DVDPedia Statistics

[utopianz14]

I recently made the switch from Ant Movie Catalog to DVDPedia because DVDPedia is the best DVD cataloging program for Macs that I've tested.

Although the transition was smooth, there are some features I really miss from Ant Movie Catalog, mostly regarding statistics:

1) There are some categories (countries, languages, media, etc.) that I prefer seeing the data presented as pie charts rather than bar graphs. Would it be possible to have multiple statistics views that I could choose from?

2) I'd really like the ability to select items in my library and view statistics only for those selected. For example, in Ant Movie Catalog, I can sort by year in the main view, select the movies between 1930 and 1939, and then find out what countries or languages are most represented in my collection during that time period.

It's also an easy way to count how many DVDs I own of a certain criterion; like if I were suddenly curious about how many 60s French movies I owned, I would sort by year in the main view, select all the movies from the 1960s, and look at languages in the statistics.

3) It'd be nice if I could get the "theatrical years" statistics to display in chronological order - that way, I could see based on the ups and downs of the bars which periods are most represented and which are least. Subsequently, if we could group those bars by periods of five years, it would make for an even easier read.

Other differences with Ant Movie Catalog I think I'll appreciate more once I get myself more accustomed to DVDPedia, so I won't bother mentioning them. The three things I mentioned definitely won't make or break DVDPedia because I love the program as it is. All I'm saying is: it wouldn't hurt to give me more reasons to love DVDPedia a little bit more.

Thanks for creating such a wonderful program!

[Conor]

Thank you for the feedback. You are right that having the statistics work on a selection would be useful. I have included that for the new 4.4.1 version, even though it's only meant for a rare bug fix. If there is a selection greater than one, then the statistics will be on the selection. It will say so on the header of the statistics to make it obvious that it's only a partial statistics for the collection. I'll look about adding the chronological listing possibility in a future update.

On the pie chart front I wanted to include that option early on but the statistics view is HTML based and it's quite hard to make pie charts with HTML. If we ever update the statistics to a Cocoa based view then more drawing options will be possible.

[utopianz14]

Wow, color me impressed! Sixteen hours was all it took to implement a suggestion!?! You have just raised the ante for what constitutes customer service in my book! Thanks a million!

[Conor]

Update: Chronological order for the date fields will now be the default in the new version, now included in the beta versions and there is a post that has more about adding sort by label for other statistics as well. Even though this new feature took a bit more than 16 hours.