Quoting rdodolak:

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I agree with Charlie.  The fields are either related to the actual packaging or the disc but not both.  Release date, overview, cover art, case type, digital copy, etc. are all tied to the packaging.  Studios, cast/crew, running time, aspect ratio, etc. are all tied to the specific disc or movie.

If the same disc is repackaged in 5 different releases due to cover/packaging changes then why the need for 5 different Disc IDs if the disc is the same?  This only leads to watering down the contribution pool that is, for example, instead of having 100 contributors for a given profile Disc ID #1 may now have 10, #2 may have 23, #3 may have 47, #4 may have 15, and #5 may have 5 contributors.  It also results, in this example, an increase in 4 times the amount of data in the database which has already been captured in the main profile.

It would be nice if the software had a checkbox for a disc profile to inherit the cover images, etc., from the parent profile.

Quoting CharlieM:

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I personally have never seen a disc ID get reused for a different movie.  I guess in theory that it could happen.

This could never happen because if the movie changes then the tracks and disc content changes which will result in a different Disc ID.

But that isn't how Ken set up the structure of the DVDP database.  The way it is setup now is that it is  based on the profile level, which includes The DiscID information (what is on the disc) as well as the packaging and other items within the release.  We can't separate the two.  So why would I want data from another release in my profile.  It makes absolutely no sense.

[b]If the same disc is repackaged in 5 different releases due to cover/packaging changes then why the need for 5 different Disc IDs if the disc is the same? [/i]  Because the profiles contain more information than just the contents of the disc.  In a perfect world I'd agree with you.  But within the system we have now why would we not have information for that release within the Variant?

Quoting rdodolak:

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Quoting DoubleDownAgain:

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But that isn't how Ken set up the structure of the DVDP database.  The way it is setup now is that it is  based on the profile level, which includes The DiscID information (what is on the disc) as well as the packaging and other items within the release.  We can't separate the two.  So why would I want data from another release in my profile.  It makes absolutely no sense.

[b]If the same disc is repackaged in 5 different releases due to cover/packaging changes then why the need for 5 different Disc IDs if the disc is the same? [/i]  Because the profiles contain more information than just the contents of the disc.  In a perfect world I'd agree with you.  But within the system we have now why would we not have information for that release within the Variant?

The database isn't perfect but what we do have with our current system is that we could agree to keep packaging type fields in the parent profile and keep disc based specs with the disc profiles.  This would require a rules change but it could be done.  This would eliminate all of these extraneous variant disc ID profiles and get the whole contribution pool together.

Ultimately, it would be nice to see a better system to deal with this ... maybe when v4.0 gets released.

Now in terms of cover images ...

Just look at the Horror Classics: 50 Movie Collection.  Instead of 12 disc profiles we'll now have 50 which means we're storing 51 copies of the front image and 51 copies of the back image on our HDD; hardly efficient.

Or just look at how many Blu-ray and DVD disc profiles will exist for the Despicable Me 2 Blu-ray and DVD releases.

You say that in bold like it's a bad thing, I see it as a good thing.  Now when a customer downloads a profile they are going to get the right profiles.  Those ''extraneous disc IDs" contain different data, useful data.

I do agree that a way to link to a shared image would be better, but not a major concern IMO

Quoting rdodolak:

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Quoting DoubleDownAgain:

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You say that in bold like it's a bad thing, I see it as a good thing.  Now when a customer downloads a profile they are going to get the right profiles.  Those ''extraneous disc IDs" contain different data, useful data.

I do agree that a way to link to a shared image would be better, but not a major concern IMO

No necessarily bad but really unnecessary.

This isn't just about the cover images though.  If it has the same Disc ID then it's the exact same disc with the exact same content.  If the content was different then the Disc ID would be different. The only reason why these variant disc profiles are currently different is because changes to the packaging fields are being included in the disc based profiles.

The unfortunate part is if someone makes a cast/crew change then either that change will only exist in that one profile or the contributor or someone else will need to copy or make the same changes to all the other variant Disc IDs.  This significantly reduces the contributor pool for any given variant disc profile even though the discs are all the same.

For example, if one disc is included in 10 different packaging releases this could lead to 9 additional variant disc based profiles.  We could end up with all 10 disc based profiles not being equal to any of the others.  That would be a mess because the disc based data would be fragmented amongst the different variant disc profiles.

But we are both flying blind here... it seems that Ken has plans for the next update... I think he is planning on moving towards a similar set up, a single entry for each film, and then variants based on changes.  If that is the case, this new setup won't be as big of an issue.  I'm sure Ken wouldn't have allowed the variants if he doesn't have a plan.

Quoting ateo357:

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so what your trying to say is if 10 people have the same disc in 2 different box sets, but only 3 contributed data on a regular basis, the other 7 better hope that they have the same box set as a contributor. Or they're SOL.
That's gonna keep me up all night.

Yes, that is very plausible.  Also, why contribute the same exact data with multiple, separate, disc profiles?  This only serves to inflate the size of the online database unnecessarily.

Using your example, all ten people could contribute data to one or more profiles but the 2 different profiles could be different assuming the same data wasn't contributed to each profile.  Thus profile #1 <> profile #2 when Disc #1 = Disc #2.

Using the Despicable Me 2 Blu-ray releases as an example, the BD has Disc ID FDB71C1ED7F6E004 and the DVD has Disc ID 991AE6C46421CC89.

Here's what's currently listed in the database (there are more releases that haven't been added to the database though).

025192123634 / BD + DVD + HD
025192200519 / 3D BD + BD + DVD + HD
025192202018 / BD + DVD + HD + DVD (Target Exclusive w/ extra DVD w/ bonus content)
025192205200 / BD + DVD + HD (Target Exclusive Digibook)
025192205217 / BD + DVD + HD (Walmart Gift Set)

These all share the same Disc IDs for both the Blu-ray and DVD.  Thus the database can end up with 5 BD disc profiles and 5 DVD disc profiles when they're simply the same discs.  There is only a need for 1 BD disc profile and 1 DVD disc profile.

Despicable Me (first film) has even more releases in the online database that share the same discs.

Over time, I've noticed the number of contributors has decreased over time.  Multiple disc profiles only serves to further reduce the contributor pool for any given profile which is unnecessary.

Now some contributors may make an effort to keep all variant disc profiles up to date, they would be in the minority though, but this creates more work for them.  In the case of Despicable Me 2 the workload would increase 500%.

Quoting DoubleDownAgain:

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No, your numbers are off. It is really easy to get data from one good profile and update it.  While we both agree that it'd be best to have one central DiscID that isn't how it is currently set up.  Believe me, I am much more aware of this than you are.  I live in Canada, and most of my profiles are Canadian, and there aren't that many contributors up here, and only a very few that when I see their name I know it's going to be a good solid profile.

A couple of months ago I was going through and making sure the case type was right.  I found Tron: Legacy was incorrect, it was listed as a HD Keepcase and I bought it early on and it was HD Slim with SlipCover.  SO I made a contribution... but I forgot and didn't check to see the original Disc ID was for the 3D version which was released in a HD Keepcase.  When I checked the next day after work I had over a dozen no votes, and felt silly that I didn't check before hand.

If Ken doesn't have an issue with the database expansion, why should you?

My point was this is a community built database and we all benefit from the contributions from all users.  That's what made this software so great for so long.  I know I don't always have the time to contribute updates to every single release that I own.  I have time to contribute some but not all.  I benefit from updates that other users contribute as do other users that benefit from the contributions that I make.  I just can see this adversely affecting the contributions for any given profile.  I think well all be affected to some extent although some may be impact less than others.

As aeto357 has put it, I better hope I own the profiles where contributions are still being submitted otherwise I'm SOL.  That's a nice way to say screw you.  Or I better find even more time to do them all myself which is unlikely.

Maybe I'm wrong but I fear we'll see an impact over time.  Only time will tell I guess.

The sad thing is there are some releases that I own that would have been added weeks before the release date.  Some of those releases end up going empty for months unless I add all the data; not enough contributors adding to the database any more. I remember back in the day when I had a hard time contributing to the database because someone always beat me to the punch because they always got an advance copy before release date.  That's no longer true in a lot of cases today.