TV – Apparently It's All the Rage

[Conor]

Dan at RowdyPixel.com has created a plug-in for TV Rage for those with a lot of TV season episodes. The plug-in has been crafted in order to download information specific to each single episode. In fact you have to include the season and episode number as part of the search to be able to determine the exact episode. "Burn Notice 02x01" would download information for season two, episode one of Burn Notice. This is incredible useful for those keeping linked video files for each episode inside DVDpedia.

It's not just a simple search plug-in, it also includes a level of flexibility unprecedented in any other plug-in. Under the plug-in menu you will find the "TVRage Options..." command that will let you change a number of settings on how to store the information, including the order of title-season-episode information. Head on over to rowdypixel.com to download and install the plug-in as well as to learn more about it. Please post any feedback in our forum and do not hesitate to donate to rowdypixel.com if you find the plug-in useful.

[teacher24_70]

What a terrific Plug-in! I do have a couple of questions.

If I change the TV Rage options (particularly how the title is displayed, it seems to effect all future additions, but is there a way to go back and change the Title display format on past additions through this plug-in? It would be nice if there was a way to right-click and select an option that would change the Title format to the current settings.

One other "request", although I'm not sure if this would come from DVDpedia or from the plug-in. I would like to be able to change the Series Title to a shortened version. I do want the Series Title included in the entry title, but I'd like it abbreviated. For example, I'd like "Touched by an Angel" to appear as "TBAA". Would there be any place (options/preferences/etc.) that would allow such a replacement? If not, that's okay--just a thought.

[Conor]

Glad you are are finding the plug-in useful. Once the information is merged into the title it's hard for the computer to parse out the information into separate fields again to mix back in a new manner. This is why the setting only applies to new additions.

The second one is a limitation in DVDpedia there is no "find and replace" option. If you are feeling adventurous this can be done directly on the database file with SQL with the program called Terminal (update the middle line to the appropriate find and replace):

Code: Select all

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/DVDpedia/Database.pediadata
update zEntry set zTitle = replace(zTitle, 'Touched by an Angel', 'TBAA');
.exit

If your going to try that out be sure to create a backup of your data folder at "~/Library/Application Support/DVDpedia". You should always have a backup but via direct SQL access it only takes one command to wipe all your DVDpedia data so the backup is extremely important in this case.

[DanW]

Although Conor is right with the first suggestion, there may be a way I could implement the second. I would have to put in the abbreviation as it was grabbing information, and you would have to reimport the information for your TV Shows, but it could be possible to get an abbreviation. I would need one of two things:

1. A way I could *always* manipulate the title to get an abbreviation (e.g., grab the first letter of each word )

2. Somewhere on the TVRage site where it gives the abbreviation. If it always shows the abbreviation on the TVRage site, then I should be able to make the plugin scrape that information. On certain TV shows, for example, the Battlestar Galactica page, it does give this information. However this doesn't always apply. The Touched By An Angel page does not have any sort of abbreviated version of the title. I could implement an option to grab the abbreviated title if it exists, but in my opinion having half abbreviations is half full titles is inconsistent enough to be ugly. Let me know what you about this.

[teacher24_70]

Thanks for chiming in Dan! And thank you very much for the plugin!

I haven't dug around on the TVRage site enough to see which would be the most logical. It would be nice to have the abbreviation for some shows, but I wouldn't want to use the Terminal command to "find and replace" it EVERYWHERE. I would just want it replaced in the Title field of these imported TV episodes. I would still want it spelled out in other fields, summaries, etc.

I would think that your option #2 would probably be best--whether it's just an abbreviation (TBAA) or just a shortened name. I'm not at home on my Mac or I would poke around to see if I had any other suggestions.

[quote="DanW"]Although Conor is right with the first suggestion, there may be a way I could implement the second. I would have to put in the abbreviation as it was grabbing information, and you would have to reimport the information for your TV Shows, but it could be possible to get an abbreviation. I would need one of two things:

1. A way I could *always* manipulate the title to get an abbreviation (e.g., grab the first letter of each word )

2. Somewhere on the TVRage site where it gives the abbreviation. If it always shows the abbreviation on the TVRage site, then I should be able to make the plugin scrape that information. On certain TV shows, for example, the Battlestar Galactica page, it does give this information. However this doesn't always apply. The Touched By An Angel page does not have any sort of abbreviated version of the title. I could implement an option to grab the abbreviated title if it exists, but in my opinion having half abbreviations is half full titles is inconsistent enough to be ugly. Let me know what you about this.[/quote]

[DanW]

[quote]I haven't dug around on the TVRage site enough to see which would be the most logical. It would be nice to have the abbreviation for some shows, but I wouldn't want to use the Terminal command to "find and replace" it EVERYWHERE. I would just want it replaced in the Title field of these imported TV episodes. I would still want it spelled out in other fields, summaries, etc.[/quote]
The terminal command Conor gave would only replace it in the title field.

Off the top of my head, this is how I would implement an abbreviation:

-Use an 'Abbreviation' tag in the title format (%A or something). If you used this tag, it would check for an abbreviation. If one existed on the TVRage site, it would use the abbreviation, otherwise you would get the full title.

As I said before, this would have one major limitation. It can only get abbreviations listed on TVRage. If you are getting information from [url=http://www.tvrage.com/Battlestar_Galactica]Battlestar Galactica[/url] or [url=http://www.tvrage.com/Stargate_Atlantis]Stargate Atlantis[/url], then it can fill in an abbreviation (notice the section 'Also known as' on those pages). For shows such as [url=http://www.tvrage.com/Firefly/]Firefly[/url] or [url=http://www.tvrage.com/shows/id-6392]Touched by an Angel[/url], you would still have to replace the title manually as there are no abbreviations on the TVRage site.

Of course, if you can find a more comprehensive website of TV show abbreviations, I can search that as well. :)

[teacher24_70]

It sounds like this may just be more complicated than it's worth. I guess I was thinking along the lines of a self-created shortcut, so maybe the Terminal trick is the only thing that would really do the trick easily. I'll just have to decide whether or not it's worth it. I guess this would allow me to do it on a Series by Series basis.

[DanW]

A good way you can do it now is to manually enter the abbreviation you want in the title format instead of using the series tag. You'll have to remember to change it for every series, and you will need to reimport everything you already have, but you can get your abbreviated title easily (without directly playing with the database).

[teacher24_70]

Thanks for the tip. I may try that.

[teacher24_70]

Quick question that I just noticed. I re-synced my DVDpedia collections to my iPod Touch and the Custom fields aren't retaining their labels for those just added with TVRage. Instead of "TV Series Season" it just says "Custom 6". I have entered the appropriate titles for the custom fields in the DVDpedia preferences and they appear fine in the DVDpedia app window for that DVD.

Actually, upon further inspection, none of my custom fields are showing their edited titles on the iPod Touch. They just display as "Custom 1", "Custom 2", etc. Is this intentional or just a bug?

[DanW]

My initial guess would be that Pocketpedia doesn't sync the custom field titles, just the data inside the fields. I'm not sure if that's something I can add to a plugin, but I'll take a look into that tomorrow when I can get access to an iPhone.

[teacher24_70]

I wasn't in any way trying to point fingers at your plugin. I quickly realized that it seems to be a by-product of the Pocketpedia. I just mentioned it in this thread because I initially noticed it when viewing (on the Touch) one of the episodes added with the TVRage plugin. After I started the initial post, that's when I decided to check a different entry that used a previous custom field and found the same issue.

Thanks for your quick response to try to help the situation, though! It's great to see developers working so hard to make their apps the best and to respond to customer feedback.

[Nora]

At the moment the custom fields don't copy over their newly assigned names but retain the original value (Custom 1, Custom 2, etc.) We hope to change that in the future.

[teacher24_70]

[quote="Nora"]At the moment the custom fields don't copy over their newly assigned names but retain the original value (Custom 1, Custom 2, etc.) We hope to change that in the future.[/quote]

Thanks for the information. I figured that was the problem. I'm glad to hear that it will be addressed in the future.

[DrPaul]

Is this plugin available from somewhere else?

I get a 500 server error from the RowdyPixel domain.