[XODIDOX]

Forgive me if it's been covered already, as I've only skimmed through some of this thread, but how is this feature being handled as far as NFO files?  I don't mind doing the work linking movies in my library once, but I'd really want to make sure I don't have to do it again if I move directories or move to a fresh install in the future.  I see <videoversion> and <videoversionid> tags in the NFOs of the default version of movies, but nothing in the alternate versions.  Is backing up to and restoring from NFO files still a work in progress for this feature?

Yes, NFO support (and also JSON-RPC support) is required, but I don't have enough knowledge (and time) for these parts currently. It would be great if people with experience on these parts can help. And I'm not sure if it's expected to add these in current stage of Omega release cycle.

[CrystalP]

It's unlikely that that PR will help, it's helpful when the scraping new movies to find a match with an existing library entry.
Do you have an external mysql/mariadb or use the builtin sqlite? When does it freeze, in the preparation of the list for browsing?

Built in sqlite. It freezes in preparation of the list for browsing.

The problem comes from loading all the thumbs before the screen opens:

c++:
bool CGUIDialogVideoVersion::ConvertVideoVersion(const std:hared_ptr<CFileItem>& item)

...

  CVideoThumbLoader loader;

  for (auto& item : list)

  {

    loader.LoadItem(item.get());

    item->SetLabel2(item->GetVideoInfoTag()->m_strFileNameAndPath);

  }

The time spent is proportional to the number of items in library. Takes about 10 sec on my mid-range desktop too and 1600 movies, it's probably terrible on low power Android...
Hopefully there is a way to lazy-load the thumbs, as is done elsewhere for posters. Or the list needs to be limited, or to lazy-load the items as they come in view.

There also is a usability problem, how to efficiently select a movie out of thousands... Maybe move "similar" movies to the top of the list.

[XODIDOX]

The time spent is proportional to the number of items in library. Takes about 10 sec on my mid-range desktop too and 1600 movies, it's probably terrible on low power Android...
Hopefully there is a way to lazy-load the thumbs, as is done elsewhere for posters. Or the list needs to be limited, or to lazy-load the items as they come in view.

There also is a usability problem, how to efficiently select a movie out of thousands... Maybe move "similar" movies to the top of the list.

I'm not familiar with the lazy load, so need help on this. But as you mentioned, with many movies in the list, the current details view for the selection dialog is not good for usability, a simple view may be better. Or I can only list the detected same movies in the list (or use some heuristic method to detect similar movies, I doubt this will work well though), if a movie is missed in this list, user can still use the "Add version" button to choose the video file directly.

[ashlar]

The time spent is proportional to the number of items in library. Takes about 10 sec on my mid-range desktop too and 1600 movies, it's probably terrible on low power Android...
Hopefully there is a way to lazy-load the thumbs, as is done elsewhere for posters. Or the list needs to be limited, or to lazy-load the items as they come in view.

There also is a usability problem, how to efficiently select a movie out of thousands... Maybe move "similar" movies to the top of the list.

I'm not familiar with the lazy load, so need help on this. But as you mentioned, with many movies in the list, the current details view for the selection dialog is not good for usability, a simple view may be better. Or I can only list the detected same movies in the list (or use some heuristic method to detect similar movies, I doubt this will work well though), if a movie is missed in this list, user can still use the "Add version" button to choose the video file directly.

Yes, I think I mentioned a similar solution in one of my latest posts. Having the "top results" of a heuristic search (sorry if this is not the correct definition, I mean exact title plus similar titles following). And if the problem is the thumbs... I suggest we do away with thumbs. Are they really needed, after all?

[ashlar]

Now, SMS shortcuts help but I wonder if a regular expression of some sort could be used to put on top the movies which have identical or very similar titles.

Yes, I was suggesting that here. Also, anyone can tell me how to use the SMS shortcuts by remote? Which window should I be targeting in keymap.xml?

[NeoCortex]

One nitpick that's not a big thing and I'm not sure if anything can be done about it: In the folder view, the alternate versions and extras are intermingled in the list.  Is there a way that those can be made to force the versions at the top of the list?  I can sort by duration and that does it most of the time, but not necessarily always.
The reason I ask is that while I do think the dialog window selection (which does separate versions from extras) looks fine and works well, it would be nice to be able to see the runtime of extras when browsing through them since they can vary so much from a few minutes to hours.
I have a feeling that folder view may not allow such forced sorting, though.  I figured I'd just throw it out there and someone can just correct me if it just wouldn't work.

[XODIDOX]

Yes, I think I mentioned a similar solution in one of my latest posts.

It's probably missed in the long discussion.
 

One nitpick that's not a big thing and I'm not sure if anything can be done about it: In the folder view, the alternate versions and extras are intermingled in the list.  Is there a way that those can be made to force the versions at the top of the list?  I can sort by duration and that does it most of the time, but not necessarily always.

In fact, Kodi core does return them with versions at first, extras at last. The problem is skin will apply sorting on the list, which will sort the items. It's out of the control of this feature. It's better to request this in the skin section for each skin to treat the version folder specially on sorting.

[NeoCortex]

 

One nitpick that's not a big thing and I'm not sure if anything can be done about it: In the folder view, the alternate versions and extras are intermingled in the list.  Is there a way that those can be made to force the versions at the top of the list?  I can sort by duration and that does it most of the time, but not necessarily always.

In fact, Kodi core does return them with versions at first, extras at last. The problem is skin will apply sorting on the list, which will sort the items. It's out of the control of this feature. It's better to request this in the skin section for each skin to treat the version folder specially on sorting.

That makes sense.  Thanks for clarifying.

[ashlar]

It's probably missed in the long discussion.

How hard would it be to use the same procedure that gets used when a new movie is added for which a different version already exists in the database? That works perfectly in my currently limited experience.

Using it to work on an existing library when using "Convert Version", I mean.

[XODIDOX]

How hard would it be to use the same procedure that gets used when a new movie is added for which a different version already exists in the database? That works perfectly in my currently limited experience.

It's more than easy. You probably saw the previous reply in this thread, Kodi team member is quite busy, my PR 24148 (PR) has been pending for more than 3 weeks. I have a bunch of fixes and improvements finished in local but depend on this PR. before it's merged, I can't do any useful work here.

[ashlar]

How hard would it be to use the same procedure that gets used when a new movie is added for which a different version already exists in the database? That works perfectly in my currently limited experience.

It's more than easy. You probably saw the previous reply in this thread, Kodi team member is quite busy, my PR 24148 (PR) has been pending for more than 3 weeks. I have a bunch of fixes and improvements finished in local but depend on this PR. before it's merged, I can't do any useful work here.

Oh, ok. Sorry, kinda missed that, even if you mentioned it. Well, when that will be merged I am glad to hear it's going to be easy to implement. As usual, thanks for what you're doing!

[teriyaki]

Just some thoughts about this new feature.. This is my first time in this thread and I have not read all 22 pages before posting this so I apologize if these points have already been raised...

1) How do you intend to handle cases where more than one label would apply? For example, if there's an extended version and an extended version with an alternate ending, or an extended director's cut? Or say a US theatrical release and non-US theatrical release(s)? In these examples just simply using "Extended" or "Theatrical" isn't accurate enough and won't properly cover the different versions. The same is true for remasters of special versions.

2) What about cases where there's a unique non-"standard" version like Mad Max: Fury Road (Black & Chrome edition), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Collectors Edition), movie's where there's an X year anniversary edition of different versions?

3) What kind of future-proofing is built into the design? Will users be able to add their own custom-defined version labels? Is the version value itself a string or a point to an array item?

I think video version support is a great feature to have, and it should be robust enough that it can handle anything no matter how obscure. What makes the most sense to me as an end-user is having the version field for each file be a string. You can select >= 1 from a pre-defined list. You should also be able to add your own custom versions to that list and/or have the ability to modify the string that gets stored. I think limiting or restricting the user's video version options would be an unnecessary and bad design flaw. I just hope the end result has been well-thought out and capable of satisfying all the users version labeling needs now and in the future.

Again, my apologies for voicing these concerns if they've already been resolved.

[jbinkley60]

Just some thoughts about this new feature.. This is my first time in this thread and I have not read all 22 pages before posting this so I apologize if these points have already been raised...

1) How do you intend to handle cases where more than one label would apply? For example, if there's an extended version and an extended version with an alternate ending, or an extended director's cut? Or say a US theatrical release and non-US theatrical release(s)? In these examples just simply using "Extended" or "Theatrical" isn't accurate enough and won't properly cover the different versions. The same is true for remasters of special versions.

2) What about cases where there's a unique non-"standard" version like Mad Max: Fury Road (Black & Chrome edition), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Collectors Edition), movie's where there's an X year anniversary edition of different versions?

3) What kind of future-proofing is built into the design? Will users be able to add their own custom-defined version labels? Is the version value itself a string or a point to an array item?

I think video version support is a great feature to have, and it should be robust enough that it can handle anything no matter how obscure. What makes the most sense to me as an end-user is having the version field for each file be a string. You can select >= 1 from a pre-defined list. You should also be able to add your own custom versions to that list and/or have the ability to modify the string that gets stored. I think limiting or restricting the user's video version options would be an unnecessary and bad design flaw. I just hope the end result has been well-thought out and capable of satisfying all the users version labeling needs now and in the future.

Again, my apologies for voicing these concerns if they've already been resolved.

Thanks for your feedback.  I implemented similar functionality in the Mezzmo Kodi addon called movie collections.   I went through the same thoughts around specific tags for versions, multiple tags and such and decided, as you suggest, to allow the users to define their own tags.  I struggled with the same thought of whether I could predefine the tags / versions and decided against it for some of the reasons you highlight.  In my case users are typing from a keyboard into a GUI interface so having long tags isn't a big issue.  I wonder though when folks are using a Kodi screen keyboard how practical that may be.  For my approach I preceded the tag names with ###   which is known by the system to filter / sort on but not displayed to the users.  I do see where the predefined labels are a benefit if you have movie naming conformity and are trying to auto-assign the movie version to a predefined tag / label.  Maybe the most flexible approach for Kodi is both ?  Attempt to predefine the tag based upon name but then allow the user to override with a custom label ?

Do you think with allowing custom labels the issue of a movie belonging to multiple collections / versions would be an issue ?  I didn't think so.  For example in the approach I chose you could define a version called ###Avenger and then any movie with the ###Avenger tag would be displayed whether it is 3D, extended edition, theatrical, director's cut etc.  It would be whatever movies (even non-movies in the Mezzmo case) you choose to assign the label to.   With the customer label approach I have yet to see the need for a movie being part of multiple versions / collections.

Just my 2 cents,


Jeff

[jjd-uk]

While yes there are predefined version label types to make it easy and quicker for a remote control user, you can add any label you want to give to a version.

[jjd-uk]

Examples