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yan00s
Moderator
405 Posts |
 Posted - 04 Aug 2013 : 14:43:31
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There are few things which bother me when it comes to cover / image related features in XMM 8 so here's a list (inspired by Sahphir  ) of my wishes:
[1] Customizable file name patterns
Status quo: At the moment, it's not possible to actually customize the naming scheme for images. XMM7 at least had an "Picture Mask" option. It was imperfect but it was something. I know there's a config.ini entry left over but it's not enough. Also, XMM uses at least three different patterns internally which doesn't help either. Also, as a buglike feature, episode pictures won't get checked for existence but always seem to get a new (incredibly silly) file name.
Why I want some changes: First it's in my blood. I love it when things are well organized. It's the illusion of control.  Then it would make things easier for extended usage scenarios if I'd have human readable cover names and such. And last but not least it would just look prettier (pretending XMM's a lady  ).
What I want:
- a set of constructors for file names
for Covers (front, back, fanart, screenshots)
[Title] [Original title] [MovieYear] [MovieId] [Director]
additionally for Episodes
[Series Title] [Season ##] [Episode ##] [Episode Title] [Air Date]*
* ... I want to be able to set the air date format.
for Artists
[Name] [SortName] [Year of Birth] [PeopleID]
- freedom to construct "my" file names with additional characters (as long as those are allowed by the operating system), for instance:
<_> <(> <)> < >* <[> <]> <.> <x>**
* ... spaces - it's perfectly legal to use those in a file name and there's no reason to always replace 'em with dashes
** ... any letter allowed - may it be Upper or lower case
- freedom to select constructors and identifiers for related cover types (fanart, screenshots)
constructor+identifier: a (pre-defined but changeable) option field like
_fanart
-screenshot
Examples:
Cover:
My movie title (1910).jpg
Fanart:
My movie title (1910)-fanart.jpg
Episode cover:
[The Great Series] Another fine episode - 5x07.jpg
Artist:
Moore, Roger (b. 1927).jpg
[2] A dedicated (sub-) folder for episode pictures
It would be nice if it would be constructable pathes like for covers, for example
..._covers
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series
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Series one (1955)
Series two (2013)
...
but it would be ok if it were just the "series" subfolder. |
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Edited by - yan00s on 04 Aug 2013 14:44:49 |
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JDommi
Administrator
Germany
4655 Posts |
Posted - 04 Aug 2013 : 15:15:54
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Additionally to this something I have asked for a long time ago:
Why not combining those database columns for cover (front, back, fanart, screenshot, are what ever else...) into only one column that contains only the suffix?
As example "My movie title (1910)" and for the different categories on the HTML Card you only have to add _[category].
Same for the script command #TAKECOVER# instead of #TAKEFANART#, #TAKESCREENSHOT# etc. Thus you have to add the _[category] in script code.
This brings two big advantages:
1. instead of 4 columns (present status quo) you only have one column -> less waste of database filesize and memory usage!
2. it will be easy to add more (user defined) categories.
As benefit you have same name convention for all pics.
Episodes could be handled similar.
And Actors - maybe with appended _actor or _character or _director...
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In order to achieve what is possible, you have to try the impossible over and over again.
Hermann Hesse |
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yan00s
Moderator
405 Posts |
Posted - 04 Aug 2013 : 15:53:52
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quote:
Originally posted by JDommi
Additionally to this something I have asked for a long time ago:
Why not combining those database columns for cover (front, back, fanart, screenshot, are what ever else...) into only one column that contains only the suffix?
As example "My movie title (1910)" and for the different categories on the HTML Card you only have to add _[category].
Same for the script command #TAKECOVER# instead of #TAKEFANART#, #TAKESCREENSHOT# etc. Thus you have to add the _[category] in script code.
This brings two big advantages:
1. instead of 4 columns (present status quo) you only have one column -> less waste of database filesize and memory usage!
2. it will be easy to add more (user defined) categories.
As benefit you have same name convention for all pics.
Episodes could be handled similar.
And Actors - maybe with appended _actor or _character or _director...
There's a drawback: this will require even more file system access and this makes things slow and may be hindersome (security-wise):
It's already bad practice that there's no counter for images ... everytime XMM wants to display some image it needs to cycle thru the respective folder determining how many _## images are there. With your proposal there'd be yet even more such file system searches: first I'd need to find out which types of images are there and then I would need to count those. I believe filtering something from a db will be faster than filtering a flat file storage.
Note: creating alternative front-ends would be much easier if there would be no need for direct file system access.
But I second the request for user type images. I think this would be (kind of) easy to accomplish by using something like an Image table and an ImageLink table (or two / three sets of those, one for movies / series and one for artists). |
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JDommi
Administrator
Germany
4655 Posts |
Posted - 04 Aug 2013 : 17:14:52
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Well, you're right with the file system access... so there must be a second column that contains the number of pics like 3-0-1-1 (3 front - 0 back - 1 fanart - 1 screenshot). And the different pic categories could be saved in a folder by the same name.
On the other side at the moment you do have this access, so as worst case there are no differences except that you have only one base name in the movie table instead of 4 base names that are only different in the _[category].
What's the most effective way is could be discussed before any changes.
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In order to achieve what is possible, you have to try the impossible over and over again.
Hermann Hesse |
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yan00s
Moderator
405 Posts |
Posted - 17 Nov 2013 : 17:23:50
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| Bump: Ale, any plans? |
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marcocc
Starting Member
24 Posts |
Posted - 13 Dec 2013 : 11:16:15
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Hi,
i agree; it's a major drawback of the new version: i download many covers manually from google, and i import them directly in XMM. It would be a big improvement to allow users rename images as they prefer.
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Topic |
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Missing Features: Image naming