Quoting MicHaeL H.:

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Yeah OK, there were already 2 people riding my back, I don't know why.
I might be a little much with my posts, asking this and ideas for that.
But they're all just actual questions and suggestions, not demands and like "Do it my way!".
As said, to just try and tie up the loose ends, that's all...

See it like this; If I didn't care, I wouldn't say a thing, I'm not here to hassle anyone.

There has been nothing wrong with any of your posts. And even if there were, that's no excuse for the bad behaviour of the other people.
And Ken, big kudos to you for having the maturity to apologise.

be gentle to each other and lets get back to topic, please 

I have to agree with 8ballMax... and what happens if no matter how hard we try we can not find info on an actor for documentation? Can't just leave him out of the credits. I have a lot of low budget movies with a lot of no name actors... several where it is the only film they ever acted in.

Quoting 8ballMax:

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IMO, this Cast/Actor/Actress Database is too much work and will cause just as many problems as we are having now. First off, who decides what the Crew or Cast member's "real" name is? How is it to be determined? What sources would be considered valid?

Who decides it isn't necessarily to be done by a person.
But, I guess as it's done with the final profiles for the films, let everyone decide together.
What I personally do is firstly look them up on a site such as WikipediA.
I know, I know... it's not 100% as it's made by different people too.
But who would lie about an actor's name, most fans or anyone that cares would enter it correctly anyway.
No matter how well or little known that actor is, there is bound to be someone to correct it.
If not, we could perhaps use IMDB, even though I'm no user of that website.

Just whatever website or source you or we together would decide what's best.
You or we can always track down like the official or the fan-site or anything like that.
But that's all to be decided eventually, it's a bit ahead of time.

For the work, it would be just as much as we'd put into creating the profiles.
I mean, you enter the cast just as well at that time.
Even if we couldn't find a smaller supporting role, just enter it as it is now.
But at least they will have their unique character-profile not to be confused with another.

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Once these things are settled, how are the "real" names to be chosen, by public vote, by commitee? That's just to get the names in a database.

Well, as said before, how is it to be decided which is the best profile for a film?
It could be done the same way.
But as I also said before, I don't make my own rules, I work by the facts.
It is as it is, the actor's real name is the actor's real name as I would automatically fill into this program.
That's what first of all confused me, everything was simply by credit-name without using the form.
I would just fill in the name I'd know or look up to identify them uniquely.
Even though usually their image-name is usually quite unique.
And on top of that I'd enter the credit-name, which usually was already there, for visual purposes.

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Now, how is something like this to be implemented within the program itself? Let's say I'm doing the cast credits for a film and type in Joe Blow, because that's how he is credited, in the search field of this new Cast/Actor/Actress Database and Joe Q. Blow, Joe S. Blow and Joe R. Blow show up in the list but no plain old Joe Blow...what do I do now? Am I going to have to search the World Wide Web for Joe Blow to see if maybe his "real" name is either Joe Q. Blow, Joe S. Blow or Joe R. Blow? If he is not one of the three listed, am I going to have to submit his name with documentation showing he's a "new" Joe Blow?

Well, there should be a default credit-name added in each actor's unique profile obviously.
So you don't have to go searching for the actual real name.
The real name would merely be for "uniqueness" of each actor and additional info for the interested.
So the profile's "search-tag" or however it works should contain both the real name and the credit-name(s).
As, like you said, you'd search by either credit-name or real name, you'd find the matching profiles.
HOWEVER, there will only be one correct profile and no duplicates or any variables like that.

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For the Top Billed, well known actors and actresses this may not be too much of a problem but for the thousands upon thousands of supporting roles, this is going to be a nightmare and the average user/contributor does not have the time to be researching and documenting every single actor in a cast list. I just don't see how this would be feasible.

Yes, I totally understand that, but as said, the smaller roles could be left less expansive than the bigger stars.
Maybe there could even be (two?) different classes in the types of actors if it would maintain a problem.
In the end though, it would help out a lot since all the variables, duplicates and similarities wouldn't be a problem anymore.
For the time and work on it,
in the end it would be a set and fixed name-list only slowly expanding if any new actors would be added.
The work would be done the same as the actors were added to this program the first time.
Or even better, maybe with only a minor edit, the original (current) actor-profiles could be used.
They could be filled out completely and possibly be technically made unique.
Maybe with a generated code, or most likely just by the unique name and/or other properties.

Again, not to turn this into an actor-database.
But see it more as a sub-database with lesser details on the subject.
Or rather as I like to see it, more of a name-list as it is at the moment, only advanced to the next stage.

Quoting MicHaeL H.:

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Well, there should be a default credit-name added in each actor's unique profile obviously.
So you don't have to go searching for the actual real name.
The real name would merely be for "uniqueness" of each actor and additional info for the interested.
So the profile's "search-tag" or however it works should contain both the real name and the credit-name(s).
As, like you said, you'd search by either credit-name or real name, you'd find the matching profiles.
HOWEVER, there will only be one correct profile and no duplicates or any variables like that.

Quoting MicHaeL H.:

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I mean, the person is the person is the person, you create their profile with their real name
as the form is in the software, only none of them seem to be filled out.
Also the date or just year of birth, then perhaps the name that they are (mostly) credited as, as an artist.
That's both to have it filled out and to find it easily, because when I fill in their full names,
that's how they are shown in the 'Cast Member'-list, which is sometimes too different.

   
So now what? Parse by "Real" name or not?
What you are trying to do now is to weaken your own position. If we parse the "well known" actors by their real name and enter the supporting actors with their credited name, what happens if one of those nasty supporting buggers is getting well known too? Do we have to change the parsing then?

Sorry, but I really can't see any advantage to the existing system in your request. All this does is delay the mess for about two years, and this doesn't even take the mess into consideration that would arise during the change of the database.

EDIT: The only way that I would see this work is if we could get the crosslinks that are needed then onto program level. Means: we have a starting name (e.g. Nicholas Cage) and every time this actor changes his name (which usually wouldn't happen too often, since the name is something like a trademark), or gets credited with a variant of this name (for what reason ever), we have to add a crosslink to this starting name.
This actually might work, the only problem is the premise: we would need a separate actor's database then. I'm not sure if this will ever come.

Quoting Unicus69:

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Quoting goblinsdoitall:

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This actually might work, the only problem is the premise: we would need a separate actor's database then. I'm not sure if this will ever come.

Agreed.  It seems like a lot of people...well not a lot, just some of the ones here in the forum...seem to have forgotten what it is they purchased.  This is software designed for tracking a collection, it is not a film database.  There is already one of those out there AND it does a fairly good job.  I don't believe Ken is attempting to compete with them...though I could be wrong. 

Ummm....but the shiny disks I'm tracking contain movies.  And why would I want to go to two different sources when one can do it all?  That's why I bought the software.  If I just wanted a list of disks, I could use Excel. 

I don't know anybody who collects shiny disks.  Now I know a ton of folks who collect the contents of those disks... 

Quoting 8ballMax:

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First off, who decides what the Crew or Cast member's "real" name is? How is it to be determined? What sources would be considered valid?

Once you have an Id for an actor like 08154711 that's the master key for the actor. If you have that you can even use the same procedure as today to determine the common name, use the CLT, provide cator's homepage links, ...

And if there's a need to change the common name, it has no impact on the database itself because everywhere he played there is just noted "08154711".

It would look something like this

Actor Table
ID | Common Name
1  | Courteney Cox
2  | James Tolkan

Movie Table
ID | Name
1  | Masters of the Universe
2  | Friends: Season 10
3  | Back to the Future

Cast Table
MovieID | ActorID | Role                    | CreditedAs                    | Uncredited | ...
1          | 1          | Julie                    | Courteney Cox              | false          | ...
1          | 2          | Detective Lubic    | James Tolkan                | false          | ...
2          | 1          | Monica Geller-Bing | Courteney Cox Arquette | false          | ...
3          | 2          | Prinicpal Strickland | James Tolkan                | false          | ...

Quoting Unicus69:

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So, when you bought this software it could 'do it all'?  Funny, if that was the case, why all the complaints about actors and crew not linking properly? 

But they link just fine. It's just that you can't use DVDP online database data to achieve this.

So while the program itself is actually capable of achiving this (most of the time, unless there are two actors with the same name and both no birthyear or the same birthyear), the online database is in no condition to currently provide the correct data and I assume it will take a few years to settle this due to the "dynamic" identifier ("most credited form").

Every database designer know that a primary key has to be unique and it's often unchangebale. The actor identifier can't even guarantee the former.