What's new in Movie Collector?
Thanks to your reports we’ve been able to fix a problem with sortnames when adding new cast/crew members to your movies!
Fixed:
- Cast/Crew: adding a cast or crew member by searching Core, the system would not add the sortname correctly.
- Fixed some stability issues in the down sync from CLZ Cloud.
Thanks to all who reported the bugs!
v23.3.4: Fixed a couple of crashes and Cast/Crew search issues
Thanks to various user reports we’ve now been able to find and fix the following bugs in the latest version:
Fixed:
- Cast/Crew: When searching cast/crew, persons could show up more than once.
- Episodes: When adding cast/crew to TV-episodes, database corruption error could occur.
- Crew: When editing a “User Credit” role for a movie, the program could give an Access Violation error.
Thanks to all who reported the bugs!
Fixed:
- In some cases the original image of an actor/crew member could be overwritten when adding the actor/crew to your movie.
- The “Edit Actor/Crew member” screen was not high enough to show all the fields (URL/image was missing).
In the last version, a couple of buttons went missing in the Edit Screen. Through reports we found and fixed all of them with this build!
Fixed
- Several buttons in the edit screen were missing
The CLZ development team has just finished a huge project, something we have been working on for several months: the ability to modify a movie’s cast and crew lists, for both the Movie Connect web-based software and the CLZ Movies mobile app.
Of course, your Movie Collector desktop software has allowed you to modify your cast and crew lists for many many years. But still, the project we just completed has resulted in a big v23.3 update for Movie Collector too, which introduces THREE new features:
- Cloud-sync your customized cast and crew lists to the CLZ Cloud and the CLZ Movies mobile app
- A quicker and easier way to add new cast and crew members, by searching our Core lists
- Simplified Sort Name editing for all pick list entries
Improved:
- Adding by Barcode: the last barcode you scanned is now automatically selected in the queue
- Further improvements for sorting text with numbers in it (especially with – symbols)
- Faster sorting, resulting in overall performance improvements especially for large databases
(most noticeably after clicking the Add button in the Add Movies screen)
Fixed:
- Sorting problems for certain fields
- Several small Add Screen stability issues
Fixed:
- Add Movies screen: When adding “by IMDb”, the result list always kept the last searched IMDb result.
- Dark Skin: In the Folder panel, we’ve made the barchart color a bit brighter.
- In the Pre-fill popup you could not select an “empty” item for pick lists.
- Sorting your list by date wasn’t always working properly.
- The program will now ask you if you’re sure you want to overwrite an existing file when using “Export to XML” or “Save Database As” (this was already working for other export/save options).
As announced last weekend, here it is, Movie Collector version 23.2 for Windows, with full support for our new CLZ Scanner barcode scanner app!
And as indicated earlier, support for the old CLZ Barry scanner app has now been removed.
Also new in this version: Improved support for barcodes that were used over multiple series.
What is CLZ Scanner?
The aptly-named “CLZ Scanner” is a barcode scanner app, nothing more, nothing less. It is an app that you use on your phone to scan barcodes and then instantly send those scanned barcodes to the Add Movies screen of the Movie Collector software running on your computer. From there, you can then easily and comfortably add the scanned movies to your computer software.
CLZ Scanner replaces the old CLZ Barry app.
Another update for your Movie Collector software, that could make using the software quite a bit faster and more responsive!
In this update, we are changing the way Youtube trailer videos are shown in the details panel. Instead of an embedded YouTube player (which can be very slow to load), the trailers are displayed as a list of video thumbnails and title. Just click to open the video on the Youtube site.
This new setup has the following advantages:
- Browsing through your movies is a lot faster now.
No more annoying “hangs” while the Youtube video loads. - It resolves the problem of many videos not being “allowed” to be embedded nowadays.
- Clicking a trailer will now always open it in your default browser!
(previously it always opened in Internet Explorer)
v23.0: Report screen after Update IMDb Ratings + Easier way to update ’em all
After months of working on comic related updates only (for our CovrPrice partnership), the CLZ team is finally freed up to work on our other products again, phew!
So today, we can release a nice update for your Movie Collector software, in which we improve on the IMDb integration. Not a huge “major” update, but since 2023 is getting closer, we are calling it “version 23.0” anyway 🙂
Anyway, about IMDb: Most of you are probably diligently updating your IMDb Ratings and Votes on a regular basis. After all, if you are in any way interested in IMDb ratings, it is important to always keep those up-to-date.
However, after running the “Update IMDb Ratings/Votes” and getting the “254 movies updated” message, have you ever wondered
“WHICH movies have been updated and WHAT the change was?”.
Well, not anymore, because with today’s v23 update we are introducing a nice report that answers just that. Also, this updates makes it easier to update IMDb Ratings for your entire collection in one go.
Yesterday’s build introduced a couple of small problems which some of you reported to us, so today we’re fixing those!
Fixed:
- Link Screen: Trying to link a movie manually would present an “add” button
- Edit in List: Fields could (still) be cleared when modifying the set of column fields during editing in list
In today’s update, no big new features. Instead, we decided to spend some time fixing a lot of outstanding issues. While we were at it, we also implemented some small tweaks requested by users. Here’s what’s tweaked and fixed:
Tweaks:
- Year folders now sort from most recent year to older
- Transfer Field Data: It is now possible to transfer crew to the Notes field
- Transfer Field Data: It is now possible to transfer data to the Extra Features field
Fixed:
- Link Screen: Fixed various “Access Violation” errors
- Edit Screen: File paths for missing cover images weren’t showing
- Main Screen: filtering on Collection Status “Sold” didn’t show correct filter text in the bottom of the screen
- Edit in List: Fields could be cleared when modifying the column fields during editing in list
- Edit in List: Fixed some problems with editing price/value fields
Fixed:
- Various “Access Violation” errors fixed in the Link Movies screen
- User Defined Fields: default values weren’t used when adding movies
- Pre-fill: User Defined Fields weren’t remembered between sessions
- Light Skin: Rating stars weren’t visible
Fixed:
- Add/Update Movies: Country and Language weren’t downloaded
- Add/Update settings: Download links from MovieMeter checkbox was missing
- Pre-fill screen: It wasn’t possible to clear out certain fields (such as Tags)
- Edit screen: Pick list popups for certain fields didn’t remember their sort order
- Pre-fill wasn’t working after the “move to other collection status” popup
- Add Movies: When adding books to “Sold” the button wasn’t showing text
v22: Configurable Pre-fill, more configurable Update from Core fields + WebP support
It’s been a few months since the last Movie Collector update, but behind the scenes we have of course been preparing for a big v22 update! And today, it is finally ready for release, with 3 cool new features:
- User-configurable Pre-fill screen: choose your own fields
- User-configurable Add / Update from Core
- Support for WebP images
- New collection status “Sold” and new collection status icons and colors
In this update, we are improving the Submit to Core system.
We have created a completely new site for processing your submitted entries, which is now fully responsive to your browser size and therefore now fully mobile-compatible.
At the same time, we created a new auto-login system, making submitting easier and more seamless.
Another big update for your Movie Collector software! In this latest version we’ve added two new fields to the sync, namely web-links (and their description) and box set covers (front and back).
Version 21.4 is now available for your Movie Collector software, with a nice graphical update for your folder panel. The folder panel now show horizontal bars in the background behind the folder entries, representing the “relative size” of the folder, that is, relative to the biggest folder in your collection.
Fixed:
- Date fields didn’t always transfer correctly
Improved:
- Better transfer of pick list data: where possible the tool will copy images and URL fields to the destination field now too.
Fixed:
- After using the Transfer Field Data tool, modified movies didn’t trigger a change to Sync with CLZ Cloud
A nice new v21.3 update is available for Movie Collector now, in which we introduce a new super useful database management tool, called Transfer Field Data (new in the Tools menu).
In short, this tool lets you copy field values from one field to another, in batch, so for your entire database, or for a selection of movies.
It is important to have your movie entries linked to the corresponding entries in our Core online movie database, especially when syncing to the CLZ Cloud and/or the CLZ Movies mobile app. Because a correct Core link is what gives you all automatic movie details, like cover images, cast, crew, backdrop art, trailer videos, etc..
All movie entries you added through the Add Movies from Core screen, will of course be linked with a Core entry automatically. However, if you added movies manually, or if you imported a list of movies, e.g. from a CSV file or by adding movie files, some of your entries may arrive “unlinked”. In which case you would need to do the linking afterwards.
Previously, linking movies with Core was done in an old and clunky screen, based on a very old version of the Add from Core screen. But not anymore!
As of today, Movie Collector has a completely new Link Movies with Core screen.
New: Clear your CLZ Cloud right from the Sync screen
No more need to login to the CLZ Cloud site and use “Clear Database” there. It is now possible to clear/reset your CLZ Cloud straight from the Sync screen, using the Clear CLZ Cloud button at the bottom.
BTW: please only use this when strictly necessary, in case of problems. Clearing the cloud and re-syncing all items is a heavy operation and causes seriously load on our servers. Thank you!
New: Find Duplicates results can now be exported to a TEXT file
By popular demand: you can now export the results of the Find Duplicates screen, either to take with you as a text file, or for printing.
New: Use the Statistics screen on a selection
Something that “got lost” when we replaced the old Database Totals screen with the fancy new Statistics screen: being able to see totals for the selected items in the main screen.
So… now that feature is back! Just select items in the main screen, using the checkboxes or Select All, then open Tools / Statistics to see totals and charts for just those items.
New: Filter area in status bar now highlights when a filter is active
A common question in support: “Why don’t I see all my items anymore”. Always turns out that a filter is active, either in the Quick Filter Panel, the Alphabet Bar or the search box.
To make this clearer, the Filter area in the status bar at the bottom now highlights in yellow when a filter is active.
Improved right-mouse click context menus, with sub-headers
Through the years, new commands kept being added to the right click context menus, and to be honest, they became a bit messy. So about time we cleaned them up.
All main screen context menu’s have now been cleaned up, re-ordered and re-grouped with nice sub-headers.
Improved Unrecognized Barcode popup
In the Add Movies from Core screen, when you search for a barcode that our Core does not have yet, you get the Unrecognized Barcode popup, for reporting the missing barcode to our Core. This screen has two different TABs, for either single movies/seasons or for boxsets.
However, we were seeing many users using the wrong tab here, so we have adding a question popup here that explicitly ask you “Single Movie/Season OR Multi-movie Box Set ?”.
Let’s hope that this will help getting more Box Set barcodes reported correctly.
Edit Movie: Episode list now includes Seen It and Seen When fields
Small tweak to the Episode lists in the Edit Movie screen. It now has 2 extra columns for Seen It and Seen When.
Added format and logo for “FandangoNow”
A while ago we added a lot of formats with their icons. But after that, many users have requested the addition of FandangoNow, so here it is 🙂
Fixed:
- Filtering on the Number of Episodes field did not work.
- In Vee Eight template the new Audience Rating logos were shown too big
- Statistics: total purchase price now includes Purchase Prices of Box Sets.
- Card View: mouse wheel scrolling was broken
- After Select All in list, some action bar button did not show up
- After editing, the list did not scroll to the edited item anymore
- Statistics: rare Access Violation while loading the screen
- Picklist item images are now automatically resolved when folder changes
- Update File Links: manual mode missing trailing slash by default
A great addition to your Movie Collector software today: Automatic Audience Ratings from IMDb, like the MPAA ratings for US, or the BBFC ratings for UK.
I know, we announced this feature a couple of months ago already, expecting it to be live soon. However, the project turned out to be quite a bit more complex and time-consuming as initially planned. Not only technically, but also in terms of cleaning up duplicate ratings, creating all the rating icons, etc…
But the feature is finally here now. And, after running the Update from Core on my own collection (3100 movies), I must say, it was well worth the wait!