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    Invelos Forums->DVD Profiler: Desktop Feature Requests Page: 1 2 3 ...11  Previous   Next
"Cast & Crew Creator"
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMagmadrag
Master of childprofiles
Registered: May 25, 2007
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Actually I am very deep in comparing my profiles with the list of accepted birthyears (and I have to do countless corrections) and this way got to a problem of the update process which probably could be solved with a tool of a programmer?

The problem is: If there is a cast- (or crew-)member only WITH a birthyear and a new profile to be added has the same person WITHOUT birthyear, profiler doesn't create the one but uses the first available one WITH birthyear - and this way the data is wrong as soon as the profile is added.

So it would be neccessary to have every cast & crew WITHOUT a birthyear as soon as there is the same name WITH birthyear in the local database. As there are countless names in each databse meanwhile, I hopefully think that an AddOn could solve this problem within minutes?

It only has one job: Checking the cast- & crew-lists, and whenever it finds a person with BY, the next check is, if the same name is available without BY, and if not: create one!

Is this technically possible? Without causing too much work for you?
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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Registered: March 18, 2007
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Have you checked to see whether existing tools could be of help, and then you would have a bit of work of still  left to do?

For example CLTBoss?

DJDoena's tools?

It is late in the day here, so I will need to re-read your explanation again in the morning.
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 Last edited: by mediadogg
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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For example if you load the profile list with the profiles from your database and the set the variants table to a pair of entries, one with and one without the BY and do the scan. Maybe something like that ...
Thanks for your support.
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMagmadrag
Master of childprofiles
Registered: May 25, 2007
Germany Posts: 453
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@mediadogg: Would you be so kind and give me a link for CLTBoss?

And: Your second post I am absolutely unable to understand.

There are several tools available which can do this and that. A read several descriptions but was not able to find THAT function I (and in my opinion: all users) would need to have. So I started this thread especially for programmers like you who know their tools much better as any description could be.

As I have given up the hope for any update in close future, I try to solve a problem of an extraorginary size.

Just for your imagination: I am not done with letter B of the BY-List (http://www.luigifilocamo.it/BY.html) and had to correct actors in more than 100 profiles. Only a few of them are wrong in the central database, but the rest got wrong by download as I didn't have actors w/o birthyear. Until I am done with the complete list it might last months. And especially then I want to avoid that such mistakes become part of my local database again.
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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Quoting Magmadrag:
Quote:
@mediadogg: Would you be so kind and give me a link for CLTBoss?

And: Your second post I am absolutely unable to understand.

There are several tools available which can do this and that. A read several descriptions but was not able to find THAT function I (and in my opinion: all users) would need to have. So I started this thread especially for programmers like you who know their tools much better as any description could be.

As I have given up the hope for any update in close future, I try to solve a problem of an extraorginary size.

Just for your imagination: I am not done with letter B of the BY-List (http://www.luigifilocamo.it/BY.html) and had to correct actors in more than 100 profiles. Only a few of them are wrong in the central database, but the rest got wrong by download as I didn't have actors w/o birthyear. Until I am done with the complete list it might last months. And especially then I want to avoid that such mistakes become part of my local database again.

Somehow I thought I made CLTBoss for you. My bad. Read about it here:

http://www.invelos.com/Forums.aspx?task=viewtopic&topicID=1003379&PageNum=1
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 Last edited: by mediadogg
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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I have read your description of what this tool would need to do, several times and still don't get it.

Would you mind giving an example or two, using data from existing profiles?
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMagmadrag
Master of childprofiles
Registered: May 25, 2007
Germany Posts: 453
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It is not profile-specific..... but as an example, I'll try it more visually....

I start the tool at any profile (I am quite sure that I need to start it twice, once for cast and once for crew) and the tool checks out all actors in the cast list. Then it reachs an actor with a birthyear:



The tool now sees, that "David Brown" WITH Birthyear already is in the list WITHOUT Birthyear, too. So it can go on in the list. Then it reachs another actor with a birthyear:



So "James Anderson" is only available WITH Birthyear. So now the tool directly goes to



And creates this "James Anderson" WITHOUT a Birthyear



When this is done the tools goes on through the whole list of cast and does the same job for every actory where it is neccessary.
 Last edited: by Magmadrag
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorGSyren
Profiling since 2001
Registered: March 14, 2007
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@Magmadrag:

What you suggest would entail two steps:
1) Create a list of names that have birthyear, but does not have a corresponding non-birthyear entry. A tool that does that is fairly easy to develop.
2) For each such name, create a cast (or crew) entry without a birthyear. This I don't know if it is possible to do through the API.

Even if it could be done, creating a cast/crew entry that is not connected to a profile has its problems. If you do a full database repair, the name will be gone. I think it will survive a basic database repair, but I'm not sure.

However, I believe there is an even bigger problem with your suggestion. Let's take David Brown as an example since you used that name. Presumably the Non-BY actor occurs in fewer movies than the BY actors. So if an update comes down without a BY for an actor that should have a BY, then it will accepted without a BY since there is such a cast entry in your database. Thus you get an incorrect linkage to the Non-BY actor.

Basically this is a design flaw in DVD Profiler itself. There is no way to distinguish between "birthyear known but not (yet) entered" and "birthyear unknown", and I don't see how this can be reliable fixed by a tool at the local level.
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 Last edited: by GSyren
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMagmadrag
Master of childprofiles
Registered: May 25, 2007
Germany Posts: 453
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Quoting GSyren:
Quote:
If you do a full database repair, the name will be gone.


This only happens by a full repair, but with the customized repair, I only have to uncheck the "delete unused cast/crew"

Quoting GSyren:
Quote:
So if an update comes down without a BY for an actor that should have a BY, then it will accepted without a BY since there is such a cast entry in your database. Thus you get an incorrect linkage to the Non-BY actor.


But if the profile I download should have a BY but doesn't and there is no entry with BY available, Profiler automatically uses the first entry WITH BY. So to stay at "David Brown": If I wouldn't have the none-BY-Version and download a new profile with no BY (altough it should have e. g. 1947) then I also get the wrong linkage as profiler then uses "David Brown (1916)"

I am not sure how many people have ever recognized how HUGE this problem is! Like mentioned in former posts: Actually I am working very hard to check and correct the BYs. For some there have been the wrong ones, for countless the BY is accepted and official but most of the profiles including that person never got an update (that's another very huge problem) and this way: It is nice to have the Birthyears, but quite less of the profiles really have them.

But maybe (a very big MAYBE) your suggestion would cause another tool: Similar to the duplicate search something like a "BY-Search". To talk about myself: Whenever I add a new disc, I do this in "ordered". If cast & crew is available, I move it to "owned", if not, I first type them down and then I move it to owned. So to solve that problem you mentioned: A tool which "knows" all the accepted/released BYs and checks all cast & crew in any profile I want it to check if there is any cast/crew WITHOUT a BY but is in the list WITH a BY. So then I know that I have to check this person if I allready have it in my database with one BY or another.

Now I only can hope that the description of the 2nd tool wasn't too complicated. The wrong linkages I am actually cleaning up (and this will last months), and to avoid to new ones, only this 2nd check-up-tool could handle that.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorGSyren
Profiling since 2001
Registered: March 14, 2007
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I whipped up a little program to see if this is something useful to you.
It lists all cast in your collection that does have a birth year, but has no matching non-BY entry.
To keep it simple I just used cast, but if you think it's useful I can add crew too.
BySpecial 1.0
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Gunnar
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMagmadrag
Master of childprofiles
Registered: May 25, 2007
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Thanks a lot! I'll give it a try as soon as possible.
But you say it's a listing "only"? Causing manual work to do the creation?

For sure I don't want to sound outrageous in any way, but just imagine having 20.000+ actoris with a BY.... horrible imagination to create new entries for only 10 % of them
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorGSyren
Profiling since 2001
Registered: March 14, 2007
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Like I said:
Quote:
For each such name, create a cast (or crew) entry without a birthyear. This I don't know if it is possible to do through the API.

So yeah, it's just a listing. If it's no help at all, then sorry!
My freeware tools for DVD Profiler users.
Gunnar
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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Registered: March 18, 2007
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I need to re-read this thread a few more times. The example was perfect. I know the problem is not profile specific, but the tool needs to scan profiles to get to cast and crew, so that's why the example makes sense.

Actually let me take a look at the API more carefully, and see if there is a sneaky way to access the Cast and Crew tables globally by scanning those tables instead of profiles. If so, would that work?

If not, I think I can envision a magic trick:

(1) Scan all profiles and create a dictionary of cast and crew entries.
(2) Scan the dictionary and look for the cases in your example
(3) Using a dummy profile, add the required cast and crew entry, saving the profile each time
(4) When done, delete the dummy profile. The cast and crew entries should remain defined, even though unused the moment.

I will mess around with this someday soon.
Thanks for your support.
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 Last edited: by mediadogg
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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Another idea would be a tool that would show the reverse relationship between cast and crew. Click on a name_BY, and get a listing of all profiles with that name_BY. Then what would you want to do?

Or suppose you click on a name_BY and there are no profiles associated? What would you want to do?

Would you want the list of approved BYs to be involved in these tools somehow? If so, how?
Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMagmadrag
Master of childprofiles
Registered: May 25, 2007
Germany Posts: 453
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Quoting GSyren:
Quote:
So yeah, it's just a listing. If it's no help at all, then sorry!


Well, I wanted to try... but I can't! I would need to export my (whole) collection to xml and export doesn't work anymore. It runs and runs... and at about 99 % the Error-Popup comes... I got an xml but with Zero KB size. So in this case I got no chance to try it.

Is there any chance that the tool opens the "Actors"-File in the programm folder (no idea if the DAT or the IDX is relevant) but this would avoid (the for me impossible) export
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantmediadogg
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Well if you are not interested in my recent comments, I will move on. Gunnar by choice does not write plugins. I do. When / if you decide the exported XML approach does not work, maybe you can take a look at my idea and give me your comments.

By the way, even the API does not have the ability to open the Actors file. I mentioned that I would double check, and I did. If you would like to continue helping understand what you need, I think I know how to write the code.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog.
 Last edited: by mediadogg
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