User Profile for Pluis

DVD Database X 1.6.2 (Mac OS X)

Merging imdb and amazon info for differing movie titles  

Adding a not so nice but working solution for an earlier request (previous posting): how to merge info for a movie that do not have identical titles in imdb and amazon. My problem was with Gerry. Searching on Gerry on amazon.co.uk it comes up with Donnie Brasco etc., but not Gerry. So I searched on Gus van Sant, then selected the Gerry [2003] film. But adding and look up with imdb won't work now because imdb doesn't know a film called 'Gerry [2003]'. <b>Before</b> pressing the add and look up button _first_ change the title to just 'Gerry'. This imdb now finds and the information is succesfully merged. Amazon.co.uk also had a problem with 'Big Fish', and here I had to search for 'Tim Burton', then page till 'Big Fish', and then add and look up with imdb. As, so far, it has been amazon.co.uk I had problems with, it would be <i>convenient</i> if I could configure the add-button to look on amazon first, then when I found the film, adjust the title when necessary and search imdb second. At the moment the add button will either give empty fields or look at imdb. Minor suggestion that would make my life just that little bit easier. Whether DVD Database X can come up with a nicer solution, allowing to change the title field also _after_ a film hasn't been found _without_ losing the option to merge data, that I leave to the developer. I keep on using the program with pleasure! [alert admin]

Read Comments (1) | More Info

Monday, September 19 2005 @ 12:38 PM PDT

DVD Database X 1.6.2 (Mac OS X)

Another look at other programs, but back to DVD Database X  

So I upgraded to OS X Tiger, and made a back-up of all user data. Not the programs, because I like these upgrades to also get rid of downloaded programs I never use and get the latest version of what I do use. To my dismay I learned the hard way that DVD Database X stores it data under /Applications, and not under /Users/Joe/Documents/Whatever. This is something I would like to recommend, at least as an option! Call me stupid (only once will do), but there is more than enough to keep track of already (in the world I mean) not having to worry about the location of DVD data. Being moderately pissed off I decided to weigh my options again. Having to enter 140 films AGAIN (merging IMDB with Amazon information) I, for once, didn't care about the $15-25 I would have to pay to move to another program that wouldn't make me loose my data like this. I tried DVDAttache and DVD Sphere, but I didn't get the wealth of info I was used to. I also saw that Database X had a newer version, so I tried this one again too. Of course it helps I am more familiar with it, but the merging option of IMDB and Amazon is what convinced me once more. I guess I really want a movie database more as a DVD database. So I don't care about all sorts of details, but don't want to live without the complete cast-info for example. I also found that some other things had been improved. Most importantly it no longer automatically opened in Cover View mode. But installing the newer version I had problems getting covers, which I solved by changing the permissions of the images directory (sudo chmod 777 images). Never had this problem before though, and I guess I caused this problem myself playing with older versions (with existing but empty database file). Then, as I am back with the program now, I have two wishes, one of which is standing somewhat longer: 1. I like DVD Database X to remember how I left the view. When I like my films ordered according to year, it should not always list them alphabetically according to title when I open it again. 2. This might be out of your reach, but amazon and imdb don't generally have the exact same title for the same film. Looking for 'Gerry' on imdb works, but adding and lookup with amazon gives erroneous results. Searching on Gus van Sant on Amazon _does_ give a list including Gerry (Gerry [2003]), but doing a look up with imdb on "Gerry [2003]"doesn't give any results! And at this point I loose the merging feature. Ideally I would be able to modify the title field in order to be able to merge. Which leads, indirectly, to suggestion 3., which is that I have the look up button also when editting an existing entry (not only when adding a new one). Regardless on what information a film holds, I would like to be able to _add_ information to it automatically using internet look up. So much for a critical user that returned to base, somewhat against his will. [alert admin]

Read Comments (1) | More Info

Sunday, September 18 2005 @ 02:17 PM PDT

DVD Database X 1.5.2 (Mac OS X)

Suggestions to further improve application  

Having written a review-type posting before, I'll add some 'request' comments. I am encouraged to do this as I had two requests in the review, written at time of version 1.5.1, one of which has been granted with 1.5.2, which came out within six days of my previous posting(!).

I am fond of the merger option that allows me to 'fuse' information found at amazon.com and IMDb. You can set from which site you want the title/picture/cast and some other fields which both sites offer, and have the unique fields from the site that offers them (e.g. plot by IMDb, studio by amazon.com). Your DVD information can hardly be more complete.

Two comments I still have though. One concerns the fact that it will only accept (look for) amazon.com, and not, at the user's request, amazon.co.uk or other amazon sites, as is generally offered by competing DVD library programs (share- and freeware). The information might be fairly similar, but I want, for example, a link to a DVD in the region code that is mine, and not 'per forza' an amazon.com link.

Secondly, I was hoping that under 'Amazon reviews' it would actually load 'Amazon.co.uk[or others] Review'. I don't know if this is offered in the same way all the other information is, but I am MUCH more interested in the less partial review offered by amazon than the latest guy who watched the film with his mother and didn't like it because the plot was too difficult.

In 1.5.2 you can now export your database information in a list (one column) in a html-format you can determine yourself. You can use all of the tags offered, or select just a couple etc., in a very straightfoward and easy way. But it is what it is: a list.

The table format (you can determine number of columns and rows yourself, and consequently the number of clickable html pages generated) I find more attactive myself as it more information is can be presented on a single page in the browser. Again you can decide what kind of information should be printed on the page. Just an image with year, title, your rating, and plot, or more, or less, and there you have it.

But there is one thing you can't change, and that is the order of the films. This is done alphabetically, according to film title. But I think of several other attractive ways of ordering my films to be presented on an html-page. Personally I order my films according to director (and for this I have to modify the director name so that the downloaded 'Woody Allen' becomes 'Allen, Woody' and I get my list alphabetically according to director). But listing them according to year, or rating might be equally attractive.

What would be a step forward, in my opinion, is that the order of the content in the html-table would be determined by the order you have in the database yourself. E.g. when I have ordered according to year, or rating, or director, it will also export the database in this order to html, and not force the alphabetical film-title order upon me (side-note: the program has no memory for the order you like, it always opens by presenting the mentioned film-title order, but this can be changed with a single click on the field you prefer (and the order of the fields can be changed too, and whether you want the field to begin with etc. etc.)).

And while the developer is at it, why not allow the user to play with the export-html table-template as well? Based on the 'Detailed info.txt' template the table can be made real pretty.

So much from an exited and near-complete-satisfied user that wants to stress that this program has been running for weeks without loosing one single bit of information or getting stuck in a search. Recommended. [alert admin]

Post a comment | More Info  |  1 of 2 users found this helpful

Thursday, February 10 2005 @ 02:32 PM PST

DVD Database X 1.5.1 (Mac OS X)

Two suggestions for already great application  

Started looking for DVD database three days ago, downloaded three based on reviews and user comments on various sites (two of which were freeware), then payed the 20$ for this one. With a growing collection, but not too big yet, I wanted to be able to look for director/actor and find a list of movies. With DVD Database X I got much much more, and much much easier as I had imagined. Using IMDB and Amazon I found all my movies so far (no surprise as I order from amazon.co.uk almost exclusively), and got a bunch of information including the DVD cover images. Using the preferences page I could decide what information I wanted to see in my table, and in what order. The same when it comes to exporting the information. It makes e.g. a html-page with just the information you desire (image/director/year/genre/rating), this way you can make nice (if not extremely practical) pages e.g. for friends to see what you have on offer. It also exports all this information (whatever you want) to text-file in a way that allows you to import all this data in a separate database of your own choice (e.g. MySQL) to which you can make your own web-interface to make your database searchable via the internets (that bit you have to do yourself of course). Perhaps it were the DVD cover images that made me decide to buy it within less than 5 minutes. Or the information that is downloaded by searching IMDB (i.e. a whole list of actors, not just the leading two or so, as often the case with the Amazon search). Or just seeing your own collection grow on screen, and finally rating them, then order them such, then such, etc. I was having fun! And within no time I also found two things I would like to see added to a future version (1.5.1 is already a month old!). 1) I like to be able to add the Amazon-specific information (reviews, amazon-link, release date, studio, couple more) to the IMDB information (which has many more actors as well as a simple but very useful plot description). I find myself adding a movie with one search, then with the other, then cut and paste. That is, I did that for three movies, then gave up because it is too much work and, in principle, should be easy to program by someone who had already done this much. So, having added "Manhattan" via IMDB, I like to repeat the search with Amazon and have it fill up all the empty fields for Manhattan without overwriting anything IMDB already found. That would be good. 2) A much more minor issue. When I have a link to the movie, and I export to html, I would like to have this link attached to the icon of the DVD cover, as one is generally used to, and not as a text-string (which is both ugly (because very much longer than the information I want on this page) and rather unpractical). In conclusion I can say that I found this application stable, useful, and fun. For the beginning (mostly amazon-based) collector, who wants little more than to enjoy his collection (although much more can be done with this tool!), I think this is pretty darn close to perfect. [alert admin]

Post a comment | More Info  |  1 of 2 users found this helpful

Friday, January 28 2005 @ 12:38 AM PST

No user comments.