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Proper use of filters

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buah:
rick.ca,

First of all, thank you as for your suggestions considering personal reference as for your usually fast reply and as I said earlier: it's not that PVD is the best of it's kind (which is true) that matters to me, but that it suits all my needs. That's why I posted such a topic in this and not in "Feature..." forum: because I felt I only needed support to figure out how to get the result I want.

Second, I found a flaw in my previous posts, if it matters now: I meant "Group operations" and not "Group options". Silly me!

Third, as I finished testing PVD on a single entry ("The Shawshank case" :)), and while we're waiting for an update for an imdb.dll regarding "Top 250 Rank" issue, I decided meanwhile to test PVD on a multiple movie entries. And that's how this topic emanated.


--- Quote ---The status of the owned filter is determined by the existence of data in the Path field.
--- End quote ---

Important thing to say here is that I imported 5500 movie entries from MS Excel table without such a "Path" column in that .xls file.

If I understood your statement quoted above, please let my screen capture first talk instead of me:






1. I don't have a path for "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" as you can see. I applied "owned" filter (also seen) and it still appears on list?
2. I downloaded data for "Mesrine..." movie from my collection (it's "Path" is not null), and I got an extra "Gangstars - Gangstars ()" entry (light blue coloured one in the left pane). Don't have it in collection, don't have a path for it, still "owned" filter applied, still "Gangastars" visible, and in the "owned" list? I applied "Refresh" also.
3. No matter I additionally applied "Visible" advanced filter, the result is the same - all movie entries shown: "owned" ones (physically in my collection) and "not-owned" ones (not physically in my collection), and all are "marked in database" (is it the term?) as visible?


--- Quote ---In buah's case, I see no reason (yet) why the existing filters—used in the "normal" manner—will not serve his needs.
--- End quote ---

I know that this issue is too trivial, because primarily and main purpose of any software of this kind is to manage and maintain one's collection. Regarding that, I'm definitely doing something wrong - either setting up PVD's preferences, or improperly using existing filters, while at least, all PVD components I use were up-to date, but I just don't know what.

The experience says that sometimes rephrasing the question can help resolving problems, so please allow me to do so:

After mass import online data in silent mode (or not, it produce the same unwanted result for me) for 5500 movie entries and getting hundreds of thousands new entries, how to manage to get shown only a list of movies I own - those 5500, regardless the fact that I don't have "Path" field filled in for them, without deleting extra entries gotten?

Please if it's needed consider here as a separate issue above screen capture regarding applied "owned" field didn't impact on not-having-"path"-movie-entries, in terms of "how it should be after online importing" and "how it is in buah's case after online importing".

I want you to know that I read your previous post several times before, and several times during writing this post ensuring that I didn't misread something. Thank you even for your patience to reach the end of this post, not to mention if I get a reply.

Cheers

rick.ca:

--- Quote ---'Owned' and 'wish' end up with the same colour as 'wish'...not useful for me, since I can tell them apart.  So I use an option that does give me a different colour.
--- End quote ---

Your personal preference was clear from your original post. I was only pointing out there is nothing wrong with the program design in this regard. Most people, if they cared, would be perfectly happy to flag a movie "wished" in the circumstance described. It will stand out very nicely in a list of "owned" movies. Yes, in an unfiltered list, it will appear as "wished" and you won't know it's also "owned." I don't care. You do, so you choose do it differently. So what?


--- Quote ---Which comment isn't being useful?
--- End quote ---

Your comment implies any effort to modify these aspects of the program is not worth the bother. My experience does not bear this out. Your comment is not useful because it's misleading—especially to new users. Users have a choice. They can leave things as much as possible in the "out-of-the-box" state and forego the benefits of modifications, or not. Creating a custom skin from scratch is a lot of work. It should be undertaken only by those with the aptitude, desire and/or need for such things. On the other hand, adding a few custom fields, adding them to the default skin and using a custom language file are all rather straightforward things anyone can do.


--- Quote ---Delete all your 'people', turn on ALL the download options and remove the limits on credits.
--- End quote ---

As I said earlier in my post, not restricting credits is not a good idea. You will end up with a huge number of people in your database, most of whom you don't care about—as well as having performance issues. But my database works reasonably well with the credits restricted (to the extent possible) to those I'm interested in. Maybe that won't work for you—due to poor internet service or the data source—but the suggestion it can't be done is not a valid generalization.


--- Quote ---It takes time to figure out how to do what I'm doing...
--- End quote ---

Of course it does. Any software with similar capabilities would too. Yes, a "slicker" interface might make some aspects of its configuration easier. And yes, it would be great to have "professional" documentation. But these are not reasonable things to expect from a freeware application. Good documentation is scarce, even in commercial software. But I digress. The necessity to configure a database application in order to get the results a user wants has does not constitute a "workaround."

mgpw4me@yahoo.com:
I disagree, but it doesn't matter.

If buah can find a workable answer anywhere in this thread, I'm fine with that.

rick.ca:

--- Quote ---I found a flaw in my previous posts, if it matters now: I meant "Group operations" and not "Group options".
--- End quote ---

No problem. But since you mention it, I hope you don't mind me changing the subject to "Proper use of filters." I thought that better described what you're asking about.


--- Quote ---If I understood your statement quoted above, please let my screen capture first talk instead of me:
--- End quote ---

OIC. The problem is with your understanding of the filter menu captions. What you're calling the "owned" filter is actually the "wish" filter (i.e., it depends on the status of the wish flag. I obviously haven't helped by referring to the "media on hard drive" filter as the "owned" filter. Sorry for the confusion, but this illustrates the problem with filters when each one works in a very specific way, but can be used in different ways by different users. I've actually renamed them "Wished" and "Media" (meaning I have, or "own" the media) using a custom language file—because that's what they mean in the context of how I use them.

I find it helpful to consider what each filter does, rather that what it's called. First of all, they all have three "states:" on/true, off/false and ignore/not applicable. Then the attributes filtered, in the order presented in the menu, are:

1. Viewed: Based on the view flag (which is set automatically if a view date is set).

2. Wished: Based on the wish flag.

3. Loaned: True if the movie has been "loaned" using the loan management feature. If you're willing to let "borrower" mean whatever you want it to mean, this can be used as a customizable filter. For example, you could "loan" a movie to "amazon.com" to indicate the movie is on order, with delivery due on a certain date.

4. Path: A path exists in the Path field.

5. Bookmarked: As set using the Bookmarking feature.

6. Movie (not series): It's movie unless it's not. Then it's a series (or an episode of a series).

I'll wait to see how much this clears things up before commenting further.

rick.ca:
I missed this in my previous post...


--- Quote ---Important thing to say here is that I imported 5500 movie entries from MS Excel table without such a "Path" column in that .xls file.
--- End quote ---

This may not be an issue, depending on how your media files are named. The program will scan your HDD and attempt to match the files found to your movie records. If the Title or Original title and Year are included in the pathname in a form recognized by the regex provided in Preferences - File Scanner, then the program will do this for you. Perhaps you've already done this (Tools - Scan folders...). If this doesn't work with sufficient accuracy (you'll probably want 95 - 99%), you may as well address the issue now. That means revising the regex so all of your files are properly recognized and/or changing filenames so the regex are able to accurately extract the Title and Year. Although the pathnames might have been imported, letting the program do it will be a good test of the configuration. If it can process 5,500 movies correctly, then you can be confident it will continue to do so for future additions.

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