Category Cleanup

[wrems]

What’s the best way to cleanup categories? Mostly combine similar entities. One example of some nuance to labelling is the category or genre for Science Fiction. I have 3 variations with subsets of content in each: Science Fiction, Science-Fiction and Sci-Fi.

Is there a way to easily correct this for multiple videos at once?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wrems

What’s the best way to cleanup categories? Mostly combine similar entities. One example of some nuance to labelling is the category or genre for Science Fiction. I have 3 variations with subsets of content in each: Science Fiction, Science-Fiction and Sci-Fi.

Is there a way to easily correct this for multiple videos at once?

You can try your luck with the Tools -> Fix Genres. It attempts to clean up the genres by splitting out "Action and Adventure" or "Action/Adventure" into 2 separate Genres "Action" and "Adventure".

[wrems]

Is there any chance that the Batch Update could append rather than replace genres?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wrems

Is there any chance that the Batch Update could append rather than replace genres?

The whole point of the that update tool is to clean them up... i'm not sure appending new genres would cleaning it up, or making it more dirty (I guess it all depends on how you look it at I guess).

It could certainly do as you asked, but I won't have time to add in something like that for a while. Too many things on the go... and not enough time

[wrems]

Yeah, but say I want a view for Movies and use the genre field to group them for my vfs. Yet, I still want to be able to retain the genres like action/adventure/sci-fi etc, so that they can still be drilled into. Right now I can have either the regular genres (action, adventure...) or I can replace the whole field with a tag like Movie and then filter by genre in my view.

I like being able to get to a single list of all my movies not separated by their format or sorted in a weird way. So far this method is the only way I've been able to achieve that. I just have to give up the other genres. Which I don't use much anyway but nice to have if one wants to drill by drama lets say... My wife does this, plus kids shows genres are now gone too.

I’m not rushing you, just stating my case

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wrems

Yeah, but say I want a view for Movies and use the genre field to group them for my vfs. Yet, I still want to be able to retain the genres like action/adventure/sci-fi etc, so that they can still be drilled into. Right now I can have either the regular genres (action, adventure...) or I can replace the whole field with a tag like Movie and then filter by genre in my view.

I like being able to get to a single list of all my movies not separated by their format or sorted in a weird way. So far this method is the only way I've been able to achieve that. I just have to give up the other genres. Which I don't use much anyway but nice to have if one wants to drill by drama lets say... My wife does this, plus kids shows genres are now gone too.

I’m not rushing you, just stating my case

I see. When you said "Batch Update" i thought your were referring to the Fix Genres tool... but your are really talking about the Batch Updater. Unfortunately, that's even harder to pull off, based on the nature of how the batch updater works That being said, i can see the value of allowing for this, but i'd need time to figure out a way to do it, and them time to actually do it

[wrems]

How about a tagging function?

This way genre’s could be left as is and a person could segregate their media to their heart’s content. A couple of examples would be tags for: kid’s movies, adult movies, exercise videos and so on.

I know you’re busy but I thought I’d throw it out there and see if any of it sticks eventually.

Any merit to this approach to segregation?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wrems

How about a tagging function?

This way genre’s could be left as is and a person could segregate their media to their heart’s content. A couple of examples would be tags for: kid’s movies, adult movies, exercise videos and so on.

I know you’re busy but I thought I’d throw it out there and see if any of it sticks eventually.

Any merit to this approach to segregation?

From my point of view, I see "tags" exactly like genres. It's unlikely that I'll add a separate facility for storing tags, since for genres, I'm just using the sagetv field for storing genres. If I implemented tags, then I'd have to manage the lifecycle of that data, including cleaning it up when it's no longer there, etc. I could use a custom field, but again, to me, Genres == Tags.

BTW, don't know if you realized this or not... but I did add the ability to add/remove single genres to the Batch Update panel.

ie, if you do a batch update and enter +MyGenre in the Genre field, then MyGenre will be added to all items. Likewise, usinge -MyGenre will remove MyGenre from all items.

[wrems]

Originally Posted by stuckless

BTW, don't know if you realized this or not... but I did add the ability to add/remove single genres to the Batch Update panel.

ie, if you do a batch update and enter +MyGenre in the Genre field, then MyGenre will be added to all items. Likewise, usinge -MyGenre will remove MyGenre from all items.

No, I didn't realize! That's perfect actually. I see your point and thought about that too. I think your method is actually better for control. Now I'll have to dig into your PQL.

I'll bet there's a way to search by genre huh? Then I can use the batch updater to zap out the genre anomalies and then batch update and append consistent labels. Plus, use the field entirely like tags anyway...

I still haven't loaded any of the new stuff up yet. Looking forward to it.