Sorting behaviour on sequels (1 Viewer)

[RoChess]

I noticed something weird.

• Art of War II: Betrayal, The
• Art of War III: Retribution, The
• Art of War, The

Gets sorted in that same order (I used the sorting field data). But I expect it to look like this inside the view list:

• The Art of War
• The Art of War II: Betrayal
• The Art of War III: Retribution

To make that order work, I have to simply delete the ", The" part from the sorting fields, but is it possible to do this automatic? Sure I can fix it manually, but I would think most users would prefer (even expect) the order with 1st movie at the top.

 

[bodiroga]

Moving Pictures Configuration - About - Advanced Settings - Sorting - Articles for Removal

Here you can edit the articles that you want to be remove, very simple

Regards,

Aitor

 

[RoChess]

I will test that the moment my wife stops hogging the HTPC

It might be a good idea to make this a default entry though, as I expect that a lot of users will want this behaviour by default.

 

[maxx_nantes]

you can also change the "sort by" field manually in the movie details page.
For example, I changed "look who's talking too" to "look who's talking 2" and "look who's talking now" to "look who's talking 3"
Having 2 separate fields (one "sort by" field and one "display" field) you can change this without any problem

Edit : sorry, didn't read your message completely so I missed the last part (and gave you an answer you already knew)

 

[fforde]

I agree with maxx_nantes, changing the sort by field for the individual movies is probably the best way to go unless you want all your movies starting with the word "The" to be filed under T. Which I find very very annoying. Modifying the sort field is very convenient for movie series with oddly named sequels though, like the Indiana Jones series. I generally just modify the sortby field to "indy1", "indy2", etc. As bodiroga stated, you can change how the sortby field is generated, but again, The Matrix will fall under T...

 

[maxx_nantes]

BTW, is there a way to remove the french article " l' " (which might exist in spanish and italian too, at least)
for example, the french title of Ice Age is l'age de glace and the movie is sorted using "lage de glace" as its title (without the " ' " character).

 

[RoChess]

Thanks for the discussion, but let me eleborate on my intentions. The reason most of us use MovingPictures is so things go automatic

So I figured I give a point of view that perhaps an extra configuration option should be added that controls how movies are added so that they sort correctly out of the box. Some people do prefer "The [title]" to be listed under the 'T', and others prefer "[Title]" so that they jump to letter 'A' to find "The Art Of War". A simple checkbox option would be nice to offer users the option between those two, without having to manually correct everything. Both ways are possible, one would be to fill the sortby field with "The [title]" and the other would be to fill the sortby field with "[title]".

It is the current usage of "[title], The" that causes the order problem I tried to convey. Now bodiroga's explanation is probably exactly what I'm looking for, it would ignore ", The" from the sortby field, thereby leaving a sortby entry such as "The Matrix" alone (still haven't been able to test it, as wife is still hogging it).

But going by fforde's example of Indiana Jones, the plugin could have a 'smart' look at the alternative titles and look for numbers at the end of the title or Roman numerals such as IV and autoreplace those with decimal numbers. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" for example has an alternative title "Indiana Jones 4", which could be used to properly sort the entire Indiana Jones series without any manual interaction. Looking for numbers at the end of the title would be important to avoid conflicts with titles were the numbers are part of the title, such as "3 Ninjas". The 4th movie is the only one in that series that has an alternative title "3 Ninjas 4" that could be used in the automatic smart sorting, but in that case maybe the plugin can just log an error that smart-filtering failed, so that for those rare exceptions a manual rename can be applied.

I notice that imdb.com lacks a lot of alternative titles on older movies that could assist in the proper smart filtering, but themoviedb.org seems to be more complete (and can be adjusted with the help of the community easier). Another fallback would be for the smart-filter to look at the Year, because with the exception of Star Wars (only one that pops into my mind) most titles run in a chronological order.

Not everybody might prefer this, so I was hoping for like a "Use smart title sequel sorting" checkbox option in configuration or something.

 

[fforde]

Series ordering is a very personal thing. What about Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Temple of Doom? Where should these be classified on the list? Should they all by under "I" for Indiana Jones? Or should they each be in their proper ordering? What about the Alien series? Is AVP: Alien vs. Predator an official part of that series? Should it be considered a sequel to Predator? Or should AVP and AVP2 be treated as their own series? Or what about Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty? These movies are technically related but I wouldn't call the later a sequel to the former really. And when I was looking for Evan Almighty I would definitely look for it under "E" which makes it difficult to group them.

My point is none of these questions have a "right" answer. Tastes vary wildly on most of these things and many cases there just isn't a good answer to where things should be placed when trying to group by series. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that the majority of websites have little alternate title data and zero series data. Yes some exists on some websites like IMDb, but many many Moving Pictures users do not use this data source. So this means that auto grouping like this would not even work for a large percentage of users.

I am not saying we will not look into this, we plan to investigate and implement movie grouping in the near future (currently scheduled for 1.2). Automatic grouping I think will be pretty tough to do though...

 

[RoChess]

Ok, that clarifies it for me.

And I know the subject is hard, because like you said, personal preference comes into play.

I personally rename all my movies, such as:

• Indiana Jones I: The Raiders Of The Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones II: The Temple Of Doom
• Indiana Jones III: The Last Crusade
• Indiana Jones IV: Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Because I like them grouped and ordered like that, but I understand any hesitation (or ability) to implement that automatic by default.

I guess the lack of filtering inside the "Movie Manager" tab makes it harder, which for me isn't a problem, as I just use the SQLite Browser and use SQL Queries to do my dirty work, but figured it didn't hurt to ask for an implementation into the plugin itself.

You guys have done such an amazing job already with this plugin it's down to nitpicking on the little personal things now :sorry:

 

[fforde]

No worries, it's good to talk through this stuff anyway. Keeps us thinking. As for filtering and sorting in the Movie Manager, this is coming.