Personal Video Database

Edit: This version of the AdultDVDEmpire movie information script no longer works, due to changes in ADE's website layout. I don't have the time to modify and maintain it anymore, but another user named Joc has picked it up. See this thread for his new version. -- Aimhere

Hi,

Revised AdultDVDEmpire.com script, version 0.1.0.8.

Imports movie information (including box artwork).

For use with PVD 0.9.9.16 and above only.

Aimhere

(P.S. - I didn't write the original script, just maintaining it for now due to occasional changes at ADE. Your mileage may vary!)

-- Modified again 8/6/2011 to deal with a change in ADE HTML for title formatting.

Okay, I'm having a problem with the ADE script's poster processing (using PVD 0.9.9.16 with the most recent ADE script).

On one particular movie, the script engine goes into an infinite loop while trying to download the poster. The information bar at the bottom of the window pops up, says "Downoading from:" with the URL of the poster image, but never finishes. PVD seems to keep trying to download the image repeatedly, with the "bytes" value updating rapidly (mostly showing the value 39373, which I assume is the actual file size) until I click "Cancel" (or until ADE blocks the connection, which happens sometimes if the site gets hammered too much).

If I enable -debug mode and check the log, it shows PVD trying to GET: that image URL over and over and over.

If I try to open the URL directly in Firefox (pasting it into the address bar), the browser doesn't behave as expected. Where it would normally simply show the JPEG image in the Firefox window, instead it asks me whether I want to open or save the file. Same thing happens when I go to the ADE catalog page that has the picture embedded in it, right-click on it, and select "Show Image". If I DO save the image to a file when prompted, my regular JPEG viewer can open it without any problem.

Further research leads me to suspect that the website is passing the wrong MIME identification for the file when my computer requests it by HTTP, confusing PVD. But Firefox is still able to download the file, whereas PVD goes into an infinite loop trying to download it again and again. Whatever the problem is, Firefox handles it gracefully (it can still show the picture embedded in the parent webpage, after all) but PVD just chokes on it. It seems to happen very rarely, as this is the first time I've ever seen this problem.

Thing is, I don't see how to go about fixing this? As far as I can tell, the script is doing everything right in parsing the page and sending the (completely valid) poster URL back to PVD... PVD itself handles the actual downloading of the image, and that's where this particular URL breaks it. (Changing the Preferences/Plugins option to forbid the script from overwriting the movie poster won't help, as PVD still tries to download the image regardless of this setting, as long as the script passes it a valid URL.)

For now, I'm just going to enter all the movie information (including the poster) manually for this title. But, I think there needs to be some kind of sanity check in PVD's internal HTTP-download routines to prevent an infinite loop like this from happening?

Aimhere

Thanks for the answers. I'll just keep on embedding the images in the database then. 

Aimhere

Quote

Sorry, I guess I'm not making myself clear. I just thought it would be good for PVD to behave like most other Windows apps in that regard

You were perfectly clear. I don't think the behaviour of "most other Windows apps" is appropriate for a database application like this. My personal information and media managers don't behave that way. I doubt any of their competitors do either. The vast majority of users use only one database for such things. Most of the rest would still want one loaded at startup—either the MRU, or they would create multiple shortcuts so they could choose which one to load.

Which is why I want it as an option, which is turned off by default. That way, power users can turn it on if so desired. Some of us just prefer to work in an application-centric way (e.g. launch an app, then open a document) instead of a document-centric way (launch a document shortcut, the associated app opens). It's all a matter of user preference.

For me, the real issue is database size. I've only got part of my video collection cataloged so far, and already my database is around 500 megabytes. (Mind you, I embed all images in the database, rather than referencing them from disk, because I really don't want to have to keep a bazillion JPEGs stored alongside the main PVD database.) Once I add the rest, the database could easily swell to three times that size. So I split the database into separate files for functional categories (e.g. movies, TV shows, etc.), and again, I prefer to work in an application-centric way (see above) and don't want the MRU database opened when I launch the app.  I'm sure that if I kept everything in one monolithic database, I wouldn't mind the auto-open-MRU behavior.

Aimhere

Hi,

There's a small issue with the Multiple Movies Editor, regarding the checkboxes next to the various fields.

When you click in one of the plain-text fields (like "Director") and type something, the checkbox next to that field is automatically selected/ticked, so that the value is applied to the selected movies when you click "OK". But this doesn't happen with the drop-down listbox fields, like "Category" or "Media Type". If you select an item from a listbox, the checkbox remains UNselected, and if you don't remember to tick it, the change won't be applied when "OK" is clicked. Likewise, you can click in a listbox field and enter a new value, but again, it won't be applied unless you manually tick the checkbox.

Using 0.9.9.14 here. I seem to recall that older versions didn't act this way, but my memory may be wrong. In any case, the inconsistency is kind of annoying. Can this be fixed, please?

Aimhere

Sorry, I guess I'm not making myself clear. I just thought it would be good for PVD to behave like most other Windows apps in that regard, e.g. launch the program from the Start Menu (versus a document shortcut), get a "blank slate".  (Other apps also tend to have something like an "Open Recent..." item under the "File" menu, where the last several documents to be opened are listed and can be called up.)

It's a minor quibble, to be sure.

Aimhere

Just a small suggestion...

Would it be hard to add a toggle option in Preferences that would cause PVD to open with no database loaded (as opposed to always loading the last-opened database), when the program is launched from its own icon in the Start Menu?

I want to keep several databases for different purposes, and just don't want PVD to open any particular one when it's launched from the Start Menu.

Naturally, double-clicking a .PVD file (or a shortcut to one) in Windows Explorer would launch PVD with that particular database opened, as usual.

Aimhere

I have some entries about titles and (alternative) names in my TODO list, but these changes really need much time to implement, so please, be patient.

Okay, I'll try.    It's nice to know you're working on improving things though. 

Hi again,

I have an issue with the behavior of the left-hand pane's list of movies/actors (depending on which view I'm in). When the list has focus (click on a movie or person, the cursor bar is dark blue), I can use the cursor keys (Including Home/End/PageUp/PageDown) to move between records; however, the list does NOT scroll when the cursor moves out of the visible range of records.

For example, if I'm somewhere in the middle of the list and press the Home key, the cursor jumps to the first record, as expected... but the list does not scroll to follow it, instead remaining right where it was. I can then start pressing Cursor-Down, and view the second, third, etc. records, but the list pane still continues showing the same group of records in the middle of my list. I have to use the mouse to grab the scrollbar and drag it in order to find the area around the cursor.

Is there any chance of getting the movie/person list to scroll properly with cursor movement?

Aimhere

Revisiting this topic 'cause it's still frustrating me...

If you go to Tools -> Preferences -> Miscellaneous -> Adding records and check "Show selection dialog if similar records are already in database" then you will have more control of what is happening when records are added. The problem is the dialog will popup every time PVD is uncertain if it should add a new record or use a similar one.

I could improve this particular feature to use Alternative names / Akas as well, but enabling this for all actions would cause dramatic performance fallback as these fields are not indexed (and can not be).

That's a shame. I can't tell you how many times I've added a movie and imported its actors list via a plugin... only to find that PVD added a new person record, instead of adding to an existing record. And all because the person was credited under an alternative name... even though I had that alternative name listed under the existing record.

Maybe it would take a lot of programming work to index all the alternative names, and slow down the program somewhat... but isn't the whole point of a computer DBMS to reduce the amount of manual data-entry, cross-checking, and verification needed to maintain a database?

Aimhere