strange IMDB id match

[hector]

Can you add subtitles for a film that hasn't a valid IMDB id? If so, how can you do it and what should the id be?

[SimplyTheBOSS]

Hi. While looking for some subtitles for the TV show "Home Improvement" I came across this:
http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitl ... century-pb

What does this have to do with "Home Improvement". Nothing at all. Except the id. As I thought the low part of the id matches the id for Home Improvement episode:

Code: Select all

Dec Hex Episode id: 805285 C49A5 Strange id 1896630693 710C49A5

Beside the fact that I don't think this is a valid IMDB id, the match is clearly incorrect.
This brings up some questions:
Can you add subtitles for a film that hasn't a valid IMDB id? If so, how can you do it and what should the id be?

https://forum.opensubtitles.org/viewtopic.php?t=15341

[hector]

Yes, thanks. I had already read it.
But this presents new problems like
how do you guarantee uniqueness and avoid duplicates?
How can you find a suitable subtitle for a certain video? Using just the title (a string) is clearly not enough.

I think it is good to have this functionality. It is better having one subtitle without a unique id than having nothing because it can't be stored. But how do you solve those problems?

[oss]

sorry, I think nobody understands you, thats why no reply here. Maybe you can explain it better what you actually want to do. Do you want to store subtitle to movie, without movieid ?

[hector]

First of all, you can reproduce the bug this way:
Search for "Home improvement" - all languages. Then click 1st episode, 3rd season

http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search/ ... bid-805285

Perhaps I should have posted this in the first place.

And second, what I want is just to know what I asked. For example: I add a movie or clip. Since there is no general database I give it some title which I consider is appropriate. Then somebody else searches for this subtitle. Since the movie - title association was just chosen by me this user has no way to know if this movie is what s/he is looking for. Perhaps he uses another title (what he thinks is the right title).

OK, you have hashes. But I'm talking here about manual search (which I use all the time)

[oss]

ok, now I understand. The bug here is that sphinx was limited on uint to save some resources, which imdbid is using. So I corrected this and tommorow that search should return just correct subtitles.

We are using "internal" database for movie/clip... titles, which doesnt exists. So you can add your own after confirming it doesnt exists, thats how we avoid duplicates. By the design of the system we have to simulate IMDBID, which is big number. It works ok in my opinion. If you have suggestion, explain how to do it properly in your view.

[hector]

Here is my view of the subject.

First of all, I use always manual search. I don't rely on hashes. Why? Hashes are good but they're not perfect. In many cases it doesn't work. Hash could not be available. Or just changing a few bytes could render the video a false negative. Manual search is more effort but it works in all cases.

That said the problem here is that you are storing only id, title and year. It is clear that just a title is not enough to identify a movie or clip. Some title searches in IMDB return more than 10 exact matches. Adding a year alleviates the problem but doesn't solve it completely.

You say you are simulating IMDBID but you don't simulate the whole thing. I mean, when I do a manual search sometimes I rely on the poster of the movie or some other information like director, actors, etc. You don't have any of these for a "private" id. If it is not in IMDB it is likely that none of this information is applicable. It will probably have no actors.

So the conclussion is that we need some more information. Perhaps director or producer. Perhaps links to available copies in the web?

[oss]

yeah I know what you mean now. Well, nothing is perfect. I could make editor to add all of these info, but in reality there will be 0.01% people who will use this. For now we have to rely on not perfect system

(and you can always add this new things to imdb.com - I know - not a perfect solution, but better than none)

[hector]

OK
Perhaps I should consider adding things to IMDB. By now it's fine because I had one movie that had no IMDB id. Or at least I thought it hadn't. I was convinced. But it turned out that it actually has. So it's OK.

[oss]

[SimplyTheBOSS]

OK
Perhaps I should consider adding things to IMDB. By now it's fine because I had one movie that had no IMDB id. Or at least I thought it hadn't. I was convinced. But it turned out that it actually has. So it's OK.

...and guess how I found it? Using the name of the director and the actress (narrator)...

[hector]

Touché :-)