While I understand the reasoning behind the arguments for open credits, the introduction of open credits would make the programme virtually useless for DVDP users with international collections and/or for DVDP users with limited mastery of English.

Taking myself and my own collection as an example, I have sufficient mastery of Dutch, English, German and French to be able to both understand and enter crew credits in these languages. However, my collection holds over 35 CoO's and includes films in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Thai, Vietnamese, Turkish, Farsi, Greek etc.

A system of open credits would - given DVDP's current limitations on handling languages using non-roman characters - implicate that any crew credits in such languages would a) need to be romanised just to enter them; b) become incomprehensible anyway to anyone that doesn't have a decent level of mastery of both the language and its romanised version.

Whereas in the current system, it is still possible to use subtitles to enter at least some main crew, that all goes out the window the minute open crew credits are introduced. And while that may be fine for those fellow users that have US-centric collections, some of us have more globally oriented collections and enjoy it that way. Byebye to all non-Japanese Kurosawa fans, for instance.

Then there are the users with limited understanding of English. For this group, which is probably now using one of the programme translations, introduction of open crew credits would for all Hollywood, UK, Australian etc. movies mean the introduction of credits in a language they hardly understand or don't understand at all - which, in turn, makes the programme useless for them if they have any interest in Crew.

In conclusion: introducing open crew credits would allow me to only track part of my collection as far as crew is concerned. For me, that would be a deal-breaker and would force me to abandon DVDP and find an alternative that allows me to track data in a language I can understand.

And somehow I reckon I'm not the only one who would be affected in this way...

Quoting dee1959jay:

Quote:
While I understand the reasoning behind the arguments for open credits, the introduction of open credits would make the programme virtually useless for DVDP users with international collections and/or for DVDP users with limited mastery of English.

Taking myself and my own collection as an example, I have sufficient mastery of Dutch, English, German and French to be able to both understand and enter crew credits in these languages. However, my collection holds over 35 CoO's and includes films in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Thai, Vietnamese, Turkish, Farsi, Greek etc.

A system of open credits would - given DVDP's current limitations on handling languages using non-roman characters - implicate that any crew credits in such languages would a) need to be romanised just to enter them; b) become incomprehensible anyway to anyone that doesn't have a decent level of mastery of both the language and its romanised version.

Whereas in the current system, it is still possible to use subtitles to enter at least some main crew, that all goes out the window the minute open crew credits are introduced. And while that may be fine for those fellow users that have US-centric collections, some of us have more globally oriented collections and enjoy it that way. Byebye to all non-Japanese Kurosawa fans, for instance.

Then there are the users with limited understanding of English. For this group, which is probably now using one of the programme translations, introduction of open crew credits would for all Hollywood, UK, Australian etc. movies mean the introduction of credits in a language they hardly understand or don't understand at all - which, in turn, makes the programme useless for them if they have any interest in Crew.

In conclusion: introducing open crew credits would allow me to only track part of my collection as far as crew is concerned. For me, that would be a deal-breaker and would force me to abandon DVDP and find an alternative that allows me to track data in a language I can understand.

And somehow I reckon I'm not the only one who would be affected in this way...

Very well said, green arrow, I simply do not get it, why some people want to make this program more and more complicated. There is already so much stuff to track and contribute.

And honestly who the hell wants to know who was the assistant to the secondary unit director ?

And again this is DVD PROFILER not a MOVIE DATABASE !

But even if open credits would come, this would not stop me from using this program, I would just ignore them, never contribute them, never let them into my database.

cheers
Donnie

Quoting DarklyNoon:

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And honestly who the hell wants to know who was the assistant to the secondary unit director ?

While I 100% agree with the above statement...

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And again this is DVD PROFILER not a MOVIE DATABASE !

I 100% disagree with this.

You are right, it is DVD Profiler, but I really dislike that statement when I see it because by that criteria, why keep track of credits at all? Or audio? Or features? Or video. Since it's DVD Profiler, maybe everything should be just limited down to the titles of the DVD you own.

The cast and crew is part of the DVD, thus it should be entered, just like everything else on the DVD.

Sorry, even though I'm directing this at you, I'm not really directing this at you. I see that argument often on the forum and it's a small peeve. If it's on the DVD, then it should be open to profiling. The program is called DVD Profiler and not Everything on the DVD except for this and this and that Profiler.

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But even if open credits would come, this would not stop me from using this program, I would just ignore them, never contribute them, never let them into my database.

I'm with you on this. I'm happy with producers, directors, writer, composer and effects. Everythign else would get blocked out.

Has anyone brought up the mess that full open will be with linking names? Because once you do full open, you can forget about proper linking. Hell, it's a problem now, but it will get leagues worse.

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

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Like I said Open creds would finally make Profiler accessible to ALL users

My claim is the exact opposite, as explained in my lengthy post above.

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

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Te thing that amazes me Hal is how downright selfish that attitude is., and i do mean selfish. Why is that you believe you should be able to have Profiler as YOU wish it. Who do you think you are too tell some user that he you can have what you want, but he can't have what he wants. Like I said Open creds would finally make Profiler accessible to ALL users not just the select few who are selfish in the extreme. Frankly, I am shocked at the attitude.

However, I am pleased to note that by a rather huge margin some form of Open Credits is desired.

It has nothing to do with how I want it.  It is all about how Ken wants it.  As a programmer it is his decision as to what information he will allow to be tracked in the main database.  He has decided to limit the crew to specific roles, and I happen to agree with that decision (except that I personally IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, think he has gone overboard with sound and special effects credits).  He has provided users with the ability to track whatever they want locally.

Skip, it would really be appreciated if you would try to stick to the topic and not try to "divine" people's motivations, which you are actually pretty bad at!

Open creds is much more non R1 centered. but I have never been R1 centered to begin with. I list french credits as they are seen on screen without problems. Or German, or if I needed to Russian, except the program doesn't deal with Cyrillic. The problem to which you refer seems to be more one of the program not being able to cope with the character set. Were I in your shoes, I would then try an seek out someone who could help me translate the character set.

After all, in your Norwegian centric attitude, this really has little to do with the Online, but more your ability to be able to translate the data into something manageable for you LOCALLY. That is how I would be viewing it here, if i were being R1 or English centric, how do I cope with this not for the Online but for ME.

Scott:

I think that small handful of users is just as important, if not more so, than the selfish majority. The program should try as hard as possible to serve ALL users, not just the few, even if that few is the majority. My place, personally, is the same as most here, I have no interest in tracking  every piece of information for every film, but I would be amazed if there are not users who do have such an interest, and may have even abandoned the use of profiler because they can't. But I am unwilling to put myself in a position that is only about what i want, it is better to capture all of the data and then each user can do with it what he will or will not. This would also be something that would set profiler apart from the pack in a big way.

As my friend Dan has noted in the past, sometimes some of the "secondary" information is of interest, for example Unit people/Location people can get Oscars, one that i recall was a unit director or maybe it was a DOP who received an Oscar for his work, I want to say it was Sound of music but I could be wrong about the specific film. I know about it, but since we don't capture the data, it is not something I keep at my fingertips.

Skip

I understand the conundrum, reybr. but that is the same problem we could have in the US. The program cannot deal with Japanese characters, so if i have a movie with only the japanese crew data I am SOL, unless I can get help translating. That, however, has nothing to do with open credits. That is cultural problem and a LOCAL problem.

Skip