Collection Tagging

[tolkeinknoxy]

Could it be possible to use the code/program Tellico. Tellico has been round for a long time and is built to manage collections of things like Books, Films, Music, DVD's, Wine etc.

It already has many scripts to go to imdb, amazon etc to get the information to tag files. Could we use these scripts to save us reinventing the wheel and just port the XML files to the sql statements into our database. Thus improving our searching abilties in our media browser's as we will have better tagged files.

At the same time Telico can output AJAX enabled sites. Providing our smart homes with the abilty to catagorise anything we want and to be accessible from a webpage.

[royw]

I installed tellico, then added a couple of DVDs to see what the tellico.xml looks like.  Here's one dvd entry:

Code:

  <entry id="0" >
   <title>Fool's Gold (Widescreen Edition)</title>
   <medium>DVD</medium>
   <year>2008</year>
   <certification>PG-13 (USA)</certification>
   <genres>
    <genre>Comedy</genre>
    <genre>Action &amp; Adventure</genre>
   </genres>
   <region>Region 1</region>
   <casts>
    <cast>
     <column>Matthew McConaughey</column>
     <column></column>
    </cast>
    <cast>
     <column>Kate Hudson</column>
     <column></column>
    </cast>
   </casts>
   <studios>
    <studio>Warner Home Video</studio>
   </studios>
   <languages>
    <language>Spanish</language>
    <language>French</language>
    <language>English</language>
   </languages>
   <running-time>112</running-time>
   <aspect-ratios>
    <aspect-ratio>1.77:1</aspect-ratio>
   </aspect-ratios>
   <widescreen>true</widescreen>
   <color>Color</color>
   <plot>Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson go for the gold (and the diamonds emeralds and rubies) as a just-divorced couple who bicker and banter their way through an adventure- and laugh-packed undersea treasure hunt. McConaughey is Finn in love with his ex (Hudson) and in deep with gangster Bigg Bunny. After eight years of searching Finn gets a clue to the whereabouts of the Queen?s Dowry a fabulous fortune that mysteriously disappeared in the Caribbean in 1715. Now all he has to do is get the gold get the girl and get going before Bigg Bunny gets him. Directed by Andy Tennant (Hitch) Fool?s Gold glitters with danger action romance comedy great one-liners ? and a great time to be had by all!Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/ROMANTIC COMEDY UPC: 085391139997 Manufacturer No: 113999</plot>
   <cover>0cda00401e94918c5d5d52b6f6c155b6.jpeg</cover>
   <amazon>http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Gold-Widescreen-Matthew-McConaughey/dp/B0012KJ0DK%3FSubscriptionId%3D0834VQ4S71KYPVSYQD02%26tag%3Dtellico-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB0012KJ0DK</amazon>
  </entry>

The pluto_media db to tellico.xml looks like a pretty straight-forward mapping (ok, there are a lot of caveats due to the multi-table and multi-database nature, but I've already worked most of them out on the DVD Profiler sync).  Still, there will be a couple of issues:

*  Can we use pluto_media.file.PK_File for the tellico entry@id value?  That seems to be the ONLY unique identifier on the tellico side.  If you want to support adding files independently on both sides, prevention of collision for entry@id might be interesting.

* The only method I see for syncing is via a title match, which can mostly be handled with fuzzy matching (drop punctuation, drop symbols, yada yada) with a fall-back of using the pluto_media.file.Filename if there is not a title attribute.  Still there will be some titles that have to be manually matched (duplicates like "The Alamo", and incomplete titles like "Animal House" vs. "National Lampoon's Animal House").

IMO the data still seems a little sparse (see cast in the above DVD).  Also while the UI is head and shoulders above pluto-admin, it is still a little primitive.  But it is native!   

HTH,
Roy