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    Invelos Forums->General: General Discussion Page: 1 2  Previous   Next
DVD Profiler User Base?
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorLJG
Registered: March 14, 2007
United States Posts: 933
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I think people forget that many people from many different countries contribute to the online database.  This means that there are a LOT of different grammar rules and common usages that people use and they want to stick with the one they know best. However, this means that information will be entered into the database in many different ways which makes it useless.

So, by saying that GERARD DEPARDIEU should always be translated into Gerard Depardieu, it means that we shouldn't get a thousand different variations of his name in the database. I am not French, I would have no idea where to put any accents into his last name and as we all know, sources differ no matter where you're looking at.

This is why we have the credited as feature so we can tie one name spelled multiple ways together. The information on the disc, which doesn't change, is represented but differences are taken into account so the profiles are connected.

I feel if people would actually follow the rules rather than try to get their personal bias into the database, we'd be having a lot less problems with a database that is a mess.

IMDb.com is KNOWN for having incorrect information so they can track who is stealing from them. Also, it is theft, plain and simple, to use their information without paying for it.

I'm not sure why that's so hard to understand. Is it because it's a lot easier to copy and paste the information into the database than physically checking out the credits?

As for other information, yes, there are often typos in the overview. But if you let people start changing things they aren't going to stop at fixing a spelling, they'll start adding in information they want instead.

Time and aspect ratios, the data that will not change is one thing-you can go to your dvd player and see that the film is only 91 minutes long instead of 95. Everyone will get the same result. Names are much less tangible. Like I mentioned before, I don't have the knowledge of foreign names to "correct" them to what they really are. So if I start doing that randomly, how is this a help to the database? It's not.

So, by inputting what is directly on the screen, I don't have to make those random decisions and mess up the data any further. I can however, figure out by using the credit lookup tool, that there are different ways of spelling a name and connect them together without losing what was actually on the screen.

I have been a member of this forum for many, many years. Not as long as some of the originals, but I was using this program before it turned into Invelos. I still frequent it and add to the database when I can, though my buying has died down. I don't tend to voice much here because these arguments have been going on since the program started. And part of that is Ken's fault. I know he's one man (though his wife shows up periodically as well), but putting in a voice here and there and clarifying what he wants would have killed a lot of the arguments that have driven off a lot of contributors.

From what I see, many people just want their own personal opinion to be right and be the way everyone contributes just because they want to be right. Not enough people are willing to compromise. And when people finally do come to a consensus, Ken won't make the final ruling or update the rules.

So yeah, it's very easy to see that the user base is shrinking and to see why, beside the obvious that physical media is not as popular as it used to be. I just keep in mind that what makes this program so versatile, is that even after it dies, I can still use it because I can enter what I want and how I want it without needing to access an online database. Is it nice to have a lot of it done? Yep, but at least I know if I want to make changes I can do so and do so easily. I just don't feel the need to force those changes on others.

/end rant.
Lori
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributor69samael69
Registered: April 1, 2007
Canada Posts: 176
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^^^^^^^^^^^
This is why I always stick to just the technical details and never touch the cast and crew other than to copy it from one profile to another...I simply don't care that much. I leave cast/crew to those whom it matters more to. I would want Gerard Depardieu to show up onthe same list as Gérard Depardieu and would change local data to make that happen, which defeats the purpose IMO.
 Last edited: by 69samael69
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorAiAustria
Profiling since 2004
Registered: May 19, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
Austria Posts: 4,505
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Quoting 69samael69:
Quote:
I only use IMDB to check to see the year a movie was released, if it's not on the cover, or obviously not correct. I like to think they can at least that bit of information consistently correct. 

No. But in this case it the rule set is completly responsible for most of the differences. We enter the year of the first going public of a feature, not the copyright year...

This contradicts all other intentions to make the data transparent and easy to find
Complete list of Common Names  •  A good point for starting with Headshots
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorAiAustria
Profiling since 2004
Registered: May 19, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
Austria Posts: 4,505
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Quoting GSyren:
Quote:
That's not actually spelled out in the rules, is it?

Yes it is spelled in the rules to use the CLT if there are different name variants.
Quote:
To determine whether to enter the name directly as credited, or to use the "Credited As" field, use the Credit Lookup tool.

It is not necessary to document the source of the common name, outside the use of the CLT. If there is a dispute over whether the credit references the same person, documentation may be necessary. However, in most cases it is not required.

And yes, there is the clarifications from Ken/Invelos concerning this upper case lower case conversion: E has to be converted to the lower case e with no exceptions -> see here

But: the current common name thread for Gérard Depardieu tellls us, the common name is: Gérard Depardieu. Yves has to pick another example 

But this issue was discussed in excess, without any improvement. Until there are better suggestions than I know what the name is and this solution works for most cases this is ranting on the border to trolling.
Complete list of Common Names  •  A good point for starting with Headshots
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorrdodolak
Registered: March 18, 2007
Reputation: Great Rating
United States Posts: 1,261
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Yes, I noticed this years ago.  There might be more contributors for DVD than Blu-ray, but Blu-ray contributions have declined long ago in my experience.

Quoting eommen:
Quote:
Hard to tell. Some years ago Invelos claimed DVDp had millions of users, but the site doesn't provide actuals. With only a one-time fee it is harder to tell if someone abandons the product.
The only way to find out by Invelos is to monitor how many different users regularly update their database with the "Refresh Updates Profiles" option. But a diminishing user count is not something any company likes to advertise... The one thing I do see the people on the fora are by and large the same (fairly small) group of people throughout the years.


Don't know about the PC or iTunes app, but the Android app only shows 10-50K installs.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorThe Movieman
DVDP User Since 2007
Registered: March 18, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
United States Posts: 2,379
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I've noticed a decent decline as well. While I'd like to see the rules cleaned up and clarified, doubt that would help increase the numbers, it's just the nature of the format nowadays as people are moving toward digital.
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorruineddaydreams
Registered: Dec. 2, 2002
Registered: March 14, 2007
United States Posts: 1,322
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i have noticed a sharp decline as well... whoever does a lot of the pre-order contributions in the US sure loves horror and 70's B movies... all of those are entered and ready to go well in advance lol

at the end of the day i think it's maybe not even user base shrink, but contributor shrink... as physical media becomes more niche fewer young people pick it up, this results in fewer new users who are younger. new younger users are good for contributions because i think a lot have more free time...

i was never the largest contributor to the database, but i would hop on and put in pre-order titles all the time before i was married and had a kid. i would also take the time to do a full update on rare or uncommon things to the exact rules as best i could.

these days i dont have the time for that... if i buy something and it isnt in, i'll contribute it with the minimum amount of info just to get it in there. i flag it locally for update, but im never going to get to those updates.

i suspect alot of contributers my age who have been with this program for a long time are in simmilar life circumstance, and then on the other end i think we had a bunch of older folks back then who maybe arent up to full audits anymore either.

its just complicated. i think everyone needs to just understand that this is becoming more of a niche and we should appreciate each other and ken and do our best.
-JoN
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorsurfeur51
Since July 3, 2003
Registered: March 29, 2007
Reputation: Great Rating
France Posts: 4,456
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Quoting AiAustria:
Quote:
But: the current common name thread for Gérard Depardieu tellls us, the common name is: Gérard Depardieu. Yves has to pick another example 

Not really. The common name thread, though opened in 2010, lists only 70 films when Depardieu played in more than 200 movies. So the thread is not conclusive. And if it was, I'm sure the result would be Gerard Depardieu, since most of credits are in capital letters, as it is the case for the thousands of actors with accented names and no common name thread.

About trolling, I just explain to a user, who is astonished to see contributions decline, the reason why I stopped contributing...
Images from movies
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorsurfeur51
Since July 3, 2003
Registered: March 29, 2007
Reputation: Great Rating
France Posts: 4,456
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Quoting LJG:
Quote:
This means that there are a LOT of different grammar rules and common usages that people use and they want to stick with the one they know best.

I can understand that, but how do you explain that before present rules, names were correctly entered without spelling mistakes? And now, some good old profiles are changed to enter an incorrect form just because a common name thread has decided that the incorrect form (= used nowhere (even in credits) except in Invelos world) must be used.

And I also understand that somebody not knowing a language cannot give the correct spelling (as I cannot be sure for Scandinavian languages, for example). But why to forbid knowing users (specially of the same country than the actor) to correct an incorrect entry and explain it in contribution rules ?

Do you really think it is a good solution to have four different variants for the same name in the database ? (Francois Berleand= François Berleand= Francois Berléand= François Berléand ...see CLT....)
Images from movies
 Last edited: by surfeur51
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar Contributoreommen
DVD nerd
Registered: March 13, 2007
Reputation: High Rating
Netherlands Posts: 462
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The naming issue rears its head again... Let me react to the original question from 69samael69. There are obviously a number of causes for the number of of new titles to drop. One, there is the decline of the disk popularity, be that BR or DVD, reflected in less active users busy with DVDp. That is an outside cause for less contributions.

A thing to acknowledge is that there are a number of data fields that cannot be researched without the appropriate tools (I do not mean copying from other sources on the internet, that is illegal). You can't figure out a disk-ID unless you have a DVD player in your PC. Or a BluRay player. Did anyone notice many laptops are now commonly sold without such a player? Tablets and smartphones do not have that either. These 3 categories are the preferred personal computing devices these days. You can't contribute good scans without owning a proper scanner. Basically, same issue.

Other inside causes are the clashing interests in what is the 'best' profile. And there we go again    .

Minutely copying the credits from on-screen is a PITA exercise so we should thank those who do that. As 'credited as' can solve many things, what constitutes the 'right' naming? I wholeheartedly support Surfeur51 approach (spell the name according the rules of the home language of that actor/crew member), but that has its issues too. As pointed out throughout the years this immediately presents a problem with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Russian, Georgian, etc, etc actors and crew members. There are more alphabets than [a..z]  .
Users of DVDp are Latin alphabet users and (usually) there are several ways to do the alphabet transition. Which is one problem. AFAIK DVDp is not fully Unicode compatible which is another. The current rules (as I perceive it) are biased towards the English community because English has no (or extremely few) words with accented characters. But for a REAL discussion on specifically this I suggest reviving one of the older discussions on this issue rather than morphing this thread into one.

So, 69samael69, your request for the basic data should really be the bare minimum. So far, just UPC/EAN + publishing_country ('locality' in DVDp lingo) serves as unique database key/ID while the publishing title is the obvious other part. But beyond that? Though it is frustrating to see a profile that has just about only that...

Ken has stated to be working on release 4.0.1 and the release of 4.0.0. was based on the necessity for cross platform compatibility. Hope he does resolve the many bugs very soon. Possibly he will then be able to focus his attention on raising the contribution rate    .

P.S. Thank you rdodolak for pointing out that such stores list the number of installs. Sad it is low for the Android, but it cannot list the people who subsequently abandoned it. On the positive side, it looks like it's at least a year's income -- ignoring the cost of running this site...
Eric

If it is important, say it. Otherwise, let silence speak.
 Last edited: by eommen
DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantmovie_madness
Registered: August 7, 2007
Posts: 81
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Quoting 69samael69:
Quote:
Out of curiosity, has the user base shrunk? I've notice the last year or so that I've been getting a lot more content that I have to enter myself, especially for box sets and collections. Maybe I'm just unlucky.


The user base has never been big to begin with, as this is a niche hobby after all.  Even if movie-collecting isn't a niche, movie-collecting in large quantity to the point that you need software to manage it is definitely a niche thing to do.

Missing titles and missing info in existing titles in the DVDP database have always been a problem.  That's why a few years ago I created my own movie collection using software and techniques that I designed, including the ability to import cast and crew data from IMDb automatically and programmatically, the ability to look up my collection anywhere on the web (cloud feature), the ability to use unicode characters, etc.  I've posted about this on this forum, so check my post history for detail. 

With all the missing info on DVDP and the need for you to do your own entries, at times you feel like you are the one creating the database, not Invelos and the contributors.  So you might as well create one on your own, which is what I did.  If you have programming skills, definitely give this a consideration. 

I also imported all of Leonard Maltin's reviews into my database so they appear whenever I access a title. 
I even put in "disc-specific" cast & crew, such as the people who do audio commentaries, interviews, or any content outside of the movie itself that I deem important enough to be searched for.  In fact, I can put in ANY info I want in the way I want.  And that's because I have the database structure I want.  That happens to be another reason why I ditched DVDP: because its database structure has some major limitations.  I mentioned this in detail in my older posts also.
DVD Profiler Unlimited Registrantnero041001
Registered: June 2, 2007
Posts: 52
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Quoting 69samael69:
Quote:
Out of curiosity, has the user base shrunk? I've notice the last year or so that I've been getting a lot more content that I have to enter myself, especially for box sets and collections. Maybe I'm just unlucky.


For those area's, I'm not surprised at all. There are so many re-releases of box sets of films and tv series, we don't tend to buy them all. For Example
Walking Dead 1-2 / 1-3 / 1-4
Fast and Furious 4 Movie collection / 5 Movie / 6/7  Movie Collections etc..

Making a new profile, adding images, running time, synopsis etc.. are part of the fun for me when I find I need to do it, I quite enjoy it

tris

Also, keeping it 'user added content', it keeps the cost of the software down and subscription free with free updates.... Unlike Collectorz who I think are  greedy gits.
 Last edited: by nero041001
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