Descriptions when there is only one version of a video

[GothsterC 44]

Let me see if I can explain what I want.

 

In the past, I would manually change the name of the movie in the metadata manager from something like Aliens to Aliens (Director's Cut).

Let's say that I only have one version of this movie.

 

Because of the great new feature of multiple versions, I would rather not keep the description like Director's Cut as part of the name.  Furthermore it appears in the movie listing with that name.  So I would rather have it just say Aliens in the movie list.

 

Now with multiple versions, when I go into the movie detail screen I get that nice pull-down that allows me to select which version I want, but this doesn't show up obviously if you just have one version of the movie.

 

So I would still like the words "Director's Cut" to show up somewhere in the movie details so I know that this is version I have, but I don't want it to be a part of the name because it shows up in the movie listing.

 

Is there some way I can achieve this?  A new field that could appear below the title on the movie detail page would be great.

Or if you could find a way to use the new multiple version feature apply for when you have single versions.

 

What I've been doing is creating an empty stub file called movie name - Stub.mkv.  This forces the multiple version pulldown to appear so I can see that I have the Director's Cut, but it isn't ideal since I also have a bogus movie in the pulldown called Stub.  Also it makes the number 2 appear on the movie poster in the listing even though there really is only one version.

Perhaps you could so something like if there is a file called movie name - Stub and there is only one other movie version available, you could ignore the stub version but have the pulldown be replaced with static text showing the movie name of the non-stub version?

 

Thanks.

Edited January 3, 2018 by GothsterC

[Luke 37247]

Hi, if it's the directors cut then why not just name it as such so that it will appear in the media title?

[GothsterC 44]

Because whatever you name or title the movie appears in the main movie listing screen.  

That is what I was doing initially before the multiple versions update.

 

So with multiple version, I don't want to name the movie: Alien (Director's Cut and Theatrical Cut).  For one that is really long and won't fit on the movie listing screen (the one that shows all of the posters that you scroll through).  Also we now have the elegant solution where you can just call it Alien, then go into the movie detail screen and select which of the two versions you want to watch.

 

I would like it to be analogous when you have only one version.  Instead of naming the movie Aliens (Director's Cut), you would simply call it Aliens.  Then in the same location in the movie detail screen you would see the single version that would say Alien's (Director's Cut).mkv instead.

 

I hope I explained it well.  I'm just looking for consistency in the screens.  If I'm no longer going to title the movies like Alien (Director's Cut and Theatrical Cut) because we now have the multiple versions pulldowns in the detail screen, then I would like to do the same when we have only one version of a movie if it is something like a Director's Cut.

 

Please let me know if I'm still doing a poor job of explaining this.

Thanks.

[GothsterC 44]

A very simple solution to what I would like it is to simply show the movie filename for a single version in the same place as the pulldown when you have multiple versions.

Just gather up all video files that match up like you do now for the multiple versions pulldown, but if you have only one, then just list the one file as static text.  If you have more than one, then show the pulldown.

[Luke 37247]

Well we do show the movie file name, but it's at the bottom in the media info section. I'm not sure I have another solution besides the media title because I don't think it makes sense to display the filename there when there is only one version.

[GothsterC 44]

I suppose I could live with the media info version of the path at the bottom there, but that information isn't present in the Amazon Fire TV app that I use.  Could it be added to the AFTV app?

What about the idea of a general purpose notes or comments field that would appear underneath the title in a smaller font on the movie detail page?

[GothsterC 44]

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of a user-defined annotations field to appear in a smaller font under the title in the movie detail page.  If not present, the field too would be missing.  Maybe even make it understand limited HTML tags.  The user could then annotate any movie the way they would want.  They could put in Director's Cut or right comments like: Best Movie Ever or First Movie I saw with my Spouse.  There are no user-defined fields of this nature that appear in the screens that aren't also tied to auto-pulled metadata.  I wouldn't like to re-purpose something like the Tag Line field since that is tied to third-party meta datasources requiring you to use your own comment and then lock down the field.

[MikePlanet 140]

Imho the best and only way to support editions is to add a new field "edition" to the database, which could be displayed, if it has content. Filling the field could be done automatically by regex parsing of the media path, which has rules for the usual "edition types" like "directors cut" "extended version", "remastered", etc. This would work fully automatically and could be controlled by the user by properly naming the files and/or directories.

The multiple version selection is not really good for that, as it will assume, that all the underlying movie files are "the same", only having different encoding/bitrate etc. - but length should be the same.

Edited January 3, 2018 by MikePlanet

[GothsterC 44]

I like that suggestion.  However I am using the multiple version selector for files of different lengths. 

For instance I have: Alien [1979] - Director's Cut.mkv and Alien [1979] - Theatrical Version.mkv together in the same Alien [1979] directory.

It shares the nfo file: Alien [1979] - Director's Cut.nfo.  So this isn't ideal, but as far as the interface goes, the only issue is that you don't get consistent behavior with the length display or with the chapter selections.  It would be nice to dynamically change those with the version you pick.