New user with ideas and need for advice

kseiferlin · Post by **kseiferlin** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 7:08 am

This is my first post, so let me congratulate for the really excellent product DVD pedia (I tried a few hoters before and switched to DVD pedia for good reasons!)-

Having done that, there are a few topics I would like to bring up:

1) Could someone with experience give me some advice how I can extend the MINT view template in two ways: (1) I would like to see the DVD cover, and (2) I would like to add a link "Edit" which would bring up the edit record mask (look for the MATT extra style, for example)

2) I changed the names of the 4 custom fields. They appear in the list view as column headers and in the detailed view below the list, but the "new" or "edit" masks still use "custom 1" etc. - is this a bug?

3) Now it is getting difficult, I am afraid: I use applescript a lot. Most often in conjunction with Salling Clicker (a bluetooth mobile phone remote control with a MAC OS server based on applescripts). I would like to control DVDPedia with applescript, however currently there is no interface for applescript included in DVDpedia. Browsing, selecting, playing and ideally adding new records by applescript would be a dream. EyeTV supports applescript. One might think of a script that adds recorded EyeTV movies to DVDpedia, fills the descritpion, length, moves the vido file, creates a link to that file in DVDmedia etc. - is applescript support foreseen for a future release?

4) DVD pedia like most similar products is specialized very much on actual DVDs as sold by amazon. My database contains more than 50% movies I created from Camcorder DV, throuigh iMovie, or EyeTV recordings. Database fields like codec, file format, compression setting, pixel size, source of the video (TV, Camcorder, internet,...), archived on HD/DVD (with other files or alone), CD, VCD, SVCD,... would be really useful.

Keep on with your excellent support of the product!

Post by **Conor** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 2:59 pm

1) Go into the programs content with ctrl-click on DVDpedia.app and show package contents. Navigate to Contents/WebViewFiles/en/mint.html and open it in any text editor and add: "<a href="pedia://bruji.com/perform=editEntry">Edit</a>".

I would suggest to add it where the ADD_HERE is in this section: "<div class="myrating">ADD_HERE<img src="[Key:StarRatingURL]" alt="Rating" border="0">". This way the edit will appear right before the star rating or you can add it right after the section so it appears afterwards.

Also add some CSS color style to the myrating class to remove the blue color of the link and the underline.

For the image add: "<div class="thumb"><a href="[Key:AmazonLink]"><img src="[Key:CoverImageURL]" alt="No Image" width="120" border="0"></a></div>"
right after "<div class="mainInfo">". You can change the size by changing the width in both the img tag and the thumb CSS class.

I would suggest changing the name of the template and making a copy of it to another location as you will need to add it back in the future when you upgrade the program. (We are working on doing this step automatically in the future.)

[url=dvdpedia://www.bruji.com/download?extras/mintedit.zip]Here is[/url] the template with those changes as an example. It's called MintEdit and might require a restart to show up.

2) By "new" and "edit" mask you mean the window for adding and editing information. Once you restart the program the names will take effect in the add/edit window as this is set at startup.

3) It's something we have been meaning to add. We would like to do it properly and that takes time, so I am not sure when AppleScript support will be part of the program. Even though DVDpedia has Automator actions they are geared towards automating exports rather than importing and won't be useful for your needs.

4) We have lots of plans for the future of DVDpedia. One of the features would expand the custom field idea considerably and you will be able to use those to keep track of all the relevant information that is not of the traditional DVD type.

kseiferlin · Post by **kseiferlin** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 9:06 am

Thank you very much for your fast and compehensive reply. Let me give you a short status report:

Issue (2) had been solved by re-launching. Your answers to (3) and (4) are understood. Concerning the data transfer from eyeTV to DVDpedia, I am working on an applescript that produces XML or CSV files, that can be imported. Concerning a remote control of DVDpedia using Salling Clicker, I have written a script package that makes use of "System Events" sending key strokes to DVDpedia. This allows me to navigate in the collection, toggle full screen, toggle info view, and switch between table and cover view. I can also "press" the play button to launch linked files, both in fullscreen and normal mode. It took me some time, however, to find out the keyboard shortcut for both, which are, unfortunately, even different ("p" in fullscreen, command-p in normal view). I might post the Salling Clicker applescript here, if somebody is interested.

Finally, thank you very much for the edited MINT template. I spent two hours now to get familiar with the definition of styles and the structure of the template, and I could successfully add a thumbnail of the cover, link the vover to the "edit record" function, re-structure the layout, and add some fields. BUT SOME FIELD DON'T WORK as expected:



and



give no results (no output). I hoped and expected that I would see something like DVD/DivX/VHS... for the first and PAL/NTSC for the second. Both fields ("Format" and "Video format" are filled with information in my database). If I remove the IF clauses and style markup, a simple [Key:Media] and [Key:VideoFormat] still produce no output. What's wrong? How can I retrieve the storage medium in the info view?

Post by **Conor** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 11:19 am

("p" in fullscreen, command-p in normal view)

You are correct it should be option-p in both cases. I will fix the fullscreen mode shortcut for the next release so that option-p also launches the movie.

and

You have the right template format. What you are probably missing is that you can turn off and on fields to display in the info view in the preferences. For example the video format is set to not display by default as many users would only have one type of format. Go to the style tabs in the preferences and make sure that video format is checked.

I am sure users would like the Salling Clicker script package. If you set up your own web page with information we can link it from the extras page, or if it's in a convenient package for users to download we can host it on our server.

kseiferlin · Post by **kseiferlin** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:29 am

That helped! It worked right away - great.

Concerning the Salling Clicker script, I'll create anew post under "support" - please feel free to move it to a different location if you think it is not at the right place. Can I attach files to a post?

Thanks again for the support.

Post by **Conor** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:23 pm

The salling clicker script.