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Invelos Forums->General: General Discussion |
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DVDSpot shutting down |
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| Registered: March 18, 2007 | Reputation:  |  Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting CalebAndCo: Quote:
Quoting mediadogg:
Quote:
rating (0-50) is divided by 5 and mapped to Review-Movie
Ratings are not coming over correctly; they show as DVD Review and the numbers don't jibe:
50 > 5.5 
40 > 4.5
35 > 4
10 > 1.5
I'll poke around more tomorrow; I'm sleepy. I'll check the math, but more important - I'm not clear about the sematnics. I thought DVDSpot "Rating" was equivalent to the numerical review for a movie in profiler (0 - 10). It would not be be anything like the MPAAA-Style Rating of DVD Profiler, right? Or am I wrong on this ... Bottom line: what does DVDSPot "Rating" mean? Then we can figure out from there what to do. Regarding the Retailer info, you're right.  Of course you can't put a value that changes with each profile into the Retailer property - doesn't make sense. If I put it into notes, I will probably format it as XML so that it can be easch parsed with Profiler XML output. But I'm still looking for a clever way to stuff it somewhere else that is visible. Edit: Ok, I found the math problem. Profiler wants 0 index (0 - 9). Easy to fix that and put into Revew Movie instead. Now just need to figure what to do with the purchase info. Will stuff into notes if I don't get a better idea. | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 6, 2008 | | Posts: 1,932 |
| | Posted: | | | | Awesome, dogg!
You're interpreting DVDSpot's Rating correctly:
50 = *****
40 = ****
35 = ***1/2
The only other fields I see that could receive the Owned Custom field are Easter Eggs and Other Features. Neither is really a good choice.
This is great stuff! Aside from the Purchase Places (which is unavoidably convoluted), it's fairly straightforward. I hope to come out of this with a simple-as-possible set of instructions to post for my fellow DVDSpot refugees. | | | | Last edited: by CalebAndCo |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting CalebAndCo: Quote:
Awesome, dogg!
You're interpreting DVDSpot's Rating correctly:
50 = *****
40 = ****
35 = ***1/2
The only other fields I see that could receive the Owned Custom field are Easter Eggs and Other Features. Neither is really a good choice.
This is great stuff! Aside from the Purchase Places (which is unavoidably convoluted), it's fairly straightforward. I hope to come out of this with a simple-as-possible set of instructions to post for my fellow DVDSpot refugees. (1) Cool - but let me make sure I understand. Does this mean that your previous comments about the Rating are void, and that what is happing now (numerically) is correct - I just need to remap from Review-DVD to Review-Movie. Is that correct? (2) The Purchase place issue may disappear in the next release 3.5. It has to do with a technical glitch that we needn't get into here. I'm sure that the members of both communities are happy for your efforts to make the process as painless as possible - and any developer appreciates quality debugging! By the way, FYI here are other fields that are personal in nature: Location - nope Slot - nope Tags - nope Events - (Edit: on second thought no - I couldn't find a way to view the Event note ...) ***** Abandoned idea there is a "Note" field. Today are three types of events: "Borrowed", "Watched", "Returned". Events have a user name and timestamp also. I was considering creating a dummy event that uses the Purchase Date timestamp. Notes has been become a general catchall for lots of things - I'm reluctant to put more stuff in. If there were a special kind of event, it can be easily parsed in XML and remapped someday if desired. The Event might be something like: Note = "Purchased UPC#: owned custom contents". Dummy User = "Purchase Events". Eventype = "Watched", Date = Purchase Date. To see these events, Tools\Users\History. ******* Abandoned idea So I will put XML in Notes such as <PurchaseNotes>owned custom contents</PurchaseNotes>. This can be easily be parsed in the Profiler XML at some later date. You would just search for XML nodes: <DVD><Notes><PurchaseNotes>. | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 6, 2008 | | Posts: 1,932 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
Quoting CalebAndCo:
Quote:
Awesome, dogg!
You're interpreting DVDSpot's Rating correctly:
50 = *****
40 = ****
35 = ***1/2
(1) Cool - but let me make sure I understand. Does this mean that your previous comments about the Rating are void, and that what is happing now (numerically) is correct - I just need to remap from Review-DVD to Review-Movie. Is that correct? Sorry; I wasn't clear. Your understanding of the field is correct, but the CSV import is putting it incorrectly (extra 1/2 star) in the wrong field. Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
(2) The Purchase place issue may disappear in the next release 3.5. It has to do with a technical glitch that we needn't get into here. I'm sure that the members of both communities are happy for your efforts to make the process as painless as possible - and any developer appreciates quality debugging! 3.5's in Beta, right? How long does that typically take before a release? That'll be nice for future operations. I'm glad to do my part (and gain some of the benefit as well).  Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
So I will put XML in Notes such as <PurchaseNotes>owned custom contents</PurchaseNotes>. This can be easily be parsed in the Profiler XML at some later date. You would just search for XML nodes: <DVD><Notes><PurchaseNotes>. All that sounds great! |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Thanks. Beta to stable is a toss up. Ken, the Owner/Chief Programmer I'm sure is swamped. See the Beta Release Testing Forum. This time around, not only is he changing the underlying data model (new fields), but he is adding new functions. This has to be coordinated with a mobile version, and on top of that, a new plugin toolkit has to be provided so that plugins can be upgraded. (Edit: and of course the web database and refresh process has to support the new fields and data values.) I haven't even started working on my upgrades.
Anyway, I changed the collection type rules and came up with 550 owned, 1 ordered and 18 in wishlist, from the test database you sent me. Is that correct?
New rules:
IF owned=1 then Profile is put into Owned
IF (source<>"" OR owned date later than 01/01/1900) AND owned=0 then Profile is put into Ordered
Otherwise Profile is put into Wish List
How's that?
Still working on the Rating glitch - can't seem to get rid of the extra 1/2 star ... | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 6, 2008 | | Posts: 1,932 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
Anyway, I changed the collection type rules and came up with 550 owned, 1 ordered and 18 in wishlist, from the test database you sent me. Is that correct? Not bad at all, the Spot says: 553 Owned; 18 Wishlist; 1 Watched (not owned) - ordered is fine for this since Profiler doesn't have a corresponding category. Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
New rules:
IF owned=1 then Profile is put into Owned
IF (source<>"" OR owned date later than 01/01/1900) AND owned=0 then Profile is put into Ordered
Otherwise Profile is put into Wish List
How's that? Good idea. Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
Still working on the Rating glitch - can't seem to get rid of the extra 1/2 star ... What values does the field in Profiler use to represent what Review (rating)? |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting CalebAndCo: Quote:
Quoting mediadogg:
Quote:
Anyway, I changed the collection type rules and came up with 550 owned, 1 ordered and 18 in wishlist, from the test database you sent me. Is that correct?
Not bad at all, the Spot says: 553 Owned; 18 Wishlist; 1 Watched (not owned) - ordered is fine for this since Profiler doesn't have a corresponding category.
Quoting mediadogg:
Quote:
New rules:
IF owned=1 then Profile is put into Owned
IF (source<>"" OR owned date later than 01/01/1900) AND owned=0 then Profile is put into Ordered
Otherwise Profile is put into Wish List
How's that?
Good idea.
Quoting mediadogg:
Quote:
Still working on the Rating glitch - can't seem to get rid of the extra 1/2 star ...
What values does the field in Profiler use to represent what Review (rating)? Got it. Just had to subtract 5. Profiler is base 0, 0 - 9. Uploading 1.03 in a few minutes. Meanwhile, I'll explore where your missing three profiles went and include the fix in the next release or give guidance as to how to prevent it. Ok, available. Edit: Actually, I had figured out the missing ones befofre, and I forgot about it. One flaw in the Import process is that it does not check for duplicates in the imported stream - only duplicates between the incoming stream and the existing database. Duplicate entries in the strean just overlay the new profiles. You have 4 profiles with UPC = 000000000000, and they overlay each other, producing only one profile, hence three appear to be missing. Best way to avoid this is to correct those UPCs inside DVDSpot or the CSV file before importing. You can even lmake the UPC blank, and a manual profile is created for you to edit later. There is also untested code which attempts to recognize the DVD Profiler UPC format for manual profiles and Disc IDs in case the import was a round-trip from data that was imported into DVDSpot from Profiler. This looks like: Manual DVD #{12 digits} - manual profile UPC Example: Manual DVD #000000000001 Disc ID: {16 hex characters} - Disc ID profile UPC Example: DISC ID: A123-B456-C789-D012 | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 6, 2008 | | Posts: 1,932 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
Quoting CalebAndCo:
Not bad at all, the Spot says: 553 Owned; 18 Wishlist; 1 Watched (not owned) - ordered is fine for this since Profiler doesn't have a corresponding category. I was wrong. The watched not owned disc went into Wishlist (which is still fine). The sole ordered was a disc I ordered, but the order was cancelled by the vendor--it still had a source. Anywho, I was able to run the test and reproduce your results. The Reviews (ratings) and the purchase notes look right on. Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
Actually, I had figured out the missing ones befofre, and I forgot about it. One flaw in the Import process is that it does not check for duplicates in the imported stream - only duplicates between the incoming stream and the existing database. Duplicate entries in the strean just overlay the new profiles. You have 4 profiles with UPC = 000000000000, and they overlay each other, producing only one profile, hence three appear to be missing. Best way to avoid this is to correct those UPCs inside DVDSpot or the CSV file before importing. You can even lmake the UPC blank, and a manual profile is created for you to edit later. I wondered what happened to those...  Following your directions, I went back and got them. Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
There is also untested code which attempts to recognize the DVD Profiler UPC format for manual profiles and Disc IDs in case the import was a round-trip from data that was imported into DVDSpot from Profiler. This looks like:
Manual DVD #{12 digits} - manual profile UPC Example: Manual DVD #000000000001
Disc ID: I{16 hex characters} - Disc ID profile UPC Example: IA123-B456-C789-D012 Now, you lost me. No matter. You are a prince among men. Thanks again for all your hard work for my friends and me (and Profiler). |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting CalebAndCo: Quote:
There is also untested code which attempts to recognize the DVD Profiler UPC format for manual profiles and Disc IDs in case the import was a round-trip from data that was imported into DVDSpot from Profiler. This looks like:
Manual DVD #{12 digits} - manual profile UPC Example: Manual DVD #000000000001
Disc ID: {16 hex characters} - Disc ID profile UPC Example: DISC ID: A123-B456-C789-D012
Now, you lost me. No matter.
You're welcome. Actually, there was a slight mistake in the examples. I corrected the quote, and I will correct the original post. In profiler, you can identify a profile by creating a profile ID in one of three ways: (1) UPC and locality, results in a profile ID of UPC.Locality. You can see this in the exported XML, and part of the filenames for cover images. (2) For reasons that I still don't conpletely understand, sometimes the correct UPC.Locality is already legitimately used, or a UPC is not available (certain special promotional packaging). In these cases, you can also create a profile ID by using the DISC ID of the actual DVD media. Profiler has an automated way of doing it by looking at the DVD in the drive. Tools like BuilkEdit allow you to just type it in. The DISC ID is always 16 hexadecimal digits (A ... F, 0 ... 9). This results in a profile ID of I{16 digits}.locality. The "I" serves as a flag to Profiler. The UPC that is derived from this (you can see it in the UPC column) is DISC ID: {16 digits}. (3) In cases where you find the need to create a profile and you don't care about its relationship to the official database, or when the UPC or DISC ID are not readily available, or whatever, you can create a "Manual Profile". Again, Profiler has automated ways to do this, and BulkEdit was designed to make it easier to do things like that. You can create and manipulate manual profiles, clone existing profiles into a manual version, or create a clone using the disc ID of one of the discs in the profile. Manual Profile IDs always start with an "M" and consist of 12 (unique in the database) digits. So Manual IDs look like (example) M000000000035.locality and the drived UPC is MANUAL DVD #000000000035, which again you can see in the UPC field in the collection pane. Bulkedit scans the database quickly and captures the highest manual ID in use, and starts from there whenever it is asked to create a new one. The next release will include allowing you to add a "Profile ID" (either one of the 3 types) to the DVDSpot CSV, so you can pre-define the locality and avoid the editing steps if you want. If present. it will override the UPC and bypass the Locality guessing algorithm. Also, for the Review-Movie, I think I still have a small glitch. I coded a >5, subtract 5, when it should be >= 5, subtract 5. Only affects a Rating of 5. | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 6, 2008 | | Posts: 1,932 |
| | Posted: | | | | Thanks for explaining that.
EDIT: PMing you with instructions I typed out. I'd appreciate if you could skim through them and answer one question. | | | | Last edited: by CalebAndCo |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting CalebAndCo: Quote:
Thanks for explaining that.
EDIT: PMing you with instructions I typed out. I'd appreciate if you could skim through them and answer one question. Ok, I just made 1.04. That should do it, unless more bugs / issues are uncovered. See the BulkEdit thread for details. | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. |
| | Registered: October 7, 2008 |  Posts: 55 |
| | Posted: | | | | Hi mediadogg! Yet another former DVDSpotter here. I've recently given your BulkEdit plugin a go against my own DVDSpot .csv file to see how it works and to scope out any problems I might run into, such as this locality deal which I honestly still don't really understand. It seems to work fairly well except in a few cases where I get no matches on the UPC; I assume this is where the locality comes in. Anyway, the locality part's not the issue; I think I can work around that by flagging the mismatches and changing their localities via the DVD menu. The problem I've been running into is on the "Save Changes" step after verifying the Purchase Place info. I'm getting an "Unhandled exception" error message and I'm not sure what's causing it. The debug message starts with: Quote:
************** Exception Text **************
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index Oh, and FYI, in the interest of full disclosure: I still haven't registered the Profiler software so I've been working with a truncated version of the .csv file to avoid neutering the application. I'll likely register though once I'm comfortable with the import process and with the app itself. Thanks for all the great work you've put into this plugin and for any assistance you can provide with my situation. Let me know if you need more info and I'll do my best to get it to you. |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | @Varrus
Welcome. I'm not sure what you mean by "verifying" Purchase Place Info. What you need to do is to actually CREATE the Purchase Places, using the Profiler Menu Tools\Edit Retailers - otherwise, as my instructions state, you will get nasty errors. The Retailers (a.k.a Purchase Places a.k.a Sources) must be spelled exactly as they appera in the CSV file - case sensitive, spaces and punctuation.
If you do this and still get errors, PM me and I will give you an email address to send a sample so I can debug the situation.
An alternative approach is to elminate complexity. Use MS Wordpad (not Word, not Notepad, not Excel) to edit the CSV file and simplify your sources, maybe using Find/Replace commands. That may help prevent situations that my code doesn't handle. Anyway, keep me posted. You are using a good approach - test the waters before going full steam. | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 7, 2008 | | Posts: 55 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "verifying" Purchase Place Info. What you need to do is to actually CREATE the Purchase Places, using the Profiler Menu Tools\Edit Retailers - otherwise, as my instructions state, you will get nasty errors. The Retailers (a.k.a Purchase Places a.k.a Sources) must be spelled exactly as they appera in the CSV file - case sensitive, spaces and punctuation. Yup, been there, done that.  Sorry, this is what I meant by verifying. I made sure my Retailers matched what was in the .csv when I entered them in through that menu option and then checked that BulkEdit didn't have any mystery sources in the "View my purchase places" menu option before proceeding any further. Although, I just had a thought (Ouch! That hurt!) -- I do have a couple DVDs with no source info at all and a couple others that have no UPC. Could that have something to do with it? Regardless, I'm going to send you a PM. Thanks! |
| | Registered: March 18, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,461 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting Varrus: Quote:
Quoting mediadogg:
Quote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "verifying" Purchase Place Info. What you need to do is to actually CREATE the Purchase Places, using the Profiler Menu Tools\Edit Retailers - otherwise, as my instructions state, you will get nasty errors. The Retailers (a.k.a Purchase Places a.k.a Sources) must be spelled exactly as they appera in the CSV file - case sensitive, spaces and punctuation.
Yup, been there, done that. Sorry, this is what I meant by verifying. I made sure my Retailers matched what was in the .csv when I entered them in through that menu option and then checked that BulkEdit didn't have any mystery sources in the "View my purchase places" menu option before proceeding any further.
Although, I just had a thought (Ouch! That hurt!) -- I do have a couple DVDs with no source info at all and a couple others that have no UPC. Could that have something to do with it? Regardless, I'm going to send you a PM. Thanks! Missing data causes exactly that problem if you don't have the correct number of delimters (comma). So, a record with missing UPC would start with a comma for example, because the first field is empty. Let me check something. I made a quick change to that code to strip blanks that I didn't test - that could be it. Hang on while I check ... Edit: Works fine. Blank UPC is perfectly valid. I create a manual profile for you. I suspect that the missing UPC is also missing the comma delimter. On second/thrid thought, you've made it past CSV parsing by then. That can't be it. If you get as far as succesfully parsed, the data structure must have been OK. Did you look at the log? Any error messages there? | | | Thanks for your support.
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Hey, new product!!! BDPFrog. | | | | Last edited: by mediadogg |
| | Registered: October 7, 2008 | | Posts: 55 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting mediadogg: Quote:
On second/thrid thought, you've made it past CSV parsing by then. That can't be it. If you get as far as succesfully parsed, the data structure must have been OK. Did you look at the log? Any error messages there? Hmm, no, I don't recall seeing any errors in the log. |
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Invelos Forums->General: General Discussion |
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