Mover from DVD Profiler - Thanks & feature request

[FromOZ]

Firstly thanks team for a nice, no... let's be more effusive... a great program!

Some background: I have, for personal home network use, completely switched us from Windows to Macs. My wife, daughter and myself. Windows is no more! I have been looking at where Macs were going (BSD Unix base with great UI) and thinking and thinking... then finally Windows Vista was the final straw. I have experience with Windows, Linux & (now) Mac and I'm not going back.

Part of that move was leaving behind DVD Profiler (which sadly has been in beta for almost two years!?!?) and finding a good alternative on the Mac. I looked at Delicious Monster (and found it 'tasty' - but with not much substance) then I happened upon DVDPedia at FindMacStuff.com. After looking at the forum and getting my DVDs imported from DVD Profiler (needed a little cleanup) I now own three Pedias! Enough said!

I like the flexibility of the HTML UI design customisation for info and export templates, and have already customised the 'collection2' info template.

There are a couple of features from DVD Profiler I miss. I see you are already looking at box sets; one other feature I really liked was being able to click on an actor, or cast member's name and then see all other movies they have been in. For example in my DVD Profiler library if I browse to "Das Boot" and click on his name as director I get (from my collection) list showing him as:

1. Air Force One - Director, Producer
2. Das Boot - Director, Screenwriter
3. Enemy Mine - Director
4. The Never Ending Story - Director, Screenwriter

This is nice quick analyis feature to see what people have done in different movies. The smart collection feature in DVDPedia can do something similar but cannot show all crew credits in table view as not all of them are specific fields in main & advanced screens i.e. screenwriter can only be entered as free text in credits window.

Is there any thinking of doing anything along those lines? It affects the structure of the program and XML schema a bit I realise.

[Conor]

Thank you for the post. Glad you found the programs of value. We had looked at doing something similar to what you described; it has been especially mentioned for the full screen view, to switch to more movies with this director or actor.

To be truthful it's a feature that has a low priority since the ability to filter the library provides this feature, albeit with a little more clicking. Entering "Wolfgang Petersen" in the filter will give you all the movies he has a relation to. This filter can even be limited to the credits to avoid the rare case were he might be mentioned in the summary of another movie.
But I like the way the information gets condensed in your version (or rather DVD Profiler's) - thanks for the idea.

We welcome the feedback as we are always improving, at the moment we are focusing on Core Data to make the database fast with thousands of items as well as other interesting features. I am adverse to having to run windows and in fact don't own it. So when I stop by my brother's house next time I will take a look at the feature in DVD Profiler to have a better idea what the competition is up to.

[FromOZ]

But I like the way the information gets condensed in your version (or rather DVD Profiler's) - thanks for the idea.

I am adverse to having to run windows and in fact don't own it. So when I stop by my brother's house next time I will take a look at the feature in DVD Profiler to have a better idea what the competition is up to.

No need, here you go, I did screenshot for you [link removed as Conor has downloaded now]

You can click on any name shown on the screen and it brings up immediate window showing all DVDs the person is in and in what capacity. It's a nice quick way to see what a person has done and sometimes how they change from cast to crew etc.

[Conor]

Thank you for the screenshot.

[bradandbree]

After putting DVDpedia through a few paces with my collection, the first feature request that came to my mind was the same one this board mentioned. I did figure out on my own that I could do it by entering the actor's name in the search box and selecting "credits" from the drop-down menu, but in a perfect world, it would be great to be able to click on a name in the credits area and pull up an instant list of work that actor has done. So I second the request that FromOZ submitted!

By the way, the more I play with this app, the more I love it. Very slick and very powerful.

Thanks,
-Brad