Personal Video Database

after still finding some smaler bugs
(roles did not import...)
I made up anew version with corrections
and additional features
budget, poster....and others  can be imported now
additional crew members can be imported now in (little tricky)...
..with german & english language support
see inside the attached file
please try on an empty DB first and for setting it up to your needs

curently everything is enabeld with german language

cu meriator


[attachment deleted by admin]

hi nostra
the script i currently working on should
import/update title and description (in german) for movie-episodes only
(may be later the cover-images too)
the movie has to be allready in the db
I imported my test-movies from IMDb
(its very boring job, to update a lot of episodes manualy)

the source-page for the new script is http://www.fernsehserien.de
this page is a kind of a german episode-guide

while writing this script
I have a problem
I need the MID for giving the orginal title of the episode from the db
because the season- and episode-numbers do not match
to IMDb but the orignalTitle does
so my question is.
Is it posible to implement a callback-function to the scripting-engine
which gives back the MID of an episode (of the current selected Movie),
in exchange
like
getEpisodeMID(orignalTitle of Movie-Episode)
may be we need
getMovieMID(current selected Movie) too
to do it this way
getEpisodeMID(currentMovieMID, orignalTitle of Movie-Episode)

and a function which will change movie-episode fields
like updateMovieField (MID, field-name, field-value)
this would be very great

thanks meriator

ps:I know you might be very busy, sorry

Oh sorry
my intention is not to translate whole sentences
like description, or taglines
this is sure not possible
I'm talking about single terms like genres, or countries
but also tags as they are simple expressions

one reason is
if I search for a comedy I will find
comedy but not Komödie (german) or comédie (french) or comedia (spanish)
but all mean the same thing
but if Komödie, comédie, comedia will point out to comedy
I will find everything I did searched for

cu meriator

An other suggestion
I think that most users relay on IMDB for their movie-data,
especially on unknown/uncommon movies they do not own yet.
Unfortunately these data is mostly only in english available
and there are a lot of other good site in the web with
different languages from the users own.

to solve language related problems
in a proper way it might be usefull to have
a language specific replace-list

language specific means if I use the app with english translation
only phrase marked as translated into english will be used
and so on


for genres, countries(names), languages(names), categories, tags, mpaa-ratings, ....
and maybe for phrases used by the program it self (to customise the viewable output),
as i have seen in other apps aka "data crow" -> sourceforge.net

means
id;lang;fieldtype;phrase;replacement

so all incoming data will be setted up
language-specfic correctly to users-needs
at capture-time (db-data will be changed to his native language)
or
at view-time (db-data is keeped in orginaly language and will be only processed for viewing)
or
nothing (means like it is)
(this all should depend on the users-preferences
if he, the user needs this and if he takes the time to use it)
 
with out the need to know all these phrases at the development process

the replace-list could also contain a generaly list off
letters/phrases
which might be lead to output-errors or which simply unwanted
this list should be processed always on all incomming data

but these lists should be keept either in the specific movie-DB
or for all in an other settings-db or how ever a simple list
(again users-preferences)
(on export/import the user should asked for the language,
especially if he has choosed view-time-processing)

and so after a while(may be) language-specfic replace-lists
could be shared here in the forums or where ever

I know that native english-speakers dont think so much about these language-specfic things
but all others may do a little more

these is one of the most important features
Sadly to say, I miss in most apps

this are only a few ideas I'll had to handle this language-specfic things
without having so much development-work
on handling unknown phrases (which besides might be wrong)


@nostra special greetings and thanks
while I'm reading here, recognizing your allways friendly open ears to all questions
which is not allways usual

cu meriator

hi nostra

you've got mail 

the items in my 1. post
are the corrected ones allready
 
thx
cu meriator

It's not clear to me, for example, why a non-English user is trying to translate information from the IMDb

1.it is easier to understand
2. and I prefer my home-language
3.I'm sharing my DB with my people and not all of them understand/speak english
but some of my reallife friends are foreigners in my country (Germany)
and they do not speak german very well but english or italian or ...
so why not more then one language if it's possible to do
4. a lot of terms are coming up again and again
   like genres, professions and, why not,  tags too
once translated no more or less future trouble
5.I like to have my data in more then one language
and a lot of my DVD-movies are supporting my wishes 
sometimes I'm watching movies with friends in other languages then my own
and mostly a have seen the movie already in my language, this is funny
6. i like to work on DBs, and translations are a recuring challange
it's like surfing the Inet, relaying on only one language would be very boring

so I do not collect all needed/prefered infos from IMDB
but of course IMDB has a lot of them in 1 place
except older stuff

these are some Ideas why to do so
and maybe, Russia agree   

thx again
cu meriator

@nostra

What do you mean with translation tables?

I think my last post will explain your question

but may there's also the need of an ident_key
to mark translation to purposes

translation-table
ID|lang|ident_key|lang_value|default_value

translation-typ-table
ident_key|meaning
1|professions
2|genre
3|tags
and so on

in a realy relational DB a better way would be

translation-table
ID|lang|ident_key|lang_value|term_ID

terms-table
term_ID|lang|term_value
 
so we get no double values in default_value aka term_ID
and we are able to pre-translate terms by procedur/function
if term_value matches any new incomming value
but the overhead is
the user has to match the languge of new incomming terms before
(specialy imported tags from IMDB are in diffrent languages as I noticed)


thx again
cu meriator

ps.writing to fast forces me making spelling mistakes
if you find one keep it 

@rick.ca

2. I think two factors are going to affect requests of this sort. First, Customizable views and more flexible custom fields will improve our ability to add whatever we want. Second, the Scripting feature gives us the means to get the data for whatever fields we have added. The catch, of course, is that we'll have to do it ourselves. 

3. What do you mean by "movie-preview"? The current Actors section shows actors and their roles if Preferences-Movies-Information card Show credits as...roles is set.

thanks for u comment
2. I wouldn't do it via custom fields
..so far i found out there's a table named career
which seems to store all the info's about
person->profession and person->role per movie->ID
this is the right place
..but there should be the possibility
to assign labels to the interger->field ctype
wich seems to carry the profession->information.
(...and great would be to do it via a translation-table
but the trans-Table i found in the DB
has not the valid fields to store translations in diffrent languages for the same "term of meaning")

3. (sorry) movie->dataview is meant  ...thank you, this is it   ....

now taking an other deep breath.   
I may study the DB-structure a little more, because I'm not used to Firebird->DBs

thx again
cu meriator