DVDpedia: how to take advantage of the QuickLook plug-in?

[MauiMark]

From the 4.0.7 DVDpedia release notes: "QuickLook plug-in"

How can I take advantage of this feature? As far as I can see the DVDpedia library is one big file. So it wouldn't make sense to use quicklook on Leopard to browse the file. Unless the plugin would look inside of the DVDpedia database and met me browse my library.

Any idea how that works?

Thanks!

[Nora]

In order to use Spotlight DVDpedia creates a file for each entry in your database at ~/Library/Caches/MetaData/DVDpedia. (We got this ideas from iCal and Safari, they also use a single database to save but want entries to appear separate in Spotlight). Quick Look extends on the Spotlight files and provides further information on the file. In fact Quick Look is the only way to do this in Leopard, it used to be the Spotlight's results window that appeared with "show all" could be expanded to show the attributes of a file. Now you need to use Quick Look to see the internals of the file. Some of the advantages of Quick Look is that it's really fast, to look at the information for one single entry only 6k of data is read (the other 200k of the file is the high resolution image for Cover Flow), the regular SQL Database.pediadata file does not need to be loaded. As you mentioned that would appear as a single file. You can browse the metadata folder to see the entries but it easier to use the search as all items are tagged "PediaItem", and if you have more than one Pedia you can narrow it down more with "PediaItemDVD". You can save smart folder that will contain all your DVDs and add them to your sidebar.

Of course if your going to use Quick Look you need to have Spotlight turned on in DVDpedia.
Take a look at this video Conor made about the Quick Look plug-in. It's part of the new Articles section we added to our site.
In the next version update there will also be a little explanation about the new Spotlight, Quick Look, Cover Flow and smart folders in the Help (expanding the current Spotlight page).

[MauiMark]

Thanks Nora.
This is a very cool feature. Now it would be great if we could start playing the DVD from QuickLook or CoverFlow.

In order to use Spotlight DVDpedia creates a file for each entry in your database at ~/Library/Caches/MetaData/DVDpedia. (We got this ideas from iCal and Safari, they also use a single database to save but want entries to appear separate in Spotlight). Quick Look extends on the Spotlight files and provides further information on the file. In fact Quick Look is the only way to do this in Leopard, it used to be the Spotlight's results window that appeared with "show all" could be expanded to show the attributes of a file. Now you need to use Quick Look to see the internals of the file. Some of the advantages of Quick Look is that it's really fast, to look at the information for one single entry only 6k of data is read (the other 200k of the file is the high resolution image for Cover Flow), the regular SQL Database.pediadata file does not need to be loaded. As you mentioned that would appear as a single file. You can browse the metadata folder to see the entries but it easier to use the search as all items are tagged "PediaItem", and if you have more than one Pedia you can narrow it down more with "PediaItemDVD". You can save smart folder that will contain all your DVDs and add them to your sidebar.

Of course if your going to use Quick Look you need to have Spotlight turned on in DVDpedia.
Take a look at this video Conor made about the Quick Look plug-in. It's part of the new Articles section we added to our site.
In the next version update there will also be a little explanation about the new Spotlight, Quick Look, Cover Flow and smart folders in the Help (expanding the current Spotlight page).

[Nora]

We're hoping to incorporate that in the future.