How to handle TV Episodes

[dtjenkins]

Hello All,
I love DVDpedia and use it to track all my movies, TV episodes, Amazon Unbox, and iTunes shows. The big hurdle I'm having is how to keep track of all the episodes for a single TV show. The ultimate would be to have a single entry in the database that had sub entries, one for each episode. Another idea would be to have multiple entries, one for each episode, that would collapse into a single displayed line. For example, as I scroll through my collection when I get to Stargate Atlantis I would like to see just Stargate Atlantis Season 1. I don't want to have to scroll through each entry unless I specifically want to see that season. Does that make sense?

Currently, I'm doing it by having a single entry called Stargate Atlantis Season 1 and then putting all the episode detail in the summary field. But, this is less than elegant (see example below).

I'm curious what other people are doing. Are there any suggestions for a better way of tracking episodes?

Example Below:
============================

- iTunes -
e1:**** Adrift
e2:**** Lifeline
e3:** Reunion
e4:** Doppelganger
e5:**** Travelers (Cmdr taken hostage & forced to reactivate an Atlantian ship)
e6:*** Tabula Rasa (A strange sickness causes everyone to loose their memory)
e7:***** Missing(Teyla and Dr Keller find Teyla's people missing on a visit)
e8:*** The Seer (SGA makes a deal with the Wraith to help activate the Replicators virus)
e9:*** Miller's Crossing (Dr. McKay and his syster are kidnap to help save a dying girl)
e10:*** This Mortal Coil (Replicators create a fake crew of Atlantis to help them assend)
e11:***** Be All My Sins Remember'd (Atlantis,Wraith defeat the Replicators)
e12:***** Spoils of War (The crew take down a Wraith hive)
e13:**** Quarantine (The computer erroneously sends the base into a quarantine)
e14:**** Harmony (The team protect an obnoxious 13 yo queen to be on her coming of age journey)

- Disc 1 (Ben24) -
e15:*** Outcast (On Earth for his father's funeral, Sheppard finds a rogue scientist making replicators)
e16:**** Trio (Rodney,Sam,&Doc get trapped underground on a mining planet & must work together to escape)
e17:*** Midway (When Ronan is scheduled for a suitability review by the IOA, Teal’c travels to Atlantis to counsel him)
e18:**** The Kindred Part I (Tayla's search for her people gets her caught by Michael and a plot to kill all the other Wraith)

- Disc 2 (Ben29) -
e19:**** The Kindred Part II (Dr. Becket found in part I, helps to track down Tayla)
e20:*** The Last Man (Shepherd gets sent 48,000 years into the future and a halo Rodney must help him get back - cliffhanger)

[DanW]

Here's what I do:

Folder: TV
---Folder:Stargate
------Collection:SG-1
------Collection:Atlantis

Each of the collections is excluded from the main library, and each episode is ripped to a separate file. This lets me easily add information specific to each episode, and at the same time keeps the database organized.

(I can get screenshots later if you would like, but it's late now and I'm not at the right computer )

[witnix]

Hey guys.
I´m just a new user of this incredible tool DVDpedia. And I also want to organize the episodes I recorded. I want an episode guide, so I use the structure DanW suggests

-TV Shows (Folder)
---CSI: Miami (Folder)
------Season 1(Collection, excluded from DVD Collection)

Now I want to know how to use the IMDb to get the episode Info for every single episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0534845/
Can I use the search mask? Or do i need the ID (in this case tt0534845) and then import all the data to DVDpedia? Or has everything to be done by "Copy & Paste"?

Hope you can give me a little help

[witnix]

OK, now I´m using the TV Rage plugin. Seems to work for my needs

[Conor]

Glad TV Rage is working. To use the IMDb number you can place it in the IMDb number field. Then selecting the entry (or entries) in the table and using the menu command "Advance --> Get More Info --> IMDb" would use the IMDb number to locate the information and download it to the correct fields.

[One-Ten]

Each of the collections is excluded from the main library, and each episode is ripped to a separate file. This lets me easily add information specific to each episode, and at the same time keeps the database organized.

I've found this a very useful tip, and it's a solid workaround for episodes support (I drag in IMDB entries, though I just have one excluded "episodes" collection).

I link the episodes to their parent DVD and visa versa. The problem I have is on the HTML export. I'd like, when I export the library, to be able to link to the episodes (which would also be exported to HTML, albeit in a separate export). If there were some way of exporting individual records to HTML with the uid in the URL (rather than an incremental number) it would be possible to do this in a custom template. However, I can't find any option for this. Is there a way of doing this? Might this option be added?

[Conor]

To your custom template add the following command and the HTML export pages will be named by UID instead of incremental order page number.

Code: Select all

<meta name="uidNaming" content="yes" />

Of course you will also want one movie per page, instead of setting it each time in the export options you can use:

Code: Select all

<meta name="PageSplit" content="1" />

[One-Ten]

To your custom template add the following command and the HTML export pages will be named by UID instead of incremental order page number.

Code: Select all

<meta name="uidNaming" content="yes" />

Very neat! Thanks! Your advice is much appreciated.

Though I've realised I still can't link to the records... The [link:url] option gives the full "dvdpedia://bruji.com/uid=" bit before the uid, so it's no use in terms of linking to another html document. I can't find anything along the lines of [link:uid] to just give the uid, so that I could link to ../Episodes/[link:uid].html or similar. Is there anyway of doing this?

[Conor]

I wasn't going to mention that part as I hadn't yet figured it out. DVDpedia doesn't distinquish the UID as it could be any kind of link, not necessarily and internal one. You should be able to change the "dvdpedia://bruji.com/uid=" part of the link for something like "/details" by using Javascript and calling a find and replace function on load. If you add a name="episodeLinks" to the links in the template you would be able to find them with getElementsByName not sure how you would find and replace and how you would narrow down on the href of the link tag.

Another idea might be to have a function that transform a given link into the proper format (this is all guess work, but it sounds plausible):

Code: Select all

function tansform(alink) {
if (alink.src.indexOf('pedia://bruji.com/uid=') !=-1) {
        return '/details/' + alink.substring(25) + '.html'
}
}

<a href="javascript:transform('[link:url]')">a link</a>

This topic might prove slightly useful.

[One-Ten]

Another idea might be to have a function that transform a given link into the proper format (this is all guess work, but it sounds plausible):

Code: Select all

function tansform(alink) {
if (alink.src.indexOf('pedia://bruji.com/uid=') !=-1) {
        return '/details/' + alink.substring(25) + '.html'
}
}
<a href="javascript:transform('[link:url]')">a link</a>

This topic might prove slightly useful.

That didn't quite work for me, but it was enough of a pointer to get a complete Javascript novice to a working solution... This works for me now:

Code: Select all

function transform(alink) 
{
  if (alink.indexOf('pedia://bruji.com/uid=') !=-1) 
  {
        location.href =  '../../Episodes/' + alink.substring(25) + '.html';
  }
}

and

Code: Select all

<!--IFlinks
[linksBegin]
<a href="javascript:transform('[link:url]')">[link:name]</a><br>
[linksEnd]
ENDlinks-->

Really appreciate the speedy advice again.

[One-Ten]

A variation on the problem: linking back to the DVD on which the episode is to be found. At present these links seem to default to the format dvdpedia://bruji.com/asin= which means the above method does not work... Is there some different tag, or some other way of forcing the links to use the format dvdpedia://bruji.com/uid= in all cases?

[Conor]

If the ASIN and the UPC are not important information for you then remove them from all the movies forcing it to use the UID. Select all and use the edit function and check the ASIN and UPC fields but leave them empty, this will remove them in one fell swoop.

[One-Ten]

If the ASIN and the UPC are not important information for you then remove them from all the movies forcing it to use the UID. Select all and use the edit function and check the ASIN and UPC fields but leave them empty, this will remove them in one fell swoop.

Not sure if they're important for me, so i think I'll keep them and just add a "back" link for now...