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How do I deal with long-running documentary series?
Gaco:
First off nice job with the PVD application. Your work is much appreciated ;)
My whole use of PVD is cataloging documentary films that I have watched. I regularly watch new docs off my harddisk, and I want to be able to rate them and store this information. The idea is to have a database of all the docs I have seen, and be able to filter, group and search them. Especially important is it view a specific genre/tag/group (for example Science, Physics, Evolution, War etc., I use "categories" for this) and then sort them according to my own rating.
My big problem right now is with long running documentary series such as BBC Horizon or PBS Nova. These are designated as TV series in IMDB, therefore each documentary film in the series is an episode when importing the whole doc series off IMDB. Now when I rate an episode, I've found that it will not show up when do various kinds of searches and group-viewing. How do I deal with this?
I could decide to make them all movie entries instead of episodes, that would solve the problem of them not showing up in "grouping by categories" for example. But on the other hand the thing I love about PVD is how various information is fetched from IMDB directly to the entries. Is there any way do do this smart? Or any easy comprehensible feature that I can request and put on my features wishlist for the developers?
The only suggestion I can think of is to add a simple on/off option in preferences to include or exclude episodes from searches and groups? Now to distinct between independent episodes (such as Nova or Horizon) and episodes in (2-part, 3-part, 8-part or whatever) documentary miniseries, a filter could be made to view only entries with ratings - then "additional rating" could be used for episodes of the same coherent mini series, and ordinary "rating" could be used for long-running documentary series of wide ranging independent subjects?
buah:
It would be good to take an example, and reproduce the problem step by step, including steps concerning searches/filtering.
Screenshoots would be also appreciated.
Gaco:
Very well :)
This is my category list. I use it to add my own tags associated with genre and content in each of the documentaries. I have only just started, so I only have the categories needed for the movies I've seen so far, but I will add more as I need them:
Now lets try and group by category:
Which looks like this:
I then sort by rating and look under Science:
Even though I have given the episodes "No Ordinary Genius" (which are really independent from all the other documentaries in BBC's Horizon series) categories Science and Physics, it does not sure up under Science and Physics, but stay in "Undefined" because I have not categorized / put on genre tags on Horizon because it is impossible as each documentary in the series is a unique subject.
Another aspect of the same problem with the episodes is following:
When grouping by rating, the episodes does not show up under 6-8 which is where they belong with a rating of 8, but under "not rated" because I have not rated the Horizon series as a whole, which is impossible.
So you see, the big problem is that PVD treats all "TV series" as though you should be able to rate the series as a whole, and to specify it's genre as a whole, which in the case with normal TV series and documentary mini-series is totally possible, but not decade-longtime running documentary series such as BBC Horizon or PBS Nova. But these gets imported from IMDB as big-ass TV series with many, many episodes! I don't know what can be done or what the smartest thing is to do. The easiest thing in terms of easy of implementation would probably be my suggestion in the first post, although the best/most complete solution would be have PVD distinguish between two different kinds of movie series, the normal kind that is currently available, and a second kind, whose episodes have properties much more like single-movie-entries, just brought together under a single TV series name. Does this make sense?
buah:
--- Quote ---because I have not categorized / put on genre tags on Horizon because it is impossible as each documentary in the series is a unique subject.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote ---I have only just started, so I only have the categories needed for the movies I've seen so far, but I will add more as I need them:
--- End quote ---
I think you gave the answer. Every time you assign a new unique category to an episode - assign it to a whole series. It's exactly 4 clicks more. PVD deserves it, believe me. ;)
Gaco:
--- Quote from: buah on May 06, 2010, 05:42:53 pm ---
--- Quote ---because I have not categorized / put on genre tags on Horizon because it is impossible as each documentary in the series is a unique subject.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote ---I have only just started, so I only have the categories needed for the movies I've seen so far, but I will add more as I need them:
--- End quote ---
I think you gave the answer. Every time you assign a new unique category to an episode - awssign it for a whole series. It's exactly 4 clicks more. PVD deserves it, believe me. ;)
--- End quote ---
That's not the problem. Problem is, Horizon would show up in every search without showing which episodes actually had the tags/categories in question!
But what I think is the best solution came to me just a little earlier. I only have to sacrifice one thing, but it would solve all other problems. An added feature would be needed though, but I reckon it's not very hard to make: I will just add each Horizon episodes as single movie entities anyway instead of episode in a series. This way I cannot just use the "New Movie Master" on full auto because it will never find any Horizon docs on a IMDB search (because they are hidden away as episodes of Horizon (1964) as we know). All documentaries being part of cross-genre documetary series will have to do without IMDB as of right now. The feature I will then cross my fingers for is "force import IMDB link" so that I can just force import all movie data from a link (for example http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1087881/) on a movie entry. I still have to deal with each documentary individually so it wouldn't take up extra time each time! PVD would then have to associate a movie entry with a specific IMDB link so that it can easily be updated later with a simple "Import->[EN] Get movie info from IMDB.com".
In other words only use the TV series w. episodes structure on actual mini-series of documentaries, where it's episodes all lies within the same genre/topic. IMDB treats BBC Horizon and PBS Nova as a TV series with episodes, too bad, I'll have to it custom in PVD then. But it would still be nice to be able to download movie info manually off a URL into a movie entry! :)
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