What's new in CLZ Movies Web? 2018

Another useful addition to your software today, as we added a Quick Search box in your folder panel.

Especially useful for those long folder lists, e.g. when using Actor as the folder field. Just type a few letters of the actor’s name and the folder list will instantly “filter down” to the matching actors, while you type!

See it in action:

A nice time-saving feature was added to your Movie Connect software today:

Next / Previous buttons in the Edit Movie screen

These buttons let you go through your movie list to make changes, while staying in the Edit Movie screen. Just use the Next or Previous button on the bottom left.

While doing so, the screen will keep you on the same tab and same field, making it super-easy to make changes to same field(s) for multiple movies.

A small UI tweak today, made necessary because of the growing number of field options for the folder panel: the folder field menu is now grouped into 4 categories.

This should make it easier to find the field you are looking for.

Do you like to customize your software to suit your needs or just your personal taste? Then we have big news for you today, as we have just introduced four “Skin” choices in your Movie Connect software:

• Default (the standard look, as it was before, so dark toolbars, light content)
• Dark (dark toolbars, dark content)
• Light (light toolbars, light content)
• Blue (shades of blue, with yellow highlights)

On top of that, we have given you 3 template style choices for the Movie Details area: Dark, Light and Blue. Either to match your Skin choice, or to mix to up, it’s up to you.

Both the Skin and Template selectors can be found in the Settings screen, under Customization.

Screen shots:

Default Skin:

Dark Skin:

Light Skin:

Blue Skin:

In June this year, we introduced the new Box Set adding feature in the Add Movies screen, where it automatically “knows” which movies are in the box, then creates separate entries in your database for all the movies contained, then “links” them using the Box Set field:

Most users love this new way of adding Box Sets. However, since the introduction we have learned that some people absolutely hate it.

So as of today, the “multiple movies entries” behaviour is now optional.

When adding a box set, found by title or barcode, you can now choose between:

• Add box as 1 entry
• Add box as [x] movies

using the two big blue buttons at the bottom right.

Add box as 1 entry:

Add box as 3 movies:

A new grouping option is now available in your Connect!

Click the folder icon top left and select Release / Publication Year to see all your items neatly grouped in a year folder. Click on a year to see all items that were released/published in that year!

This week, we added several new settings and improvements, all based on your feedback:

New setting for the List View: Wrap column content

This new “Wrap column content” setting can be found in the Settings screen. It lets you choose if text in the List View columns should wrap to multiple lines or not.
The default is YES / Checked. Uncheck this setting to keep your List View row as single rows, resulting in a cleaner list and more rows in view.

New Date Format setting

Also found in the Settings screen, this new selector lets you choose how dates are displayed, anywhere in the program where date are shown.
Choose from:

• 7 January 2018
• 07 Jan 2018
• 7 Jan 2018
• January 07, 2018
• January 7, 2018
• Jan 07, 2018
• Jan 7, 2018
• 07/01/2018
• 7/1/2018
• 07/01/18
• 7/1/18
• 01/07/2018
• 1/7/2018
• 01/07/18
• 1/7/18
• 2018-01-07

Core IDs can now be added as columns in the List View

Now available in the Column Selection screen for the List View: The Core ID fields.
E.g. for movies, add the Core Movie ID and Core Media ID fields to your lists, to quickly find movies that are not linked to our Core entry yet.

Previously, setting up for the usage of the CLZ Barry as a barcode scanner required going to your Connect Profile page and back. Not anymore.

You can now get started with CLZ Barry straight from the By Barcode/ISBN tab of your Add screen. Just click the blue text “Set your Barry ID” on the far right of the barcode box and all the setting up can be done right then and there:

Sharper images in Cover View and Card View

This week, we have implemented several changes to the cover images that are shown in Cover View and Card View, making them much sharper/crisper, less blurry.

Also, on computers with a 4k / Ultra HD screen, both the Cover View and the Card will automatically switch to even higher quality images, with twice the resolution!

The difference is huge, check out the screen shots below. But the best way to experience the sharper images is to log in to your own account and look at your own collection!

Other improvements to Cover and Card View

At the same time, we made other improvements to the Cover and Card views, to make them look nicer and to make the scrolling experience smoother and faster:

• While scrolling, the images now load faster.
• Scrolling the view while images are loading is now smoother, less “choppy”.
• The Images view now has black background for a more classy look.
• In both Images and Card View, while scrolling, it does not first load a placeholder image anymore, it just show the background color until the actual image is loaded, also resulting in a less choppy scrolling experience.

It is important to have your movie entries linked to the corresponding entries in our Core online movie database, because that is what gives you all automatic movie details, like cast, crew, plot description, cover art, backdrop art, trailer videos, etc..

All movie entries you add through the Add Movies screen, by searching our Core, will of course automatically be linked to Core.

However, if you imported a list of movies, e.g. from a CSV file or from a competitor product, some/most of your entries may arrive “unlinked”, especially if you did not import IMDb numbers or barcodes.

Previously, linking those unlinked entries to Core was a one-by-one job, slow and cumbersome. But we fixed that once and for all, with the new smart Link Movies tool!

This new Link Movies tool automatically finds best matches in our Core online movie database, based on title and release year in your list. Then, it lets you auto-link all “high match score” movies, saving you loads and loads of time and clicks!

Two updates for the Movie Connect software and the CLZ Cloud viewer today. One a big step forward in usability, the other a nice cosmetic improvement:

Movie Details now integrated in main screen

Up till now, when you clicked a movie entry to see its’ full details, you were taken to the movie details page, that is, a new page in your browser. One had to click “Back” to get back to the movie list again. Often resulting in an annoying back and forth clicking, each time causing you to lose your position in the list.

But not anymore! Starting with today’s update, the movie details are now integrated in a panel within the main collection view:

No more back and forth clicking. Just click a movie entry to see its’ details, click another one to see that movie’s details. Nice and easy, never lose your spot again.

Choose from two Layouts:

• Horizontal Split: folders on the left, list on the top right, details on bottom right
• Vertical Split: 3 panels side by side, folder, list and details

In either layout, the 3 panels are fully resizable by dragging the black “splitter bars” between the panels, so that you can customize the layout to your own liking.

The movie details panel comes with its’ own “action bar”, with the main actions you may want to take on the selected movie (Edit, Share, Delete, Duplicate, Loan and Link with Core).

Improved Cover View and Card View

At the same time, we made some small tweaks to both the Card View and Cover View, so that they’re making better use of your specific screen width. Both now use a “fully justified” layout, with the Cards auto-resizing to fit your screen width and the Covers distributing over the width, both resulting in a cleaner, less “jagged” view.

As some of you may know, we have a page detailing the 50 most popular movies of this week in our Core online movie database. It also details the new DVD, Blu-ray, 4K releases for last month and this month.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could quickly add those to your Collection or Wish List? Yes. It would. So we added 2 new tabs to the Add Movies screen!

New: Most Popular tab

Open your Add Movies screen and click the “Most Popular” tab to see the 50 most popular movies of this week in our online movie database. Select one to add it to your collection or wish list!

New: New Releases tab

The second new tab in the Add Movies screen is the “New Releases” tab showing you all new releases of last month and this month. Use the little expand button to see which editions are new (including their release date!).

Up until today, the quick search box in Movie Connect (and the CLZ Cloud viewer for movie) only searched in the Title, Year, Barcode and Tags fields. Pretty limited, but necessary for performance reasons.

However, with the new search engine we created last year, it became possible to search more fields while keeping the search super-fast. So lets use that capability!

From now on, if you use the search box, it will also search in many more fields. The complete lists of fields that are now searched:

• Title
• Title Extension
• Original Title
• Series
• Episode Titles
• Year
• Barcode
• Plot
• Notes
• Tags

Example: searching for “hogwarts” will return all Harry Potter movies, because the word appears in the plot summary:

During 2017, our content managers worked for months to enhance our Core online movie database with movie list information for thousands of multi-movie box sets.

As of today, Movie Connect can use this new Core data: Just use the enhanced Add Movies 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 to Collection 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 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 box set panel on movie details page, with movie list!

A nice new 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!

Change the order of movies in a box set

At the bottom of the list of movies you will find a link to “change order of movies…” to modify the order in which the movies are displayed in the details page.

Over the last week Joël from team Connect worked on splitting the settings into more logical places, and added new tooltips to explain what all the buttons do. The full what’s new:

Added tooltips

Hovering your mouse over the various buttons will now show tooltips to explain what the buttons do! Hover your mouse over the buttons to see what they do.

Split the settings

All settings used to be together in one screen, but they weren’t easy to find so we decided to split the settings up into their own logical pages. You can now find them by opening the menu (top left), and look for:

• Field Defaults: to set up default field values for new items
• CLZ Cloud Sharing: to set up all your CLZ Cloud sharing options
• Settings: with just the behaviour and display settings

A cool user interface update for your Movie Connect software today, in which we makes it easier to select movies and easier to perform batch actions on the selected movies.

Select using checkboxes

To select movies, just click the checkboxes on the left of each movie entry in the list. Checkboxes are also available in Card View and Images View, just hover your mouse over an item.

No more need to go into “Select Mode” first. The Select Mode is automatically activated as soon as you checkbox the first movie, clearly indicated by the blue Batch Action Bar that replace the regular toolbar.

Batch Action Bar

While in Select Mode, the blue Batch Action Bar is visible, always showing you the number of selected movies. Also:

• Use the “Select all” checkbox to select all movies in the current list in one go
• Use the “x Cancel” button on the right to leave Select Mode
• And of course, use any of the action buttons (Edit, Delete, Print, Export, Duplicate and Loan) to perform an action on the selection movies

You can now loan movies in Movie Connect: just find and select a movie (or select multiple with the Select tool), and click the “Loan” button at the top!

Loan Manager

Click the menu top left, and then Loan Manager to access the new Loan Manager where you can see all your loaned out items, and directly return them. Alternatively you can also use CLZ Barry to scan a barcode of a movie, find it in your outstanding loans, and return it.

In the Loan Manager, you can click on a loaned item to modify the loan date, due date, return date, loaner and notes about the loan.

Print current loans to PDF

You can print out all your current loans to a PDF file by clicking the Print to PDF button in the Loan Manager screen.

Alternatively, you can select a loaner from the dropdown menu there, and only print out his/her current loans to a PDF file!

New:

• Loan movies by selecting a couple in your list, or by viewing the details of a movie, and then click “Loan” at the top.
• Return movies straight from the loan manager or by scanning their barcodes with CLZ Barry.
• Check outstanding loans and loan history in the Loan Manager.
• Edit outstanding or returned loans by clicking on them.
• Print out current loans to a PDF file

Coming up:

We will be adding the syncing of loan information to Movie Collector for Windows and macOS, and CLZ Movies for iOS and Android.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “DVD Profiler” to Movie Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “DVD Profiler” import tool in Movie Connect!

You can find the “DVD Profiler” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “Delicious Library” to Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “Delicious Library” import tool in Connect!

You can find the “Delicious Library” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

By popular demand, we have added 9 more editable fields to Movie Connect. One a completely new field (Is TV Series) and 8 fields that were already available as automatic Core fields but are now fully editable:

• Is TV Series (Yes/No). For your entries, indicate whether these are movies or TV series. Use Is TV Series folders to split them in the main list. This is a new field. Default values for your entries have been set using our Core central database, but you may want to run though your list to check and correct as needed.
• Release Date. Previous only available as Release Year, this is now a full date field.
• Runtime. Previously set automatically, now fully editable.
• IMDb Number. Previously set automatically, now fully editable.
• IMDb Rating. Previously set automatically, now fully editable.
• Audience Rating. Previously set automatically, now fully editable. Also available as a folder option.
• Region. Previously set automatically, now fully editable. Allows multiple values. Also available as a folder option.
• Studio. Previously set automatically, now fully editable. Allows multiple values. Also available as a folder option.
• Distributor. Previously set automatically, now fully editable. Also available as a folder option.

To make room for all the new fields in the Edit Movie screen, we introduced a new “Edition” tab and moved all edition-specific fields there (including the Format and Barcode fields):

A small user interface tweak today:
The Add Movies screen is now a pop-up screen that lays over your movie list.
(previously it was a separate full screen page)

Looks cooler, feels more “snappy” and while adding movies, you can actually see the new additions appear in your movie list in the background!

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program “My Movies” to Movie Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new “My Movies” import tool in Movie Connect!

You can find the “My Movies” import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

Import from “My Movies”:

If you’re a new user or thinking of moving your collection from the program CATVids to Movie Connect, good news: we’ve just added a new CATVids import tool in Movie Connect!

You can find the CATVids import tool under the menu top left, then choose “Import Data”.

Import from CATVids:

Persistent barcode queue

Barcodes scanned on the add page are now remembered! This means you can scan your barcodes into the add queue, leave the page, return later and still add the barcodes you scanned.

If you wish to remove barcodes from your queue, use the Edit button top right of the list of barcodes!

You were already able to group your movies on various fields such as Format or Director, and we’ve now expanded those options with Actor and Producer!

Log in to your Connect account and click the folder icon top left of the page, then select Actor or Producer.

Selecting a folder option:

Grouping your movies on Actor:

Last week we updated the field selection popup for Connect and CLZ Cloud, and this week we bring that same field selection popup to your “Export to Text” and “Print to PDF” pages.

The update also includes an update Preview box for Export to Text, and an updated way for dragging/dropping fields for your columns or sort order.

Open up your Export to Text or Print to PDF screen via the menu top left in Connect.

New field selection popup:

Updated “Export to Text” page:

With new preview panel:

Updated “Print to PDF” page:

The ability to select your own Columns for the List View is an important customization feature of Movie Connect. The same holds for selecting the Sort Order fields.

However, the “field selection” screens for doing these customizations were a bit outdated and finding a field could be tricky. So we decided to re-imagine the field selection screens to make them easier to understand, easier to use and better to use on mobile devices too.

Redesigned Field Selection screen:

• Available fields are now grouped, like the tabs in the Edit 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.
• For sorting: use the ASC/DESC button to change the sort direction of that particular field.
• Works great on both your desktop and mobile browsers!

Select Columns screen:

Select Sort Order screen:

Live today in your Movie Connect software: a completely re-designed Edit Movie screen with an improved look, layout and usability!

New look and layout

We’ve moved some fields around and to have them grouped and placed more logically. You’ll notice that we’ve also updated the look of certain buttons so it’s all easier on the eye, and there’s only one big blue important “OK” button to save your changes.

Updated dropdown and pick list fields

The pick list fields have been updated so they’ll only show options from your own collection instead of all available options in our online database. This makes it a lot faster to quickly pick something from a pick list that you used before!

You can just start typing to filter to the pick list entry you want to use, or open up the dropdown to scroll and pick.

Multi value pick list fields such as the Genre field, have a blue plus button to pick a genre from your genre list. Click it, and either start typing or just pick a genre from the list.

New Pick List fields

We’ve updated the following fields from plain text fields to “pick list” fields. This means that those fields now have a dropdown which you can click to quickly pick an existing pick list entry for that field.

The following fields haven been updated from plain text to pick list fields:

• Location
• Condition
• Purchase Store
• Storage Device
• Owner

These field now all have a dropdown to pick an entry. You can also type into them to search or create a new entry for that field.

Panel with personal fields on all tabs

At the bottom of the edit screen we added a “sticky” panel that you can see on all edit tabs. This panel contains some of your most important personal fields so you can always edit them quickly.

New Find Cover pop-up

The Find Cover pop-up has been updated to the latest version we introduced in the Add Screen. Check it out:

We have just updated both the Connect web-application and the free CLZ Cloud viewers to make them a lot faster.

• The folder panel now uses “lazy-loading” which makes it load (a lot) faster.
• When selecting a folder, only the list panel is re-loaded, where previously the entire page was refreshed.

The above changes will make browsing your CLZ Cloud or Connect app a lot snappier and will prevent server performance problems (two birds with one stone!).

The performance improvements are especially noticeable for large book, music and comic collections, as these generally have loooonnnngggg lists of author, artist and series folders.