Bruji

On Monday, September 27th, 2004, blerp wrote that another piece of DVD Library software, DVDManager, did a good job of handling Box Sets. Their approach, he said, was to pull information about the Box Set from Amazon's servers (much like what your product does), and if a particular field or variable was enabled, the program would automatically create placeholders in a subtree with the main record item as the tree's parent. Now, blerp went on to say that he didn't necessarily endorse DVDManager particular solution (which I will go so far to say that I do), but as far as he was concerned, that particular solution seemed to work pretty well. Later on that day, you said that Box Sets were something you hoped to add in future releases.

Over the next few posts, 8 separate users took the time to voice similar requests, noting that while DVDPedia was a well-written piece of software, it lacked proper support of Box Sets. As if sensing where the posts were headed, you, Conor, posted a follow-up response on Friday, January 14th, 2005. You wrote "The reason this change is slow in coming is that is one of the harder ones to do. It means a change to the core of DVDpedia not an addition. It means I have to change the main table to an outline view; and this table in the code of DVDpedia is the big daddy of everybody. It handles most requests, as it handles the data and lets other functions know what is selected and what is going on. So replacing it is a big task."

Link to the original thread: http://bruji.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=160

Several years later, on Sunday, October 14th, 2007, rast wrote "I remember some time ago there being a request for being able to handle box sets in DVDPedia. I've had a search and dont see anythingabout this now."

The next day, Nora responded, "There is no dedicated feature regarding box sets in DVDpedia (it's on our feature request list for the future)...". She went on to say that there was a workaround that one could use to provide a limited sense of functionality the desired feature would bring by incorporating the title of the Box Set in each item's title, followed by a dash and the actual name of the movie. This way, upon browsing or searching through the library, a search for "Stanley Kubrick" would match the name of the Box Set (Stanley Kubrick Box Set) that would have been included in each item's title field, along with the actual name of the film. She went on to talk about an even less intuitive workaround that involved linking.

Again, over the next few posts, several users voiced their desire for proper handling of Box Sets, and we were again given suggestions and assurances, and thanked for our input.

Link to the original thread: https://www.bruji.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 856&p=6635

There have been a myriad of posts made by many users over the history of these forums, all requesting (to some extent) this feature, but it has yet to genuinely implemented. Support for TV shows coming out on DVD seem to be an extremely common form of motivation behind most of these requests. There have been tips, tricks, articles, and even plugins (a la Dan's TV Rage Plugin) all designed to help users categorize, label, and deal with these new ways to watch old episodes of their favorite shows, but there hasn't been much progress on DVDPedia's front. The addition of Collections and Folders in DVDPedia was a start, but using these forms of sorting doesn't feel intuitive, and seem much more like a quick fix than a genuine solution.

I believe dtjenkins, on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008, said it best when he wrote "The ultimate [solution] would be to have a single entry in the database that had sub entries, one for each episode... [one where having] multiple entries, one for each episode, would collapse into a single displayed line." What he was describing is just your standard tree, and (aside from the list) is one of the most ubiquitous data structures in programming.

He goes on to say that as he scrolled through his collection, when he got to the entry for Stargate Atlantis (an example entry that would have many subentries/children), he could click on (say, a plus sign?) next to that entry, which would then list all the child nodes of that parent node (presumably each node would be a season of Stargate Atlantis). Then, since he wouldn't want to scroll through each entry from each Season, he would then click the plus sign next to the child node named "Season 1" and just like before, the list would then expand to show all the child nodes/subentries of that particular parent, including the episode he wanted to watch.

To make sure there was no mistake of misinterpreting his request, he (and others) included an ASCII diagram so as to be as clear as possible.

Others responded with alternative solutions that might help dtjenkins organize his media, but again, these seemed more like forced workarounds than natural and intuitive solutions. DVDPedia is meant to manage a library of DVDs, and while Collections and Folders certainly have their uses, they seem much more like Playlists one might find in iTunes, and don't feel like true representations of a Box Set. A Box Set is not a Playlist.

Link to the original thread: http://www.bruji.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2604

There have been quite a few posts asking for this feature (in some way or form), but I'm still not sure why it hasn't been added. If it's due to difficulty, lack of time, or lack of desire, then send me the source code, and I'll take care of it. I know DVDPedia isn't open source, but after having extensive experience improving the Linux/GNU kernel, I'll tell you this: you'll be amazed by how much work (even the unpleasant and mundane kind, like code re-factoring, maintaining code consistency or documentation, etc.) you can get done with even just 5 or 10 contributors.

If you're unwilling to open source the program, then please: Conor, Nora, or whoever writes code, take some time from whatever else might be on the todo list for this program, and concentrate on adding this feature, and give us a firm timeline of when it will be included.

And just to make sure I'm as explicitly clear and helpful as I can be, when I say feature, I mean the following (copied, collected, and pasted from several user's posts):

1. DVDPedia include the ability to add collapsable/expandable subentries or children to items in the Library. This way, one could create an entry for "Family Guy" and an entry for "Season 1". Then, by dragging and dropping, or whatever action you think is appropriate, one could place Season 1 under "Family Guy." Then one could create an entry for "Death Has a Shadow", and populate that entry with data about the the first episode of the first season using whatever means they find appropriate - be it manually from IMDB, or through the use of Dan's TV Rage Plugin - and then drag it under "Season 1". Thus, the resulting Library would look like this (done in code to preserve spacing):
And after clicking the plus sign next to the entry, we would see:
And again, expanding the subentry even further:
2. Children nodes reasonably inherit fields from parent nodes when that inheritance makes sense, unless otherwise indicated by the user. This would reduce a significant portion of the tedium of manually adding information for each episode, especially when that information (like producers, crew, audio, locale, etc.,) doesn't vary too much from episode to episode. It would also allow users to really take advantage of plugins (like TV Rage) to overwrite those inheritances automatically with fields that indeed might change (cast, director, duration, summary, etc.).

In all other aspects, the entries would act just like any other DVD.

Please read the above carefully and consider them as helpful (if not lengthy) suggestions on how to make an otherwise superb application measurably better. Thank you for your time and attention.

-cron

I'd also like to add that having columns for Season and Episode, would probably make a whole lot of sense as well... I'm surprised to find out that they're not already there - am I missing them?

Wow... I'd also like to request the ability to apply the same cover image to multiple entries... If I've got 7 Seasons of Family Guy to add, there should be a way to save me the effort of repeatedly dragging and dropping the same image over 168 different entries.

That is a thorough post. Glad to realize that the forum is useful to know what has been going on with the products. The issue with the box sets remains since the outline view is complicated to integrate with DVDpedia's code base. When we started DVDpedia the outline view was too buggy to use and now DVDpedia has grown in different directions. As you mentioned with a lot of work things could be refracted and the outline view put in. So far there has always been a feature that is higher up the priority list, especially given the relative work that one feature will require compared to true box set support.

The issue has been partly solved, via collections, folders, tags and links. Some have a set up excluding the child entries from their main library and then just having the main series in the library with the children in an excluded collection reachable via link. I promise to take another look and see if there are any ways around all the technical difficulties that would allow me to put this feature on a milestone for release and hence you would have something to look forward to. Although a change of this magnitude would probably be included with a x.0 release.

Open sourcing the program is not likely but has been considered. I am sorry that you wouldn't be able to get your hands dirty with DVDpedia and add the feature yourself, since this is something that would not only benefit you but others as well. Having more coders is never a bad thing and that is why open source is always a possibility.

You are correct that more and more users are using DVDpedia for TV series and this lends itself better to the whole movies having child entries than regular film DVDs. If the trend continues not only will box set rise on the to do list but also the need for a set series and episode field instead of users using two custom fields.

The good news is that fixing the drag and drop of an image to several entries will not take as long as adding box set support. Download the beta and if the selection is of several movies when you drag a cover into the cover well then you will get a warning to make sure that you want to replace the cover for the entire selection and not just the movie shown in the info view. It was not originally included as DVDpedia was not meant to have more than one movie with the same cover.

This, along with multiple genres, has been at the top of my, and I believe many users' feature requests list. It looks like multiple genres/countries is close to fruition!

Cron, thanks for bringing this request back to the limelight. And your example of its implementation is exactly how I would hope it it done.

Connor, thanks for again considering it, and I hope it will rise to the top of your to-do list.

Yesterday I asked the forum for information concerning recommendations for a Windoz based DVD cataloguing program. NORA came back recommending DVD Profiler http://www.bruji.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3129. After carrying out further research and trialling several Windoz based programs, this day, I have to agree with her recommendation of DVD Profiler http://www.invelos.com/.

Now as I stated in my original request this is for a Windoz friend of mine who has a huge collection of Boxed Sets of TV shows and movies. This was the main reason I chose DVD Profiler over all the other Programs as DVD Profiler handled Boxed Sets extraordinarily well. But it also had its faults the main one being it is very cluttered/busy and difficult to navigate about in.

This program used the collapsible/expandable subentries tree based system in the Library. Providing all the information pertinent to each episode when selected - Production date, Release date, Actors, Producers, Overview etc.

QuoteI believe dtjenkins, on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008, said it best when he wrote "The ultimate [solution] would be to have a single entry in the database that had sub entries, one for each episode... [one where having] multiple entries, one for each episode, would collapse into a single displayed line." What he was describing is just your standard tree, and (aside from the list) is one of the most ubiquitous data structures in programming.Unquote

Everthing else that "Cron" mentioned I fully agree with.

Please do place this higher on the priority list.

I cannot face the prospect of manually entering 7 seasons of Buffy, or e.g. the complete collection of Norman McLaren shorts, &c...

You have a great product, but some of us genuinely need the specific data about an episode or short animation, not just the singular host package.

thanks

+1 for box support!

It would make it a lot easier to manage which TV show discs I've let friends borrow, instead of having to make custom notes such as "Person x has Disc 1, person Y has Discs 3-4" etc. Not to mention, it would be great to be able to handle multiple movies in a set (eg: Toy Story set came as Toy Story 1 & Toy Story 2; The Truth About Charlie has Charade on the reverse side of the disc, TV show support in general…)

I love the pedia series and recommend them to everyone I know, but the one thing they always ask is "does it support box sets/TV on DVD" and I hate having to say "well, technically not yet…"

Thank you — so many of us are looking forward to this feature! It would make the best cataloging software even better!

This is also relevant for Gamepedia where many games or collections might have 2 or more games in it. For example Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection has around 40 games and it would be really nice to be able to "open" that game to see what it actually contains. If the function would be similar to folders with +/- signs so you can "collapse" an entry, that would also be great for limited editions which includes other things. That way I can manually add say, a soundtrack included with a game and when "opened" I can see that being there.

Overall, I'd REALLY appreciate parent/child implementation in all pedias since collections are getting more and more attentions in all areas.

Pwetty pwease?

I downloaded the trial for DVDpedia last night and I have to say I'm amazingly impressed, however I was a little confused when it came to box sets. I don't link media to the entries it's purely a cataloging process and to keep track of what I have and where it is in my house (Lots of DVDs in folders ), when scanning something like The Alien Quadrilogy box set I now have one entry and a director called "David Fincher, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Jean-Pieret Jeunet" this happens again with the Alien Legacy box set which I double dipped on so now I have 2 entries for this long list of directors. I'm I right in thinking there is no solution than to add each individual film seperately and delete the box set entry? Also what do I do for TV series? Lots of entries here are mentioning inputting each individual episode, how do I do that and is there an automated process on the way in an update so I don't waste my time doing this when a snow leopard update may have more functionality?

Sorry for all the questions but before I pay for the serial and get all scan happy I don't want to realise I've actually not got the programme set up as I would like and have to double my work load, I know there's a help option but do you know of any idiots giudes or hints and tips for an absolute newbie that wants to get the most out of the programme?