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Movie Explorer Pro 2.5 for macOS released

Betamagic

Betamagic

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 25, 2017
113
73
Netherlands
Updated to version 2.5, see post #11

The standard free edition of Movie Explorer is a popular macOS app to index movie files on your hard drives and transform the result into a super attractive, fully featured movie catalog.

Movie Explorer Pro goes multiple steps further, and adds the following features:
  • Support for digital discs like Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD and DVD’s
  • Built-in barcode scanner
  • Special Discs manager and editor
  • Support for TV show files indexing
  • Dedicated TV Shows view
  • Watch history support
  • Watchlist support
  • Synchronisation with Trakt.tv
  • Custom sidebar filters
  • Custom collections
  • Personal ratings and reviews
  • Import iTunes library
  • Export to PDF, HTML and CSV
  • Grouping support in Movies view
  • Support for Collections

2019_01.jpg



Movie Explorer Pro is available as an upgrade subscription in the standard free Movie Explorer 2.0 app. Or when you hate subscriptions, it’s also available as a single purchase, standalone Movie Explorer Pro 2.0 app. If you want to try Movie Explorer Pro: the standard edition contains a free, automatically ending, 14-day Trial.

Product info links
Movie Explorer Pro: https://betamagic.nl/products/movieexplorerpro.html
Movie Explorer: https://betamagic.nl/products/movieexplorer.html

Mac App Store links
Movie Explorer Pro: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movie-explorer-pro/id1096514088?ls=1&mt=12
Movie Explorer: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movie-explorer/id802224528?ls=1&mt=12

Blog page link
https://betamagic.nl/news/2019/2019_01.html

Update 8 December 2022:
Movie Explorer Pro has been updated to version 2.5, see post #11
 
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Version 2.0.3
Movie Explorer Pro 2.0.3 and Movie Explorer 2.0.3 (standard edition) is a minor update that solves some performance issues and adds some small but handy new features.

Improved scanning performance
File scanning and especially rescanning of existing locations could be slow in the previous version. And when setting 'Read embedded metadata' was enabled, rescanning could 'take ages', as some users complained. After some research it became clear that this all was caused by a recent new implementation of progress handling, that seems technically cool at first sight, but very problematic and bad performing in real world scenarios. So we simply reimplemented the 'old way' of tracking progress, and that solved indeed a lot of issues.



New ‘Refresh Metadata’ context menu action
The context menu of movies in the Movies view, and the context menu of TV shows in the TV Shows view, now contains a ‘Refresh Metadata’ menu item. With this you can redownload the TMDb metadata and artwork of the selected movie or TV show. This may come handy in the following scenarios, amongst others:
  • You want to update the rating and votes count to the current values.
  • You have updated some aspects of the selected movie or TV show in TMDb, like missing actors, summaries or artwork, and you want to update your catalog with the new data.
  • You want to download localized metadata and artwork for just one or a few movies, after changing the ‘Primary localized data language’ setting.
New Query criteria for Discs
When you make a Query for the Disc entity, you can now choose from 4 extra selection criteria. When you select one of these 4 criteria fields, a special dropdown is being presented, filled with predefined values:

  • Category: The corresponding dropdown list contains Movie’, ‘TV Show’ and ‘Collection’.
  • Condition: The dropdown contains values like ‘New’, ‘Good’ and more.
  • Status: The dropdown contains values like ‘Catalogued’ (which is the default), ‘For Sale’ and more.
  • Type: The dropdown let you choose between ‘Blu-ray’, ‘Blu-ray 3D’, ‘Blu-ray 4K’, ‘DVD’ and ‘DVD HD’.
The current value for these 4 fields can be changed in the Disc editor, which appears when you double-click on a selected disc in the Discs view. The Discs view is part of Movie Explorer Pro.

Other fixes and improvements
  • The minimum thumbnail size in the Movies and TV Shows view has been decreased. This means that you now can display more movies or episodes in the same window.
  • The processing of data requests for digital disc indexing has been improved. This means less chance that you have to adjust the result of a barcode scanning action.
  • When you add an unknown barcode, the new disc gets now a default value for field Type, which is ‘Blu-ray’.
  • The initial display of thumbnails in the Discs view has been improved.
  • Number of digital discs in the sidebar no longer includes unverified discs.
  • Export and print content sorting is now based on ‘cleaned’ titles.
 
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This software looks fantastic! I'm compelled to give it a shot on pure beauty alone!

One question I have that I didn't see addressed in working my way through the website - how do I synchronize the catalog between multiple Macs? I'm in a situation where I manage my media collection on my Mac Pro in my office, but I'd really benefit from being able to take the database with me on the road where I could further work/organize it and it would be so nice to have those changes reflected on either/both machines.

Thanks for any consideration!
 
EightBitWhit said:
This software looks fantastic! I'm compelled to give it a shot on pure beauty alone!

One question I have that I didn't see addressed in working my way through the website - how do I synchronize the catalog between multiple Macs? I'm in a situation where I manage my media collection on my Mac Pro in my office, but I'd really benefit from being able to take the database with me on the road where I could further work/organize it and it would be so nice to have those changes reflected on either/both machines.

Thanks for any consideration!
Click to expand...

You can backup the database via menu File > Backup Database, and restore it (on another Mac if you wish) via menu File > Restore Database. Make sure the paths to all files remain the same across all your Macs, otherwise playing movies won't work.
 
Betamagic said:
You can backup the database via menu File > Backup Database, and restore it (on another Mac if you wish) via menu File > Restore Database. Make sure the paths to all files remain the same across all your Macs, otherwise playing movies won't work.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the response, but backup/restore is a data protection/recovery mechanism and I was looking for a synchronization mechanism.

If there’s no current way to synchronize then is it on the product roadmap? I’d love to use this software but the sheer hassle of constantly doing the backup/restore shuffle on 2 or more Macs is just unsustainable.
 
Version 2.1
Movie Explorer Pro 2.1 adds support for regional content certification, iTunes metadata import, disk image indexing, built-in file copy and more.

Regional content certification
Movie Explorer Pro and Movie Explorer standard edition now supports retrieval and display of content certification, also known as content rating. Because content certification is very related to a region, we have implemented a function to change the certification region, and to update the content of the catalog with the new region.
  • Use menu File > Update Certification to update your current pre-2.1 catalog, or to switch to a new region.
  • Menu Window > Certification Overview opens a window that gives you an overview of all possible certificates of the currently active certification region. It shows also the number of movies and TV shows assigned to each certificate.
Read section Certification of the Movie Explorer Pro Help for more info on how to update your catalog and how to use certificates to filter your data.

iTunes library import
You can now add movies and TV shows purchased in iTunes to the catalog of Movie Explorer Pro by using the new Import iTunes Library function, or if you are using macOS 10.15, Import Apple TV Library. Read section Import iTunes library of the Movie Explorer Pro Help for more info.

Movie Explorer Pro 2.1

Disk image indexing
You can now index your DVD and Blu-ray disc copies saved to hard-drive. Because there are multiple ways to save disc copies to a hard-drive, we have implemented a few options to fine-tune what you want to index and what not. In the Location Preferences of the Movie Explorer Pro Preferences, you'll find the following new options:
  • Index BDMV directories: when enabled, digital Blu-ray disc copies on hard-drive will be indexed, assuming that each copy is saved in a directory that contains the complete Blu-ray structure, including an essential directory named 'BDMV'. The name of the directory must comply with the regular naming convention for movies.
  • Index VIDEO_TS directories: when enabled, digital DVD disc copies on hard-drive will be indexed. It works very similar to Blu-ray indexing described above, the structure must contain a directory named 'VIDEO_TS'. The DVD disc copy directory may have an extension .dvdmedia. Depending on the configuration of the Mac, especially which apps are installed, files with this extension may appear as a single file, instead of a directory. Movie Explorer Pro is able to deal with both scenarios.
  • Index ISO files: when enabled, files with an .ISO extension will be indexed as a movie. This means that the ISO file must comply with the movie naming convention.
Built-in file copy
The context menu of files displayed in the Files view and Media inspector has been extended with Copy to ⟨last selected folder⟩ and Copy to… menu items. This allows you to easily copy your files from one location to another, for example from a network drive to a local staging folder shared with Infuse on your Apple TV, without leaving the app. Copy operations are performed one by one, and are displayed in a nice progress info panel, which includes a waiting queue list.

Other improvements
Movie Explorer Pro 2.1 contains the following additional improvements:
  • The subtitle info line under thumbnails in the Movies and TV Shows views can now be configured to display the release year or release date of the movie or episode. This setting is part of the View optionsunder menu View.
  • The initial number of visible Query and List items can be limited. This can be done in the Movie Explorer Pro Preferences.
  • Support for numeric conditions in the Query editor has been improved. Values are no longer formatted with a thousand separator, which tends to mess up your query when you saved them.
 
Version 2.5
Movie Explorer Pro 2.5 introduces a rewritten grid control in the Movies and TV Shows view, support for grouping in the Movies view and support for combining movies in Collections. Plus some other useful improvements.

Grouping
The Movies view can now be grouped on Certification, Collection (more details below), Director, Rating, Budget, Revenue, Index Year, Release Year and Watched Year.
  • To set or change the grouping, choose View > View Options in the menu and select a grouping field in the ‘Group by’ dropdown.
  • You can change the sorting direction of the grouping by toggling between Ascending and Descending in the ‘Group by’ dropdown.
2022_05.jpg


Collections
Movies that share the same main characters or continues the story of an earlier movie, and are therefore ‘true movie sequels’, can be combined to collections on which can be grouped and sorted.
  • Collections are generated while indexing movies, or by using the new File > Update Collections feature.
  • The Update collection data dialog will let you choose to add missing collections, or start completely from scratch.
2022_05.png


Other changes
In addition to the new features discussed above, version 2.5 contains the following changes:
  • Revenue is a new field presented in the Inspector panel, and can be used as sorting, grouping and query field. The field will be empty for existing movies in the catalog database, but can be updated using File > Update Localized Data or Item > Update Metadata in the menu.
  • Auto maximum size in a new setting in the View Options dialog. When enabled, the thumbnail size in Movies and TV Shows view is automatically being optimised to be as large as possible and to use as less as possible margin space, within the boundaries of the set thumbnail size.
Release notes
More detail about Movie Explorer Pro 2.5 can be found here: https://betamagic.nl/news/2022/2022_05.html
 
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