Title preference regarding series (1 Viewer)

Movie series: use original imdb title or altered

  • Keep original imdb.com title

    Votes: 6 21.4%
  • Use altered title with Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc)

    Votes: 5 17.9%
  • Use altered title with decimal numbers (1, 2, 3, etc)

    Votes: 14 50.0%
  • No preference

    Votes: 3 10.7%

  • Total voters
    28
  • Poll closed .

RoChess

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    I'm interested to find out what the preference is amongst MovingPictures users on title naming when it comes to a movie series.

    Use original imdb.com titles, such as for example Alien:

    • Alien (1979)
    • Alien³ (1992)
    • Alien: Resurrection (1997)
    • Aliens (1986)

    Alter title to make the group link more obvious with Roman numerals:

    • Alien I: Alien (1979)
    • Alien II: Aliens (1986)
    • Alien III: Alien³ (1992)
    • Alien IV: Resurrection (1997)

    Or with decimal numbers:

    • Alien 1: Alien (1979)
    • Alien 2: Aliens (1986)
    • Alien 3: Alien³ (1992)
    • Alien 4: Resurrection (1997)

    PS: The Roman numerals should still use decimals in the sortby field, because otherwise you run into sort problems with 9 = IX, getting sorted before 5 = V.

    The above example is actually a bad one, because each title already bears some reference to the original 'Alien' movie, and it would only be hard to find them if you have a lot of movies that also have the word 'Alien' in their title. However there are plenty of series, James Bond for example, where there is normally not a common grouping in the official title (AKA is a different story).

    Thank you for participating.
     

    ltfearme

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    I prefer decimal so that the 'title' is left aligned and looks nicer in GUI.
     

    kiwijunglist

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    I liked roman numerals, but when you raise the alignment issue then i think decimals would be better. You should use starwars as an example, because then the dates are out of order =) ... Also in moving pictures GUI we don't see the year in the title do we?
     

    RoChess

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    • #4
    With decimal number you also run the risk (albeit it much lower) of titles not alligning properly, such as with the James Bond series that is in the 2-digits, though I guess that can be solved with an added option to allow for zero-padding, so you get 01 to 99.
     

    kiwijunglist

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    true, but it's pretty rare that a movie series has >9 movies. Where are you getting the movie grouping info, is it from imdb or the moviedb?
     

    RoChess

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    true, but it's pretty rare that a movie series has >9 movies. Where are you getting the movie grouping info, is it from imdb or the moviedb?

    This was just a curiosity right now, which could settle a title rename battle on MovingPicturesSocial later when it goes public, as to see where public concensus lies at.

    And eventually assist in a possible MovingPictures solution (which is an existing ticket). In that ticket, I've suggested that the imdb movie relationship information could be used for an automatic way, but this will require a change in both MovPic for dbase field support and the IMDB scraper, so that is most likely not going to happen anyday soon.

    So this was more of an inquiry ahead of time, to make things easier down the road :)
     

    RoChess

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    • #8
    there is a link on the page to here

    The Twilight Saga — TMDb

    PS. This example is not taken from my own collection...

    Sure, sure, you could have taken:

    The Matrix Trilogy @ http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/2344
    Star Wars Collection @ http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/10
    Indiana Jones Collection @ http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/84
    James Bond Collection @ http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/645
    or even Harry Potter @ http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1241

    And you went with the Twilight Saga instead :D

    But on a serious note, do you know if TheMovieDb offers a search method to find those collections without having to stumble on the link from a movie details page? Because then a seperate system could be made that simply collects all those collections and MovPic can simply match them up with the ones you have (simple SQL statement).

    Otherwise somebody would have to rescrape their entire collection to obtain this information from the movie details pages (after MovPic adds support for it). At least TheMovieDb scraper can then be updated as well to support this system, so that is very good to know.

    Example of the way imdb.com does movie relationships with James Bond @ Casino Royale (2006) - Movie connections

    Let me know if you find a way to search or even better list all those collections at TheMoveDb.
     

    kiwijunglist

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    hanging out with too many girls lately...

    I am not aware of any page on themoviedb that lists every movie connection/series.

    Looks like you have to scrape the series/connection data whenever you add a movie to the database.

    This is probably the best way forward anyway, otherwise you'd still have to regularly scrape a page that lists all the series to keep that data up to date with new movies as the come out.

    PS. Both imdb and themoviedb have the same data except the moviedb gives the collection a title eg. "James Bond Collection" or "The Twilight Saga" , so i think getting the information from moviedb might be better.

    _________________

    I just thought of another consideration

    If you rename the title of the movie to include the movie series name then the movie titles will be too long to be displayed nicely in a list.

    eg.

    The Twilight Saga: 1 Twilight
    The Twilight Saga: 2 New Moon
    The Twilight Saga: 3 Eclispe

    will look like this

    The Twilight Sag...
    The Twilight Sag...
    The Twilight Sag...

    when you scroll through your movies. The other disadvantage would be that New Moon is now listed under 'T' instead of 'N' as one might expect.

    Possible ways around it

    1. movie title is not renamed but movies are sorted according to the movie series title. This isn't as good as option 2;
    for example the movie New Moon is stored under 'T' so I can't find it under 'N' as expected.

    2. You have a special entry in the movie list when you scroll which is the movie series name, when you click this entry, a pop up dialog box comes up with all the movies in that series and you can select one of the movies. The movies are still all listed in the regular manner as well.

    3. You have a sort of dummy title entry in the movie list which is the movie series name, this entry is not clickable, the entry below would be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd movie in the series and so forth. This isn't as good as option 2;
    for example the movie New Moon is stored under 'T' so I can't find it under 'N' as expected.

    I would prefer option 2. because it doesn't really change the way the user interacts with the movie list. I can still find the movie by scrolling to the movies original name in the usual alphabetical manner. However I can also access the movie series by clicking on the movie series title.
     

    RoChess

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    • #10
    hanging out with too many girls lately...

    I just thought of another consideration. If you rename the title of the movie to include the movie series name then the movie titles will be too long to be displayed nicely in a list.

    Your skin must be extremly restrictive then, Blue3Wide allows a lot of room for movie titles for me.

    However somebody else did some Photoshopping on the forum and came up with what I think would work when the feature eventually gets implemented, and that is:

    64670d1278550669-organizing-movie-series-movingpictures_seriesalt.jpg


    That way the indented movie titles can remain shorter, so you get something like:

    Alien Collection
    Alien
    Aliens
    Alien³
    Resurrection​

    Could possibly even add an option then to collapse those collections by default, so that browsing your collection is easier. Say you have all 23 bond movies that exist (I count the Never Say Never Again one as part of the James Bond collection), then browsing through your collection is easier when you only have to skip the single "James Bond Collection" entry, but when you are in the mood for some 007 action you expand the collection.

    PS: I personally rename movies to match them to the same letter, because otherwise I can't find them. So I expect 'New Moon' to be under 'T', and when I actually look for a movie direct knowing part of the title, I would use SMS-style locating, by typing in 'Moon', instead of browsing to 'N' or 'T'.
     

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