Post #19by Kronus » Mon Sep 12, 2005 7:36 pm
Dear authors!
I've recently installed a trial verison of your program! It looks really great (special thanks for russian film DBs support and automatical movie-files reading). In my opinion it's really super, and best among the competitros. Though it has a lack of some evident and not difficult to program features. I'm not sure if you're aware of, so i'll write them here in a list. In my opinion, if you're able to add them your program will be the best. The most needed (IMHO) are marked with !!! sign.
1) Presentation & interface
- multicolumn list of films at the left (title, orig. title, year etc.), customizable (!!!)
- thumbnails list with title/original title
- skins or templates for movie info displaying at right: compact/condensed table-like design (!!!)
- add options to make the film info at right be more comfortable in viewing:
* normalise/standardise dvd cover picture (e.g. scale up/down) (!!!)
* font size (smaller at least) (!!!)
- buttons: play movie
- add more and standardise shortcuts usage: make a list of shortcuts being adequitely mapped to keys. Some of current ones are not evident: add cover Ctrl+a, add from amazon F2, add from scaner F11, and the same time - add dvd by barcode - F6???
- make ability to display toolbar at top more compact with smaller buttons to use less space
- display user-fields at a specified place at movie info page and make them easy-searchable/filterable like built-in fileds (by clicking). As per now i do not see my user fields at mvie info page...
- show movies with un-filled MAJOR fileds (title, actors, year,...)
2) Movie adding
- separate download of info and of cover: i do not need to re-download cover from amazon each time i'm trying to update movie info from another source (!!!)
- "movie found info" preview (main fields - title, year, actors etc.) to make sure the movie selected is correct (!!!)
- multi sources search of info (selecting by checkboxes) with ability to compare the results prior to adding. Should be usable with both: movie info and movie covers (!!!)
- add import of small covers also from the film bases that are already in the list (some russian ones have small covers)
- import sources: what about russian sources like ozon.ru (it has covers to many russian and soviet DVDs? Or add other big russian catalogues besides videoguide? Also i can comment that russian sources #2 and #3 are not very informative and mostly always (in my case) are useless.
- add ability to add screen shots later (if path to movies is saved). Sort screenshots
- add "cover edit" tab into movie adding/edit properties dialog as a separate tab.
- add back cover field also.
- add auto-screenshot function by number or by a random time mask.
- add support for multi-movies DVD processing.
3) Technology
- SQL will be great... MDB is not a very good for those with big and covers/screenshots/-ful DBs. Though MDB is still be ok as for me (500-600 films).
- what if to make most of info sources (film DBs) to be plugin? With ability for easy creating of new ones, by smart users instead of programmers?
- better protection... As i noticed the [CENSORED] versions appear in the net not far away from the release...
It's very interesting to me what do you think of these features and WHEN do you plan (if you plan) to add them. I'm sorry if this topic and these ideas are discussed somewhere else,but i ahve not found anything like a list of future features with possible dates of implemenetation. As form me, it's very important to know your future plans before i buy your product.
Best regards,
Kronus
p.s. I can comment on any of the above mentioned questions if you ever need it.