DVDpedia: Separate Fields for Studio & Publisher

[Lodovico]

I notice that when I add a DVD using information from IMDb, the Studio field is filled in correctly (e.g., for Citizen Kane, it's Mercury Productions). When I add a DVD using Amazon, it's the DVD publisher's name that gets put into the Studio field (for Citizen Kane, the DVD is by Turner Home Entertainment).

Would it be possible to have two separate fields, Studio and Publisher, with the info being sorted into the appropriate field depending on the source (Studio info from IMDb, Publisher info from Amazon)?

[sjk]

I'd like separate Studio and Publisher fields, too.

[kbarnes70]

Me too!

Rgds, keith

[Conor]

Thank you for the feedback. Originally the studio was the most important and we would like to pick the studio from Amazon as well, but sadly they don't carry that information just the publisher and vice-versa for IMDb. We will keep the suggestion for a dedicated publisher field in mind.

[sjk]

This topic reminded me of something I'll briefly mention here …

I've been wondering if it would be possible for DVDpedia to differentiate sources of information retrieved from different sites. As a specific example, the Studio field could track and somehow indicate its value was from Amazon, IMDb, or elsewhere. And Smart Collection matching could provide filtering.

The motivation behind this is having db entries constructed from multiple sites and not necessarily knowing the origin of the field values but wanting to (for different reasons); I'll stick with another topic-related example:

With the site origin information an alternative to having separate Studio and Publisher fields would be that you could know that Studio from Amazon was really the Publisher.

If tracking every field's origin is overly complicated maybe it could be simplified to just tracking one or more origins for each entry; I'd still get value from that.

I can start a new thread if there's interest in deeper discussion about this, though only if it's something Bruji might consider.

[Conor]

DVDpedia does not keep track of the sites per field. I understand the studio field can be confusing since it does contains the publisher if the entry is from Amazon. DVDpedia however does keep track of Amazon and IMDb via the ASIN and IMDb number fields. If the field is empty then the information came from the other site. However, if they are both filled then you wouldn't know which one went first. In the meantime if you want to be very meticulous you could add only from Amazon and then have a smart collection that is "IMDb number is blank", in that collection you would move the studio to a custom field (named producer) and then blank the studio field and add the information from IMDb, filling the rest of the information including the studio. DVDpedia does not have a way to move one field to another inside the program, but this can be done on the SQL database directly.

[kbarnes70]

For the sake of being meticulous <g>, I just selected ALL from my Library, clicked Edit, blanked the Studio field, and then updated the whole lot using IMDb, so now my entire collection has the Studio in the Studio field. Of course, I need to remember to do this from time to time when I add new movies (or each time I add a new movie using Amazon as the primary source). This is relatively easy for me as I have a smart collection called 'Most Recently Added' which contains only DVDs added in the past 50 days.

Rgds,

Keith

[sjk]

DVDpedia does not keep track of the sites per field.

It would be useful to know for sure where certain info originated, and even be able select per-field download sources, but I can understand why it's not worthwhile enough to implement.

DVDpedia however does keep track of Amazon and IMDb via the ASIN and IMDb number fields. If the field is empty then the information came from the other site. However, if they are both filled then you wouldn't know which one went first.

Right. I'm adding most items from Amazon first, then query IMDb to fill in some of what it misses. That gives me a pretty good idea of what came from where. Is there any way to combine both lookups into a single action? If not, this is a casual request for that capability.

I've also created an excluded IMDb collection with the intention of using it to keep track of "unowned" movies (e.g. those seen in a theatre), and maybe upcoming ones without any Amazon data yet. Hmm, I could merge that into the main Library and create a "ASIN is <empty>" smart collection based on this tip:

… then have a smart collection that is "IMDb number is blank"

Didn't realize the value could be empty, but for some reason it's not working with my "ASIN is <empty>" test. "IMBb is <empty>" does match a couple items. Checking a bit further it looks like other "… is <empty>" tests are broken. Also discovered "Movie is (not) in collection" has mixed results. Suddenly this got deeper than I expected. I'll do more thorough testing later and start a new thread and/or mail a bug report with the results.

[Conor]

I did a couple of quick test on the "ASIN is empty" smart collection and movie is not in collection and had no issues. If the movie is not in collection rule is based on another smart collection it won't go an update the smart collection before hand otherwise it creates the possibility of getting into a loop trying to update each other. If you run into any bugs please do send me your database.pediadata file as well, so I can run the test with your data.

[sjk]

Thanks for the info. Today I got a simple "ASIN is <empty>" Smart Collection to match items in the main Library. But this one doesn't work:

Movie is in collection IMDb
ASIN is <empty>

… where IMDB is an excluded collection and most (unfortunately not all, as I'd hoped) items in it have an empty ASIN field.

Btw, any possibility of adding Auto Fill to Smart Collection criteria?

[Conor]

It's most likely that the "Include library-independant entries in smart collections" preference check box is not checked, under the general preference tab. Without that the excluded IMDb collection is not considered in the search and the rule "Movie is in collection IMDb" results in an empty set. You are correct that this preference shouldn't apply for the movie is in collection rule but being global it's hard to turn off for a specific case.

[sjk]

Enabling that preference did the trick -- thanks! I'd noticed Smart Collection matches were only returning results from Library items but hadn't figured out how to modify that behavior. After enabling the pref I had to add "Movie is not in collection <collection>" to a couple to keep them from matching unwanted items. Not sure I want it this way permanently but it least it might be temporarily useful.

[sjk]

Re-asking this:

Btw, any possibility of adding Auto Fill to Smart Collection criteria?

Tags, for example. I'm kind of spoiled by how thoroughly autofill works in iTunes.

[Conor]

Thank you, will add it to the to do list.

[sjk]

Thanks, Conor. Speaking of tags, can a complete list of them be displayed from within DVDpedia? Workaround is to look at the tags key array in autofill.xml, which is fine if there's no easier way.