notes.splitbrain.org

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====== Usage ======

VideoDB should be pretty much self explanatory. Here are some usage tips anyway.

===== Browsing the Database =====

The **browse** view allows you to list the content of your database by applying filters to the available data. On the top of the screen you'll find a row of radio buttons to list the available titles sorted by the first letter of the title.
This means if you select the ''DEF'' filter only movies beginning with a ''D'', ''E'' or ''F'' are shown in the list.

When adding movies it is a good practice to move common words like ''the'' or ''a'' to the end of the title to have the sorting make more sense.

Example: ''A Clockwork Orange'' becomes ''Clockwork Orange, A''

VideoDB treats TV episodes special, which means they are not shown by default. To show them, ''show TV episodes'' must be enabled. You can change this behavior in the [[vdb:configuration]].

When selecting the ''all'' filter all movies are shown - please note that this can take some time if you have a very large database! Usually the list is always sorted lexically, you may change the sort order of the ''all'' filter to sort by the DiskID in the [[vdb:configuration]].

The ''unseen'' filter just shows you the movies that are not marked as seen yet by you.

When using the new filter only the 15 newest additions to your database are shown. You can change the number of shown files here in the [[vdb:configuration]].

The last filter is the ''Wishlist''. Movies shown here are not yet owned by you and will not show up in any of the other views (not even with the all filter). To add a movie to your wishlist just add like every other movie but set its mediatype to ''wanted''.

===== The Detail View =====

When clicking on a title in the ''browse'' view, you're presented with the movies detail view. It's pretty self-explanatory. You just see all the information thats stored in the database about the selected movie. Clicking the cover image opens the IMDB page for the movie. Clicking an actors name will search for movies with that actor. The same applies to all other clickable labels.

You can click the random link in the top menu to get a random view

===== Searching the Database =====

The search screen allows you to search for movies that match your criteria.

The simplest thing is to search for one or more keywords. Just put them into the textfield and hit ''Search''. The search is caseinsensitive and matches word parts, too. To search phrases you can enclose them in quotes ''"''.

Examples:

  * ''wood'' matches ''Ed Wood'' as well as ''Clint Eastwood''
  * ''"Ed wood"'' only matches ''Ed Wood''
  * ''Ed Wood'' matches ''Eddy got lost in Sherwood Forest.'', too

To refine your search you can use the boolean operators ''AND'', ''OR'' and ''NOT''.

You can restrict your search to some genres by selecting the wanted genres and to some database fields by selecting them in the selectbox. To select multiple fields hold the ''Ctrl''-Key while selecting.



===== Access Keys =====

VideoDB defines some access keys to speed up accessing certain parts of VideoDB. Here is a list of currently assigned Keys.

  * ''Alt+i''  Brings you back to the index page
  * ''Alt+f''  Opens the search page to find a movie
  * ''Alt+n''  This creates a new entry in the database
  * ''Alt+e''  Using this combination you can edit the current movie
  * ''Alt+b''  This opens the borrowmanager
  * ''Alt+h''  Opens the help with the user manual
  * ''Alt+l''  Use this for logging in or out
  * ''Alt+s''  Pressing this key lets you save entered formdata