. There are many different variations in the content a user may want. IMDb does not seem to be the first choice for European, Russian and Asian users. Even I, a unilingual Anglo, want my information from two different sources. My point is, doing this well is beyond the scope of what MC intends to be.

Quote
or is it also functionality too ?

Yes, very much so. It has the powerful database features you'd expect from a relational database application—filtering, searching, handling relations like a complete filmography for each person in the database. It handles multiple posters, covers and screenshots. It includes a fully-configurable web search function to facilitate searching for information beyond that it automatically downloads. And there's much more, but...

I'm not trying to say PVD is doing anything MC should be doing better than MC. If you consider why I maintain a video database, it may help you understand my point-of-view: Unlike many MC users, I have little interest cataloging video media. I'm primarily interested in maintaining a database of movies I've seen, and may want to see. While downloading is overtaking DVD rentals as my media source, I delete most downloaded media after viewing. I may be wrong, but it seems MC wasn't designed to catalog media that doesn't exist. At the same time, I would very much like MC to be able to use the information I have in PVD about the media I have on hand at any point in time.

Quote
It would be interesting to hear where you think MC could improve.

I wish I could express that in term of concrete feature proposals, but I'm still to new to MC to do that. My hope is those with more experience might understand my point-of-view, and offer solutions for my particular needs, as well as possible paths for MC development in this area. My gut tells me the answer is in somehow better facilitating the exchange of media meta information, but I'm not sure how that might be done. Since my last post, I looked at the possibility of importing data from PVD via XML. That might work if MC offered some kind of mapping utility. Without that, however, doing so on my own seems out of the question. Even if it would work, it wouldn't be a very practical solution for keeping the information up-to-date on a daily basis.

Others have requested (for some time now) improvements to Theatre View for displaying video information. Some have gone as far as recommending the information source issue (e.g., downloading from IMDb) be set aside until this is done. I whole-heartedly agree. There's little point in getting information into MC unless there is a way to use it. I realize this is a selfish view—I already have and use the information with PVD. All I'm looking for is the ability to use it in a 10-foot display.

Quote
...a delicate balancing act which to date has been maintained IMO.

I understand and appreciate the design premise of MC, so I agree with you completely. Although it often makes my brain hurt, the power and flexibility of its common media management architecture is very impressive and attractive. However, that just make me want to use it more. Clearly, I'm not alone in that sense. Maybe this is an indication of where MC is in it's development. The guts of it are complete and stable, and users are very impressed and happy with it. As well, the developers have been disciplined enough to not try to make it do everything—to keep it "well-rounded." So MC really can be used to manage all media, and can be configured and used in ways to satisfy just about any need. It follows the development focus should be to improve and add tools that help users adapt MC to their own particular needs. This would include generalized import routines to facilitate getting whatever information a user wants into the database. On the "other end," it would include making Theatre View more configurable so that information can be used.

In conclusion, MC does not intend to be a "movie database manager." I believe it's (potential) strength lies in it's ability to be an excellent media manager that can used by most for all of their movie information needs. At the same time, I think it can be made to also accommodate those who are compelled to use more specialized software to maintain their movie database. There may even be a common solution for both "regular" and "advanced" users: Provide a utility function for importing a file in a specified, easy-to-use format (e.g., CSV). Also provide, or encourage user development of a plugin that will download information from IMDb and create such a file. Alternatively, an advanced user would be able to export information from their specialized software in the specified format. The same general facility could be implemented for all media types—and so be in keeping with MC's purpose and architecture.
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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #8 on: July 27, 2008, 03:59:32 am »

In what ways can you export the data from DVDProfiler and PVD... I wouldn't mind giving one or both of them a try... Anyone out there used both? Advantages? Disadvantages?

I would love to see this functionality or similar in MC, but IF they decided to go down this road, three rather major things would have to happen.

WHERE DO WE GET THE DATA?
1. Hook up to a database. I don't think YADB would work for this - no one is going to type out all the information and submit it, sorry. For this to work, J River would need to make a deal or hook into one of the existing databases - open (IMDb/AMG) or closed (DVD profiler etc)

HOW DO WE DISPLAY THE DATA?
2. Develop specific information views. Currently, most of MCs "view" capabilities surround "finding" the file you want... not viewing information about it. We'd need a way to display all the people and film data for a particular film.
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #9 on: July 27, 2008, 05:02:20 am »

Quote
In what ways can you export the data from DVDProfiler and PVD...

PVD is set up to handle text exports using user-configurable templates. So I suppose the correct answer is you can export in whatever way you want. Sample templates are provided for CSV, XML, a few plain text lists, and several HTML formats.

Quote
J River would need to make a deal or hook into one of the existing databases - open (IMDb/AMG)...

Probably a good reason why it should be left up to individual users to access such databases for their exclusive personal use. J River would have to make some sort of deal if they would otherwise be seen as exploiting these services for their own benefit. I don't see anything wrong with providing users with the tools necessary to access the information, however.

Quote
Move to a relational database.

This board must be built on a relational database. I search for "relational database," and my screen instantly fills up with your posts. ;D  That's okay—it really is necessary for movie/people databases.
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hit_ny

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #10 on: July 27, 2008, 08:38:00 am »

PVD is set up to handle text exports using user-configurable templates. So I suppose the correct answer is you can export in whatever way you want. Sample templates are provided for CSV, XML, a few plain text lists, and several HTML formats.

MC has its own type of XML called MPL. Select some files from Playing now and then File->Export Playlist, in the dialog that pops up MPL playlist should already be selected, select Output Range as 'Selection' and then OK.

Then examine the resulting PlayingNow.mpl file to get an idea of the format.

It can also import via a CSV file but you will have to look that up as i'm not too familiar with it.


Probably a good reason why it should be left up to individual users to access such databases for their exclusive personal use. J River would have to make some sort of deal if they would otherwise be seen as exploiting these services for their own benefit. I don't see anything wrong with providing users with the tools necessary to access the information, however.

Tools in the form of a SDK are available for MC if one is skilled enough to write a plugin, i imagine there would also be APIs necessary from the data sources to pull the required info.

This board must be built on a relational database. I search for "relational database," and my screen instantly fills up with your posts. ;D  That's okay—it really is necessary for movie/people databases.
The reason MC is not relational if simple, speed, it's hand tuned to work optimally.

Going relational offers some benefits if you can use SQL for access but overall i doubt many users would be willing to do that. Speed would prolly suffer as a result as well. MC in its current iteration can handle upto several hundred thousand items and still perform.
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ronron

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #11 on: July 27, 2008, 08:54:42 am »

I would definitely be interested in the tool
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #12 on: July 27, 2008, 11:59:32 am »

Quote
Then examine the resulting PlayingNow.mpl file to get an idea of the format.

I've already done this. The MC and PVD formats are not at all similar. Even if they were, I don't have the programming skills to merge or update one with the other. Manually updating the MPL file is useless—it would be easier to just cut & paste information directly into PVD.

Quote
It can also import via a CSV file but you will have to look that up as i'm not too familiar with it.

I can't find any reference to this. I'm also puzzled because you said in a post just last week:

Quote
To import from CSV will require you to transform it via xsl to xml, specifically mc's flavour of xml or mpl.

As much as I like MC, I find the lack of a CSV import function a shocking deficiency. It's commonplace among database applications, it's easy to provide, and it provides the means to deal with just about any data conversion requirement. To illustrate, an example: Before I found PVD, I was "logging" movies seen using IMDb's My Movies feature (essentially, just a list of titles/year with the date seen). The list included over 500 titles seen over the past 10 years, so it was important to me. I cut & paste the web page table into Excel, and parsed it into a list of title, year and date seen. I imported this directly into PVD (it could have been saved as CSV and imported too). Because this simple tool was available to me, I was able to get a 500-movie database up and running in about 20 minutes.
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hit_ny

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #13 on: July 27, 2008, 12:36:17 pm »

Quote
it seems MC wasn't designed to catalog media that doesn't exist

MC depends on media to exist, point at a folder it lives in and then import.

There is no way to import into MC something that does not exist even if you did do it with MPL.

App you mentioned earlier is as close to ideal for your requirements, ie a pure database.
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #14 on: July 27, 2008, 08:07:59 pm »

Quote
There is no way to import into MC something that does not exist even if you did do it with MPL.

In my situation, nothing exists because I delete movies after viewing them. But I just realized this is not entirely true. I create a shortcut before deleting—to create a log entry of the movie and the date I viewed it. So I just changed the file extensions to AVI and imported them into a "Viewed" album. Furthermore, my file naming convention allowed me to fill title, year, rating and rank fields using fill properties from file name. Is there a way to automate the last step?

Great—Now I've got a bunch more "movies" I can't import information to.  ;)

Oops—Another presumptuous assumption. Using the same technique (but creating null files, rather than shortcuts), I have (260 - pathname length) characters of filename with which to bring movie information into MC. That's not going to accommodate any long text fields, but it should be plenty for things like year, genre, director, lead actors, rating information, etc. After importing the information, I can use MC's rename function to change the long filenames back to something reasonable.

Quote
App you mentioned earlier is as close to ideal for your requirements, ie a pure database.

Except I have 2 apps to manage it all instead of just the one.  ;)
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hit_ny

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #15 on: July 27, 2008, 09:34:21 pm »

Furthermore, my file naming convention allowed me to fill title, year, rating and rank fields using fill properties from file name. Is there a way to automate the last step?

Don't follow... what to automate ?

You select a bunch of files, define the template to fill properties from and then OK.

MC will remember that template so its only a pulldown in the future if you need the same template again.

Unless you mean automatically apply the same template for any future imports, no that is not possible.
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #16 on: July 27, 2008, 09:47:25 pm »

Quote
Unless you mean automatically apply the same template for any future imports...

Yes, I'm very lazy.  ;)
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #17 on: July 28, 2008, 06:58:27 pm »

Quote
Using the same technique (but creating null files, rather than shortcuts), I have (260 - pathname length) characters of filename with which to bring movie information into MC. That's not going to accommodate any long text fields, but it should be plenty for things like year, genre, director, lead actors, rating information, etc.

In case anyone is interested... I successfully imported about 600 movies this way. It was more work than I anticipated—dealing with illegal and accented characters in Excel, mainly—but much more efficient than cutting & pasting.

Some questions... Date and duration had to come in as string data. The only way I could manage that was to put them in custom string fields, and then use expression columns to parse those into consistent sortable "data." Is there some way I might have converted the strings into "proper" date and time data? There don't seem to be any arithmetic functions in the expression language that would allow me to compute an integer from a string (e.g., seconds from "hh:mm"). If this is possible, can such an integer be saved in a custom date or time field?

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cncb

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #18 on: July 28, 2008, 09:47:20 pm »

If anyone is interested I decided to go with MyMovies due to the limitations of DVDProfiler.  I posted my import tool here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=47574.0
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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #19 on: July 28, 2008, 10:15:11 pm »

If anyone is interested I decided to go with MyMovies due to the limitations of DVDProfiler.  I posted my import tool here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=47574.0

Thanks cncb, I'll certainly be giving it a try...
Just wondering... what limitations do you refer to?

In case anyone is interested... I successfully imported about 600 movies this way. It was more work than I anticipated—dealing with illegal and accented characters in Excel, mainly—but much more efficient than cutting & pasting.

I processed my ~300 movie collection in PVD using the AMG lookup... now just have to try and get it back into MC. Will let you know how I go.
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cncb

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #20 on: July 28, 2008, 10:34:45 pm »

Just wondering... what limitations do you refer to?

I meant the limitations of the "free" version: no export if > 50 movies and small cover art.  MyMovies also found most of my "obscure" kids movies where DVDProfiler did not.
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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #21 on: July 31, 2008, 02:24:15 am »

If anyone is using Personal Video Database, I managed to set it up so you can easily export an MPL file containing info from the PVD database. For those who don't know, MC can use MPL files to retrieve database information.

First of all, set it up (only need to do this once:)
In PVD, go to tools > preferences > plugins > plain text/export > add > (call it what you want) > and then copy and pase the following:
(i pulled the info from AMG, so my fields are named accordingly, but you can rename them to whatever you want)

Code: [Select]
%OPTIONS%
replace="&<->&amp;"
replace="<<->&lt;"
replace="><->&gt;"
filter="MPL Files|*.mpl"
encoding="UTF8"
%OPTIONS%
%HEAD%
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<MPL Version="2.0" Title="ChrisRulz">
%HEAD%
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">{%value=27}</Field>
<Field Name="AMG Year">{%value=5}</Field>
<Field Name="AMG Genres">{%value=44}</Field>
<Field Name="Themes">{%value=46}</Field>
<Field Name="AMG Synopsis">{%value=15}</Field>
<Field Name="MPAA">{%value=6}</Field>
<Field Name="Actors">{%value=52}</Field>
<Field Name="Director">{%value=53}</Field>
</Item>
%FOOT%
</MPL>
%FOOT%

You can add as many entries of: <Field Name="XXX">{%value=YY}</Field>  as you want
(just replace my ones with the names of your fields)

XXX is the name of the field in MC
YY is the two digit number PVD uses to refer to fields: http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?topic=766.msg1293#msg1293

Once you've saved the script, select the movie entries you want to export, go to tools > export > select your template and name the mpl file.

From MC, select File > Import Playlist > Open the MPL file
The appropriate fields should now be populated in MC.
For this to work properly, both the PVD and MC databases need to point to the correct path and filename.

Thanks to rick.ca for recommending PVD to me :)
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cncb

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #22 on: July 31, 2008, 09:39:41 am »

From MC, select File > Import Playlist > Open the MPL file
The appropriate fields should now be populated in MC.

Hmm. I didn't know about the MPL import.  This gives me an idea for my MyMovies tool.  Thanks.
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gappie

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #23 on: July 31, 2008, 12:40:01 pm »

If anyone is using Personal Video Decoder, I managed to set it up so you can easily export an MPL file containing info from the PVD database. For those who don't know, MC can use MPL files to retrieve database information.

thanks... this is great. i managed to get my movies in PVD from excell and this script to make an mpl really resolves the last issues... thanks a lot!!!!

 :)
gab
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #24 on: July 31, 2008, 02:40:05 pm »

Quote
Thanks to rick.ca for recommending PVD to me.

Thank YOU! This is... FANTASTIC!!!  :D

I feel rather sheepish about my pessimistic views of my ability to import to MC via MPL (not to mention my rather cumbersome import-via-filename solution). I think this serves as a perfect illustration that it's not only feasible, but rather easy to do. Even for a code-phobic klutz like me!

This provides almost all I can wish for in terms of the "convergence" of the best-of-breed movie and media managers (PVD and MC, IMHO). The idea of MC attempting to do what my movie manager does so well now seems pointless. Even if I had no interest in maintaining a movie database, I would rather use PVD as a tool for assembling and importing movie information to MC. All that's needed now is an improved Theater View that can make use of all this information—specifically, by being capable of displaying detailed information for each movie.

Some comments:

It's Personal Video Database, not Personal Video Decoder.  ::)

Adding replace=",<->;" to the template will replace commas with semicolons so genres and actors will import to list fields correctly.

I believe the movies PVD will export are those that are displayed, rather than "selected." PVD provides powerful searching and filtering for doing that. For the limited testing I've done so far, I've "bookmarked" test subjects, displayed those, and run the export.

PVD saves posters in it's database. These can be exported as well, but it requires an extra step to rename the resulting imageN.jpg files. The following template can be used to export posters along with the movie pathname:

Code: [Select]
%OPTIONS%
encoding="UTF8"
replace=".avi<->.jpg"
replace=""<->"
replace="#13#10<-> "
replace="#13<-> "
replace="#10<-> "
filter="CSV files saved as TXT|*.txt"
%OPTIONS%
%HEAD%Poster;Path;
%HEAD%{%value=63};{%value=27};

Open the exported TXT file using Excel; in the Excel text import wizard, specify a semicolon-delimited file. Copy the following formula to a third column: ="rename "&[image]&" """&[filename]&"""". Copy & paste the entire column into a text editor, and save the file with a BAT extension in the same directory as the image files. Run the batch file. Move the image files to the same directory as the movies files (if they are not already there), so MC will find them (I suppose your auto-import has to be configured for it to do so).

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zxsix

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #25 on: July 31, 2008, 04:55:57 pm »

So if I go through the trouble of installing this software and doing all this exporting/importing of the data, is there a theater view skin that will display the synopsis (I suppose stored in the bios field in MC) as you browse through the movies?
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #26 on: July 31, 2008, 05:25:18 pm »

No. As I said...

Quote
All that's needed now is an improved Theater View that can make use of all this information—specifically, by being capable of displaying detailed information for each movie.

But PVD installs very easily, and I'm sure Theatre View will be updated any day now. ;)
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gappie

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #27 on: July 31, 2008, 06:01:30 pm »

Thank YOU! This is... FANTASTIC!!!  :D


Adding replace=",<->;" to the template will replace commas with semicolons so genres and actors will import to list fields correctly.


it really is. thanks to you too. just one question. the replace for the comma, leaves the space behind the comma. is there a way to replace the , plus the space by a ;. i dont want to do it in mc (which would be easy, i think), because i dont want mc to touch the keywords anymore. it will change the order to alphabetic before you know it (still dont understand what is so good about that.)


edit: that was actually easy.. i think. works now. guess the time and my enthousiasm made me not think a bit.  :)

actors and directors and plots etc for about 250 movies into mc in about 3 hours. never thought that would be possible. 8)
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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2008, 07:15:07 pm »

Glad it's working out :)

It's Personal Video Database, not Personal Video Decoder.

Woops! I did know that. Promise!

Adding replace=", <->;" to the template will replace commas with semicolons so genres and actors will import to list fields correctly.

Yes, I tried this, but the only problem was that it replaced all the commas in ALL the fields (like synopsis) :P
So I created two export templates, one for lists and one for strings. Seems to be working okay.


In other news, I experimented with trying to update MC's [Image] field in this way, to get it to point automatically to the posters PVD outputs, but unfortunately MC doesn't let me edit the image field manually. In the absence of this, rick's technique seems to work okay though.
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #29 on: July 31, 2008, 09:44:25 pm »

Quote
Yes, I tried this, but the only problem was that it replaced all the commas in ALL the fields (like synopsis).
So I created two export templates, one for lists and one for strings. Seems to be working okay.

Yes, I was counting on you to solve that little glitch. ;) People should be aware it's only a template, and will "blindly" perform the specified replacement globally. One for lists and one for strings should do it, but it still depends on your data—as gappie's problem illustrates. So now what do we do? Moving all of our data from PVD to MC is going to take a full minute instead of 30 seconds! I'll have to push PVD for a batch facility for running multiple exports at once. :D

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I experimented with trying to update MC's [Image] field in this way...

While I've noticed the field, I haven't tried figuring out exactly how the data is updated. I've aways saved covers with the movie files (i.e., with the same root name), so MC has never had any trouble finding them. Whenever I try to figure it out, MC just messes with my head. Here's a little (four movie) experiment to illustrate:

  • move covers out of directory
  • in MC, select movies, and remove cover art (from hard drive as well—just to be sure)
  • as expected, the Image File fields are blank
  • move covers back into directory
  • in MC, select movies, and Quick find in file...
  • three posters are back, the fourth is a screenshot instead; its Image File entry remains blank
  • use Add from file to add fourth cover
  • the cover appears, but, according to the Image File entry, it's from a file created by MC and saved in it's application data directory  ?

So the "rick's technique" you're referring to must be my popular "I have no idea what going on here, but it works."  ;)
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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #30 on: July 31, 2008, 10:26:32 pm »

So the "rick's technique" you're referring to must be my popular "I have no idea what going on here, but it works."

I think if the image file is in the same directory and has the same name as the file, a "Quick find in file/folder" will work...
Still, would be great if the user was allowed to modify the image field, then all of this could be automated! Ie importing the MPL file would apply all the correct coverart as well...

the cover appears, but, according to the Image File entry, it's from a file created by MC and saved in it's application data directory

Check your options... this is probably because you've set MC to store all coverart in a single folder (in your case, the default folder).

Yes, I was counting on you to solve that little glitch.

Haha please don't rely on me.
I'm a medical student, not a computer guy... I use trial and error until it works. With the code that is. Not with the patients....
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scottlindner

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #31 on: September 01, 2008, 06:34:36 pm »

Gents,

I have been doing what you're describing using another program for a very long time.  My solution is defunct and I've been hoping MC will some day openly support DVDs the same way it does music.  You guys are on a very good track here.  Have either of you answered your questions regarding seeing this information and coverart in theater view?  Could you write a guide with screenshots to demonstrate how it works when it's done, and how to do it?  I read your posts, but it would take me a while to assemble the pieces to get where you are.

Cheers,
Scott
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darichman

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #32 on: September 01, 2008, 08:54:21 pm »

Could you write a guide with screenshots to demonstrate how it works when it's done, and how to do it?  I read your posts, but it would take me a while to assemble the pieces to get where you are.

I'll see what I can do, but it mightn't be til the weekend :) In the meantime, the first step will be downloading the images into PVD, so you can start that now...

1. Download Personal Video Database: http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?action=down
2. Import your videos: Tools > Scan Folders for New Movies > Select the folders your movies are in
3. The movies should now be imported in PVD in a list down the left hand side...
4. The titles, which will be used for lookup, will be based on the filenames, so you might need to clean up the titles if you have messy filenames (OR if you have a field in MC with the movie titles already, you can copy your MC film view into excel and then import this data into PVD: Tools > Import > Get movies from MS Excel)
5. To import images for your movies: Tools > Import > Get Poster from your choice (I like IMPAwards)

The exporting bit, to get it into Media Center, is a bit more involved and depends on your setup. It's described briefly above, but I'll try post in a bit more deatil in the next few days.

Cheers, and good luck :)
Chris
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brentk

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #33 on: September 22, 2008, 04:55:42 pm »

I couldn't begin to do the implementation, but the setup I'd love to see for movie info in theater view is Info added to the menu listing with Play and Add and going to a simple page just like Weather with all the info and layout of PVD.  I believe this is what MediaPortal and XBMC do for their IMDb info pages. Never played with either long enough to find out as JR is just so much better in just about every other way. I could care less about being able to interact with the info pages, no desire to cross reference or search by actor, or even see what else they've been in. Synopsis and cast listings per movie alone is a huge plus in my book.
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rick.ca

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #34 on: September 22, 2008, 07:37:57 pm »

I think we'll have to be patient and see how Theater View development unfolds in version 13.
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Media Freak

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #35 on: February 03, 2009, 02:35:17 pm »

Does this approach with Personal Video Database works with Vob files? I've done the process as described over and over but I get no data exported from PVD to MC.
I know this topic been inactive for a while but I'm desperately trying to have 300 movies with info/data in MC.

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gappie

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Re: Movie Database Development
« Reply #36 on: February 03, 2009, 04:23:49 pm »

since not so long ago im totaly on 13 and have not installed pvd again yet (also rebuild my machine), but this aproach also worked for my ifo/vob files in 12 a month ago. did you import the video data in pvd via an exported file, or did you let pvd do all the work. i did the first.

if the last, you should look at the adres for the videoos in the file you want to import in mc. the file adres should be the same. in mc , instead of ifo/ (vob) the filename ends on .dvd;1 and that could be important for the imported file. so you could change that via the replacefunction in notepad.

if this does not seem the problem, maybe you could give a bit more detail where it fails.

 :)
gab
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