Hi there,

I'm currently trying out Coollector. It has some great ideas but also some smaller bugs and misses some features that would make it even more user friendly.

I'll start with the bug that bugs me most

The text boxes for string search (e.g. movie title search) use a font that has about double the height of the text box. That means only the upper part of the entered word(s) is visible (see attached image). That can be quite annoying sometimes. As I'm on a macbook retina system I wonder if the upscaling of the font might somehow be broken.

Here's some background info:
I'm on Macbook Pro Retina with OS X 10.8.5 and am using version 4.0.5 of your software.

Concerning the missing features, one thing I'd find really useful is an option to batch edit the movie info. As an example, I have several movies in different languages and would like to batch set the language. Unfortunately I haven't found any way to do that. The only way so far is to manually edit every single movie entry.

Anyhow, neat program and keep up the great work.

Indeed, that's very annoying!



It's a possibility, as I've never tested the program on a Mac retina (don't have one). But it's strange that there's a problem only with this text box, and that no other user has reported this problem. In fact, I think I've been in contact with several Mac retina owners and they didn't have this problem.

Could you please try some other skins to confirm that they all have the same problem.



What bothers me about batch editing is the batch selecting. In other words, how will you select which videos you want to edit?

About your language problem, my guess is that you've scanned your video files, and the language was set to "English" while you would have liked "Italian". You need to know that when you scan a file or add a video from scratch, the language field is set to the last value that you've used. If you add a video with "Italian" as the language, after that the language field will be set to "Italian" again when you'll scan new files.

My suggestion is to remove all your scanned files with the menu "Tools->Manage your video files->Batch delete several file associations", and to scan them again.

Your feedback makes me realize that I should modify the scanning feature. When you click the button "Add the recognized files", a dialog should tell you which language will be used, with the opportunity to change that value. What do you think? Do you like that solution?



Thank you very much, there are great things cooking

Hi,

Wow, thanks for the quick answer.



I've tried the legacy light blue skin. Same problem. It affects any text box that allows you to enter text. Interestingly, when I open a tab containing such a text box, the text has the correct size for about one second and then doubles in size. Decreasing the font size via the skin editor doesn't help either. It decreases the text size as well as the height of the text box. So in the end the enlarged text is smaller but still too large for the now dwarfed text box.



The problem is that it's not only the language I'd like to batch set but also other info (e.g. media type, subtitles etc.).

I've given it a bit of thought and see basically two and a half potential solutions/workarounds.

option 1) You use the <scan your video files> option by a) letting the user - as you proposed - set the info they need when scanning files and b) allowing the rescan of already associated files, which would make it possible to update the info in the user database without removing the associated files first

option 2) Allow the user to create a custom list of movies (this would actually be a useful extra feature). The question is how do you select the movies?

either a) you put an "add to custom list" button in the search tabs (e.g. <movie filtered search>, <movie title search> etc.). This button adds the currently visible movie(s) to the custom list. This way groups of movies as well as single movies can be added to the custom list.

or b) you display e.g. check boxes with each movie. Checked movies can be added to the custom list and then edited.

Having the possibility to create a custom list of movies would actually be a cool extra feature . I often find myself in the situation, that I have friends over and they ask for a selection of movies to choose from. A custom list would make things way easier.


Just putting in my five cents, Cheers

Even if I don't have a Mac retina, I should be able to create some test versions that you would try and tell me how it works. Unfortunately, I'm moving to a new appartment, and I won't have access to my Mac until 2 days. When I'm operational again and if you're ok, I'll be happy to fix this bug with your help.



Please explain your needs.

When you scan your video files, the media type depends on the file type. Why do you want to change the media type?

In the future, I plan to extract information from the video files: resolution, sound type, subtitles, etc... When this feature will be available, the problem should be fixed.



You can already create a custom list of movies by tagging the movies with the same tag and using the tag filter.

But that works only for the movies, not the videos, so we would still have the problem of batch selecting the videos to batch edit them.



I think that check boxes are the only good solution to batch select.

But:

a) you don't want to select movies, you want to select videos, so it doesn't work.

b) even if it worked, I would never make the interface more complex for a feature that is very little needed. I much prefer to find a workaround that makes it not needed at all.

It's not like my life depends on it . I can easily wait till next year . I'll gladly test the test versions then. Just contact me when they're ready.



Automatic extraction of this info already solves half of the problems. Great feature! Usually I recode my DVDs and BLU-RAYs to MKV (AVI and MP4 from older DVDs), as long as these files are read it's perfect.
In general, the most important info I like to have with the movie is: audio language(s), subtitles (languages), resolution (e.g. DVD, 720p, 1080p).



I'm fine with a custom list of movies instead of videos. Tags is a possible workaround (to be honest hadn't seen them before, I'm new to Coollector). Just not very convenient when it comes to a larger and/or temporary lists. Deleting the tags one by one is a bit bothersome. Perfect would be something of a drag and drop type. But I understand that it is of minor priority to you at this point.

Anyhow, happy new year and happy moving ...

Thank you very much! There's nothing I can do without your collaboration.



I think there'll be no problem extracting them from an mkv container. Except for the resolution "DVD" which I don't know what it means...



That's our way to create lists.



You're right. I should probably add a way to modify or delete a tag (it would be modified/deleted from all the movies). We already have something like that for the video locations.



I'm not sure I see what you mean... Ok, you'd drag a movie. But where would you drop?

We already have the keyboard shortcut "Control + T" to edit the tags of the displayed movie. We could add the shortcut "Shift + Control + T" to globally modify a tag. You would pick up a tag from the list of tags, and decide if you want to delete it or edit it.

What do you think?

Your screenshot is blurry and I can't tell if it's because the image is compressed or if the program really looks like that. Could you please send me a lossless screenshot (png or bmp) instead of this jpg screenshot?

Here is a zoom of how the program looks like on my PC:

DVD: Just me being lazy. My way of summarizing DVD-like resolutions (640 to 720 horizontal)



Well, you would need to define a drop zone, where selected movies can be dragged. In general, introducing something like a quick custom list or better a "movie basket" - would be a nice and convenient way of managing the user movie database. It could be used for deleting several movies in one go as well as batch editing, exporting custom lists etc. It could be a very flexible tool. But I'm getting carried away. I don't know how much effort it would take to incorporate something like that into the software. Particularly, since you appear to use a less common code library, at least judging from the UI.



That would be a big help in handling tags / tag based lists.

Hmm, strange not blurry at all on my side - even if I open the uploaded pic in the post. Here's the PNG.

As you can see, the cursor is at the correct position. It's just the displayed text that is enlarged

Just realized now. When I edit the entered text it switches back to the correct font size for a second and then enlarges it again.

I'm afraid that our interface is already crowded enough. Also, the interface can be used in single pane mode or dual pane mode, which limits even more the options.



The problem isn't the effort that it'd take. If it was worth it, I'd gladly make that effort. But I see little use for such a drop place. It'll look strange, it'll eat up space, and it'll be rarely used.



I'm using wxWidgets, which allows me to develop for Mac and PC at the same time. But wxWidgets can't be blamed. It's all my fault. The controls that have a problem are controls that I draw entirely by myself. It's up to me to fix this retina problem.



It's blurry when you zoom the picture to look at the details. Thank you for the png, it's much better to analyze how drawing goes wrong.



That's certainly a clue. Does it have a relation with the position of the mouse? What happens when you move the mouse over the control? What happens if you use only the keyboard and leave the mouse away from the control?

Can you be fast enough to take a screenshot of that state?

Well, that's your decision. I do not think it would be rarely used and it wouldn't need to be bigger than e.g. a small thumbnail. But there's no point in discussing this further. You've made your position clear.


It does appear to be some post-processing/post-drawing problem. When I enter / edit / delete text it shows / switches to the correct text size. Between half a second and a second after I've finished typing it redraws the text as the enlarged version. This appears to be completely independent of whether or how I use the mouse.


Nope. Not at all.


Doesn't change anything.


I've attached a screenshot from the interval between typing something and the text getting enlarged.

Please remind me for what use you need to batch select movies.



Where would you place it? What would it look like for the users to immediately understand what it's for?



Thank you very much, that screenshot is very encouraging.

That's how the text should look like. The lines still have some defects that I should easily fix.