Currently im am reviewing some of the asian (mainly Hong Kong) Movies i have collected and entered in my DVD-Profiler database. What i really dislike is that many of the asian actors are entered in many different ways. The actor "Chow Yun-Fat" for example is somtimes as "Chow Yun-Fat" and other times with the reversed Western-Order "Yun-Fat Chow".
The same thing happens with "Shu Qi"/"Qi Shu" an so on.

The rules state that one should use the more commonly used by the CLT. All the actors that i was checking with "Surname, Given Name" and "Given Name, Surname" were more commonly used in the original "Surname, Given Name"-Order.

My Idea ist that: Shouldn't we, the active DVD-Profiler Users consent to stop the re-ordering of the asian names? I think the re-ordering of the asian names is one of the major reasons why we have the different/inconsistent actor names in the database.
Also i think that keeping the asian names in their original order would show some respect to their different cultural habits.

Two years ago, I asked in the Feature requests forum to add a tick box to reverse name display; That would help to manage in a better way Asian names.

The result would be something like that:

Yep this is one of biggest gripes about how the database is organised with respect to Asian actors, and I have vocalised it in previous posts of mine. It hinders a film search within your own local database if particular actors are entered by 3-4 different variations of their own name. A universal solution needs to be implemented to address this unique problem towards Asian cinema/actors.

I've myself have had to search aka's of all my Asian actors in my local database, and then individually go through them one by one, and change them all to just one acceptable 'common' name. I had the patience and time to do this, it's not fair for everyone to have to go through this process independently....it's very time consuming!

Quoting corleone:

Quote:
Solution #1: Extend the actors database with an "interlink" feature. With that feature the users could define that for example "Yun-Fat Chow" is the same person as "Chow Yun-Fat". That way we could have different name orders, but still get all the movies for an actor if we do a search on just one of the name variants."

We already have Credited as feature

Quote:

Solution #2: Extend the actors database to store the different name variants in the same database record. With that, the database record for "Chow Yun-Fat" would also include the variants "Yun-Fat Chow", "Chow Yun Fat" and "Yun Fat Chow".

Se two first pinned threas on this forum subsection:

http://www.invelos.com/Forums.aspx?task=viewtopic&topicID=509284&PageNum=1&messageID=1455816#M1455816

http://www.invelos.com/Forums.aspx?task=viewtopic&topicID=536570&PageNum=1&messageID=1543493#M1543493

Winston:

I understand what your saying about the "Credit As"-Feature.
But my main problem is different, it is how the different name variants are done in the actor database.
If we stay with your "John Wayne" example than he would show up either as "John Wayne" and "Wayne John". And i don't mean that for the Creditedt As part but for the Cast Member that is selected from the left table when the actors are selected for the DVD profile.

My main problem is: If i select to filter my movies in the main windows of DVD-Profiler, and i choose Actors: "Chow Yun-Fat" then only a fraction of his movies will be listed in the Collection list. To see the rest of the movies i would have to select the other 3 variants of his name. And i have exactly the same problem if i doubleclick the same actor in the actors list of a profile.

What i want is: I want to be able to select ANY of the name variants in the filter window, and the program should find ALL of the films. That was my basic idea for the solutions a suggested.

Corleone:

The system as designed by Invelos is not the way I would have implemented it personally. The existing system is based on user input, and all users following the Rules. Thus we have a Most Commonly Credited Name, which means Name A=Name B and Name C and Name D, sao to get your result you have to know the "priority" name.

The system I would have setup would have yielded Name a=Name B=Name C=Name D, which would yield the result you desire. There would be no priority name, any variant you enter would yield the same list of films, a much more rational solution in my opinion. Users should also be able to sort the resulting lists based upon paramenters of their choosing, but that is another story