Personal Video Database

Hey, the plugin update seems to be mostly working very well again for TV episodes. Just a couple of issues I've noticed since the new version was automatically downloaded the other day...


• After importing info for a new TV series, the info is downloaded from IMDb, but there is no "+" to expand the title, and show the seasons & episodes. However, if you go into the main title to edit it, then save your changes, suddenly the ability to expand the title appears. It's as if the title in the list column isn't being refreshed, or something. (Importing from TVDb after the IMDb import also causes the expand option to appear, but then that was always the case with that.) EDIT: OKAY, WEIRDLY NOW THIS APPEARS TO BE WORKING -- AT LEAST FOR THE LAST SEVERAL TV SERIES I'VE UPDATED. Newer Edit: Whoops -- no, now it's doing it again. Just added a new series and the option to expand the title did not appear, just like before.
• When first running the plugin on a TV series main title, the images being downloaded from IMDb for each particular episode in the TV series are thumbnails, not the full version. So I have to go into Preferences, and check the box to have the plugin overwrite the existing posters, in order to get the full-sized versions when I run the IMDb plugin again on the episodes themselves.

Otherwise, I appreciate you getting it working again! IMDb's formatting of episode titles is generally better than TVDb, which I find makes the final IMDb updates-by-episode run more smoothly.

I've been encountering situations where I need to select a number of titles, and it's beyond what I'm able to do with filters and searches.

For example, tonight I needed to locate all titles with an IMDb URL that were added in the past 3 days, but did not have poster/cover art, did not have anything already in the "description" field, and weren't TV shows. So I used CTRL+select for this purpose, but frankly I get nervous when I start doing that with 100+ titles, since I'm always afraid I'll accidentally click somewhere without the CTRL key pressed, and erase all my selections.

What I was thinking was that a checkbox (or some other method of temporarily "marking" the title entries) would allow me to easily go through the database (whether it was filtered or unfiltered) and select whatever titles which happened to match my particular needs, and then be able to perform any action on those titles as if they were selected in the normal manner.

Such a feature would ideally also have an "inverse select" and of course a "clear all selections" option, as well.

Thank you again!

I downloaded the latest beta of PVD a few days ago, since I needed to add a whole bunch of titles from an Excel file, and the beta's features made that much easier. I've spent a number of hours since yesterday, doing the confirmations on the added titles, and then starting to download full info for them (over 2,000 new entries).

It actually went very well, until now.

This is what I was doing just before the code gremlins showed up: I had an old movie serial that I initially entered with each chapter as separate versions of the same title, then altered each entry to match the titles of each particular chapter in the serial. Here's where I may have gotten too clever for my own good...

I decided to use the "copy" and then "paste as episode" feature, to put all these chapters as if they were episodes of a regular series -- and that also seemed to work very well. But I still had the original chapters all existing as separate, unique entries, so I figured I'd delete those and then they'd only exist as "episode" entries.

But hold on, I thought. I'd better make a backup of the database before I delete anything, in case it screws something up. So I did. Then I reloaded the original database, and began to delete those entries. Here's where my trouble began.

Forgive me for not recalling the exact sequence of events, because I've since tried numerous things and I can't remember exactly what happened first. I think I got an application error. Then upon restarting the app, I got the "range check error".  I clicked OK and it continued to load the program, but no database, so I tried opening the one I was working on, and got the dialog "An error occurred in the application" with the "continue/restart/close" options. I tried all options, to no avail.

Okay, maybe a database which I know is good will work -- nope. Same problem.

Alright, how about ditching the beta version for now and going with v0.9.9.21? Nope. Same issues, no matter which database I'm trying to open.

Rebooted my system, and still the same errors. So now I can't load either version of the application, and none of my databases, even my backups.

Help. 

Running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate, with 24GB RAM. Lots of processing power. This seems to be a new problem for me with PVD.

The one thing I'm wondering about is whether I have enough free space on my hard drives? (I know nothing about databases, but thought I'd mention it, in case it's relevant.) I have about 5 gigs free space on each of my two drives, but perhaps that's not enough, since each of the databases I'm trying to open are in excess of 850MB in size. And I did actually fill up my drives quite a bit in the past 24hrs, while I had PVD open.

Okay, this post is sufficiently bloated...

Much thanks in advance for anything you might be able to do, and for slogging your way through the above ramblings.

This perhaps can be thought of as an expansion of the "open containing folder" option on the right-click menu, combined with the "scan folders for new movies/changed paths" option...

Here's the situation: It seems that I am fairly frequently changing the location of my various specific movies and TV episodes -- i.e., archiving to DVD when I need more space on hard drives, etc. But in all these cases, the filename itself remains unchanged -- it is only the path (and/or drive) which is different.

But the option to scan for new file paths in these circumstances (when only a handful of titles have changed, and you know which ones they are) is a bit like killing a mosquito with a sledgehammer -- that is, it's far more than I need for the task (and sometimes causes quite the unnecessary mess).

What I was thinking is that it'd be nice to have an option on right-click which, upon determining that the file(s) no longer exist in the filepaths stored in the database, give you an option to navigate/browse to a folder (or drive) where they can be found, then doing a file scan within that chosen path, and either auto-update the database with the new location, or do so manually with a yes/no dialog.

Thanks!

Apologies if this has been discussed before. This has so far not proven to be a problem, it's merely a curiosity at this point. It appears to only be happening with TV episodes...

When there are multiple shows that have the same or similar episode titles, when the "select movie" dialog box pops up, many times I will see multiple entries on the same line -- that is, similarly-titled episodes from two completely different programs are sharing the same line. I've attached two examples of this, both from the series "Smallville" (although, as I say, it's happened to me with numerous other shows, as well).

Between the two entries I always see these characters:
/ #x22;
I think in every case, the first of the two entries has always been the correct one that I need, so this has not been an issue. However, I'm wondering what would happen if the episode I wanted was listed second, instead of first, on these duplicate entry lines. So I suppose this could potentially be a problem, although it hasn't been one in my experience so far.

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On a semi-related note, something I've been wondering about for a while -- I'm confused by the checkbox on the "Select Movie" dialog window. Usually I will just select the entry I want (not doing anything with the checkbox), and it works fine, but that doesn't seem to gibe with what I read in this thread http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?topic=1817.0. Also, I seem to recall on several past occasions gray-checking the box, or fully-checking the box, but neither did anything differently than merely selecting the entry and leaving the box unchecked. Is the checkbox doing something behind-the-scenes that I'm not fully aware of, or am I just clueless as to what it actually is doing?  

I did find this thread -- http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?topic=1503.0 -- in which rick.ca says, about the movie selection dialog:

...I still don't understand the intended purpose of the checkboxes. ... if I just ignore those check boxes (i.e., double-click on the correct movie or select it and click on enter), it works fine. Greying the boxes doesn't seem to do anything different. Checking them causes a duplication.

...but since that thread is from last year, I don't know if it still applies, and I don't remember that an entry was duplicated for me when fully checking the boxes, but frankly, I'm kind of afraid to try that now.  

Anyway, TIA, as always...

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I've read through this forum and learned (from Rick, I think) that the best method of adding a new TV series to the database is to first add it with the IMDb plugin, before adding the actual files. Then select all the episodes of a season and do an additional update, and finally add the files into the parent entry, using the file path field, then choosing "organize files by episodes". This works so much better for me, so thanks for that advice!

However, when you do this on a series, it brings in every season that's listed on IMDb -- past and future, whether or not you might happen to have those episodes. So my question is: would you suggest doing a "soft delete" of those episodes and/or seasons that you don't have (i.e., just making them invisible)? It doesn't seem as though I should delete them entirely.

Additionally, let's say I've done that (made certain future episodes of a series invisible), and the next week I acquire one of those episodes and want to add it to my database... what's the best method for doing that? Should I use "new", or should I create a "new episode" and then plug the file path of the new digital file into that entry? If I use the latter method, will the previously-invisible listing for that episode show up again and tie itself to my newly-created episode?

Or is it easier/best to just enable my "invisible" filter, select the episode I want to add, and choose "always show"?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, but I'm still new to PVD and am slowly figuring all this out.  

Thanks in advance!