What's new in CLZ Movies? (page 5)
New in your Movie Connect software: add web-site links to your movie entries, using the new “Links” tab of the Edit Movie screen.
Tip: paste a website link in the URL box and the description will be filled in automatically.
A great addition to your CLZ Movies app 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!
A great addition to your CLZ Movies app 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!
Fixed:
- Opening Statistics could crash the app
- Main Screen: Collection status filter: Could default to “For Sale” when it was previously set to “On Wish List”
- Main screen: Some controls were missing from the top bar on iOS 9/10 devices
- “Want” summary at the top disappeared from the list of comics
A big update for your CLZ app today. Instead of bringing one big new feature, we decided to work on multiple areas that could be improved, all of them based on the feedback we received from you all. Thanks for that!
Movie list now allows multiple format logos
Previously, the movie list only showed the logo of the first Format, but now it shows all Formats that you selected for the movie, e.g. 4K UDH and Blu-ray.
Collection Status filter
The 2nd button from the top right (next to the search button) is the Collection Status filter. Previously, it allowed you to filter by All, Collection or Wish List, but with this update, we added all collection status option there as filters, including On order and For Sale.
Also, the button will now be highlighted in yellow when a filter is active, that is, when it is set to anything other than “All”.
Re-designed toolbars at the top
The toolbars at the top have been re-designed, mainly to make the interactive elements stand out more as actual “buttons”.
(Especially the folder icon on the left was something that was often overlooked as something you could tap on. Hopefully this re-design will help to let more users find the most powerful feature of the app 🙂 )
New sort and display options in Settings
For Titles:
- Ignore Sort Titles when sorting by Title
- Show Sort Titles instead of Titles
For Cast and Crew
- Ignore Sort Names when sorting by Cast or Crew
- Show Sort Names instead of display names for Cast and Crew
Improved Statistics screen
The Statistics screen has been updated with:
- More database totals at the top (nr of episodes, runtime, purchase price, current value)
- More charts (by Year, by Actor)
- A new: “tap to show all” option to enlarge charts and see ALL entries
A big update for your CLZ app today. Instead of bringing one big new feature, we decided to work on multiple areas that could be improved, all of them based on the feedback we received from you all. Thanks for that!
Movie list now allows multiple format logos
Previously, the movie list only showed the logo of the first Format, but now it shows all Formats that you selected for the movie, e.g. 4K UDH and Blu-ray.
Collection Status filter
The 2nd button from the top right (next to the search button) is the Collection Status filter. Previously, it allowed you to filter by All, Collection or Wish List, but with this update, we added all collection status option there as filters, including On order and For Sale.
Also, the button will now be highlighted in yellow when a filter is active, that is, when it is set to anything other than “All”.
Re-designed toolbars at the top
The toolbars at the top have been re-designed, mainly to make the interactive elements stand out more as actual “buttons”.
(Especially the folder icon on the left was something that was often overlooked as something you could tap on. Hopefully this re-design will help to let more users find the most powerful feature of the app 🙂 )
New sort and display options in Settings
For Titles:
- Ignore Sort Titles when sorting by Title
- Show Sort Titles instead of Titles
For Cast and Crew
- Ignore Sort Names when sorting by Cast or Crew
- Show Sort Names instead of display names for Cast and Crew
Improved Statistics screen
The Statistics screen has been updated with:
- More database totals at the top (nr of episodes, runtime, purchase price, current value)
- More charts (by Year, by Actor)
- A new: “tap to show all” option to enlarge charts and see ALL entries
With so many users switching from the desktop software to the Connect web-based software, we are getting a lot of useful feedback about the things they are missing, or would like to see in Connect.
Today, a small update with 4 new settings to save screen space in the main screen:
- Show Filter Bar: uncheck this setting to hide the bar at the top with the Collection Status filter and the Alphabet Bar, giving you quite a bit more vertical screen space for your list.
- Show Collection Status indicators: uncheck this to remove the column with the status icons from your List View, giving you more horizontal room for your columns.
- Show pencil icons (for editing): uncheck this to remove the column with the pencil (edit) icons from your List View, again giving you more horizontal list space.
- Show episodes images: uncheck this to hide episode images from the Details Panel, for TV Series.
Also, 2 new Sort settings are now available:
- ignore sort names for Cast and Crew: when sorting by Actor, Director etc… check this sort by their display names, so by firstname, lastname.
- show sort names for Cast and Crew: when sorting by Actor, Director etc.. check this to show the Sort Names, which is a bit “easier on the eye”.
Oh and BTW: we also took this opportunity to complete re-think the layout of the Settings screen, to make the grouping of settings more logical. I recommend to take a good look again, maybe you will find some useful settings you never knew existed 🙂
A great addition to your Movie Connect 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 your Movie Connect web-based software is the first to go live with it. And, after running the Update from Core on my own collection (3100 movies), I must say, it was well worth the wait!
How to get the new Audience Ratings for your movies
First, go the Settings screen (from the menu) and on the top right, under Adding from Core, choose your preferring “Audience Rating Region”. Currently, the following regions are supported:
- United States
- Great Britain
- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Germany
- Norway
- Switzerland
- Finland
- France
- Netherlands
- Portugal
- Sweden
- Spain
- Italy
- Belgium
Then, use Update from Core to update all movies with the new Audience Ratings. Here’s how:
- Click one of the checkboxes in the movie list to enter Selection Mode
- In the blue bar at the top, check the “All” checkbox on the left
- Click the icon with the 3 dots on the right, and select “Update from Core”
- For “Audience Rating”, select “Replace current data” in the pop-up
- Click “Save and update”
For all future movies that you add, you will get the Audience Rating from IMDb automatically.
Long overdue, but it is finally here: you can now select your own currency for all value and price fields in Movie Connect.
Find the new currency settings in your Settings screen. Under Currency, choose your desired currency.
Choose from USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF, NOK, SEK or DKK. Then use the Currency display setting to customize how prices and values will be displayed.
Fixed:
- Add Screen: Genres weren’t downloading
- Add Screen: Scrolling through results could be slow
- Add Screen: Fixed a rare crash on the IMDb tab
- Edit Multiple: Fixed a rare crash
- Manage Pick List: a pick list item could appear twice when merging
A big update for your CLZ Movies app!
This time we added a new feature that will save you lots of time:
New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding movies
When adding a movie to your database using the Add Movies screen, it will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill movie details, letting you set various fields right then and there.
Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:
- Location
- Owner
- Purchase Date
- Purchase Store
- Purchase Price
- Quantity
- Tags
No more need to edit your added movies afterwards!
(BTW: of course, using the new Pre-fill screen is optional. If you don’t want to use it, just uncheck the “Show Pre-fill screen” toggle at thet bottom. You can always re-enable it through the app’s Settings screen.)
Also new:
- All Collection Status options are now available under the Add button in the Add Screen.
- New look and layout of Field Defaults screen.
A big update for your CLZ Movies app!
This time we added a new feature that will save you lots of time:
New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding movies
When adding a movie to your database using the Add Movies screen, it will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill movie details, letting you set various fields right then and there.
Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:
- Location
- Owner
- Purchase Date
- Purchase Store
- Purchase Price
- Quantity
- Tags
No more need to edit your added movies afterwards!
(BTW: of course, using the new Pre-fill screen is optional. If you don’t want to use it, just uncheck the “Show Pre-fill screen” toggle at thet bottom. You can always re-enable it through the app’s Settings screen.)
Also new:
- All Collection Status options are now available under the Add button in the Add Screen.
- New look and layout of Field Defaults screen.
Another big update for your Movie Connect software.
This time we added a new feature that will save you lots of time:
New Pre-fill screen that pops up when adding movies
When adding a movie to your database using the Add Movies screen, it will now pop-up a new screen called “Pre-fill movie details, letting you set various fields right then and there.
Fields available in the Pre-fill screen:
- Location
- Owner
- Purchase Date
- Purchase Store
- Purchase Price
- Quantity
- Tags
No more need to edit your added movies afterwards!
Here it is, version 6.0 of the CLZ Movies mobile app!
In this major update, we finally bring you THE most requested feature: being able to Edit Multiple Movies in one go. But there’s more, as we took this opportunity to completely re-design the Edit Movie screen and to implement super useful Crop and Rotate tools for movie cover images.
Here’s the full list of what’s new in version 6.0:
NEW: Edit Multiple Movies in one go!
Finally make changes to multiple (or all) movie entries in one go.
Here’s how:
- Tap and hold on a movie in the list to enter Select Mode
- Now tap more movies to select them.
- Tap the menu button on the bottom right and choose “Edit [x] Movies”.
- In the screen that appears, select which fields you want to edit.
(Tips: use the search box to find fields, tap the star icons to set Favorite fields) - Tap Edit at the top right.
- Now set values, or leave fields gray to clear them.
- Tap Done at the top right to save the changes to the selected movies.
Warning: the Edit Multiple feature is a very useful and powerful features, but… remember what Uncle Ben said: With great power comes great responsibility!
IMPROVED: Edit Movie screen
A new look for all edit boxes and a more compact layout, making it much easier to edit your movie entries, without scrolling through long lists of fields.
- The cover image is now on its own tab, so the main tab starts with the most important edit fields at the top.
- Fields are now laid out side-by-side, making it easier to edit all fields without endless scrolling.
- More compact look and user interface for all text edit fields.
- More compact display and editing of multi-value pick list fields like Authors, Genres, Subjects and Tags.
- Date fields: enter year, month day manually or use calendar icon to use date setter popup.
NEW: Built-in Crop and Rotate tool for cover images
In the Edit Movie screen the Cover is now on its own tab, with new Crop and Rotate tools for instant rotating and cropping of self-made cover photos or downloaded images.
IMPROVED: Folder Field selection screen
Yep, another update of this screen, to make it fully consistent with the Select Edit Fields screen.
It now includes a search box at the top for quickly finding the field you want, plus the ability to create your own Favorites (just tap the star icons).
Here it is, version 6.0 of the CLZ Movies mobile app!
In this major update, we finally bring you THE most requested feature: being able to Edit Multiple Movies in one go. But there’s more, as we took this opportunity to completely re-design the Edit Movie screen and to implement super useful Crop and Rotate tools for movie cover images.
Here’s the full list of what’s new in version 6.0:
NEW: Edit Multiple Movies in one go!
Finally make changes to multiple (or all) movie entries in one go.
Here’s how:
- Tap and hold on a movie in the list to enter Select Mode
- Now tap more movies to select them.
- Tap the menu button on the bottom right and choose “Edit [x] Movies”.
- In the screen that appears, select which fields you want to edit.
(Tips: use the search box to find fields, tap the heart icons to set Favorite fields) - Tap Edit at the top right.
- Now set values, or leave fields gray to clear them.
- Tap Done at the top right to save the changes to the selected movies.
Warning: the Edit Multiple feature is a very useful and powerful features, but… remember what Uncle Ben said: With great power comes great responsibility!
IMPROVED: Edit Movie screen
A new look for all edit boxes and a more compact layout, making it much easier to edit your movie entries, without scrolling through long lists of fields.
- The cover image is now on its own tab, so the main tab starts with the most important edit fields at the top.
- Fields are now laid out side-by-side, making it easier to edit all fields without endless scrolling.
- More compact look and user interface for all text edit fields.
- More compact display and editing of multi-value pick list fields like Authors, Genres, Subjects and Tags.
- Date fields: enter year, month day manually or use calendar icon to use date setter popup.
NEW: Built-in Crop and Rotate tool for cover images
In the Edit Movie screen the Cover is now on its own tab, with new Crop and Rotate tools for instant rotating and cropping of self-made cover photos or downloaded images.
IMPROVED: Folder Field selection screen
Yep, another update of this screen, to make it fully consistent with the Select Edit Fields screen.
It now includes a search box at the top for quickly finding the field you want, plus the ability to create your own Favorites (just tap the heart icons).
Last week we implemented several small improvements to the Connect software, based on suggestions (and complaints) from you all, our loyal users:
Configurable Date Format for Edit screen
Two months ago, we introduced a Date Format setting to control how dates are displayed throughout the Connect software. But the date editors in the Edit screen still always used “yyyy-mm-dd” as the format. Which could be confusing to some users.
So in the Settings screen, under Editing, we have now introduced a new setting, specifically for controlling the order of the year, month and day boxes in the Edit screen:
New “Year” options for folders, colums and sorting
Some dates were already available as Year-only options for folders, columns and sorting (like Release Year, Publication Year, etc…), but we have now updated the available options to include ALL date fields as Year-only options, for example:
- Added Year
- Purchase Year
- Seen it Year
- Read it Year
Improved Auto-Capitalization feature
Small tweak for the Auto-Capitalization tools: it now correctly auto-caps letters that follow a parenthesis, bracket, square bracket, single quote or double quote.
More Totals in Statistics screens
The Statistics screen has been updated with more Totals at the top, e.g. for Purchase Price, Current Value.
Version 6.0 is coming up for all five CLZ mobile apps:
CLZ Books, CLZ Music, CLZ Movies, CLZ Comics and CLZ Games (probably in that order).
For “Vee Six” we decided to finally implement THE most commonly requested feature:
Editing Multiple entries in one go! (aka: Batch Editing)
At the same time, v6 will come with completely re-designed Edit screens. Check out some sneak preview screenshot below. More information about app-specific v6 features and improvements will follow later!
Finally: Edit Multiple entries in one go!
This has been the most common feature request for many years: How can I edit (or clear) the Grade/Location/Owner/etc… for many of my database entries in one go?
And in v6, it will finally be possible:
- Just select the entries you want to edit (using tap and hold), and choose Edit from the menu.
- Then select which fields you want to edit (or clear).
- Finally, set the values you want to set and click Done.
Some screenshots:
(These screenshots have been taken from the iOS edition of CLZ Comics, but the other 9 apps will look very similar):
Edit screen re-design
Also new in v6: completely re-designed Edit screens, to make them clearer, more compact and nicer looking.
No more long lists of fields, one per row. In the new screen, fields are placed side by side where possible, with the Cover on a separate tab. Resulting in a more compact screen, requiring less scrolling. Especially on tablet devices!
Some sneak preview screenshots:
(These screenshots have been taken from the iOS editions of CLZ Books and CLZ Music, but the other 8 apps will look very similar):
At customer support, we were regularly receiving questions about the Edit Multiple screen, so in today’s update we made several changes to make it clearer.
- The checkboxes (for unlocking fields) have been replaced by clearer “lock” icons. Click the lock icon to unlock a field for editing.
- Or, just click on a lock field and you will receive a popup asking you to unlock it.
- An extra notification at the top explaining the unlocking and clearing of fields.
- Save button now indicates the number of movies that are being edited.
- Extra warning when saving “You are about to change data for 4 movies. This can not be undone. Would you like to continue?”
Using “Edit Multiple”
Quick reminder how to use Edit Multiple:
In the main list, use the checkboxes to select some movies, and click “Edit” in the blue action bar that appears above the list.
New in the Cover tab of your Edit screen: built-in Crop and Rotate tools for your cover images!
Super useful for fine-tuning images that you uploaded or found through the Find Online tool. You can even Crop/Rotate images that you received from Core, in which case they will be automatically turned into a custom image.
To use the new Crop/Rotate tools, open your Edit screen go to the Cover tab and click the “Crop/Rotate” icon on the top right above the Front or Back cover image:
Then:
- Click the Rotate icon to rotate the image 90 degrees to the right.
- Drag the blue crop rectangle to indicate your desired crop area.
- Click Apply to apply the changes.
Adding Actors as folder option has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of actors can get HUGE.
But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.
Soo… today we can finally introduce Actors as a folder option!
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your other folders faster!)
New folder options for Actors
With this update, we’re introducing an Actors folder option:
IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of actor folders, you first need to use Update from Core on all your movies. Here’s how:
- Go to your All Movies list.
- Tap and hold on 1 movie to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
- Now tap the menu icon on the bottom right, then choose Update from Core.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of yet another folder option, we decided to come up with a better solution.
That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Format, Director, Actor, Location, IMDb Rating) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).
Faster Update from Core
The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Actors from Core and get nicely sorted Actor folder list.
However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your movies one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every movie.
So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 movies at a time, making it much much faster!
Fixed:
- Sorting on Release Date could be off within the same year
Enjoy!
Fixed:
- In the Add from Core screen, when adding a game that is already in your app as ‘On Wish List’ or ‘On Order’, the app will now offer to change its status to ‘In Collection’
- When scanning barcodes the “beep” sound would only sound on the first scan
- Set Data language is now also used during syncing
- Search on own collection could be forgotten during scrolling/browsing your collection
Enjoy!
Adding Actors as folder option has been on our ideas list for a long time, but it was never implemented because of performance problems.
After all, on large collections, the list of actors can get HUGE.
But during the past few weeks, our mobile team has been working to improve the performance of the folder lists, including the recently introduced folder list search.
Soo… today we can finally introduce Actors as a folder option!
(BTW: the performance improvements we made will also make your other folders faster!)
New folder options for Actors
With this update, we’re introducing an Actors folder option:
IMPORTANT: for correct sorting of actor folders, you first need to use Update from Core on all your movies. Here’s how:
- Go to your All Movies list.
- Tap and hold on 1 movie to select it, then choose Select All on the top right.
- Now tap the menu icon on the bottom right, then choose Update from Core.
Redesigned Select Folder Field screen
Through the years, the number of available folder fields has grown enormously, making the Select Folder Field screen a bit “unwieldy”. And with todays addition of yet another folder option, we decided to come up with a better solution.
That is why version 5.5 also includes a re-designed Select Folder Field screen, with all folder options nicely grouped under sensible headers, and the most popular options (Format, Director, Actor, Location, IMDb Rating) instantly accessible at the top (see screenshot above).
Faster Update from Core
The Update from Core feature has become essential in this update, so that you can retrieve the correct sort names for your Actors from Core and get nicely sorted Actor folder list.
However, on large collections the old Update from Core feature was quite slow, as it updated your movies one by one, that is doing separate requests to our server for each and every movie.
So for this 5.5 update, we also complete rewrote the Update from Core feature to do the updates in batches of 100 movies at a time, making it much much faster!
Fixed:
- Sorting on Release Date could be off within the same year
Enjoy!
New in Connect today: We have added several keyboard shortcuts to the most commonly used features:
For the Main screen:
- Navigate through your items with your arrow keys (works in List, Images, Shelves and Card View!)
- Use c + a or c then a for Add from Core
- Use c + m or c then m for Add Manually
- Use c + h or c then h for Add Hardware from Core (Game Connect)
- Use c + j or c then j for Add Hardware Manually (Game Connect)
- Use c + e or c then e for Edit Selected Item
For the Edit screen:
- Use cmd/ctrl + s to Save and close
- Use cmd/ctrl + j to Save and go to Previous item
- Use cmd/ctrl + k to Save and go to Next item
CLZ Core is our central online movie database, that is the database that you search by Title or by Barcode in the Add Movies screen. In general, the movie information delivered by Core (cast, crew, release year, runtime, plot, etc…) is quite complete and correct, because of our official IMDb content license.
However, for some releases the edition specific information (cover image, edition, format, distributor, subtitles, regions, screen ratios and audio tracks) may be incomplete or even incorrect.
As of today, *you* can help us improve that, using the new Submit to Core feature!
Just fill in the correct data in your own entry, then select the movie and choose Submit to Core from the toolbar above the movie details:
Which takes you to a form the core.collectorz.net site, where you can see our Core data on the left and your own data on the right. Now use the green arrow icons to use your data to correct and complete our data. Then finally, click the big green Submit Changes button on the bottom:
Thanks for your help!
Fixed:
- Add Movies / ‘Search for’ – popup did not show up right on devices with large font.
- When downloading new entries from CLZ Cloud, previously cleared fields could get filled in.
- In the Add from Core screen, when adding a movie that is already in your app as ‘On Wish List’ or ‘On Order’, the app will now offer to change its status to ‘In Collection’.
- Box set images were not downloaded.
- On devices with intermittent internet connection, app could revert to trial mode
- After down-syncing update cover images, the list could still show old cover.
- Improved error messages in case of core search problems.
Previously, the “Add to …” button in the Add screen let you choose between “Add to Collection” or “Add to Wishlist”. But as of today, you can now choose from ALL possible Collection Status option directly. For instance, this lets you add an item as “On Order” straight from the Add screen!
Now, the possible choices are:
- In Collection
- For Sale
- Wish List
- On Order
- Not In Collection
