What's new in Movie Collector? 2017

NEW: Fully Automatic CLZ Cloud Syncing!

The free CLZ Cloud service is at the center of all our cataloging solutions (desktop, mobile and web), the glue that binds them all together.
Tens of thousands of users are using the CLZ Cloud syncing every day, to transfer data between their desktop, Connect and mobile software, to update their online collection list, or simply for keeping an online backup of their precious database.

Now, it is time to take the CLZ Cloud to the next level, with automatic syncing:
Add or edit movies in Movie Collector and these changes will auto-upload to the CLZ Cloud instantly. Did you make changes using CLZ Movies or directly in Movie Connect? Just start your software and changes will download automatically.
No more need to go to the Sync with CLZ Cloud screen, ever.

With “Sync Automatically” switched on…

1. Your online cloud backup is always up-to-date.
2. Your cloud viewer always shows the current state of your collection.
3. All your CLZ tools (desktop, mobile and Connect) will always be in-sync.

Automatic Cloud Syncing is an optional feature, switched OFF by default. If you don’t want to auto-sync, or don’t want to sync with the CLZ Cloud at all, just leave it switched OFF.

Revamped Edit Movie screen

A huge refresh of the Edit Movie, bringing the look and feel more in line with the recent Add Movies from Core screen. But it’s not all just cosmetic changes, here’s what’s new:

• Button bar is now at the bottom of the screen
  With OK button high-lighted in blue, nice Next/Prev arrow buttons, etc…

• Re-designed user interface for editing Cast and Crew list:
  • Clean lists showing just Display Name and Character/Role.
  • Click the Add button top right and a new Select Person screen will show up, with a built-in search feature to make it super-fast to find the person you’d like to add. No more endless scrolling in a small dropdown list.
  • Right-click to Modify the name of a person in the list.
  • Drag the icon in the first column to change the order.
  • Click the “x” in the last column to remove entries.
• Clearer blue + buttons for checkbox list fields (like Format, Genre)
• Same blue + buttons for dropdown fields (like Country, Language)
• Revamped Edit screen for pick list items
  Button bar at the bottom with blue OK button, smaller generate buttons, etc..

Simplified: Edit Multiple Movies screen

• Now use checkboxes to explicitly indicate which field(s) you want set.
  Safer and clearer, no more unexpected changes.

• To clear a field, just click the checkbox and leave the box empty.
  The box will highlight in red to indicate the CLEAR action. No more hidden F8 keys.

Simplified screens for selecting Column, Sort and Folder fields.

The ability to select your own Columns for the List View is an important customization feature of our Movie Collector software. The same holds for selecting the sort order and the folder fields for the folder panel.

However, the “field selection” screens for doing these customizations have always been an area of confusion. So for v18 we decided to re-imagine both the field selection screens and the system for creating/managing your own presets.

• Simplified Field Selection screen:
  • Available fields are now grouped, like the tabs in the Edit Movie screen.
  • Easily find the field you want with the search box top left.
  • Use checkboxes on the left to select fields.
  • Use the “x” button on the right to remove fields.
  • Drag and drop fields on the right side to change the order.
  • Rename the field set at the top right.
• Simplified system for managing your field presets:
  • Just click the Columns or Sort Order button to EDIT the current preset.
  • Click the little arrow to the right of the Columns or Sort Order button to select from and manage your field presets.

NEW: “Clean” template for the details panel, in Light and Dark styles

A complete refresh, based on the recent Connect/Cloud details page updates. Clean, clear and modern, with some fresh layout ideas:

• Cleaner, clearer look, in both Light and Dark styles.
• Now shows just one embedded trailer video, with a trailer selection bar beneath to switch between multiple trailers.
• More compact episode lists for TV series, click Show More to see full details (images, plots, etc..)

No more Standard edition: Pro-only features now available for everyone!

As of today, we stopped selling the Standard edition of Movie Collector. From now on, the Pro edition is the only edition we sell, and will just be called “Movie Collector” now.

Our gift to all users on the Standard edition who have a valid Update Plan:
Starting with v18, you now get access to all Pro-only features:

• Batch editing with the Edit Multiple feature:
  
  Save time by editing multiple items in batch, e.g. to fill in a field value for many items in one go.

• Customizable pre-sets for sorting, columns and folders:
  
  Create your own pre-set field combination for sorting and columns. Define your own folder options, even multi-level folder combinations.

• User Defined Fields:
  
  Create your own fields (text, number, pick list, checkbox or date) and rename pre-defined fields.

• Export features:
  
  Export your database to a CSV or XML file.

New:

You can now change the order of box set movies from the details template or Manage Pick List. Click “change order” at the bottom of the list of movies in the template, then click and drag movies around to change the order in the box set.

Fixed:

• Add Movies from CLZ Core: expanding a result would sometimes scroll to a different part of the list.
• Editing a movie from a box set could mess up the order of the movies in that box set.

After many months of work from our content managers, our Core online movie database has now been enhanced with movie list information for thousands of multi-movie box sets.

Today, Movie Collector 17.2 for Windows is the first to use this new Core data:
Just use the enhanced Add from Core screen to find a box set, either by title or by barcode, and our Core “knows” which movies are in the box.

See it in action:

Find and add box sets by barcode

Scan a box-set barcode and Core will show you which movies it contains. Click Add Box Set at the bottom right and all contained movies will be added to your database, automatically linked by a box set entry.

Find and add box sets by title

Alternatively, use the By Title tab and enable the new Box Set search to find box sets by their title.

Note: the new Movies, TV Series and Box Sets checkboxes now let you search each of these three Core section separately OR combined.
AND: The check boxes now also operate on the Search-As-You-Type suggestions, for even quicker searching and adding!

New design of box set panel in templates, with movie list!

A nice re-designed box set panel at the top of the movie details for each of the contained movies. Now showing the list of the contained movies, in the correct order, AND with clickable links to go straight to the other movies in the set!

Report unrecognized box set barcodes

Our Core online database now recognizes thousands of box sets by barcode, but of course, it is possible that you own one that is not recognized.

In that case, the Unrecognized Barcode screen will popup, which now features a special tab for Box Sets. This new Box Set tab will let you select which movies are in the box, so that you can add it anyway.

At the same time, the barcode and the movie list are sent to Core, to complete our database and to make sure that the next user who scans this barcode WILL automatically get the full info 🙂

Next week, Apple will release the new macOS 10.13 “High Sierra”.
If you are planning to update your Mac to this new OS, then we strongly recommend to update your Movie Collector software to today’s version 17.0.5!

Movie Collector problems on High Sierra:
We have been testing our software on beta versions of High Sierra for quite a while, to make sure we were ready for it’s release. We found that most of the software seems to be working as normal.

Unfortunately, we found a big problem in the Preferences screen, it does not open at all anymore, making it impossible to make any changes to program settings.

Luckily, our Mac developer Ronald was able to fix the Preferences screen to make it work on the new macOS. A fix was released today, in version 17.0.5.

Fixed

• Preferences screen didn’t load properly on macOS 10.13 “High Sierra”.
• Upload Cover to CLZ Core: Images were not always uploaded properly even if they were within the 500KB file size limit.
• Main Screen: Quick Search: Occasional crashes in the quick search when using the “Search-as-you-type” suggestions.
• Sync with CLZ Cloud: Sometimes crashed during the upload of covers.

Big changes today! The Add Movies Automatically screen is now called “Add Movies from CLZ Core” and has been completely re-designed and re-built from scratch, to make it both easier-to-use and easier-on-the-eye:

• A simple two-panel design: Search Results on the left, Preview on the right.
• Big blue buttons for the main actions, Searching and Adding, can’t miss ’em 🙂
• The Search Results now show cover images and format icons.

See it in action:

Here’s the full list of improvements:

Read more

We’ve expanded the quick search box to now also allow “search-as-you-type” with suggestions for pick list fields.

How does it work?

In the quick search box top right of your screen you should see a “dropdown” button. Use this to select which field you wish to perform a search on. If “search-as-you-type” is available for that field, it will instantly work once you start typing in the box.

Example

You can now select the field “Actor” in the quick search box, start typing an actor name, and instantly see suggestions (based on what you typed) of actors you have in your database. Click on an actor to see all his/her movies!

Box set images

Box set images didn’t display correctly in the image strip popup. This has now been fixed, click a box set image and it should show correctly in the image strip popup now.

We’ve expanded the quick search box to now also allow “search-as-you-type” with suggestions for pick list fields.

How does it work?

In the quick search box top right of your screen you should see a “dropdown” button. Use this to select which field you wish to perform a search on. If “search-as-you-type” is available for that field, it will instantly work once you start typing in the box.

Example

You can now select the field “Actor” in the quick search box, start typing an actor name, and instantly see suggestions (based on what you typed) of actors you have in your database. Click on an actor to see all his/her movies!

Fixes in this version

We also fixed some issues with the program in this version:

• Images Popup:
  • “size window to picture” showed image slightly smaller
  • .tiff images were not showing
• Add Movies Automatically:
  • “Add Anyway” would cause an Access Violation for result selected from suggestion list
• Carbon/Quicksilver Details template:
  • episode links weren’t always clickable depending on size of the details view

Quick Search: Search-As-You-Type suggestions

Instantly find and select a particular movie in your local database:

• In the Quick Search box, just start typing the first few letters of the title you are looking for.
• While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the first five matching movies.
  (for most movies, it only takes 2 or 3 letters before it shows up.)
• Once you see the one you were looking for, use the up/down keys to select it, then hit Enter.
• The movie will now be selected in your list, with the details showing in the Details Panel.

NOTE: this Search-As-You-Type feature replaces the old “filter-as-you-type” behaviour of the Quick Search box. If you want to go back to the old behaviour, you can do so in the Preferences screen, on the Behaviour page using the setting called “When typing in Quick Search box”.

Read more

Quick Search: Search-As-You-Type suggestions

Instantly find and select a particular movie in your local database:

• In the Quick Search box, just start typing the first few letters of the title you are looking for.
• While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the first five matching movies.
  (for most movies, it only takes 2 or 3 letters before it shows up.)
• Once you see the one you were looking for, use the up/down keys to select it, then hit Enter.
• The movie will now be selected in your list, with the details showing in the Details Panel.

Read more