MyMovies Tutorial
Adding a TV Season or Box Set
Ramblings from a heretofore casual user who was caught with the complexity of TV Series and Box Set editing with little documentation available.
This tutorial gently introduces more and more complicated procedures to eventually enable you to understand editing a
TV Series referenced from a Disc
Title Box set. With
MyMovies 4 introducing
TV Series and
Box Set, the potential reward is great but at the cost of much more difficult editing.
Key to understand from the start is that
MyMovies now has
TV Series that are distinct from single or multi-disc
Titles (including
Box Sets). And that although both can be edited from similar screens in the same
Collection Manager, the sharing of data between the two groupings is only via the WebServer and not your local
Collection Manager (i.e. computer or database). Once this is clearly understood, and that you need both for
TV Series from Discs, then the intricate steps needed to edit, save, contribute (i.e. upload), download and continue editing will be better understood.
One should consult the existing ))
MyMovies((
tutorials and
videos in conjunction with this tutorial. Specifically:
The scenarios of adding information in the
Collection Manager covered here are given below; in order of increasing difficulty and building on the description before.
- Movie Title with one or more single or double-sided discs
- Box Sets of movie release collections where each movie release may have one or more discs
- TV Series (one or more seasons) that you wish to reference locally as individual episodes (common for portable devices or non-DVD formats)
- TV Series (one or more seasons) that you wish to reference locally as discs from your box set where the information is complete and previously entered
- TV Series (one or more seasons) that you wish to reference locally as discs where the information is non-existent, partial or incorrect
It is this last one that is more complicated and involves editing and contributing both a
TV Series and multi-disc
Title to complete. Each is covered in more detail below. But before covering each, lets introduce a little background and a few more important terms. Note you can click on each title below to expand or collapse its information.
What Changed?
Traditionally, there was only one form of editing in the
Collection Manager — adding a
Title. What continued to complicate this further was the seemingly endless and varying ways that production houses re-mastered or repackaged movies. The distinction between unique optical discs and their collection in a product started blurring; especially how users wanted to view the products as well. Further complicating this is the larger-disc release associated with TV Series, the need for handling transcoded movie files of TV episodes and movies (especially for portable devices), and the ability for DVD Players to bypass the main menu and jump to specific content inside the disc.
To address these new needs and multiple, confusing collection management conventions developing, two new features were added. The
Box Set and the
TV Series. Both have implications in the MyMovies viewer and selection for play as well.
Terminology and Conventions
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- Countries, Languages, and more
- Data is stored separately for each country or language of release. Hence the importance to get this correct when entering the data. The differences in the disc information can be large beside just the cover language.
- Title
- Often a single Movie, a box-set collection of related movies, or maybe a TV Series season or box-set of multiple seasons. The title is historically more tied to the product sold consisting of one or more optical discs — whether it be DVD, ))BluRay((, HD DVD, VHS or similar format. Often a barcode is associated with a Title and uniquely identifies it (within a specific country).
- Series
- A television series consisting of multiple episodes and possibly multiple seasons. Most often a season is a year but sometimes a weather season in addition to a year. Episodes are often the same length in time and periodically aired (e.g. a weekly basis) but not always.
- Disc ID
- A usually unique code or number stored on the optical disk that can be read at startup. The Disc ID is written in the inner rim area that is not writeable with writeable media and so is a unique feature of manufactured discs. Each disc in a Title will have a unique Disc ID and can usually be used to help determine the Title in the database.
- 'UPC or EAN Barcode
- A commonly used and understood label on every product that helps uniquely identify the product. It is either 12 (UPC) or 13 (EAN) digits and often unique in a country if put on by a registered manufacturer.
- Chapters, Episodes, and more
- Within the context of an optical disc, there may be titles and chapters to divide up the material into index-able sections. Each disc (side) can have multiple titles with one or more chapters in each title. This is the structure of the disc. Note that the optical disc titles are distinct from the MyMovies Collection Manager Titles. A dual layer disc is just a double-length single disc in understanding this structure. Intro material in a Movie DVD, such as the illegal copy warning, are often a title. As is the main menu. Scenes, as identified in a menu of scene selection, are often chapters. For TV Series DVD's, each episode is often a title and there may be multiple chapters (or scenes) within that. Unlike movies, the chapters or scenes in a TV Series are usually not part of a menu, only the Episodes.
Because the same disc (i.e. Disc ID) may be included in multiple different packages, it does not uniquely identify a
Title. Only that disc. Similarly, the barcode is not always unique in a country as some retailers add their own unregistered barcodes local to their enterprise. Or a manufacturer may use the same barcode for slightly different editions of a product. So things are not absolute and doubt is a useful attribute.
Adding a Movie Title
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Disc Location and Content editing
This is one of the most important aspects of title editing; especially in terms of adding useful local data. It is here you can attach the physical location of the disc image if you have loaded it into a DVD JukeBox or maybe copied the disc onto a magnetic storage device or server.
Adding a Box Set
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NOTE: Do not delete the Box Set if you wish to retain the added Titles in your database. Instead, first remove the Titles from the series and then delete the box set. This might happen when you decide to no longer use a box set hierarchy and instead simply want the flat, individual movie list.
NOTE: Usually check the box Do not include holding title as part of the Series/Box in the Series/Box Set pop-up for a Box Set Title. Otherwise, if the Box Set description includes a list of discs, you will get those discs and their references to online files/folders in addition to the referenced Titles. You usually only want one or the other.
Background
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Historically, one used the cover art of the box set of multiple movies, merged the other information (such as actors, crew, rating, and such) into the Title, and then listed the discs of each of the movie members. As such, the Disc ID used in Add Title often pulls up the various box sets including the Title/product when the disc is a standalone product. These titles still and should remain in the database for those not wanting to use the more complicated, hierarchical Box Set methodology.
With the new software, one can now have a Box Set title that is distinct from the titles of the containing movies. This way, each movie (and disc) can be described separately and accurately using its own cover art, crew list and such. Then, if the collection or box set hierarchy is desired in ))MyMovies((, the Box Set title can be loaded (or created) and the individual movie Titles simply referenced from the Box Set title. In the ))MyMovies(( interface, the Box Set is shown and when selected, the individual movie entries are then shown. Thus adding some hierarchy to the collection and selection process. Historically, selecting a box set would then not allow selecting the movie until you clicked the play button that then brought up the disc selection.
If preferred, and this usually is for BluRay and HD DVD formats for simplicity, TV Series can be treated as box sets. Each Season is a Movie Title which just happens to have more discs on average, and then the overall TV Show is a Box Set. The arbitrary distinction of which episode is on which disc is not something you want to highlight and thus a Season is not treated as a box set itself. This method for a TV Series is simplest in that it involves no chapter / episode editing and distinction. But it is not possible to jump straight to an episode; only to the disc containing the episode.
One issue of going to box sets is the need to identify or group all discs of the Box Set into referenced Titles. So if an included disc of Special Features is part of the box set, it will now require its own entry (e.g. Title) in the ))MyMovies(( Web Service so it can be included in. This even though it likely does not have a separate bar code or availability outside of one or more box set products.
Adding a TV Series (individual episode files)
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This is the simplest
TV series mode and the one most users may eventually end up using. But it can be difficult to get too from optical disk purchases of a season or more of the
TV Series. This because the optical discs incorporate multiple episodes on the same disc; often dual layer. And that you desire to access the material by episode independent of the disc it was put into.
Key to understand here is if you are solely using a
TV Series with individual files, you do not need to find, edit and save a
Title. You simply need to find or add the
TV Series title and attach your individual files to each episode. A
TV Series is distinguishable in the Collection Manager with a TV () as opposed to a Clapperboard () icon. This is important because later on we will see a Clapperboard top level with a TV icon below it.
One area of potential confusion or difference between people editing and creating such series is what to do with the special and extra features. Deleted scenes, additional featurettes, and such. For those going to the trouble to transcode the original material from optical disc may not care and deal with this, those staying with optical disc structure are more limited. Hence, it is key to follow the conventions of:
- putting all such material in Season 0,
- keeping the same structure as found on the optical discs so optical disc titles and chapters can map to it, and
- titling or labeling such "episodes" with the season they were packaged with (e.g. Season 2: Deleted Scenes) or some useful and similar method for similar material across multiple seasons (e.g., preview of upcoming seasons labeled Preview Season x).
Adding a TV Series (discs with multiple episodes per disc) already complete on the Web Service
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If the TV Series has been fully added by someone else already, then this is simpler and can be understood as an extension to adding a Movie Title. But if you get part way into this and discover the TV Series has not been fully entered (partially or not at all), then you end up having to perform two edits simultaneously and work to edit, save, contribute, then download to get your information passed appropriately.
Adding a TV Series (discs with multiple episodes per disc) partially complete or non-existent on the Web Service
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This is the complicated procedure as you have to perform two edits in two different modes of the Collection Manager. And confusingly at first, you have to edit, save, then contribute the information from the TV Series before you can then download and use it in the Title editing for that same series. But being familiar with the above other contribution methods helps you understand the steps needed for this below.
To help understand further, when finished, a TV Series which you retain as disc copies or references but which can be accessed by episode will appear like this in the Collection Manager:
Note the top level Movie Clapboard icon with TV Series icons below that. This as opposed to only Movie Clapboard icons at all levels in a traditional Box Set and only TV Series icons at all levels in a traditional TV Series accessed as individual files.
Note that this procedure is required even if other seasons are fully entered for a TV Series. Or if someone entered all the episodes but neglected to complete adding the special features. Of course, this complication is only needed and necessary IF the Title is on DVD (not BluRay or HD DVD), not just on a disc. This because BluRay and HD DVD software players on your computer cannot jump directly to a title in the middle of the disc like can be done with DVD Players. Hence, this complication and benefit is only for DVD's where you want to jump directly to an episode or special feature and start playing there; avoiding the disc menu to select your episode or feature.