DVDpedia: integrated file management

[funkahdafi]

Hi there,

I know DVDpedia can directly link to movie files stored on your harddrive and do all sorts of things with it. That's great. But I would love to have this feature enhanced with simple file management, e.g. move files to other directory.

My suggestions:

1. Make links not only to the file, but also make it possible to link the containing directory
2. After marking a movie as being "seen", have DVDpedia move the file/directory to a predefined archive directory.
3. Give the option to have DVDpedia manually move files around on demand
4. Update the link information within DVDpedia to the new location

With this, I would never have to touch Finder again after watching a movie or if I just need to make some room on one harddisk and move the movies to the archive harddisk.

With this, DVDpedia would not only be the best DVD management system, it would also become the best movie file management system. And since the days of physical movie media seem to be counted and the future belongs to downloaded media, your product will be ready for that.

What do you think?

[Conor]

It's an interesting idea. Since it's a bit off the main focus of the program it could be an idea for a plug-in to DVDpedia. I worry that the preference for such an idea would have to be extensive in order to make it useful to a number of users. But the idea of managing the files a la iTunes could be a possible feature. I have added your idea to our list of possible enhancements. Thank you for sharing your idea.

[funkahdafi]

If you need someone to help out in approaching this, let me know. I am not a programmer, but I could be helping out designing the details.

[Conor]

We will contact you for beta testing if we start implementing it. Thank you.

[jano]

I think the following feature request fits into file management: ask to also delete referenced files when deleting a record. Or at least a Show in Finder button so I can do it myself without browsing manually all the way.

[diis]

What do you think?

I think that would be awesome!

Actually, I was proposing something similar (using the “linked file” part as main focus of the app). It is certainly quite an effort to implement but then DVDpedia would be definitely the “iTunes for movies”! That development somehow corresponds to the request to support file imports out-of-the-box (which would be fantastic, too).

[Alex]

It is an interesting idea: DVDpedia as a one-stop shop for everything to do with movies. Apart from all the programming required to make this happen, what worries me as a DVDpedia user is coming up with an easy way to distinguish between a virtual movie (one that you have the DVD of and are cataloging) and an electronic version of the movie that you have on the machine. For advanced users this might not be too much of a problem, but for a lot of users this can be very, very confusing. DVDpedia is a cataloguer, not a file management app, and trying to make it do too much outside of its scope might cause it to lose some of the awesomeness that it has right now, but you do have a good point about the future of DVDs.

As Conor mentioned, maybe a plug-in would be the way to go.

PS
On a more personal note, I don't think DVDs are an endangered species yet. For example, a movie that I really like, I would never buy from iTunes. Rent sure, but not buy. For $4 less than a DVD you end up with a movie you can't share easily and it is taking up space in your hard drive. You don't get a booklet or anything physical that you can touch, flip around, look at the notes on the back, lend to your friends, etc.

Look at books for example, their demise has been predicted over and over for decades now. And, sure, Kindle is getting better, picking up steam, there are good ereaders for the iphone and ipod touch, I have a number of books on my iphone and they are quite nice to read and very convenient, but will never be a substitute for the real thing.

I don't know, maybe it's just me?

Cheers,

[kbarnes70]

It is an interesting idea: DVDpedia as a one-stop shop for everything to do with movies. Apart from all the programming required to make this happen, what worries me as a DVDpedia user is coming up with an easy way to distinguish between a virtual movie (one that you have the DVD of and are cataloging) and an electronic version of the movie that you have on the machine. For advanced users this might not be too much of a problem, but for a lot of users this can be very, very confusing. DVDpedia is a cataloguer, not a file management app, and trying to make it do too much outside of its scope might cause it to lose some of the awesomeness that it has right now, but you do have a good point about the future of DVDs.

As Conor mentioned, maybe a plug-in would be the way to go.

PS
On a more personal note, I don't think DVDs are an endangered species yet. For example, a movie that I really like, I would never buy from iTunes. Rent sure, but not buy. For $4 less than a DVD you end up with a movie you can't share easily and it is taking up space in your hard drive. You don't get a booklet or anything physical that you can touch, flip around, look at the notes on the back, lend to your friends, etc.

Look at books for example, their demise has been predicted over and over for decades now. And, sure, Kindle is getting better, picking up steam, there are good ereaders for the iphone and ipod touch, I have a number of books on my iphone and they are quite nice to read and very convenient, but will never be a substitute for the real thing.

I don't know, maybe it's just me?

Cheers,

Well, it's me as well... I agree with you. DVDpedia is the best catalog tool for DVDs. It's not a file manager and I personally don't want it to be. A plug-in would be fine because then those who don't want it can ignore it. But one of DVDpedia's strengths is its simple interface that gets the job done with no fuss - I wouldn't want to see that compromised personally.

And yes, I agree with you about physical DVDs too. As we all move, gradually, to Blu-ray, there's going to be a real problem with downloading the movie as a susbtitute. For one thing, despite what the various download websites say, they are most definitely not offering HD quality. Look at the compression and the bitrate and compare it with a Blu-ray disc. It's nowhere near as good from a quality POV. Until we all have 100Mb broadband connections, online HD mocies are a pipedream. And the chances that I will *ever* get a 50Mb broadband connection let alone a 100Mb one are zero in my lifetime I reckon - living, as I do, in a small village in Eastern England. My current best broadband speed is 1.5Mb. There are no plans to improve on that for years where I live. So even downloading an SD disc would take for ever. Not to mention the gigabyte 'fair usage' cap my ISP imposes.

No - physical media will be with us for a long time to come. And that's why we need DVDpedia.

Keith

[noribori]

I agree with Alex and kbarnes that DVDpedia shouldn't refocus on playing just every movie file on a Computer. But I don't agree that DVDpedia should basically focus on cataloging physical DVDs/Blue Ray Discs. The core of DVDpedia is for me the data from IMDb/Amazon. Each movie that can be found on IMDb is good enough for DVDpedia, physical or not. It would be silly to ignore the possibilities of electronic versions. DVDpedia can already do much more than cataloging, and I encourage Bruji to go further in that direction. I personally wouldn't use a file management as discribed (I don't like iTunes for duplicating/renaming files or pushing files around either). One should be able to turn it off or not to use it at all, like in iTunes. If you can do that: why not. It's just another feature request, and we all have different opinions on what is most important.

[sampalm]

I find the task of linking files in dvdpedia very difficult especially if files are deleted, moved around or renamed. The whole thing becomes in a mess. I suggest the following according to level of easy additions.

1- Enable the export and display of link path. At present it doesn't seem possible.
2- Create a Show Broken Links option in the show menu where dvdpedia checks that all the links actually exist then flag those that dont.
3- Allow changing the directory. You are using sqllite, so it should be easy to find one path and replace with another if the path changes as is often the case on computers.
4- When playing a link that doesn't exist, DVDpedia just doest do anything instead of asking to locate like all other programs.
5- An apply to all option when importing such as duplicates.
6- A compare feature to check the names of links that exist and the links that don't. It is not great when you have a movie on the disk but cannot see it because you forgot to add the link.

This will go a long way to make DVDpedia a more useable program.