Missing Fields suggestions...

Snille · Post by **Snille** » 2006-04-09 08:00:14

Hi again Ant...
I'm really excited to have found your program! Finally a replacement for the old one I use.
But before I can move over my complete list to your system, I have some suggestions of adding of fields that are really good to have.

Don’t panic now... This is just suggestions that I use in my WebTrack system. I have gotten used to all fields because my own database uses them all.

(In alphabetic order)
1. Barcode - For saving the titles barcode, very good if you have allot of movies and want to know if you have that exact one (before buying it).

2. Number of audio channels - Just holding the number of channels for the audio tracks (ex. 2 or 5.1).

3. File path - Maybe the source field is used for this? But if not, this field would be great.

4. Frequency - The khz of the MP3 audio tracks. I know this is not a necessary field for most people, but it is a good thing...

5. Location - As for my current list I use this field to tell if the file is "Home", "Hard disk" or "Offline Hard disk", I guess it's something like your medialable field? But it's good to have them both.

6. MPAA - On the imdb site, there are a field called MPAA (The Motion Picture Association of America) they grade titles in "words", very good if you have kids.

7. Rating - My own rating. It's good to have the IMDB rating, but I don't always agree with that rating. Then it's good to have a separate rating that you set yourself. From 1-10 for example.

8. Subentry's - This is a bit tricky, when adding TV-Series, this field is used for adding each episode of that TV-Series. For example one episode on each row. This can also be parsed form IMDB if you want, or from TV.com as well.

9. Tagline - A nice "very short" presentation of the movie. Also available at the IMDB site.

10. User numbering - Just for setting your own coordinate system if you have one. Ex. "Locker 4 - Shelf 5 - Position 87".

10. View number - How many times you have seen the movie.

11. Votes - When importing the grade from IMDB, the number of votes is of high importance to know if the grade is to be trusted or not. If there are only 10 votes and the grade is 8.4 then it's probably not that good. But if it is 30000 votes with the same grade... Then we are talking good stuff.

That's about it. As I said, don't panic and if you don't want to do any of them it's ok. It is just suggestions.

Post by **antp** » 2006-04-09 09:58:05

I know that there are lots of fields to add. The only problem is that if there is too many field there must be a way to select which fields are displayed, for users that do not want to have tabbed fields like in Extreme Movie Manager for example.
1. Media Label was added for that at first, I could add again another field...
2. yes
3. URL field is currently used for that
4. Is there really an use of such info?
5. Media Label field was also for that

6. Often asked, I guess that I'll have to add it
7. Two ratings would be a good thing, yes
8. That's a bigger problem, which I'd like to solve. I do not know yet how I'll handle that. Adding episodes like separate movies and group them later is maybe not the best idea. I would have to change the current internal "flat list" structure to a tree structure.
9. Currently I put the tagline in the Description field, but I planned to add a field for that
10. For that I was planning to add few number fields, like location id, box id, movie id, disc id.
11. Why not, but then it would be better to link that to a "public rating" field rather than having a field alone for that
If fields are needed but not available a solution is to use one of the unused fields for that.
Another solution is to put these info in the Description or the Comments. Later when fields will be added it will always be possible to dispatch these info by script if they are well delimited.
e.g. you put a line:
IMDB Rating = 4.5 Number of votes = 5485.
It will be easy to parse later by script.

Snille · Post by **Snille** » 2006-04-09 10:30:29

Hi again!

Man, you are quick with the reply's!
Some more explaining and/or motivating...

1. The Barcode, it's not that important, only if you have massive amount of movies (on DVD) you may need it. Then again, a title search would work quite well to.

I just had it in my old database.

2. Goodie!

3. Hmm... Ok, but if you want to update the movie information form IMDB again after some moths for example, to get the correct rating and number of votes (and maybe a new cover picture) the URL is needed (or it could be used again). That way you don’t have to "select" what movie you are updating, and thereby do "mass movie updates". You can then basically update all your movies with the newest IMDB information with a single click... What is the source field ment for? I converted that to my "FilePath" field, maybe that was a bad idea?

4. Nah, not really... Just used for bragging purposes.

5. I see...

Well... A separate field would be great.

6. Goodie! Happy happy joy joy...

7. See above!

8. I have a suggestion here. In my "other" database he uses ^Episode 1^^Episode 2^^Episode 3^ and so on. Then it's easy to parse it. Or you can use the | (pipe), or any other "special" character of course.

9. Sounds goodie!

10. Works for me!

11. This I don't get how you mean really? Do you mean to merge both the IMBD rating and votes to the same field and call it public rating? If that’s the case, it works for me.

Yes, you can of course use some "not used" fields, but the problem is that everybody has to do it the same way, if they want to use my "WebTrack" system. If not, the parsing of the "XML" file will be a bit tricky.

Post by **antp** » 2006-04-09 13:27:26

"Source" was added as where/how you got the movie (gift, bought, etc.)

For the addition of fields, the only problem is "when" : I have no idea of when I will add that since for the moment (since now some time) I do not work often (actually nearly never on AMC). I will for sure continue to work on it some day, but it may take several months...

Snille · Post by **Snille** » 2006-04-09 16:45:18

I see, then the source can be the "filepath" for now... I think I will post a "translation table" in the WebTrack post just to let people know what I thought, and if anyone want to change it some how.

Don't worry about "when". You work with it when ever you like. It's your program. I am only making suggestions. I didn't pay anything for the program and therefore I do not have any demands of progress. I'm just glad I found a new database program that I can move to later on. Take it whenever you have the time.

bula · Post by **bula** » 2006-04-10 06:50:15

Hm. xCollect has all those fields + a lot more and it doesn't use tabbed interface.

Post by **antp** » 2006-04-10 08:08:23

Yes but by removing the large fields "Description" and "Comments" it is easy to have extra fields

I do not see on their screenshots so much fields

bula · Post by **bula** » 2006-04-10 08:38:16

antp wrote:I do not see on their screenshots so much fields

bottom screenshots
top screenshots

13 in total only for movie edit

Snille · Post by **Snille** » 2006-04-10 10:30:00

The problem with the xCollect is that it can't (yet) import form IMDB (at least not when i tested it). And that’s the most important feature according to me.

bula · Post by **bula** » 2006-04-10 11:45:17

I contacted the author and he said, that imdb import will be available in next 14 days.

Snille · Post by **Snille** » 2006-04-10 13:39:40

That sounds good!
I will take a look at the program then again and if it's not too hard, add support for that database as well to my WebTrack system.

The more the merrier!

Post by **antp** » 2006-04-11 09:09:36

bula wrote:
antp wrote:I do not see on their screenshots so much fields
bottom screenshots
top screenshots

13 in total only for movie edit

I wanted to mean "so much field on one page", i.e. on a non-tabbed interface.

http://xcollect.sourceforge.net/screens ... ie_08.html

All the fields are splitted on multiple pages, so it is exactly the same as a tabbed interface, it is a treeviewed interace

That's what I wanted to mean: if you add more fields to AMC, you have to split them on multiple pages. That's not a major problem, but I am sure that some people prefer few fields all visible together, so I have to provide a solution for customizing the view.
And when I see movie details -> part 1, part 2, part 3, that's not really the kind of interface that I'd like to have

split fields on page with generic names only because they have to be splitted...

Snille · Post by **Snille** » 2006-04-12 19:02:33

Simple suggestion for splitting (I don't think it's a bad thing).

Put IMDB info on one "tab" or what ever... And the "personal" on another.
Simple enough.

Post by **antp** » 2006-04-12 20:44:18

Yes that's I was planning to do. But as I said previously, some people would prefer to have only few fields in one view rather than lots of fields splitted on tabs/pages. So I have to find a way to make that somewhat customizable.

kashifalk@gmail.com · Post by **kashifalk@gmail.com** » 2006-05-26 11:58:13

While I applaud the efforts of the xCollect team, their product is too "unfinished" at this point. The imdb-import gave me some error, and it did not seem like it was customizable (the imdb-script in ant is very nice because it allows you to customize several aspects of the data-gathering). Also, I did not manage to find an export to html feature (well, there was a field called export but it was grayed out), which is one of the most important features to me. Also I did not find statistics?

Interface-wise, the program needs a lot of polishing. I mean, there are actually EIGHTEEN pages you can go through in the edit-window... and just adding ONE movie seems to take forever. That's an interfacing nightmare. Also, I personally only use and need 5-6 fields, so for a simpleton like me the overwhelming number of fields just made me shake my head in confusion. I don't mind other fields being added to ant, but one of the strengths of ant is that it looks clean and elegant and allows for an effective work-flow, an area where many catalog-programs fail.

But I do see potential in xCollect, unlike many other catalog-programs I've tested. The HTML-view is nice, and they seem to be serious about developing a fullblooded cataloger. I don't think they will adhere to the KISS-principle, but if they continue developing the feature-set and give the interface an overhaul, I can see them getting users, especially those who like their fields

bula · Post by **bula** » 2006-05-28 14:23:52

The imdb-import gave me some error, and it did not seem like it was customizable (the imdb-script in ant is very nice because it allows you to customize several aspects of the data-gathering).

Such error is fixed in today release. I'm really wondering if you reported the error to the author? You select which fields from web you'd like to owerwrite currently stored field for each of scripts in the last step.

Also, I did not manage to find an export to html feature (well, there was a field called export but it was grayed out), which is one of the most important features to me. Also I did not find statistics?

Export to html and xml and Import are comming in next release. But I didn't ask author about statistics.

Interface-wise, the program needs a lot of polishing. I mean, there are actually EIGHTEEN pages you can go through in the edit-window... and just adding ONE movie seems to take forever.

If you have a better idea on how to organize fields etc, you can freely sen a suggestion to author. If you ask me he's quite oppen to suggestions.
As taking forever to add movie:
- select media type, so xCollect can handle loans of multiple movies on one media (It doesn't matter what you select if you're gonna use mass import wizard)
- click on 3rd icon to read techincal data from files and to fill some other fields
- select language for each subtitle file
- save
- use wizard to import data from imdb

charlieb94 · Post by **charlieb94** » 2006-06-04 21:26:39

May I suggest to include a "SEEN" check field? I use this field in a database I created before discovering "ant movie catalog", and it is very usefull in order to save time when deciding which movie to watch.

Thank you

MisconductQC · Post by **MisconductQC** » 2006-06-05 00:38:03

Ouais sa serais pas pire sa pour mettre sa propre note et arrange dekoi pour les DVD de série télévisé quand sa serait une série-tv on pourrais activé un espace ou non l'activé pour savoir sur quel dvd sont les épisodes.

Le nombre de vote de imdb serais cool aussi et le nombre de fois qu'on l'a écouter aussi.

En vrai ya de très bonne idée lui

Post by **antp** » 2006-06-05 09:46:40

charlieb94 wrote:May I suggest to include a "SEEN" check field? I use this field in a database I created before discovering "ant movie catalog", and it is very usefull in order to save time when deciding which movie to watch.

There is already checkboxes in front of the titles in the list that can be used for that.
(Tools -> Prefs -> Movie List -> Checkboxes, if they are not visible)

charlieb94 · Post by **charlieb94** » 2006-06-07 10:43:39

Thank you antp. I didn't have the checkboxes visible. I guess I should go through all the program options before posting.

Thank you again