Unmatched files should still be shown (1 Viewer)

[zeflash]

When you drop a tv show in a watch folder for MPTV-Series, is it listed in the GUI even if it cant be auto matched? Of course not, and I think that is a wise decision.

Well actually when a new file pops up in the watched folders of MPTVSeries, it is scanned as local (always), and if no data is found about it online it stays that way. So technically it is listed, only has no art, no banner, nothing but its name / series / season / episode index / episode name - based on how its filename was parsed.

The fact it is shown is because (and I think that is the key here) there will always be an occurence of a file you won't find a match for - be it some obscure foreign series or movie. And not everyone will be willing to go over thetvdb or movies-xml to enter the proper information.

In MPTVSeries, this unknown series will be shown with just text, but will still be shown and therefore watchable.
In Moving Pictures if I'm not mistaken, ff I have such a movie I can't watch it, which is a problem as then I need to rely on another plugin to have access to it - different location in the skin, different behavior, different look. IMHO, this is a problem.

I believe (and it's been said by others, and you're answered them already) that I was expecting Moving Pictures to be MyVideo on steroids, with basically better UI abilities, auto scanning, auto matching, etc. As you stated, it's not, but it might lean toward it at some point, so I'll be patient and see how it goes

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

zeflash and others

Read the moving picture first post and visit the website and check out the bugs\todo list
For a totally new beta, i thinks it bloody marvelous what it can do already

And again the likes of all the websites the information is scrapped from, has to be supported by users, so no information uploaded, then none available to download

It ain't that hard, i've done the couple i was missing

Regards

 

[Yabba]

I also believe Moving Pictures is not My Videos. For instance, with Moving Pictures we have a incredibly responsive developer who takes into account all the crazy ideas we users suggest. We have a plugin that works more than decently since the earliest beta version and constantly improving. We have great expectations for a near future and a plan everybody can read and know how things are being done. We have now in this plugin things we've been waiting MyVideos to do for years with no success. We have improved versions within weeks, not YEARS. And still people complain...

No, it's not MyVideos. Fortunately.

 

[fforde]

When you drop a tv show in a watch folder for MPTV-Series, is it listed in the GUI even if it cant be auto matched? Of course not, and I think that is a wise decision.

Well actually when a new file pops up in the watched folders of MPTVSeries, it is scanned as local (always), and if no data is found about it online it stays that way. So technically it is listed, only has no art, no banner, nothing but its name / series / season / episode index / episode name - based on how its filename was parsed.

What about all my Simpsons episodes that have no season/episode information in the file name? They are not listed at all.

But I guess that's besides the point. You can't justify a perceived flaw by pointing at someone else that does it the same way. When someone drops a movie into their watch folder then opens up Media Portal and Moving Pictures, the firtst place they will look for their new movie is in the list first displayed to them when they open the plug-in. I can definately see a usability issue if they have to look somewhere else when they realize their new movie is not in the main list.

Maybe we could list unmatched movies (using the file name or the search string parsed from the file name) in the main list but have the text in a (slightly) different color. And when they click the movie to goto the details screen, instead of the traditional details screen you would get a menu to either pick among a list of possible matches or just go ahead an play the movie (without assigning the file to anything).

What do you guys think of this?

EDIT: And by the way thanks for the support Yabba and PD. It means a lot and I appreciate it.

 

[jonaskp]

But I guess that's besides the point. You can't justify a perceived flaw by pointing at someone else that does it the same way. When someone drops a movie into their watch folder then opens up Media Portal and Moving Pictures, the firtst place they will look for their new movie is in the list first displayed to them when they open the plug-in. I can definately see a usability issue if they have to look somewhere else when they realize their new movie is not in the main list.

Maybe we could list unmatched movies (using the file name or the search string parsed from the file name) in the main list but have the text in a (slightly) different color. And when they click the movie to goto the details screen, instead of the traditional details screen you would get a menu to either pick among a list of possible matches or just go ahead an play the movie (without assigning the file to anything).

What do you guys think of this?

EDIT: And by the way thanks for the support Yabba and PD. It means a lot and I appreciate it.

As I've suggested before (and I am sure you remember, but since this topic is about the same, I will re-suggest it here too ) I think the best way is to have an entry first in the database called "Unmatched Movies", and let that entry take the user to a screen where you can see and manage all unmatched movies.
Personally I do not want them to show up in the middle of the list, because to me "Moving Pictures" is a fantastic looking way of browsing your movies - if you go through the list, and see a lot of movies that are unmatched and has no fan-art or Covers, it would kind of ruin it for me.
If you have a movie in "unmatched Movies" that you cannot match online, then you should have an option to add it "as is" - but this should be up to the user, not something that happens automatically. After all, this way it would also be easy to see which of your movies are missing information, so you can go online and update the databases, for the pleasure of yourself and all other users


To the thing about "Moving Pictures" turning into "MyVideos v2", I certainly hope this will not happen. To me "Moving Pictures" (and MP-tvseries) are highly focused on the thing that they do best - Movies (and Tv-series). I do not want to mix in my homevideos or music videos (if I had any) with this. There can be different plugins for this. For all I care, these could be perfect copies of "Moving Pictures", just with another place to fetch the online data. I just think that the way this ought to be going, is towards more, but highly specialized plugins, instead of 2 or 3 big "jack of all trades" ones. This way users can customize their HTPC the way they want, to have the best experience.

When I am at MP Homescreen and click on "Moving Pictures" I want to be taken directly to my movie-collection. When I click at "Music Videos" I want to be taken to my music vidoes. I dont want to click on "Video-files" and be taking to a screen where I have to choose between what kind of video-file I want to look at, and then end up in the right place.



All of this is just my take on it. Also, from what I read about MP 2, it is going to be even more plugin-driven than MP, and I thats why I think "My Way" of doing it synergizes with this.
But I do not have the final answer, just one opionion. Lets get some ideas on the table, so fforde can rip-off the best ones and take full credit of them D), making the best Movie-browsing-plugin ever seen on the face of our tiny planet.


[edit]I went a little overboard in the end, didn't I?
[edit2] Woohoo, post number 101!!

 

[emphatic]

I have my MP setup with both Moving Pictures (for feature films) and My Videos (for the kids, a lot is unlisted in this genre). In my custom AEON menu, I have "Movies" pointing to Moving Pictures and "Kids stuff" pointing to My Videos (set to open the correct share, but also a way to browse unmatched Moving Pictures items if I'm in a hurry). They can co-exist you know.

Emph

 

[zeflash]

But I guess that's besides the point. You can't justify a perceived flaw by pointing at someone else that does it the same way. When someone drops a movie into their watch folder then opens up Media Portal and Moving Pictures, the firtst place they will look for their new movie is in the list first displayed to them when they open the plug-in. I can definately see a usability issue if they have to look somewhere else when they realize their new movie is not in the main list.

Maybe we could list unmatched movies (using the file name or the search string parsed from the file name) in the main list but have the text in a (slightly) different color. And when they click the movie to goto the details screen, instead of the traditional details screen you would get a menu to either pick among a list of possible matches or just go ahead an play the movie (without assigning the file to anything).

What do you guys think of this?

EDIT: And by the way thanks for the support Yabba and PD. It means a lot and I appreciate it.

That'd be perfect. Add an option somewhere that can toggle the fact those unmatched movies are shown or not and everyone will be happy (hopefully).

And even though some people seem to believe I do not think you're doing a great work there, I do. I'm merely expressing concerns about how things are right now. Just a reminder, when I started MPTVSeries, if I hadn't listened to other's opinions it would probably not have gone that far.

Cheers, and (I hate it when people say that to me ) keep up the good work!

 

[piranha]

I kinda drifted off this discussion, because I came to conclusion that I could write a scraper, which would return parsed filename for anything that other scrappers could not found. That would solve my problem of not being able to represent the "home made" movies in the DB.
It would be perfect if the scraper could also include a "category entry", so the scraper would be able to return the "grouping" of the movies if needed.

 

[fforde]

But I guess that's besides the point. You can't justify a perceived flaw by pointing at someone else that does it the same way. When someone drops a movie into their watch folder then opens up Media Portal and Moving Pictures, the firtst place they will look for their new movie is in the list first displayed to them when they open the plug-in. I can definately see a usability issue if they have to look somewhere else when they realize their new movie is not in the main list.

Maybe we could list unmatched movies (using the file name or the search string parsed from the file name) in the main list but have the text in a (slightly) different color. And when they click the movie to goto the details screen, instead of the traditional details screen you would get a menu to either pick among a list of possible matches or just go ahead an play the movie (without assigning the file to anything).

What do you guys think of this?

EDIT: And by the way thanks for the support Yabba and PD. It means a lot and I appreciate it.

That'd be perfect. Add an option somewhere that can toggle the fact those unmatched movies are shown or not and everyone will be happy (hopefully).

And even though some people seem to believe I do not think you're doing a great work there, I do. I'm merely expressing concerns about how things are right now. Just a reminder, when I started MPTVSeries, if I hadn't listened to other's opinions it would probably not have gone that far.

Cheers, and (I hate it when people say that to me ) keep up the good work!

I didn't take any offense by it at all. Constructive criticism is important. If we only used the ideas of the developers on the project for the direction of the plug-in, Moving Pictures would be a lot less flexible and meet the needs of far fewer people. So community interaction and gathering ideas from the user is extremely important to me. If I had money to hire people, I'd probably hire a community manager.

As for the issue at hand, I think leveraging the upcoming filters system might be the best way. So you could have the top level filter include or exclude unmatched files. So that way if you had unmatched files included, they would be in the list like normal with a slightly different text color. When you clicked it, it would take you to a special screen where you can select the correct match, search for new matches, or just play the movie. If on the main screen you had unmatched files excluded (via the config panel) then you would just need to open up the appropriate filter to display a list of all your unmatched movies. Then you could go through the list and manage each one individually. We will have to see what the default will be, including or excluding unmatched files, maybe I will do a poll as time gets closer.

 

[fforde]

I kinda drifted off this discussion, because I came to conclusion that I could write a scraper, which would return parsed filename for anything that other scrappers could not found. That would solve my problem of not being able to represent the "home made" movies in the DB.
It would be perfect if the scraper could also include a "category entry", so the scraper would be able to return the "grouping" of the movies if needed.

Yeah the scraper lets you put data in any field available. So everything you see on the Movie Manager tab, plus a few hidden fields like cover-art path. There is no "category" field right now, but you could populate genre with "unmatched" or something like that.