most of my movies have 100 votes, is this normal? (1 Viewer)

[anony]

In the past popular movies had many more votes, but now most movies seem to have exactly 100.

 

[Holzi]

Depends on which scraper you use. IMDb must have way more votes.

 

[fforde]

I assume you are talking about the popularity field? Holzi is right this almost certainly has to do with which scraper you used.

If you want a little more background, the meaning of this field is actually very loosely defined. The only requirement is that more "popular" movies have a higher value and even this is only required for movies imported with the same script. Mostly this is used by the importer for tie breakers when for example you have two movies with the same name.

My point is that the value could vary dramatically from scraper to scraper and it sometimes may not contain anything meaningful to you at all. With some scripts it could even just represent the position in the original search results. In others it could represent the number of people that rated it. So use the field if you find it useful but be aware that your mileage may vary based on the script you use.

 

[RoChess]

It can also be that the movie has not yet had any votes.

Some scraper-scripts then do not overwrite the 100-or-less popularity-search value used in the search-node to determine which title match is a better pick. Almost all movies that get auto-approved have a popularity search value of 100, which is why you have so many entries like that. If you have other movies that imported fine with popularity value matching the amount of users who submitted their vote, then most likely that is what is happening.

IMDb+ uses the average of 3 rating sources by default, so it can cope with that situation a little easier. It also by default filters out ratings with less then 20 votes, to prevent those terrible movies from entering your custom categories because the movie-crew gave it a 9.8 average.

 

[fforde]

The details versus search node thing you mention is not really relevant Rochess, if both are populating the Popularity field then both should be populating it with the same value. You're right about the reason for so many 100s though. Many scripts rank movies by the order they are returned in search results counting down from 100. A lot of 100s just means that the script is working well.

The real issue is the perceived vs. actual purpose of this field and this is why I left it hidden for several years. The Popularity field's meaning is just not always the same in every case and using any label at all for it generally will be confusing to a lot of users.

 

[anony]

I assume you are talking about the popularity field? Holzi is right this almost certainly has to do with which scraper you used.

I was talking about the number of "votes" after the 0-10.0 rating. Are we talking about the same thing? In the past I saw movies with hundreds of thousands of votes. My settings are default. How do I change the scraper?

 

[fforde]

Yes Anony we are talking about the same thing. Whoever created your skin should not have been labeling that value as the number of votes. As I explained above it can mean many different things. If you'd like to try to adjust your scrapers you can launch a popup from the bottom of the Importer Settings tab. You could try picking the scraper you want from there then send everything back to the importer in the Movie Manager.

Honestly though I think that's just a lot more trouble than it's worth. You could hack something together but the bottom line is that field is really only meant for internal use. It doesn't always mean the number of votes.

 

[RoChess]

@anony, what scraper-script is being used? You can verify this by opening up MovPic config and goto first tab and select one of the movies in the list. On the right side it will show all the info then and down at the bottom of that info it will show you what scraper-script was the primary source to obtain this information.

If this is the default IMDb scraper, then yes, it should have replaced the search-node value (that is mainly 100) within the details-node with the amount of users who voted with their rating (well above 100 for most movies).

This functionality has been part of the default IMDb scraper-script since v0.8 as per: http://code.google.com/p/moving-pic...DataProviders/ScraperScripts/IMDb.xml&old=136 (@fforde, this is why your comments confused me so much)

Support inside Default/DefaultWide skin to show this value was added like 2 years ago and many other skins support it as well. So the fact it keeps showing '100' for you either means you stumbled upon a bug inside the default IMDb scraper-script that fails to properly replace the search-node value, or your movies are scraped by a scraper-script that has no support for it.

So please report back to ensure your movies are indeed scraped by the default IMDb scraper-script (there has been a breaking change recently, so if you did not update MovingPictures this would explain things) and that your movies did not get imported by say TheMovieDb scraper-script, which I'm not sure on supports the popularity-tied-to-rating system (and would therefore show '100' for most movies).

If you notice that IMDb+ was used as your scraper-script and it failed to show a proper popularity-rating-based value, then let me know at: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/moving-pictures-284/imdb-scraper-98978// , but that would be a weird issue then as it works fine for me (just tested it on a new movie).

 

[anony]

RoChess: I assume "primary source" is the scraper information. Indeed it says themoviedb instead of imdb. I think I was able to see higher numbers of votes without doing anything here until some time ago.

How do I send all movies back to the importer? I can select one movie and select send to importer, but if I select all movies, that option is grayed out.

Update: I put imdb.com at the top of my Data Sources list, then deleted the movies, then re-imported them, but my movies still say themoviedb.org as the primary source. What am I doing wrong?

 

[RoChess]

Update: I put imdb.com at the top of my Data Sources list, then deleted the movies, then re-imported them, but my movies still say themoviedb.org as the primary source. What am I doing wrong?

The filename could result in a title that IMDb website is unable to find a match on. That is when MovingPictures automatically goes to the next scraper-script and asks it "can u find one?".

There has however also been a breaking change at the IMDb website that makes any IMDb website based scraper script fail to find any search results, unless they have been updated. So be sure to update MovPic to the latest version as this will also update the default IMDb scraper-script. The IMDb+ plugin auto-updated the IMDb+ scraper-script for everybody to solve this problem, but for the default IMDb scraper-script you have to manually take action.

Keep in mind that IMDb website is sometimes slow in adding some movies that quickly get an entry at TheMovieDb. If you are into UK stand-up comedy you will quickly realize that IMDb website is far from perfect then and TheMovieDb is a real lifesaver then.