[JCS]

I cannot stand when cover art looks lousy. Sometimes Amazon has a bad scan, or part of the case is in the pictures, or sometimes it's just a giant mess. Look at the bottom of this page for some examples. This drives me insane.

I'd fix it myself, scanning my own covers and so on, but it's soooo much work. The whole point of DL is to make this easier. Scan the barcode...boop! All done.

So, what I want from DL Future is a system whereby, if anyone manually scans a cover to improve upon crappy Amazon images, their work is available to everyone who uses Delicious Library. Ideally, DL users would have access to every custom cover image created for each item, not just the first one created. That way, users could choose the image they think is the best. Ratings for images would help here.

Now this is a system I could get on board. I'd scan a few of my own items and share them. If everyone does the same, pretty soon there'd be high-quality images for most popular items. In a few months or years, maybe every item would have high-quality, high-resolution, appropriately-cropped-for-DL images in the big shared pool.

And the best part: this is "community-created content" (can you heard the VCs swooping?) Delicious Monster just has to create the infrastructure, then sit back and let the magic happen.

Okay, maybe you think DL is not a "cover image sharing tool." I'm just telling you what I want. Call me crazy. Here's to the crazy ones!

[foodog]

There may be some copyright issues associated with us keeping a central repository of cover images, so we don't really have plans to pursue that right now. However, we do have some cool things planned for Delicious Library 2 which can help with the examples you mentioned. Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.

-Lucas

[macman76]

I'm not buying it. DVDProfiler, the #1 DVD library app in the world, has been keeping a central DB of everything for almost a decade now with zero issues whatsoever. It's time for DL to put up or shut up. At least DVDPedia can import from DVDProfiler.

[wjsdelicious]

macman76:

I'm not sure what your source is for whether DVDProfiler has "issues," or whether it's legal to cache covers, or even how you rate DVDProfiler "#1 in the world." Is there some contest or something for this?

For our part, running a server is not something we're particularly interested in doing, and we believe that it might be illegal. Just because DVDProfiler has slipped under RADAR doesn't mean that they won't get smacked down eventually. We've got to be a bit more careful than our competition, because we're making bank, so we're a target.

You seem pretty angry about this. Our app runs pretty darn well using Amazon's covers, and we're working on some even cooler stuff wrt covers.

I'm not sure what DVDPedia and importing has to do with this discussion.

-W

[macman76]

I'm not sure what your source is for whether DVDProfiler has "issues," or whether it's legal to cache covers, or even how you rate DVDProfiler "#1 in the world." Is there some contest or something for this?

DVDProfiler has maintained a user contributed DB of pretty much every disc released to market or promotionally with associated cover art since 1997. They offer users an online DB of all their DVDs both via the app and the web and let you export to .csv/.xml to use in your other apps or solutions. It is #1 because it has been around the longest and has continued to provide the best db around for cataloging plus the ability to share that data with media frontends and other programs movie lovers use.

I find it hard to believe you don't know they're #1 considering you make a competing application. You should be looking at the competitors and outdoing them, not pretending they don't exist. They've been around since pretty much day 1 and many collectors have relied on it since the 90s. Most of us rely on DVDProfiler because of that DB and will not switch to cataloging with other apps that fail to provide a similar user maintained solution or a way to import and export to it. That's why many of us are upset we blew any money on your app. It's horrible at cataloging DVDs, because it relies on nothing but 3 year or less Amazon data as opposed to 10 years of DVDProfiler. The info from your solution is either absent or incorrect more than correct. The cover art is not worth wasting a second on and incorrect the few times it's available. You provide zero export options for other apps which prevenets many of us from considering your app because it's a dead end solution. For something that takes a tremendous amount of user effort to enter and update data, I find it amazing you continue to screw your users with pathetic export options. Furthermore, although you claimed otherwise, it does not import from DVDProfiler, DVDPedia, or the other leaders in this market.

I'm not sure what DVDPedia and importing has to do with this discussion.

It's very simple. They're the only Mac solution that is even an option in OS X because it can import collections from other apps and export to numerous solutions. It can import all of your DVDProfiler data and coverart without any hassles.

[Nebagakid]

Originally Posted by macman76

.... is #1 because it has been around the longest..

The same reason for my t-shirt "Mesopotamia is #1"

[wjsdelicious]

Macman76:

If you and whoever makes you plural are unhappy you spent money on our product, you should maybe have taken advantage of the free download and unlimited trial period. No matter, though, because we'll still cheerfully refund your money.

It sounds like DVDProfiler does what you need, so I'm glad you're happy with it. I don't choose to follow the same path they do, but if that's the path you prefer, well, I guess you won't be our customer. C'est la vie. The mere existence of my app shouldn't cause you such anger.

Finally, I should point out that, in fact, Amazon has data going much farther back than three years. Your opinion of the completeness of their database is one datapoint but doesn't match up with what I've seen. For instance, they pull their movie info from IMDB, which has a lot more people behind it than DVDProfiler.

[macman76]

For instance, they pull their movie info from IMDB, which has a lot more people behind it than DVDProfiler.

Wrong. DVDProfiler is more accurate, more complete, and with superior Cover Art to Amazon/IMDB. I dare you to compare . IMDB is only linked to Amazon and only three partial regions. It's not even close. User maintained means fellow users work to make sure everything is accurate. Amazon is not even close to a user maintained DB. That's the reason why CDDB/FreeDB and DVDProfiler have succeeeded while others have failed.

And when you've acquired that correct info from the DB...
YOU'RE ABLE TO SHARE IT WITH ALL YOUR APPS AND ON THE WEB WITHOUT ANY EFFORT!!!!!!

With DL it's a dead end. Stare at the slow user interface and bitch that you can't do anything with that data even after you painstakingly corrected all the flaws and manually enter the massive amounts of data Amazon has failed to provide.

DVDPedia made a compromise and allows for a flexible import and export to make up for their own lack of library. DL has nothing. If Amazon doesn't sell it you're out of luck. If the DVD has been re-released, you're out of luck. If you bought from antother region, you're out of luck. If you want to share it with a media front end, you're out of luck. DL is very short sighted and fails to meet it's own users needs. It's a damn shame. Pretty front with zero user benefits.

C'est la vie. The mere existence of my app shouldn't cause you such anger.

No, but stating you would provide said solution by personal email prior to my purchase and then not responding after I made the purchase of app and scanner certainly is. Buyer beware.

[foodog]

So, it turns out DVDProfiler is Windows only software, which starts to explain why I'd never heard of it. While the greater point about user-contributed databases stands, that would also tend to explain why we don't have a DVDProfiler importer.

Should we start writing Windows data importers (and with all the switchers out there, it wouldn't be a bad idea) we'd need some DVDProfiler data to work from.

If any of you DVDProfiler fans out there want to email me some DVDProfiler data files I'd much appreciate it.

Thanks!

-Mike

[JCS]

Okay, then don't keep a central server full of images, just keep a central index, or even just a list of "who's online" (i.e., who's running DL right now, or a background DL server or whatever). Then let DL users share actual cover images in a P2P sort of way from local folders full of images. That way, DL is just a traffic cop and stores no copyrighted material.

In effect, it's the same as it is today. I already have tons of copyrighted cover images on my disk right now, thanks to DL.

[foodog]

Of course, we have permission from Amazon to use those images, right?

To reiterate what Wil said, though, we have some REALLY cool stuff coming up regarding cover images. Your cover images needs will be met. You will be well satisfied with the cover image situation.

-Mike

[chainlightning]

Originally Posted by Delicious Monster

If any of you DVDProfiler fans out there want to email me some DVDProfiler data files I'd much appreciate it.

My DVD Profiler XML Export File is about 14MB big, your interested?

[chainlightning]

Originally Posted by wjsdelicious

It sounds like DVDProfiler does what you need, so I'm glad you're happy with it. I don't choose to follow the same path they do, but if that's the path you prefer, well, I guess you won't be our customer. C'est la vie. The mere existence of my app shouldn't cause you such anger.

Finally, I should point out that, in fact, Amazon has data going much farther back than three years. Your opinion of the completeness of their database is one datapoint but doesn't match up with what I've seen. For instance, they pull their movie info from IMDB, which has a lot more people behind it than DVDProfiler.

Well, i like DVD Profiler but its a Windows only application and i would like to have one on the Mac. Thats the reason i bought delicious monster and i try it from time to time but i dont use it.

Here my! short comparison, i still use DVD Profiler but i hope i can switch in the future.

DVD Profiler

+ extreme fast and easy to add DVDs
+ a very good database behind for Covers and description
+ "all" Data from a DVD is stored and are available for reports

- GUI
- Windows only

delicious monster

+ GUI is realy nice
+ some nice gadgets like the iSight

- Enter 20 DVDs is not so fast done
- Amazon is not the best source (i think)
- Data is incomplete when you compare it to DVD Profiler


Like i offered before, you can get my complete XML Export List (about 14MB - 1100 DVDs) to try to import into Delicious and then check how many Covers are not found at Amazon - thats something i'm realy interested to know.

Cheers, KTM525

[foodog]

Plus, you know, I assume DVD Profiler only works for DVDs, right?

Anyway, please zip and mail that XML to [email protected].

-Mike

[chainlightning]

Yes, DVD Profiler is only for DVDs ;-) - true, another + for delicious.