Quoting Winston Smith:

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This is DVDProfiler.IMDDB already exists and charges an exorbitant licensing fee (minimum $15K per year I believe) to use their data. Since IMDb already exists why does there need to be two of them.Let IMDb be IMDb and let Profiler be Profiler. You are free todowhatever locally but beyond that, NO.

Hi All,
I wasn't suggesting importing the IMDB data into DVD Profiler.  I was suggesting that people could find the clarity they appear to be seeking, by searching imdb.com - there's even a link in the DVD Profiler software to take you to the site.

I just can't see the point of trying to emulate a data library that can be freely accessed elsewhere.  Perhaps the usefulness of having that data in DVD Profiler leads to some other commercial application that I'm not aware of.  But for the sake of ease and simplicity, just use IMDB.com

Regards,
John

Quoting Winston Smith:

Quote:
Be aware also, that IMDb is an extraordinarily inaccurate product. It doesn't take a lot of comparison toa film to find that the large majority of their title data are highly inaccurate, regarding ordering of say cast or Cast roles, which many times are invented  and do NOT match the actual film data at all.

Thanks for the additional information, but the inaccuracies you mention have no bearing on the matter being discussed.  The OP appears concerned with duplicated title credits, not the ordering of cast lists.

If you're striving for perfection then I applaud your endeavours.  However, the perfection you seek is in the eye of the beholder as I for one can't see any value in it.

A quick search on IMDB will give the OP and others the information they require. 

As for the reporting "problems" of the CLT it appears to be based on an assumption that a full list of dvd titles is a bad thing?  Its not!  It is a by-product of cataloguing dvd titles from all over the world.  Why would that not be of interest to people who have an interest in collecting dvds?

On its own, the Original Title, as decribed by the OP and others, as a piece of data is not worth much.  It requires context, that means CLT should return the Country of Origin.  Even then, that is of little or no value to a person who does not reside in the country of origin, so a list of countries in which the title was released is also required.  In addition, you would need to know the DVD Title under which it was released in those localities...

Though if all you actually require is a list of titles a person is credited with, then a quick look at IMDB would be sufficient.

It does appear that people are trying to make the CLT do something it was never designed or intended to do; and in the process stop it providing the information it currently provides, which it was obviously designed to provide.

Quoting J68:

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It does appear that people are trying to make the CLT do something it was never designed or intended to do

No. Instead, it appears that you haven't yet entirely understood what our CLT is for. Per the rules, we have to look to the CLT to establish someone's "common name". The "common name" we're after for DVD Profiler purposes is not necessarily the person's "real" or "correct" name, but instead it's "the most-credited form". Basic example: someone is credited in some films as "Bob" and in others as "Robert". You would then look up both name variants in the CLT, and use the most-credited form (it's about the actual number of different titles, not the total number of profiles) as the common name. That's what the CLT is for.

So the CLT attempts to provide us with a count for any name variant we look up, but in order to return accurate numbers, it's important that (a) as much of the cast and crew data in the database is accurate, since inaccurate entries throw off the numbers, and (b) that the CLT counts every title as only one entry, instead of counting the same single credit dozens of times, which again throws off the numbers. In order to do the latter, the CLT ignores the "title" field, but solely looks at the "original title" field. That's supposed to weed out multiple counts due to translated titles and so on - every profile for a certain film should have the same original title, no matter in what region, language or locality it is released.

For TV show profiles, however, we're stuck with the problem that differently formatted season indicators, multiplied by child profiles with again differently formatted disc indicators, cause the CLT to often report one single credit in one single episode of a popular TV show dozens of times - thereby rendering the CLT numbers for everyone who's credited in a few TV show profiles pretty much useless. Instead of prompting the need to have to do common name-finding threads on all these people (those findings supercede the raw CLT numbers), it would be nice if things could be improved so that the CLT could count those TV credits a bit better. That would save us all a lot of work.

So that's what this is about.

J68:

You show very little understanding of the database in your posts thus far. I did not disparage you in any way, i mad3e a valid and factual statement, on e that is backed up by the speed with you which you get offended. This is DVDProfiler, it is not IMDb, and we do not use them except as a reference source within the parameters of the rules, which I presume you have read. Very simple.Perhaps I should be offended at your attempts to defend something that in my experience is one of the absolute worst databases yet assembled, inaccurate data,data which is not substantiated,meaning it simply appears without any sort of documentation to backup it's veracity....the data at IMDb simply IS and many timesit IS inaccurate.


I shall now disengage as it appears based upon your attitude that this can go nowhere but downhill rapidly.
Let IMDb be what they are and let Profiler be what it is.

Quoting Winston Smith:

Quote:
J68:

I did not disparage you in any way, i mad3e a valid and factual statement, on e that is backed up by the speed with you which you get offended.

You appear to lack a clear understanding of what a fact is.  You said I had been here 10 minutes - that is not a statement of fact.  It was nothing more than as I said, an attempt to marginalise my contributions.  Your further post has the same undertone.

If this is the standard of treatment a new contributor can expect to receive from experienced contributor, then you have set the bar far too low.

Quoting J68:

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Having said that, if an actor chooses to be Joe in one title and Joeseph in another title, why would we want to log anything other than the name they chose to be credited under?

We don't. We have the credited as field to reflect how someone is credited if it's a different credit from the common name.

So if Joe in the above example is the most credited name (aka the common name, for our purposes) and he chooses (or the director chooses, or the guy who sits in front of a computer and types chooses) to go by Joesph in a film, we enter that using the credited as feature, which would reflect the difference in the credit. It would appear as: Joe [Joesph].

This way, in everyone's local database, Joe would still link to all his other entries. However, for that profile he chooses to go by Joseph for, it would show that that's how he's credited.

This way we still have a common name that links to all the profiles the actor is in, but the actual credit is still captured to reflect the way he's credited.

We never want to log anything other than the name that's presented in the credits, but that poses a problem. I've seen crew members that have as many as seven or eight different variants of their name. If we simply entered them all by their variants, those entries wouldn't link. Hence, we determine a common name so all the entries can link, and then use the common name feature to reflect how they're actually credited, if it's different from the common name.

And by the way, I absolutely agree that anybody, even one who uses this program for, what was it, 10 minutes? Is capable of forming an opinion just as valid as anyone else's. In fact, some of us welcome brand new opinions. It gives a fresh outlook on some problems that we might not have seen before. So please, feel free to continue in the discussions. Your opinion is absolutely welcome! 

I daresay I must agree with the martian, I don't always see eye to eye with him but on this he is correct.

My suspicion and it is only a suspicion, is that Tim's resistance lies in the amount of work he has put into this system, even after it's flaws became so dramatically clear. The flaws are one reason why I don't use the system,why put work into such a flawed mess. There are better ways to go about this, one of which Hal and I have both discussed numerous times.I understand Tim's reticence, but at the same time I wonder why after the flaws became apparent so rapidly why he continues to labor on it.It's busted, Tim, while i want to see a working and functional linking as much as you or anyone, why keep beating your head against a wall.

Yves:

As ihave saidmany time if you want to worship at the altar of IMDb you are free to do so, and you can track up to 10,000 title in your collection positively for FREE. BUT this is Profiler and NOT Imdb, nor does it need to be since IMDb already exists. You know,I would say that if you like them so much, Yves, instead of trying to get Profiler to be a clone of IMDb, why not just go use the real thing.<shrugs>