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    Invelos Forums->DVD Profiler: Contribution Discussion Page: 1... 3 4 5 6 7 ...15  Previous   Next
Credit Name Parsing
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorAddicted2DVD
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Quoting Silence_of_Lambs:
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
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How would something like this (movie based credits) handle something like 2 (or more) movies (or TV Shows for that matter) on a single side of a disc?


TV-Shows wouldn't be that much of a problem, they would be treated exactly like they are now.

Problems might arise for multi feature movie DVDs. I admit I didn't really think of those.
What I'd like to see though is the capability to attach more than one set of credits to a disc. Comparable to the already existing child profiles. But instead of Disc-IDs one could use the title to separate the children.
EDIT: Depending on how far the programmer is willing to implement this, this might even solve the problem with several cuts of one movie on one disc.



This will be a problem for TV Series too. As there is Television releases such as...







...just to show a few... Where the shows on the disc is not from the same series.
Pete
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorNexus the Sixth
Contributor since 2002
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Quoting xradman:
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I would like to also go with film based credits rather than DVD based credits (so we don't have to duplicate effort for all the different localities and releases).  I know there are few exceptions where credits differ based on locality, but benefits would outweigh the downsides.  If there is a simple way to make exceptions, even better.


That would indeed help enormously, but I don't think that was intended for this upgrade, or is it?
First registered: February 15, 2002
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorAddicted2DVD
Registered: March 13, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
United States Posts: 17,334
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Quoting T!M:
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
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he needed to balance the accurate info wanted by the most anal of users with the ease of use for the average user.

And he should stick with that principle. Of course we should realize that "the average user" is not the one painstakingly copying cast and crew verbatim, one by one, from the films credits. The number of users who actually consistently do that is a lot closer to "12" than to "the average user". So yes, there should be a balance between what "the most anal of users" want and what "the average user" wants - as long as we keep in mind what those needs are, exactly.

As far as I can tell, the average user is this one, for example: simply downloading two profiles with the same actor in them and not understanding why they don't automatically link together. That's what the average user want: to download profiles for the films that he owns, and expecting that if he clicks on a name, that it brings up the person's other credits in his database - without having to make a ton of corrections first.


Yes... I believe that is what the end non-contributing user wants... but even Ken said that he also has to think of ease of use for contributors as well.

Quoting Ken Cole:
Quote:
DVD Profiler must walk a fine line between enough accuracy to keep one side of the aisle happy while maintaining ease of use and entry to keep the other, generally somewhat silent and large majority happy.  My development experience is not trivial, and I've been forced to design systems where one person's concept of accuracy has driven the project into the ground, completely unusable to the end users.  I don't plan to make that mistake here.


See what I put in bold. So as long as it can be kept simple and straight-forward... and not mandatory (as some made it sound earlier) great... but he does need to think of this for both sides of use of the program... not just one side of it.
Pete
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorAddicted2DVD
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Quoting KinoNiki:
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Quoting xradman:
Quote:
I would like to also go with film based credits rather than DVD based credits (so we don't have to duplicate effort for all the different localities and releases).  I know there are few exceptions where credits differ based on locality, but benefits would outweigh the downsides.  If there is a simple way to make exceptions, even better.


That would indeed help enormously, but I don't think that was intended for this upgrade, or is it?


I wouldn't think so anyway... As in the OP Ken said...

Quoting Ken Cole:
Quote:
...
Any replacement system must support the base functionality of the current system, and must maintain the linking work that has already been put into our database.
...


... but I am not a programmer so not sure if it would fit in with his requirements or not.
Pete
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorNexus the Sixth
Contributor since 2002
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
Quote:
Quoting KinoNiki:
Quote:
Quoting xradman:
Quote:
I would like to also go with film based credits rather than DVD based credits (so we don't have to duplicate effort for all the different localities and releases).  I know there are few exceptions where credits differ based on locality, but benefits would outweigh the downsides.  If there is a simple way to make exceptions, even better.


That would indeed help enormously, but I don't think that was intended for this upgrade, or is it?


I wouldn't think so anyway... As in the OP Ken said...

Quoting Ken Cole:
Quote:
...
Any replacement system must support the base functionality of the current system, and must maintain the linking work that has already been put into our database.
...


... but I am not a programmer so not sure if it would fit in with his requirements or not.


That is all and well then and hopefully remains as a future path, I don't think one should attempt both changes at the same time anyway as one is difficult enough to achieve.
First registered: February 15, 2002
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorDJ Doena
Registered: May 1, 2002
Registered: March 14, 2007
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I could imagine the following system the accomodate both sides:

You can enter the credits as credited, straight-forward, text-only. No birth year. Just a one-, two- or three-name field. When entered as such these people don't link to anyone. They are just text. If you click on Bruce Willis in Armageddon it won't show you Bruce Willis in Die Hard
You can contribute that and that's it then.

But you can do this too: You can say that this actor entry in that profile is linked to an actor entry in the online actor database (OADB). This online actor entry is very compact. The actor's most credited name* and maybe a birth year (and a gender) to make it easier to spot if we're talking about the same person.
Then this entry in your profile becomes more: You have a "credited as" AND an ID. And if you have other profiles where a guy with the same ID appears, they will link. Now Die Hard will show up when you click on Bruce in Armageddon.

* the most credited name is determined automatically by using all the "credited as" where that actor's ID was used.

What you need for this OADB is a search function where you can type in the name and it'll show you all the actors with that name (ideally considering all "credited as"ses) and then the profiles where that actor appears. If you don't find him/her, you can create a new actor ID which you then link with that entry in your local database.

This actor ID info is also contributable of course.

Hope that was somewhat understandable.
Karsten
DVD Collectors Online

 Last edited: by DJ Doena
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorT!M
Profiling since Dec. 2000
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
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So as long as it can be kept simple and straight-forward... and not mandatory

Keeping it simple and straight-forward is, of course, a must. As for "mandatory", I have no need to make anything more "mandatory" than it is today - mind you: we may well disagree over what exactly is "mandatory" today. Anyway, that doesn't matter now, so I won't be sucked into a back-and-forth about it here. What matters is that I would expect anything to happen here ensure that established name links propagate more easily. As far as I'm concerned, the problem isn't even so much in how we do things, but in the fact that the same wheel has to be invented over and over again for each profile independently. That's  where it all goes awry.  If links are attached to a person's unique ID, rather than to a single profile, that information would be immediately available to everyone with that person in their database, regardless of what region or locality you're in.
 Last edited: by T!M
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorDJ Doena
Registered: May 1, 2002
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Addendum to my previous post:

The transformation from the old to the new linking system could simply be done by creating an ID for every unique actor in the current database, basing it on the distinction of what currently is considered a unique entry, e.g. ID1 = KevinSmith1970, ID2 = KevinSmith1963, ID3 = HelenaBonhamCarter, ID4 = RobertDowneyJr.
Karsten
DVD Collectors Online

 Last edited: by DJ Doena
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorsurfeur51
Since July 3, 2003
Registered: March 29, 2007
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
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Yes... I believe that is what the end non-contributing user wants... but even Ken said that he also has to think of ease of use for contributors as well.

Well, I stopped contributing cast and crew because rules, made to facilitate contribution work, ask for entering enormous mistakes concerning top billed awarded actors. I think the quality of a database is also due to the quality of contributions. Once again, the system must allow simple contributions, but certainly not forbid correction of errors.
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 Last edited: by surfeur51
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorAddicted2DVD
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Not sure what that has to do with anything I said.  But I refuse to get into a debate about correcting errors in this thread as it has too important of a subject to take off topic.
Pete
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorsurfeur51
Since July 3, 2003
Registered: March 29, 2007
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
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Not sure what that has to do with anything I said.


You wrote that a too complicated system makes some contributors fly away.
I answered that a too simple system, leading to enter errors, makes some other contributors fly away.

So Ken has to find an intelligent middle.
Images from movies
 Last edited: by surfeur51
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorAddicted2DVD
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Well... only Ken can decide on where to draw the line. Even when I said that I knew Ken had to decide on that fact.
Pete
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile Registrantlmoelleb
Beer Profiler now!
Registered: March 14, 2007
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Quoting Mark Harrison:
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...
From there you could take it a step further and use a Sounds Like algorithm to find similar names. They're fairly simple to implement.
...

Easy to implement, but not working with names in different languages was my conclusion last time I tried to use this one.
Regards
Lars
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorDarklyNoon
No Godz, No Masterz
Registered: May 8, 2007
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As i do not have much knowledge about programming, I can only state my opinion from the side of the user.

I think I nearly completely agree with xradman's first post, if this is doable, it would fix alot of problems.

The three most important things for me are:

1. Unique cast/crew ID
2. Only one cast and Crew list for a Film, no more DVD based lists. The very few exceptions that we will need to live with are outweighed by the amazing simplicity we would gain.
3. User can change the displayed actors name like he wants to in the local database.

Donnie
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DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorTaro
Registered: February 23, 2009
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Quoting Addicted2DVD:
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Yes... I believe that is what the end non-contributing user wants... but even Ken said that he also has to think of ease of use for contributors as well.

Actually, as a contributor I'd prefer a system that asks me when contributing: "please select which actor this is or create a new one" rather than the current, to me very discouraging, system. My local is very well kept but so different in the mean time from what the online requires (warts and errors and all), that I simply can't bring myself to adapt my local, contribute and readapt back to a correctly linking system for my local.

I'm also thinking of the endles CLT, accepted BY debates and threads we have going now. A unique ID system asks you to do one additional step when submitting, yes, but I think there'll be less troubles afterwards. You won't have to go back and redo finished profiles because all of a sudden The Rock is credited as Dwayne Johnson or because all of a sudden a second Al Pacino pops up and you need to add BY's to existing credits. Now, it's a never-ending updating work and I spend more time updating than actually inputing new profiles. With unique ID's, you have more work from the get-go, but once done correctly, you're all set, no matter how actors change their names or similarly names actors pop up

I think there's a group of users that would say: "gah, even more work for contributions", whereas other contributors conversely will get a new boost, knowing that what they do now is all the more useful than in the older system.
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 Last edited: by Taro
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar Contributorm.cellophane
tonight's the night...
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Quoting DarklyNoon:
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2. Only one cast and Crew list for a Film, no more DVD based lists. The very few exceptions that we will need to live with are outweighed by the amazing simplicity we would gain.

I think this is a good idea. Also, we wouldn't need to necessarily lose the alternate data, if it exists. If a film has different credits in different regions or different formats, we could have alternate cast and crew lists available.
...James

"People fake a lot of human interactions, but I feel like I fake them all, and I fake them very well. That’s my burden, I guess." ~ Dexter Morgan
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