Personal Video Database

Seeing as I've been entering data over the course of about 5 or 6 months, you'd think I'd be further along -- but I have only entered a fraction of my movies into the database so far. (I've done most of the "easy" work -- those titles which exist as files, rather than DVDs or VHS. Yes, videotape. I'm old school.  )

Right now, PVD shows I have 1017 movies, but that's not entirely accurate, since a not-insignificant number of those entries are TV series. Every entry in my database (including each TV episode) has a poster and several screenshots (whew, that's the part that took the most time, over the past several months). It shows I have 48,142 people in the Db. Current size of my database is 883MB.

As always, thanks for your help, Rick! And your sense of humor. 

I recently had to reinstall Windows XP, but didn't have to wipe my drive, thankfully. So my PVD folder was still intact -- nonetheless, I backed up my main database to another folder anyway, before I reinstalled PVD.

Now, however, no matter which skin I use, I no longer have actor's roles displayed anywhere -- and I am certain they were there on nearly every record before (if not all of them).

Any suggestions, other than re-downloading every entry from IMDb?  

TIA

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 recommend using the -debug switch always. It doesn't hurt, and it means you'll always have a log if something strange happens.

I was actually thinking that maybe I'd start doing that, although at the same time I was trying to determine if the website queries ran slower when I was in debug mode. But I guess that basic logging procedures shouldn't affect the speed of anything within the application, eh?

Sanangelis, if you haven't already tried this... first, reboot your computer, then start PVD & try the script/plugin again. If you still have troubles, disable your firewall momentarily and try the script. And if that doesn't work, temporarily disable your anti-virus program and try it. (Also, repeat this process if you have other programs which can block IP addresses, such as PeerBlock or Spybot's TeaTimer.) If the scripts work when any of those are disabled, then you know you've got some tweaking of settings to do with whatever app may be blocking access.

This is all, of course, assuming the problem isn't with the script or plugin itself (which I sort of doubt, since they also work well for me with the latest versions).

Just throwing out a few suggestions which may or may not be helpful. 

Good luck!

Yeah, I agree, you would think that your codecs are fine if you're able to use the manual screenshot maker (you said you couldn't do automatic screenshots with MS DirectShow, but I assume you can do manual screenshots with that). But, then again, I can't say I'd exactly be surprised if the problem does indeed lie there somewhere. Trying to sort out issues with codecs can be a maddening thing.

Again, I'm on XP, but I know that I've had troubles in the past when I've had several conflicting versions of codecs installed at the same time -- often installed by various multimedia applications. But I've generally been problem free ever since uninstalling any previous codecs and codec packs I've had on the system, then doing a fresh install of the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack -- for me, that one seems to work the best.

(All this sort of reminds me of days past, with the early versions of Quicktime, where that app had the potential to nearly bring down your whole system.)

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"Drat these computers, they're so naughty, and so complex, I could just pinch them!" ~ Marvin the Martian

Not sure if this is helpful, pwantzel, but frequently when I do automatic screenshots, they don't show up on the display unless I either re-save the entry or navigate to a different movie and then back again. I know they're there, it's just a refresh issue or something.

Also, I've occasionally had fffmpeg start up numerous copies of itself, which just mucks with everything -- in those cases, I've shut down PVD, opened up Task Manager and killed all process entries of fffmpeg. Then started again. If nothing else is working, maybe open up Task Manager and see if you've got more than one instance of fffmpeg running (under "Processes", not "Applications").

I'm on Windows XP, though, not sure how much of this (if any of it) applies to Vista. Could be that OS requires a different version of ffdshow. Then, of course, the other option is that you could just use MS DirectShow for screenshots, I suppose -- as long as you're only working with AVI files.

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!  

Hi, all!

Brand new PVD user here. Found it through Google after finding that my old software, Movie Library, was now completely abandoned by its author, and none of the APIs worked anymore. So far this does nearly everything that program did, and a lot it couldn't do, which is awesome, since I actually paid for that one. 

Anyway, just thought I'd chime in on this topic, also my first post to the forums...

Having digital files in a large number of different formats, as many do, I eventually found my way to VLC, until it stopped working right, and then BS Player, but I also had problems with that. (Dunno, could be an odd combination of codecs, but I got tired of trying to figure it out, when nothing I tried solved the problems with either piece of software.)

Right around that same time, however, I decided to buy the Nero suite, mainly because I loved their burning software, and also, Nero Vision was the only DVD creation app that could transcode any video file I threw at it to DVD format. Then I gradually discovered that their media player, Nero ShowTime, played EVERY type of video (and I believe nearly every type of audio file) that I had.

Fast-forward a few years later, and I'm still using Nero ShowTime. I know Nero doesn't get much respect, and I can understand the claims that it's a bloated software. It also takes longer than similar types of apps just to load. But I've found it to be really robust and reliable, and I use it pretty much every day.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Going off-topic, thanks for keeping the PVD forums lively, since I've already found answers here to a dozen or so questions that I've had since installing it last week. Looking forward to interacting more with y'all in the future, as I continue to expand my movie database... about 1,000 down and only about 6,000 to go!