English > Feature Suggestions
Screen shots (again)
mgpw4me@yahoo.com:
Collecting people images of decent quality is a bit of an issue. IMDB just doesn't cut it, and I don't see how that can be fixed...it's too difficult to program something that can get the 'best' picture, and image lists just mean you have to be there all the time. The screen shot maker is my solution until there's an online source of images more specifically suited to PVD use.
1) If there was a pop-up menu in movie view, containing the list of cast members in a movie (ordered by name), the process would be simpler and faster. Move over a screen shot, mouse right-click to get the menu and copy the screen shot to a person. Large casts would be messy to deal with. Moving the process to the screen shot maker would allow a scrollable list of cast member (lots of room in the dialog) and either drag / drop or an "copy to" button. Another possibility would be to let the screen shot maker be invoked from PEOPLE view...might be the easiest, but the screen shot maker would have to be invoked for each person.
2) Could the image list in the screen shot maker allow moving images up and down in the list (even if no screen shots were made in that session, but there were images in the screen shot list)? This would allow ordering of image lists into logical groups and allow the maintenance of those groups (ie. fan artwork could be added, then moved via the screen shot maker into the proper position).
3) A copy / paste with the clipboard would also be nice...take a screen shot, enhance in your favorite image editor, paste it back. This can be duplicated by saving as files, then editing, so it's just a matter of efficiency...same as loading into people view...it can be done manually, but it's more painful.
Anything that can streamline my work flow is much appreciated.
rick.ca:
--- Quote ---Collecting people images of decent quality is a bit of an issue. IMDB just doesn't cut it, and I don't see how that can be fixed...it's too difficult to program something that can get the 'best' picture, and image lists just mean you have to be there all the time.
--- End quote ---
I doubt this is true. The image currently retrieved by the plugin is the thumbnail that appears at the top of the person's IMDb page. The original image is also there—stored "beside" the thumbnail. For example...
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjA3MjczNzU1OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODM3OTc1Mg@@._V1._SX99_SY140_.jpg (thumbnail)
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjA3MjczNzU1OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODM3OTc1Mg@@._V1._SX284_SY400_.jpg (image)
Movie poster thumbnails and images appear to work exactly the same way. Some time ago the movie plugin was changed to get the image rather than the thumbnail. I'm sure the people plugin could be modifed do the same. While these images are not particularly large, they're a perfect size for the people pane.
Even if suitable images were could not be obtained by download, getting them from screen shots is far too a tedious process to interest many users. But this is one of many different things one might want to do with screen shots. Most of your suggestions would be useful if implemented in a more general way. That is...
* reordering of displayed images
* captions and/or tooltips for images
* cutting/pasting images to/from clipboard
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mgpw4me@yahoo.com:
IMDB has "tricked up" the process somewhat, if you look closely. They post thumbnails, then quite often, post a thumb for the large image as well. Not only that, but many images have several people in them (or even artwork), so the "usable" size is limited. When they post 2 "identical" images, the 2nd image is ALWAYS the full-sized image...never the one in the "primary" position.
Ed Asner was the 2nd person name I typed in, and is a perfect example of what I mean:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000799/
I've looked at this quite a bit, and yes, the "large" images are perfect. In fact that's the size I have my new skin sized for...I just can't get at them in a reasonable way.
rick.ca:
I'm not trying to suggest there's an ideal image for every person on IMDb. For many, there's nothing at all. But for most of those that have a thumbnail, there's a more suitably sized image "behind" it. I see no reason to speculate they're replacing the original images with thumbnails. It's more likely the thumbnail-sized image is all they have in the first place. The point is, the plugin should be getting the original image, not the thumbnail.
mgpw4me@yahoo.com:
Examples from the first 100 people in my database:
http://www.imdb.com/media/nm0946148/ 'Weird Al' Yankovic ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001173/ Aaron Eckhart ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1594381/ Aaron Lazar ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0479903/ Aaron Michael Lacey ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005455/ Aaron Spelling ... thumbnailed main image, larger images in list
Count of "good" images links ... 12
Total images ... 17
That pretty much matches up with the database overall...about 20% of the people have images, and about 30% of those don't follow the methodology you outlined.
I don't think this, nor the frequent page format changes are coincidental.
Here's an example of the 2 identical images with the secondary image being the 'big one'....and there's quite a few of these too...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0409691/
The only way I can see IMDB large images being used is to have the program look at the full-image size and do a random download from the list if it's a thumb, and even then you'd need a 'reload / re-randomize' function when the image doesn't work out.
Meanwhile, 12% doesn't work for me. It's a start, but nothing more. From my testing, I can get that up to about 50% via internet downloads. This doesn't resolve which "john smith" I'm loading into my database, so screen shots are the most reliable way. With copy / paste from screen shot to people image the process could be reasonably effecient.
Mostly I collect older B-movies so the screen shot process is much more important to me than people who collect the current releases. I have no doubt some people will have 50% of their cast filled with images via IMDB...thumbs or not.
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