Personal Video Database

Déjà vu... It works for me (using 0.9.9.4).

It's too bad there wasn't a more effective way to find a match.

I'm slowly learning that whenever I have a thought like this, the answer is, "There is a better way."

Try OSCAR. It finds subtitle matches based on the hash code of your movie file. I just tried it on a whole folder of movies, and it found subtitles for everything in seconds. I haven't actually tried any of them yet, but given the way it's making the matches, I don't see how it could go wrong. If it doesn't find an exact match, then there probably isn't one (on OpenSubtitles.org), and you would have to look for a close match manually—and should probably expect to have to use something like Subtitle Workshop to modify it.

I would like PVD to find and download subtitles (srt) based on the existing movie files...

The problem with this is the subtitle file has to be a correct match to the particular file you have, or it won't be synchronized. There can be hundreds of subtitle files for one movie. Picking the right one might be possible (e.g., using opensubtitles.org) if both you and the subtitle file uploader use the same file reference (e.g., a torrent name). Otherwise, it's difficult to see how an automated match could be made. I think the best you can do is to add Web searches that will manual searches a little more convenient.

The Impawards site itself looks different now. Could this have something to do with that?

Yes, I think it might. Thanks for that observation. I thought it must be different, but I hadn't looked at it for a long time.

BTW, as an alternate for when amazon fails (this is how I use IMPAwards), I've found MoTechPosters to be very good. My Web search for it is...

http://www.google.com/custom?domains=posters.motechnet.com&sa=Google+Search&sitesearch=posters.motechnet.com&q=%s%u
Its posters are saved as "../covers/[IMDb page code]_largeCover.jpg," so I'm hoping we get an IMDb page code variable for use with Web search some day. Also, given the simplicity of the site design, it might be a good candidate for a download script.

Could you also attach your page.html from PVD folder?

There isn't one, which perhaps shouldn't be a surprise. The page referenced in the log is correct, so if it had downloaded that it should have worked. Right?

IMPAwards works for me. What's the problem?

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, js. Yes, you will find these things are discussed elsewhere in the forum, but they're not always easy to find.

it seems like a untouted feature

Yes, it runs nicely from a memory stick. Just one of so many wonderful features that they all seem untouted.

Storing data per user is not planned yet

The ability to handle multiple users in one database seems like a good idea, but I wonder how practical it really is. In most situations, the multiple users are not going to be "equal partners" in sharing a database. There is going to be a primary user (one who created the database and is ultimately responsible for maintaining it) and secondary users. The secondary user want access to the primary user's database, in part, because they would rather not go to the trouble of maintaining their own. As such, their interest in recording personal information (i.e., wish list, seen date, comments, etc) is somewhat less. If this were not true—and the secondary user might also find they are interested in different movies, different information sources, different program configurations—then it becomes clear that user is much better off maintaining their own database. If the multiple user database approach works, except for personal fields being shared (e.g., Seen date), this can be dealt with by using adding custom fields (e.g., Seen by). The result might even be preferred in a family situation. Seen means somebody has seen it, Seen date is the date it was first seen, and those viewing it at a later date would just add their names to Seen by.

I would like to know if there is any way to use this software for other things besides movies.

If you look at the software as a front end to a relational database relating people to their creations, with the ability to download and populate the database with information from websites, then it can be used for anything that fits that model. It would require a lot of work, however, to rename captions, add custom fields, design skins, and—most of all—write download scripts. While the core functions are the same, you would find requirements vary considerably according to the subject matter. The idea of making it do everything is clearly impractical. If one has a keen interest in one particular thing (e.g., video games) not already better served by other software (e.g., music), they may find adapting PVD to this purpose a fulfilling hobby.

Probably my second highest priority request would be to make a Windows Mobile version of this application.

Unless you can afford to put nostra on your payroll, it seems you're not going to see this any time soon. But don't despair—you should be able to export to HTML in some fashion that you'll find practical for mobile use. That could include most of the information for the entire database, as well as special purpose things like wish lists for use in the video store.

I am a very technical person (although not as much of an eagle eye as rick.ca seems to be. Wow is all I can say!)

And here I was trying so hard to be humble. Oh, well. That, and seeing the future, is nostra's job.

PVD is not for everyone, but as a technical person, you'll appreciate it's power and flexibility.

That seems to be where the glitch is likely to happen so that's my concern.

Maybe I'm missing something here. What exactly is this glitch you're anticipating? Has it happened? Can you reproduce it? If there's a bug somewhere, we should be tracking it down and getting it fixed, not looking for ways to repair the damage it does.

The Cable/internet sometimes stays down for 10 days.

OMG! I'd be calling the suicide prevention line, not looking for a help file to read.

Only thing i found that was when i added Survivor all seasons apart from Season 1 were imported...

Thanks. Using "Survivor" as a test case, I can see the 0.9.8 version seems to be behaving strange/inconsistently. The first time it only downloaded the head record—as if it were a movie. I ran it again with that record selected, and it added all the seasons/episodes. I deleted season one, and tried to download it again—but could not. I deleted all the episodes (so it was just a root movie record again) and ran it again. Only one or two episodes per season were added. After deleting the series and restarting the program, I was able to repeat this sequence of events.

Trying the same things using the 0.9.9 version, everything worked as expected.

Here´s my log, thanks nostra.
Still no movies found

20/12/2008 02:12:45 p.m.: PVD Version: 0.9.8.20
...
20/12/2008 02:12:46 p.m.: Plugin loaded: imdb.dll 0.8.7.0
20/12/2008 02:12:46 p.m.: Plugin loaded: imdb_people.dll 0.2.1.8
...

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