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    Invelos Forums->DVD Profiler: Desktop Feature Requests Page: 1 2 3  Previous   Next
Ability to have multiple cover-art attached to each profile
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorDoombear
Yosemite Sam Fan
Registered: March 13, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
Canada Posts: 1,117
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Yes, I would like this very much. Then people could also have the choice of slipcase scan or inner cover scan where they differ. There are some titles with reversable covers; it would be nice to have each option available.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorWinston Smith
Don't be discommodious
Registered: March 13, 2007
United States Posts: 21,610
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Quoting ateo357:
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Quoting Winston Smith:
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This has been an ongoing request for many many years, but here we go again. Why Ken has not done anything is unknown except to  him, thiough I could speculate but won't. Someday I am sure we will habve the ability to deal with multiple covers, but...now...no.


Why couldn't you just post a reply without the sarcastic remark in it? Every discussion you pop up in you have to be condescending towards the subject or to the people wanting to discuss the subject. Making personal remarks trying to belittle people.

As noted by another user this request is quite redundant and there are any number of threads already in existence on it...was a new one necessary. I would say no, and that is not sarcastic. Simply find one of the existing threads and boot it up to the top of the list...easy to do.
ASSUME NOTHING!!!!!!
CBE, MBE, MoA and proud of it.
Outta here

Billy Video
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorKulju
Registered: March 14, 2007
Finland Posts: 2,337
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Quoting Jimmy S:
Quote:

I suppose this request will never happen because of the server cost.

Server cost? you gotta be joking..
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorKathy
Registered: May 29, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
United States Posts: 3,475
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Quoting Kulju:
Quote:
Quoting Jimmy S:
Quote:

I suppose this request will never happen because of the server cost.

Server cost? you gotta be joking..



I have no idea what would need to be done to implement this feature. Is it difficult? Costly? Too time consuming? What reasons are there that would prevent invelos from implementing this feature?
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorDJ Doena
Registered: May 1, 2002
Registered: March 14, 2007
Reputation: Highest Rating
Germany Posts: 6,744
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Quoting Kathy:
Quote:
Quoting Kulju:
Quote:
Quoting Jimmy S:
Quote:

I suppose this request will never happen because of the server cost.

Server cost? you gotta be joking..



I have no idea what would need to be done to implement this feature. Is it difficult? Costly? Too time consuming? What reasons are there that would prevent invelos from implementing this feature?


From the top of my head:

Every cover is allowed to up to 200,000 bytes. That makes 400,000 bytes (391k) per profile. Each cover variant doubles that number.
Currently, there are 550,000 profiles in the DB. To get a rough estimate, let's assume that only 3/4 of these have covers, but they use the full 391k. That means right now Invelos stores over 154 gigabytes of covers already.
And we're not talking about home user "if it's full, I'll simply buy a new HDD" scenarios. This is most likely a internet provider RAID system with backup and everything. This costs a lot more that $50 to buy a new 1 terabyte HDD.

And none of that includes the hightened traffic costs when you are up- and downloading more covers than before.


So much for the monetary aspect, now to the user experience.

First you have to make some decisions: Does the user have all cover variants locally and simply decides there which one he wants to see? Or does he have to choose by download dialog?
If the former where is this dialog and when does it come up? If the latter can he make that choice again and when?

In the online collection, does he see the master cover (which is the master cover?) or his individual one?

When contributing, how does the dialog look like? The user has to decide whether he wants to overwrite an existing cover or add a new variant. Does he do that in the local software or on the website?

When users vote: The overwrite case is simple, it's just as it is now. But what happens, if it's a new variant? How do I show the existing covers so that the voter can decide if this is a new variant worthy of being added and not just a better/different scan of an existing cover? The user has to see all cover variants and it must be easy to compare them with the new one.


When all these questions (and some I've probably forgotten) are answered then you can hack down the code.


Software developement isn't about hacking down lines of code. It's about designing a user interface and a work process that's understood by the user and to make it fast, stable and secure below the surface.
Karsten
DVD Collectors Online

 Last edited: by DJ Doena
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorBad Father
Registered: July 23, 2001
Registered: March 13, 2007
Posts: 4,596
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Quoting Kathy:
Quote:
Quoting Kulju:
Quote:
Quoting Jimmy S:
Quote:

I suppose this request will never happen because of the server cost.

Server cost? you gotta be joking..



I have no idea what would need to be done to implement this feature. Is it difficult? Costly? Too time consuming? What reasons are there that would prevent invelos from implementing this feature?


Quoting Kathy:
Quote:
Quoting Kulju:
Quote:
Quoting Jimmy S:
Quote:

I suppose this request will never happen because of the server cost.

Server cost? you gotta be joking..



I have no idea what would need to be done to implement this feature. Is it difficult? Costly? Too time consuming? What reasons are there that would prevent invelos from implementing this feature?


I’m no expert but I assume that the online collection would have to be completely revamped. How would the online know which images to link to for a customer's collection? The only way to do this would be for each customer's online collection to have it's own image folder on the server. The customer's own images would then have to be uploaded just as the other data is uploaded to the invelos server. The problems here are bandwidth and storage space. Imagine 1,000s of customers uploading 1,000s of images to the invelos server at the same time. It would be like a DOS attack and crash the system ...especially if customers have a lot of hi-res images in their collection like I do. I scan mine at 600dpi then resize to 800x1100+/-. Those images range in size of up to 1.5mb per image and I have over 5,000 profiles. Where does one store all of these images? My image folder contains 2GB of data alone. Now imagine invelos having to store 1,000s of customers images on their servers? That's a lot of TBs of data. Invelos touts over 500,000 users...you do the math. Even if invelos were to put a cap of, say 2GB per user, that would require over 1,000TB of storage space for images alone. Ok, Ok, I know that's a farfetched idea, so...let's say invelos only allows the thumbnails to be uploaded and displayed on the online as is currently done. My thumbnails folder contains over 10,000 images at 127MB. Once again, do the math. As a minimum it would require invelos to provide at least 63TB of storage space for all of its users images. That's 33 2TB hard drives at $100 a piece. Ok…that’s a manageable $3,300 investment but where do you put all of those hard drives? Now we need a larger server cabinet…$1,500+/-. Our utility bill is going to go through the roof now…gotta account for that. As you can see, it’s going to take a considerable investment on the part of invelos to pay for all of this new equipment and costs to maintain it. How will this translate to us? Yearly subscription fees. How much invelos should charge? $15, $20, $25…??? How much would you be willing to pay to have your own images displayed in your online collection? Me, personally…nada. I already have my collection, with my own images, online. I assume there are many, many other users that do too. So, it’s a risk on the part of invelos. Would the return on investment be worth it to invelos? That’s up to invelos to determine.

That's just the server and storage element of the puzzle. As Karsten pointed out there's the Program and Contribution elements to be considered as well. It's not as cut and dried as some people may imagine it would be.
My WebGenDVD online Collection
DVD Profiler Desktop and Mobile RegistrantStar ContributorDJ Doena
Registered: May 1, 2002
Registered: March 14, 2007
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Germany Posts: 6,744
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I didn't mean to discourage any further discussion about this feature request, I just wanted to show that it's not as simple as it appears on first thought. 
Karsten
DVD Collectors Online

DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorMithi
Sushi Annihilator
Registered: March 13, 2007
Reputation: Superior Rating
Germany Posts: 2,217
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Quoting 8ballMax:
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How would the online know which images to link to for a customer's collection?

Well, that part would be easy, via ID.
Now the ID is UPC.Locality ... with multiple cover it would be UPC.Locality.Variant
No additional upload of pictures necessary.


cya, Mithi

Correction: Locality of course, not Location
Mithi's little XSLT tinkering - the power of XML --- DVD-Profiler Mini-Wiki
 Last edited: by Mithi
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorKathy
Registered: May 29, 2007
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United States Posts: 3,475
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Quoting DJ Doena:
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I didn't mean to discourage any further discussion about this feature request, I just wanted to show that it's not as simple as it appears on first thought. 


I had a feeling there was more to it than I realized. Thanks to everyone for their input.


Difficult or not this still remains my #1 wish. 
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributorwidescreenforever
Under A Double DoubleW
Registered: March 13, 2007
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Canada Posts: 5,493
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and don't forget we now have the ability to store more than one disc ID to a title , so more than  one image cover shouldn't be out of the question....
In the 60's, People took Acid to make the world Weird. Now the World is weird and People take Prozac to make it Normal.

Terry
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantMysticum
Registered: June 15, 2008
Posts: 220
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Multiple covers would be awesome.  It would be great if you could have different covers, poster and maybe even disc art.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorKulju
Registered: March 14, 2007
Finland Posts: 2,337
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Quoting DJ Doena:
Quote:
Every cover is allowed to up to 200,000 bytes. That makes 400,000 bytes (391k) per profile. Each cover variant doubles that number.
Currently, there are 550,000 profiles in the DB. To get a rough estimate, let's assume that only 3/4 of these have covers, but they use the full 391k. That means right now Invelos stores over 154 gigabytes of covers already.


I'm talking about optional re-release cover art only. Out of 550,000 profiles I think that 5% would be very generous estimation about the profiles which have re-releases with the same UPC. That would be ~11GB, if all scans would be hi-res. Invelos server specs are:

- Dell 1333 FSB Dual Xeon PowerEdge R710
- Dell 9G Drive Controller - SAS/SATA
- 2x Intel Xeon 5530 2.4 GHz Quad Core Processors
- 12 GB RAM
- 146 GB 10K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD
- 300 GB 15K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD
- 300 GB 15K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD
- 300 GB 10K RPM SCSI/SAS HDD

So I don't believe that the disc space is the issue here.

Quote:
And none of that includes the hightened traffic costs when you are up- and downloading more covers than before.


I don't know how things work in States but in Finland usually if you purchase internet connection for your server you pay monthly fee based on bandwidth your choice. How much traffic in bytes goes thru that connection doesn't effect on price. Adding this feature definately doesn't change the amount of overall traffic so much that it should be upgraded.

I don't know why Ken hasn't implemented this long asked feature yet, but I believe that server costs have nothing to do with it.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorLewis_Prothero
Strength Through Unity
Registered: May 19, 2007
Reputation: Superior Rating
Germany Posts: 6,730
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Quoting Kulju:
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. Out of 550,000 profiles I think that 5% would be very generous estimation about the profiles which have re-releases with the same UPC.

And I would consider these 5% by far too optimistic.
Example Germany:
Each and every DVD / BluRay that was released before 2010 needed a new cover if it still was supposed to be sold after January 1st 2010. This makes about 80% (if you consider about 20% to be OOP with no new release planned).

And even for those released after 2010 we have about 30% that have the so called "Flip-Covers".
Not to forget the clowns in the merchandising-departments of the release companies, which released a movie named "Push" with not less than five different artworks.
It all seems so stupid, it makes me want to give up!
But why should I give up, when it all seems so stupid?


Registrant since 05/22/2003
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorKulju
Registered: March 14, 2007
Finland Posts: 2,337
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Quoting Silence_of_Lambs:
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Each and every DVD / BluRay that was released before 2010 needed a new cover if it still was supposed to be sold after January 1st 2010. This makes about 80% (if you consider about 20% to be OOP with no new release planned).


Does all re-releases use same UPC? And this is German only. Due the law change about rating logos?

Quote:
And even for those released after 2010 we have about 30% that have the so called "Flip-Covers".

Again, as far as I know, German only phenomeon.
Quote:
Not to forget the clowns in the merchandising-departments of the release companies, which released a movie named "Push" with not less than five different artworks.

These are so rare that I wouldn't count any effect on these.

No matter what, even if my 5% estimation is too low and the correct number is 15%, I still don't believe that disc space is the reason why this hasn't been implemented.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorLewis_Prothero
Strength Through Unity
Registered: May 19, 2007
Reputation: Superior Rating
Germany Posts: 6,730
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Quoting Kulju:
Quote:
German only phenomeon.


Yupp,
but since Germany has about 62.000 profiles in the database your estimation of 5% total would only suffice for the German profiles that require multiple coverscans.
Taking into consideration such funstuff as slipcovers for first release only, I think that a rate of 25% would be more realistic.

But I agree, it almost surely can't be disk-space.
More likely it's the problems with evaluation that were already mentioned
It all seems so stupid, it makes me want to give up!
But why should I give up, when it all seems so stupid?


Registrant since 05/22/2003
 Last edited: by Lewis_Prothero
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantMike
Registered: March 13, 2007
United States Posts: 453
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Quoting Kathy:
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I want my cover scans to match what I actually own so this is my number one request.

This is especially important for those who feel the same way but don't have a scanner.

The lack of this feature is a major flaw in an otherwise great program.

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