I purchased DVD Profiler a few days ago, and have several questions about using it. I have searched for answers for these questions but don’t know what to look for, haven’t found an answer, or haven’t found an answer that I like. :-)

1) Sort By Title: In the main window I can select the sort to be by Title, Ascending. This causes some very screwy sorting, which is apparently due to the Sort Title field. However, all of my Sort Titles are blank, so the sort order doesn’t make sense. How can I fix this to sort “properly” - ie; by the DVD Title alone, since the Sort Title and Original Titles are all blank? (Note that some are sorted correctly

2) Is there a way to search the Edition field for “Widescreen”?

3) What’s with the Search on the Forums on the web site? It always times out on me, or return no hits. Well, about 3/4 of the time it does, since it doesn’t time out when there are no results. It doesn’t seem to matter whether I pick “Last 30 Days” or “Any Date”. I just did a very specific search for a post I *know* exists - title search for “finding” in the last 30 days in the DVD Profiler: Technical Support forum. I got the message “there are no matching posts” !! Is it just me?

4) How can I perform an operation on multiple DVDs, like Locking several DVDs, or Updating several? In the main window, there doesn’t seem to be a way to select several (like Click… Shift-Click to select several in a row. )

5) Is there an easy way to "change" or 'replace" a DVD's info? I imported my Collectorz database, so there was some confusion from that automated process. For instance, "Brazil" got set to the Criterion Collection with a runtime of 5:36, but I have the original with a runtime of 2:23. I fixed the DVD info and images by adding a new disc by title, picked the correct Brazil, then filtered on Brazil in the title, and deleted the wrong instance. Is there an easier way to "replace" a DVD?

Thanks for any info.

Quoting Scottes:

Quote:
I purchased DVD Profiler a few days ago, and have several questions about using it. I have searched for answers for these questions but don’t know what to look for, haven’t found an answer, or haven’t found an answer that I like. :-)

Welcome to DVD Profiler. 

Quoting Scottes:

Quote:
1) Sort By Title: In the main window I can select the sort to be by Title, Ascending. This causes some very screwy sorting, which is apparently due to the Sort Title field. However, all of my Sort Titles are blank, so the sort order doesn’t make sense. How can I fix this to sort “properly” - ie; by the DVD Title alone, since the Sort Title and Original Titles are all blank? (Note that some are sorted correctly

This sounds like an import issue. I've not encountered this. You could do a refresh from the online database and see if that helps. You really do need to get those Sort Titles populated. To do this, I would first suggest flagging all of your Owned profiles (Collection / Flags / Flag All Filtered) and setting locks on fields that you don't want to update.

Quote:
2) Is there a way to search the Edition field for “Widescreen”?

Yes, if you select the substring box next to the Title search, it will include results from the Edition field. Alternatively, you can filter by Format to find widescreen titles.

Quote:
3) What’s with the Search on the Forums on the web site? It always times out on me, or return no hits. Well, about 3/4 of the time it does, since it doesn’t time out when there are no results. It doesn’t seem to matter whether I pick “Last 30 Days” or “Any Date”. I just did a very specific search for a post I *know* exists - title search for “finding” in the last 30 days in the DVD Profiler: Technical Support forum. I got the message “there are no matching posts” !! Is it just me?

The Search function here in the forums is...um...horrible.  Never search for more than one word at a time. An alternative is to Google the site rather than using the forum Search.

Quote:
4) How can I perform an operation on multiple DVDs, like Locking several DVDs, or Updating several? In the main window, there doesn’t seem to be a way to select several (like Click… Shift-Click to select several in a row. )

Flags are the way to go. You can select all filtered (eg. Owned) or select a bunch that you want to update. You can filter, for example, by many different criteria and then flag all of the results. You can save Flag Sets to work on later (Collection / Flagged / Save Flag Set).

Quote:
5) Is there an easy way to "change" or 'replace" a DVD's info? I imported my Collectorz database, so there was some confusion from that automated process. For instance, "Brazil" got set to the Criterion Collection with a runtime of 5:36, but I have the original with a runtime of 2:23. I fixed the DVD info and images by adding a new disc by title, picked the correct Brazil, then filtered on Brazil in the title, and deleted the wrong instance. Is there an easier way to "replace" a DVD?

I would make sure that the UPC of your profile matches the UPC of your DVD. If so, refresh the data from the online database. If not, you can change the UPC to match your DVD (DVD / Change UPC) and then refresh.

The sort title is only filled on the creation of the profile. It can't be updated by the "refresh profile" since everyone has his/her personal favourite way of doing it.

You either import again and fill the ST field or you have to do it once manually.

Well I just re-imported, using the instructions listed in the thread mentioned by dee1959jay, and the Sort Titles are all blank.





I'm very sad.

Nope, that didn't fix the problem. The XML produced by Collectorz had only some entries with <titlesort>blah blah</titlesort>, but apparently BulkEdit isn't recognizing that field to match with DVDPL's Sort Title.

I'm currently running BulkEdit to copy all the Title fields to the Sort Title fields, which is what my program did to the XML file anyway.

I'll ping mediadogg to let him know, just in case he wants to investigate.


Again, thanks to everyone for all the help.

Ok, if you want to try this (unpublished V1.27) and let me know.