DVDPedia 4.5 ... question and a concern

[sitenoise]

I noticed these two items in the What's New:
# Varying cover size in full screen display
# IMDb plug-in update: personal rating included if logged in

but I have no idea how to play with either one.

Also, since this update, I'm getting about a 25% fail rate when dragging an IMDb URL onto the DVDPedia icon in my dock. I have to force quit and re-open. The offending title has always added properly after that. Any ideas? This was a 'once in a blue moon' occurrence before.

[Nora]

You can check out the new varying cover size in the full screen view by pressing Command-Option-U. (To leave full screen view, press Command-Option-U again or hit Esc.)
The IMDb plug-in has been enhanced for users who have an account on the IMDb website so now when they are logged in at imdb.com, their personal movie rating is downloaded when they download IMDb information to DVDpedia.

For the problem with the IMDb URLs, could you have a look at your console log, see if there are any messages from DVDpedia? You can access the console log via the application 'Console', located inside your Applications/Utilities. The newer messages are towards the end of the log. Also, please let us know a few sample URLs that caused the program to lock up so we can try to reproduce the problem here.

[sitenoise]

Oh man ... not a big deal but I'm not fond of either 'improvement', and they aren't what I was hoping they were. For the IMDb rating, I don't want MY rating in that field. I want to know what the masses think. I have the stars for my rating and I like to see how they differ. Oh well, I was actually hoping, quite unrealistically, that it would some how sync my DVDPedia rating to my IMDb account, as I tend to rate things more frequently in DVDPedia.

For the full screen view, I was hoping for really full screen size images. That's what I thought 'varying' meant, not that the sizes would vary from one to another but still be roughly the same size as they have always been. I liked the 'neatness' of them all being the same size. No big deal though.

A few that titles that I recall hanging until a force quit are:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808332/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090728/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240493/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069733/

7/12/09 11:55:24 AM DVDpedia[65356] Advertise
7/12/09 11:58:08 AM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xacfacf].com.bruji.dvdpedia[65356]) Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 65388 PPID 65383 sleep
7/12/09 11:58:08 AM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xacfacf].com.bruji.dvdpedia[65356]) Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 65383 PPID 1 bash
7/13/09 10:03:13 AM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xad3ad3].com.bruji.dvdpedia[65398]) Exited: Terminated
7/13/09 12:06:59 PM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xb16b16].com.bruji.dvdpedia[66189]) Exited: Terminated
7/13/09 4:08:49 PM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xb24b24].com.bruji.dvdpedia[66274]) Exited: Terminated
7/13/09 4:49:25 PM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xb4eb4e].com.bruji.dvdpedia[66524]) Exited: Terminated

[kbarnes70]

For the full screen view, I was hoping for really full screen size images. That's what I thought 'varying' meant, not that the sizes would vary from one to another but still be roughly the same size as they have always been. I liked the 'neatness' of them all being the same size. No big deal though.

I have to say, I agree with you. They just look messy now. Maybe we could turn this feature on and off in a later version?

Regards,

Keith

[noribori]

(Poster seize in full screen mode is varying):
This is a feature I was asking for. I have a lot of older movie posters with very different proportions. In full screen mode those posters were squeezed unproportionally to fit into the standard rectangle and thus looked miserable.
Now it's much better, but some of my long format posters even reach beyond the text (the 2 posters on the right side are positioned before the text, the other posters on the left are behind the text). But these are rare exceptions, therefore I still prefer the new way.
Nevertheless, I wonder why it's not done the same way as in the normal cover view: there the posters are scaled down proportionally until they have the same height. Why are they scaled to have the same width in full screen mode now? Why two different methods?

[kbarnes70]

(Poster seize in full screen mode is varying):
This is a feature I was asking for. I have a lot of older movie posters with very different proportions. In full screen mode those posters were squeezed unproportionally to fit into the standard rectangle and thus looked miserable.
Now it's much better, but some of my long format posters even reach beyond the text (the 2 posters on the right side are positioned before the text, the other posters on the left are behind the text). But these are rare exceptions, therefore I still prefer the new way.
Nevertheless, I wonder why it's not done the same way as in the normal cover view: there the posters are scaled down proportionally until they have the same height. Why are they scaled to have the same width in full screen mode now? Why two different methods?

Hi - I sympathise with your POV on this. I;d be more than happy if it was user-configurable. Or, as you suggest, scaled to the height. It's a nit-pick I think because the program is so brilliant in almost every way - we probably expect perfection!

Regards,

Keith

[sjk]

For the IMDb rating, I don't want MY rating in that field. I want to know what the masses think. I have the stars for my rating and I like to see how they differ.

Same here.

Oh well, I was actually hoping, quite unrealistically, that it would some how sync my DVDPedia rating to my IMDb account, as I tend to rate things more frequently in DVDPedia.

Or, I was thinking it might translate the personal IMDb rating into a DVDpedia star rating.

[sitenoise]

Another url that is punting as we speak:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087544/
7/14/09 12:07:41 PM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xb82b82].com.bruji.dvdpedia[67031]) Exited: Terminated

Force quit/relaunch and it adds just fine.

[sitenoise]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/



Could this have something to do with sleeping external drives? Just a hunch. It feels like the app has gone to sleep too.

7/17/09 8:15:21 AM [0x0-0xbe2be2].org.mozilla.camino[67816] Debugger() was called!
7/17/09 8:15:37 AM kernel m6b057295
7/17/09 8:17:12 AM /usr/sbin/spindump[69827] process 67394 is being monitored
7/17/09 8:17:14 AM /usr/sbin/spindump[69827] process 67394 is being force quit
7/17/09 8:17:17 AM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xbc4bc4].com.bruji.dvdpedia[67394]) Exited: Terminated
7/17/09 8:20:37 AM kernel m6b057295
7/17/09 8:21:32 AM /usr/sbin/spindump[69833] process 69831 is being monitored
7/17/09 8:21:34 AM /usr/sbin/spindump[69833] process 69831 is being force quit
7/17/09 8:21:37 AM com.apple.launchd[119] ([0x0-0xc99c99].com.bruji.dvdpedia[69831]) Exited: Terminated


Force quit/relaunch had to be done twice and then it adds just fine. I woke up an external drive after second fail.

[Alex]

Sleeping external drives should not have anything to do with this unless your pedia data is on the external drive. Or maybe the app is there? If you have nothing connected to the pedia on that drive then it shouldn't affect you.

Having said that though, I have run into weird problems with external hard drive like my Mac not waking from sleep when there is an external firewire drive connected to it. But nothing like you are describing.

[sjk]

7/17/09 8:15:21 AM [0x0-0xbe2be2].org.mozilla.camino[67816] Debugger() was called!

Thanks for sharing that, inspiring me to find out those "Debugger() was called!" messages are generated by Flash Player 10, probably unintentionally left in by Adobe. I'd been noticing them when running Safari and Camino.