Moving Picture Public Beta: 0.5.4 (2 Viewers)

[funkstar]

Not sure if this has been mention yet, but i cant import any .vob movies. I have all of my movies ripped into folders, for example X:\Back To the Future\VIDEO_TS\then the files. Anyone else having this problem?

Direct DVD rips aren't supported, see this issue:
Issue 40 - moving-pictures - Google Code

And closely related:
Issue 66 - moving-pictures - Google Code

Although single file DVD images will come sooner:
Issue 49 - moving-pictures - Google Code

Hope this helps

 

[revs]

Just a suggestion for the loading of artwork slowing down performance - I have noticed that what other applications fo (e.g. photo browsers) is store and load a small low res version of the image first, and then the full res one.

So depending on the speed of the PC, you see the low res image very quickly and then the higher res one. so if you scroll quickly you would see the lower res images briefly, and once you stop on an item you see the high res one.

just an idea!

 

[fforde]

I am working on a scriptable dataprovider (scraper) right now. This is mainly to address downtime issues with the existing data sources. Right now, when they go down you can't scan any new movies. This next update will give you a few alternative sources. This release is about a week away. After that is a bug fix release that will take maybe another week. Then we will start to get int some new enhancements. You can see detailsof what will be in each release on the issue tracker. The work items are categorized by (among other things) targeted version.

So, will the "backup" scrape create an id in the database that the plugin "sees" and then updates from the favoured provider as it gets available again?

Something like "scrape quality = 1/0"?
Emph

That's a good idea. I think at first it is unlikely though, you would have to manually refresh the data whenever the data source is back up from either the details screen in the GUI or the config. The "backup" by default will be IMDb though so the quality should be pretty good. For now though I think I am going to leave the default primary source movie-xml.com though. I would really like to encourage the community aspect of all this. Scraping IMDb is all well and good so long as they don't ask us to stop scraping... To me though scraping IMDb or any other commercial site is not a long term solution.

In the next release, along with the new data providers, I am going to try to have a new panel on the config screen to set the priority of each data source though, as well as the ability to turn individual providers on/off if you don't want to use them (like OFDb for english speaking users).

fforde, does the plugin support the animation control (either by itself or general MP)
I was thinking about the missing artwork and perhaps (both learning experience for me and feature for (any) skin) to do this with an animation with overlay of colordiffuse. The diffuse would take the edge of of the backdrop, as it is not the backdrop for the selected movie.
Path would be hardcoded for now.

General animation attributes for controls should work, but to get your skin to do just what you want, some plug-in changes may be needed. For example to fade from one backdrop to another, the only way I have thought of to do this so far is to have two backdrop image controls, and alternate visibility, with a visibility changed animation to fade in and out. I will do this in a future enhancement release (maybe 0.5.7), but I want to knock out a few bugs and usability issues first.

Just a small improvement suggestion. The default size for ignoring sample files is 100 MB. Many HD sample files are just above that, about 101 MB to 105 MB. Why not raise the default value to something like 150 MB?

Fair enough. We'll change the default. 150mb is still pretty small.

finally got around to trying this great plugin, works pretty good already!
one thing though, i´m not getting any dvdcovers. it did download several backdrops but the cover folders remain empty. trying the "update coverart from online sources" button didn´t help either. getting it manually by copying and pastin the url did work however...but doing that for all the movies would take ages

Did you get this figured out? You can verify if a movie's artwork is available online by going to movie-xml.com and looking the film up. You need to have an account to view the covers through the HTML interface. If you find that you have movies that are not loading cover-art, but HAVE cover-art at movie-xml.com, could you create an issue on the bug tracker and attach your logs? See my sig for details.

Just a suggestion for the loading of artwork slowing down performance - I have noticed that what other applications fo (e.g. photo browsers) is store and load a small low res version of the image first, and then the full res one.

So depending on the speed of the PC, you see the low res image very quickly and then the higher res one. so if you scroll quickly you would see the lower res images briefly, and once you stop on an item you see the high res one.

just an idea!

Great idea! I will definately use that. There is already an issue to beef up the responsiveness in the GUI with backdrops, so I added the idea to the comment thread there.

 

[Yabba]

Myself I like the behaviour in this last release... I prefer keeping the last loaded backdrop while browsing quickly insted of having a lot of backdrops (either full or low res) quickly changing. But, as everything, it's just a question of taste...

 

[Darre]

Myself I like the behaviour in this last release... I prefer keeping the last loaded backdrop while browsing quickly insted of having a lot of backdrops (either full or low res) quickly changing. But, as everything, it's just a question of taste...

+1

But I guess we could have both, would only require a tickbox to select which you want in setup?

 

[mcbelly]

Hi,

I´m still having problems identifying movies with short names and multiple answers ( The One, Leon,..). Although they can be found on movie-xml, the plugin doesn´t recognize them. Since these are very few movies, how about a possiblity to enter the movie-xml ID, and force a match ? Shouldn´t be too difficult...

The rest works just fine for me !

cheers
mcbelly

 

[Yabba]

But I guess we could have both, would only require a tickbox to select which you want in setup?

Sure, but it would be a little less "works out of the box". I mean, it's supposed to be something that requires very little knowledge from the user, if we have a lot of choices it would increase difficulty. On the other hand, it would also increase versatility. Myself I don't have a problem with a setup utility, in fact I prefer having many choices to customize my settings, but many would have...

 

[daHive]

i think i figured it out(could´ve looked at the log files before ):
it seems like it´s a problem with kaspersky´s banner blocker. when kaspersky´s active the covers all fail the the minimum size requirement for coverart. i was already thinking it could be something like this(since it happened with tvseries-plugin too) but adding moviebackdrops.com, movie-xml.com and meligrove.com to the white list didn´t work as planned(gonna try around with the site names a bit). completely deactivating kaspersky did the trick though

edit:
had a typo in an adress in the kaspersky white list, works fine now

 

[cyberfix]

I made a few changes to the configuration screen because it just irritated me to no end to have a popup box to see a value and to change a value. With the changes that I made, you can select a value with a single click and it will show the description and the value at the bottom. If you double click the item, it will go into edit mode at the bottom. No more popups! Also, I could not take the dark background for the text, but I only changed it on the configuration tab as an example. A screenshot is included showing the changes along with a patch sourcecode file for fforde.

If anybody wants to try it, I am including the DLL compiled with the changes. Just backup your existing "MovingPictures.dll" in your "plugins\windows\" directory and put this one in there overwriting it. Please provide feedback as to the preferred method of configuring so that fforde can incorporate the changes if they are preferred.

By the way, cool plugin so far fforde (John)!

 

[fforde]

Hi,

I´m still having problems identifying movies with short names and multiple answers ( The One, Leon,..). Although they can be found on movie-xml, the plugin doesn´t recognize them. Since these are very few movies, how about a possiblity to enter the movie-xml ID, and force a match ? Shouldn´t be too difficult...

The rest works just fine for me !

cheers
mcbelly

It probably wont be in the next version, but in the near future you will be able to search by IMDb ID, which should eliminate the issue. Armandp has the issue tagged, so when he gets back from vacation I will talk to him about how much work he thinks it will be. If we can get it sqeezed into a sooner release we will do it.

Also in the next version there will be an IMDb scraper added in as a new data provider, and you should get better results from that.

But I guess we could have both, would only require a tickbox to select which you want in setup?

Sure, but it would be a little less "works out of the box". I mean, it's supposed to be something that requires very little knowledge from the user, if we have a lot of choices it would increase difficulty. On the other hand, it would also increase versatility. Myself I don't have a problem with a setup utility, in fact I prefer having many choices to customize my settings, but many would have...

I am not opposed to that kind of configuration setting, so long as it's not a decision the user has to make before the plug-in works. If they install it and two weeks later realize, "Hey, I can change this and I like it better this way!" great. By default it should be functional and elegant though. For 0.5.6 when working on the GUI performance with fan-art I will see about adding a toggle option for this behavior though.

I made a few changes to the configuration screen because it just irritated me to no end to have a popup box to see a value and to change a value. With the changes that I made, you can select a value with a single click and it will show the description and the value at the bottom. If you double click the item, it will go into edit mode at the bottom. No more popups! Also, I could not take the dark background for the text, but I only changed it on the configuration tab as an example. A screenshot is included showing the changes along with a patch sourcecode file for fforde.

If anybody wants to try it, I am including the DLL compiled with the changes. Just backup your existing "MovingPictures.dll" in your "plugins\windows\" directory and put this one in there overwriting it. Please provide feedback as to the preferred method of configuring so that fforde can incorporate the changes if they are preferred.

By the way, cool plugin so far fforde (John)!

Wow, thanks cyberfix! I will take a look at the changes in detail tonight and will try to get this integrated for the next release. Always glad to have another programmer willing to help out!