First off, I'll say that this is not a post to complain about ratDVD. I'm very happy with the idea behind it (although the implementation is undergoing some needed upgrades I'm sure) and it works pretty great for me. I consider myself a pretty savvy ratDVD user and I've ratted over 200 DVDs to date. That being said, I have a few issues with the tag image capability of rat DVD. The list goes as follows: 1.) somtimes the tag lookup feature will find the IMDB entry for a movie and pull down all the text info for the movie but leave the image field blank DESPITE the fact that if I look up the movie directly on IMDB, there is most certainly an image available for the movie. This happened to me several intermittent times when trying to tag DVDs I ripped, but is certainly the exception rather than the rule. 2.) OK, so given issue #1, I'll save the image from IMDB to my computer, then try to use the "Add..." button on the Tag screen of ratDVD to manually add the IMDB image to the file. The image shows up on the Tag screen and I hit "Save" to save the Tag information, but in reality, it doesn't actually save the image to the file. Even reopening the tag screen of the "saved" file does not display the image I supposedly saved. 3.) Now that I'm in situation #2, I can't even try to "add.." the image again because now that the file has been tagged (although with incomplete information) and saved, the tag fields are no longer accessible for editing- EVEN on the same machine the file was created on. I understand that the creator said that ratDVD will block editing tag information for the sake of keeping the world from editing and mistagging files (a commendable attempt to keep these files properly tagged), but as I understand it, the original creator of the file is supposed to have access to the tagg info for editing- BUT I DON'T! so once a file is saved, no matter how complete the tags are, it's a done deal and the tags are untouchable by anyone. This kinda sucks because now instead of having incorrectly tagged files floating around, there will just be incomplete or improperly tagged files floating around that no one can change! I saw somewhere that the creator is talking about granting more extensive access to the tagging of ratDVD file in a future update, but has anyone experienced these problems, or better yet, found a way to solve them?
It appears I'm also having this problem, although more recently... for me, this problem has only been limited to the last 3 or so movies i've ratted... The weird thing is... 1) i've looked up PREVIOUS movies i've ratted and found that i am now no longer able to bring up those same image tags in the ratDVD search that I got before... data is all the same, but no longer with images... 2) I have had only 1 movie so far that doesn't have the proper image tags on the ratDVD file before my string of recent problems... 3) I absolutely agree with the manually adding a picture from the "Add..." button - it doesn't appear work at all. Any available help or suggestions to solve my problem would be greatly appreciated!
I got word back from Splinter and we're all bunked for image tags for now: Hi Matt, you are right. I can see the problems here also and will try to fix them. I am currently very busy finishing the next version so I am not sure if i can get it into this version. If not, there's always a next version ;-) Thanks for letting me know... Regards, Splinter It's awesome that he responded to me... at least no I don't have to worry about anything on my end. We'll just have to wait for a solution.
I was curious... was that message related to the "Add..." feature's problem or the "It didn't copy the image tag properlyn from IMDB even though it exists" problem? I was wondering, in either case, why would my ratDVD suddenly stop getting images from IMDB... haven't changed any settings on my part but is there something with IMDB perhaps? >_>
Splinter's response was regarding the image tagging problem from IMDB. Image tags will no longer work (seemingly in any form, whether manual "Add.." or IMDB lookup) until at LEAST a new version of ratDVD is released (most likely). Since Splinter is getting hit with this probelm so late into his current version of the ratDVD update, my fear is that the IMDB lookup might not even be fixed in the next release (unless it's an easy fix). My hope is that Splinter was ALREADY working on fixing the manual "Add..." button problem for the next code update, so we can manually update our tags (a problem in sore need of a fix in any case). Then maybe 2 versions from now the automatic lookup will be back. Just my spectulation. You guys have as much info as I do since I posted my email from Splinter.
As the above described problems with the image-tags occured to me as well, I spent some time in finding a Workaround for this. What I found out is that using the IMDB-tags along with a picture added with the "add..."-Button will correctly add the tag-data and the Image to the ratDVD-Container after saving it. The only thing that is missing is the filename in the Picture-tag. To manually fix the Picture-Tag, you would do the following: 1) open the ratDVD-file with Winzip (or your favorite Zip-Archiving-Tool). 2) In the "INFO"-folder you will find your picture (if not, just copy it there) along with a file called "content.xml" which contains all tag-information displayed by ratDVD. 3) Extract the xml-file and open it with a text-editor. 4) Find the picture-tag which should be empty ("<Picture></Picture>") and enter the filename of your image (e.g. "<Picture>MyMovie.jpg</Picture>"). Save the xml-file. 5) Delete the "content.xml"-file from the ratDVD-container and add the edited one to the container. For some reason a replacement does not work for me... IMPORTANT: Make sure that you do not compress the files (both xml & jpg) when you add them to the container (--> select "Compression-Method: none")! Otherwise it will not work. Your image should show up correctly now. btw: you can certainly edit all other tag-fields that way. Or you can remove all tag-infos by removing the "INFO"-folder completely, and re-tag them using ratDVD. I hope this will help until a fixed ratDVD-version is released.
Holy crap thorpius! That's the first helpful thing I've ever read on the ratDVD forums (most people just complain aoubt how it takes too long). I can't wait to try it! It may take a little while, but hopefully it will get me trhough until Splinter can get that in the update. THANKS!
OMFG!!!! OMFG!!! It works wonders!! Thanks very much thorpius, your suggestion solved the tagging problem.
Hey guys, I was having the same problems, so I tried the workaround. I can now view the picture when I open the file in ratDVD, but I don't see it when I set my folder view to thumbnails. Should I be able to see this, or hasn't that been worked out yet?
