[DVDpedia 4.4.3] "Show in Collection" misbehaves in folders?

[sjk]

Bug: When adding the same item to a couple of excluded collections in a folder and selecting the folder, the "Show in Collection" context menu is only available for one of those items.

Related suggestion: When selecting an item from a list of multiple collection displayed via a folder selection it would be useful if the collection it corresponds to would be displayed somewhere instead of using "Show in Collection" as a workaround (if that actually worked correctly).
[Edit: Scratch that; I just found "Collection Names" under View Options]

Thanks!

[Conor]

It should only be possible to add to more than one excluded collection. When you move the item to a new excluded collection it would then be removed from the previous collection.

[sjk]

Maybe it makes more sense rewritten like this:

When duplicate copies of the same item exist in different excluded collections within a folder and that folder is selected, the "Show in Collection" context menu is only available for one of those items.

If not, I could make some screen captures or a short video showing exactly what I mean.

[Conor]

The show in collection only works with the exact same item in different collections. Since the item is a duplicate it won't be shown as it's a distinct item from the one that is selected.

[sjk]

That might explain what's happening, but it's counter-intuitive to me for a duplicate item to show up in a collection but "Show in Collection" to ignore it.

I think the underlying issue is my not fully understanding what duplicates really are and how DVDpedia treats them in different contexts. Here's a specific example:

• Select items in an excluded collection
• Run File > New Collection From Selection (Shift-Command-N), which creates a new included collection
• Select that new collection and run File > Exclude Collection From Library
• The "Show in Collection" menu shows an item selected in the new collection as also being in the original collection
• Also, the old and new excluded collections are displayed in the "Collection Names" column when its enabled in View Options

That confused me because I thought items in the new collection would be distinct from those in the original after converting the new collection from included to excluded. And when I add a new item to that new collection that already exists in the old one it will be a distinct, separate copy.

This makes it harder to determine what DVDpedia considers a duplicate vs. a separate copy. In DEVONthink, a "duplicate" refers to a separate copy of an item and a "replicant" refers to another instance of the same item. If you modify a duplicate in DT only that copy is change; modifying a replicant changes all instances of it.

My suggestion is to make that difference between same and unique "duplicate" items clearer in DVDpedia, like it is to me in DEVONthink (by how they're named and displayed). Last night I got burned by not immediately seeing the difference, changing items in a new excluded collection thinking they were unique, while unknowingly also changing the original copies until noticing that was happening. I could recover the original collection from the Delicious Library 2 export it came from, but now I don't see any reason to have it; all the metadata I want from it is preserved with the new (modified) collection.

And the fun didn't stop there when I started using folders. This screen capture after running View > Show Duplicates on a folder shows what I'll describe afterwards:



You might have to open it in a separate window to see the Collection Names column on the right, which is key to understanding this issue. Under it you'll notice that some (not all) items are listed as being in the IMDb collection, but IMDB is only a folder (as seen under the Collections list on the left). This is puzzling; I still haven't thought of a good explanation for it.

Finally, this bug:

After moving larger numbers of items (at least 100, maybe more) between collections there was a problem with additional commands. For example, it would take two clicks for a selection to change. Or, the app would Quit with Command-Q until after a mouse click. It happened several times during my bulk moves and I could probably reproduce it again.

I'll end by saying that I consider these issues important but they won't stop me from using DVDpedia. They've caused a bumpier journey towards getting my video collections manageably cataloged, but haven't forced me off a cliff.

[Conor]

DVDpedia always creates aliases to movies, never duplicates. To create a duplicate you have to explicitly copy/paste a movie and the title of the new copy will be appended with "copy". When using the "exclude collection" command the movies are not duplicated but removed from the library collection and left in the current collection that was excluded only. Another way to create duplicates of several movies at once is via the .dvdpedia export and then importing that file, that will be imported as an excluded collection.

[sjk]

DVDpedia always creates aliases to movies, never duplicates.

Presumably you mean that certain actions, like those in my example that I'd thought would create unique duplicates, will always create aliases.

To create a duplicate you have to explicitly copy/paste a movie and the title of the new copy will be appended with "copy".

That's helpful -- thanks.

When using the "exclude collection" command the movies are not duplicated but removed from the library collection and left in the current collection that was excluded only.

Still pondering how my usage of File > New Collection From Selection fits with that explanation. Seems those selected items were always aliases under the new collection, whether or not it was included (at first) or excluded (later). Otherwise modifying an item under that new collection wouldn't have also modified the corresponding one under the original collection.

Even with better understanding I'm having trouble not being able to easily differentiate aliased items from unique ones. Adding the Collection Name column partly helps, but some of those collections being in the IMDb folder in the screen capture I posted doesn't make sense yet.

Question I'm asking myself is, how can I be certain that changing an item is only changing that single copy and not also any aliases to it?

Another way to create duplicates of several movies at once is via the .dvdpedia export and then importing that file, that will be imported as an excluded collection.

And all those exported items are guaranteed to be unique copies when first imported as the newly-created excluded collection? Now I see that if I run File > New Collection From Selection on items in that collection I'd be creating aliases to them instead of more unique copies.

Again, it's when I've got identical looking items in a listing that there's uncertainty which are unique and which are aliases. The reason this is important is because I want to temporarily put certain collections in a folder, then run View > Show Duplicates on that folder to filter out candidates for deleting/modifying. Can that the unique vs. alias differentiation be accurately determined just by looking at the Collection Names column? If so, that would be acceptable. In the screen capture I'm sure the two instances of Lolita are unique because other fields differ. But I'm not totally sure about the other pairs of items yet …

[kbarnes70]

Can that the unique vs. alias differentiation be accurately determined just by looking at the Collection Names column? If so, that would be acceptable. In the screen capture I'm sure the two instances of Lolita are unique because other fields differ. But I'm not totally sure about the other pairs of items yet …

I've had big problems with the Show Duplicates feature too, so much so that I have temporarily stopped using it until Conor gets around to working on it. You are definitely correct that your two copies of Lolita are unique - they are totally different movies made years apart with different directors and actors! They should not be shown as duplicates. I also have quite a few movies which I own on DVD and Blu-ray/HD-DVD and these *are* the same movies but of course are unique in the sense that they are both required and not really duplicates because of the different formats, but Show Duplicates treats them as duplicates and shows them up in the list.

What I want from the feature is the ability to discover if a) I actually do own the same disc twice - the *exact* same disc and b) if I have inadvertently entered the same disc twice using different sources so, while all the most important aspects will be identical - eg actors, director, cinematographer, studio etc, some details such as Amazon's unique ID reference will be different.

I appreciate that it is really difficult to get a machine to spot these differences whereas a human being can spot them immediately which is why I have never mentioned it before. I think DVDpedia is wonderful and I appreciate the effort and responsiveness of Conor and his team and there always seems to be something more important or useful for them to do than to worry about duplicates!

Kind regards,

Keith