Usability issues for VIDEO_TS folders, naming, resetting meta-data, etc.

[jelockwood]

[As an aside, I could not find a user discussion forum which might have been more suited to raising this.]

I am running Mac OS X 10.5.4 on an Intel Mac mini with Sapphire beta 6.1.

Currently my VIDEO_TS folders are stored on an external drive in a folder named "DVDs" with a sub-folder per disk/VIDEO_TS and the name of the sub-folder corresponding to the name of the DVD.

e.g. /Volumes/External/DVDs/13 Going on 30 (2004)/VIDEO_TS

As you can see the name of the sub-folder also includes the films year of release. This is because it a) would presumably help differentiate between two similar titles (e.g. "The Italian Job" has been made twice, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" has been made three times), and b) because other software desires this information for the same reason.

However having tried Sapphire, I get the impression this naming convention completely throws it a loop. Certainly it completely fails to find titles known to be on IMDB.

Related to this is that there is no obvious method of deleting incorrect meta-data entries from Sapphire.

I would also like to suggest adding other sources in addition to IMDB e.g. Amazon, as IMDB does seem to omit many titles Amazon sells.

As Front Row (in Leopard) uses for VIDEO_TS folders cover art called Preview.jpg located at the same level as the VIDEO_TS (not in the VIDEO_TS), has consideration been given to Sapphire creating and storing cover art in the same locations and using the same names? This would allow it to be used in both the Sapphire plugin and the normal Front Row browser.

By the way, I could not see a way of excluding other top-level folders on the same drive, Sapphire only seems to let me enable/disable entire volumes under collections.

[gbooker]

First; one issue per ticket.

Sapphire should be using the directory title containing the VIDEO_TS although it has some issues with certain characters that have been fixed for a future version.

The mark menu has the ability to delete metadata for a subdirectory: http://appletv.nanopi.net/manual/controlls/

On other sources of data, patches welcome. Same with preview.jpg files.

Again, consult the manual on skipping directories.

[wazza]

I've added a diff for adding Preview.jpg files to the same level as VIDEO_TS folders.

The patch will symbolically link Preview.jpg to the cover art in Collection Art/@MOVIES, allowing it to be up to date if the cover art is overwritten.

[gbooker]

(In [642]) Patch by wazza.

Fixes #196

[cieplowski]

Replying to gbooker:

(In [642]) Patch by wazza. Fixes #196

Hi wazza,

Bit new to all this and OSX, how do I utilise the diff you have added or will it just be available in a future release?

Thanks.

[wazza]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately the above patch will be of no help to you. This adds functionality that sets the Preview.jpg for individual VIDEO_TS folders using the cover art found by sapphire. What you describe in #222 is the direct opposite.

As games aren't supported by Sapphire there is no metadata collected for them, so there is no place to store cover art. This means its not possible to do what you want, unless Sapphire was extended to support games.

[cieplowski]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Looks like I missunderstood the patch. So would it be possible for a patch to disable the cover art finder and just pull the art from the movie folder as the normal movie player does. I am sure there are others out there who keep their collection on a NAS as I do, saves on duplication and puts you more in control of your artwork albeit manual.

With regards to the games, if I can explain more, Sapphire does not necessarily need to support games just be able to pull the Preview.jpg from the folder for anything that does not have metadata, perhaps by creating dummy data if necessary. I guess this and the above point are similar. No metadata, sapphire still pull the artwork and displays it. After all under the directory browser the title still shows up, just does not display the .jpg.

Hope this makse sense.

[cieplowski]

Also, wanted to add that Sapphire is a great piece of software and I/we greatly appreciate the tiem and sffort you put in to it.

[wazza]

I had a quick look. No dummy data is necessary.

I've added a patch that will check for the presence of a "Preview.jpg" file in a directory if there is no cover art available. This should work for all content that would normally default to the Sapphire logo.

[cieplowski]

Thanks wazza!

As mentioned before I am new to this so please could you explain what I need to do with the diff? As if you were explaing it to a 5yr old! ;-)

Sorry to be a pain!

Thanks again!

Mark.

[wazza]

Short answer: just wait.

Long answer: A diff is a file that specifies changes that are made to other files. In this case the diff above specifies changes that should be made to the Sapphire source code. If the Sapphire development team agree with the change they will apply the patch to the source code and the change will be available in the next release. As I'm not a member of the Sapphire team I should stress the IF part, but I don't see any reasons why the patch would not be used, it's a simple enough change.

[cieplowski]

Thanks,

I thought there was a way to apply these patches manually to the current version. Guess I will have to wait!

Regards,

Mark.