Missing a lot of movies

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oobaka
Posts: 5
Joined: 2008-01-22 01:05:41

Missing a lot of movies

Post by oobaka »

I just added 5 new movies to my catalogue.
I add roughly 5-10 a week.
This time around I seem to be missing no less than 300 movies.
It says the last movie I added was back in September but
in reality the last movie I added was about 3 days ago.

Any ideas?
fulvio53s03
Posts: 745
Joined: 2007-04-28 05:46:43
Location: Italy

Post by fulvio53s03 »

try searching all the .amc and .bak in your hard disks....
imaybe you are lloking in the wrong folder.
bye ;)
antp
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Post by antp »

Some people already had corrupt files, I do not know what cause that as I could never reproduce the problem.
You can search for a .bak file in the same folder as your catalog, and rename it to .amc (or .xml if it is what you were using).
oobaka
Posts: 5
Joined: 2008-01-22 01:05:41

Post by oobaka »

Didn't work (renaming a bak file)
Still missing a lot of movies :(
Looks like I'll have to add them all again and back them up.

As much as this sucks, Ant Movie Catalogue is the best.
antp
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Post by antp »

You didn't make backup copies of your catalog?
If they are missing in the .bak file too it may mean that there were already missing the last time you saved the file
bad4u
Posts: 1148
Joined: 2006-12-11 22:54:46

Post by bad4u »

@Antoine: As this is not the first user having this problem..

Don't you think it would be a good idea to change that "autosave backup" solution ? I agree that a backup is necessary and it should be easy to use even for beginners (like an automated one), but it is only useful if the backup does not overwrite itself in case of a damaged database.

Instead of the current solution, I'd recommend/prefer one of these ones:

Either let the user choose if he wants to make a backup copy when he exits the program. This would be perfect if combined with some kind of variable that counts days or the number of program starts since last backup ("Your last backup is xx days/a while ago. Do you want to save a new backup file now ?" .. Noone will hit yes if his database is corrupted at this time) ;)

Or - even more simple - allow the user to hold multiple backup files via option. Maybe 3 or 5 backup files should help to avoid data loss in worst case. Just let the program delete the oldest file when it writes a new one.

Disadvantages: The first solution needs a new message text - that has to be translated to all languages. The second solution needs more harddisk space (but could be optional on preferences).

What do you think ?
antp
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Post by antp »

Actually when saving the file is renamed to .bak and then a new file is created.
So the last successfully opened file is always available in the .bak
But if you open the corrupt file and then save it, the backup is lost.
Normally corrupt files cannot be open, but in few rare cases it seems to happen (or it is something else - I do not see why movies would disappear actually).
I could indeed increase the number of backups.
oobaka
Posts: 5
Joined: 2008-01-22 01:05:41

Post by oobaka »

I was a little over the top when I said I lost over 300 moves.
Seems I lost around 140.
I have them all done again and this time I have 2 backups as well as the main amc file.

Thanks for the suggestions even though nothing worked.
It's weird that these movies disappeared though. I know I didn't do it myself.
Buroughs
Posts: 4
Joined: 2006-04-22 23:28:25

Lost Movies

Post by Buroughs »

I have over 3500 dvds, for some reason I opened up ant the other day and my list showed 13 movies. No matter what I did I couldn't get 'em back. I did manage to find a older back up I made, it only had 3200 on it and does it suck trying to find the lost ones. Now I keep losing movies, I'm re-adding movies right now that I put on in the last 2 days. Is there a limit or something.
Please help if you can.
And this program is still the best.
antp
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Post by antp »

There is no limit, but it seems that there is a bug somewhere but nobody could reproduce this, so I still haven't found what causes that.

As I said above, when the catalog is saved, the previous one is renamed to .bak
So when the file is damaged you can get the previous one by renaming this .bak file.
bad4u
Posts: 1148
Joined: 2006-12-11 22:54:46

Post by bad4u »

Maybe it would be a good idea to ask users that have this problem what operating system, AMC version and catalog file version (.amc / .xml) they are using, eventually it will be possible (in future) to find out if it only appears on special configurations..
antp
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Post by antp »

It seems to happens on "normal" configurations, i.e. Windows XP, usually with amc format (as it is the most used) but it happened once with xml, and this happens since lots of time, as in each version I change few things in the code doing the saving/loading, to try to avoid any possible problem.
A possibility is that it is from "outside", i.e. another program/driver which prevents AMC from writing the file correcting.
Similar to the bug with nVidia Nview Desktop feature, which I could not reproduce either despite that I had the same motherbord/CPU/videocard/videodrivers than someone having the bug.
Buroughs
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Joined: 2006-04-22 23:28:25

Post by Buroughs »

My saved file is dvd.amc, I'm using version 3.5.1 on windows XP
I've started saving as( 3210 dvd.amc) or how many movies I have each time I close out so that I know how many movies I had last time I used it.
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