Is this program for me?

[bonzi]

Yes, I know, the short answer is "Try it!" , but I will ask the author a question or two, anyway...

I have some 500 movies on DVDs, mostly recorded off the broadcast TV, plus perhaps 200 DviXes and relatives and hundred or so original DVDs. Also, there is a number of TV series, some complete, some not, in all formats, and fiftysh documentaries. So, questions:

• Does the program effectively support thousands of entries? Are there performance issues, problems with display, search....?
• Is there support for Series->season->episode structure?
• Can HTML exporter generate a site suitable for large number of entries (using, say, a frameset with a list of entries in one frame and details in another, or JavaScript collapsible tree structure, or something like that)?
• Not directly related to this, but do fields exist (or can they be added) to list several links to the material pertaining to the movie on the Web (say, apart from IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, All Movies Guide, Wikipedia, official producer/distributor sites, some obscure local sites for films from small cinematographies....)?

Thanks!

Cheers,
Bonzi

[bonzi]

It seems that the answer to the first question is Yes (it is suitable) and No (no problems), and to the third Yes.

Perhaps I should just download and try it, after all


Cheers!

Bonzi

[antp]

Does the program effectively support thousands of entries? Are there performance issues, problems with display, search....?

It works fine for that, but if the amount of pictures represent few tens of MB you may have to store picture as external linked files, instead of storing them in the catalog, as a catalog of 100 MB or bigger may become slow to read/save.

Is there support for Series->season->episode structure?

Unfortunately no. Using groups (you can chose to group movies on one of the fields values) you can have a 2-level structure, but not 3 anyway.

Can HTML exporter generate a site suitable for large number of entries (using, say, a frameset with a list of entries in one frame and details in another, or JavaScript collapsible tree structure, or something like that)?

There are basic frameset templates provided, as well as some more advanced ones. Not all are provided with the program, you may have to search on the forum in the templates section.

Not directly related to this, but do fields exist (or can they be added) to list several links to the material pertaining to the movie on the Web (say, apart from IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, All Movies Guide, Wikipedia, official producer/distributor sites, some obscure local sites for films from small cinematographies....)?

Only one link to URL or file exists. But you can still put what you want in comments and do some processing in Javascript to find the links in that in the exported pages.

[bonzi]

Thanks, Antoine!

I will try it, play with it (time permitting), and then bugger you with feature requests

Cheers!

Bonzi
Zagreb, Croatia

[antp]

You can do features requests as you wish, but anyway the to-do list is already long and as I nearly never work on the program it is probably not really worth doing more requests: you would have to use the program as it is

[bonzi]

I nearly never work on the program

I't sad to hear that... I see you started this quite long time ago, and by now you must have many other things to preoccupy you.

Pity the thing is written in Delphi, which I don't use. I did program in Pascal when it first came out - approximately when you were born - but I don't intend to acquire a professional version of a commercial tool (plus all those components) just in order to scratch few little itches concerning a program new for me.

Sigh... I will see whether those export templates and/or postprocessing the output will work for me. If not, perhaps I will stick with my cobbled-together-in-an-afternoon solution that has about 3% of AMC functionality, but I can modify it easily. (BTW, it is written using this extremely productive, but obscure commercial tool, so I couldn't open-source it even if it was worth it.)

Anyway, I hope you do find time for maintenance, and thanks for the all the effort you already invested in this.

Cheers!

Bonzi

[antp]

I still take time for maintenance and support. It is for new features that I do not have time

[bad4u]

..but I don't intend to acquire a professional version of a commercial tool (plus all those components) just in order to scratch few little itches concerning a program new for me.

You don't need a Delphi Professional version if you can renounce charting components for statistics - or if you install the TeeChart Demo for that, but with Demo it is not allowed spreading the results to others. If so, after a few changes on the code, the Delphi 7 Personal can be used to compile the program, but installation of all components might be a little tricky. Delphi 7 Personal was spread on the net for a while, but it might be hard to find a legal download today. In Germany there is still a book with a full german version on CD for around 30 Euro on sale, don't know about other countries. Btw.. the other components are free.

[emarc]

You still have Turbo Delphi available as a free download. But it haves the same problem you can't install third-party controls, you must substitute them to standard Delphi controls.

http://delphi.about.com/b/2006/08/13/tu ... delphi.htm