This chapter describes the basic features of KVideolist and helps you to be able to built your own movie collection. KVideolist presents you this window, if it is started without any arguments:
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The white area on the left, with the KVideolist intropicture in it, will contain your videolist, if you load on or add new entries to the list.
Just click on Movies->Add. You will see a Movie-Entry dialog. Here is a short description of the data You can fill out here:
... and some Comboboxes:
Please note that You don't have to fill it all out if You don't want to. The only essential entries are "Title" and "Tape Nr", You have to fill them out. It is recommended to fill out some cast entries and the genres. KVideolist will include label-printing for tapes and for the printing of lists You should fill out at which position the movie is on the tape and optionally the start time. If You have an internet-connection, You could also use KVideolist's "AutoFill" Feature. For more about this, see below.
You see two selectable buttons containing genres in this dialog. Click on one of them, and you will see all the movie genres KVideolist offers. Using these two buttons, you can categorize your movie. For example, the well known horror film "Alien" is a "Horror" and "SciFi" movie. If you have a movie, that exactly fits in only one of the categories, just disable the second category, select "Nothing" on it. There is also one Genre entry called "Other" which You may use for things that won't fit, for example Your holiday videos.
Let's say you collected - among much other movies - about 300 parts of the StarTrek series. It seems like You are fascinated about it and whish to work very often with only the all StarTrek movies in KVideolist, excluding all other movies. Then a subclass could be the right tool for You. Define one in the configuration dialog, and set every StarTrek movie to this subclass. Now You have a quick way to simply switch over to all StarTrek movies and back to normal view, where all movies are shown. You can do this by switching the subclass in the main window. Inside an active subclass, all modes work normally, You can use search and sort and genre-selection (more on this later). Subclasses are of course not limited to series. Use them to mark movies with Your favorite actor/actress ... You can freely define what a subclass is for. You can define up to five subclasses in the configuration dialog.
Before You define a subclass, don't forget that You can do most of this by using the search-dialog (more on this later). The usage of a subclass is recommended when You want to choose specific movies very often. It also brings some "Organization" into the list.
Let's say You have found a nice fan-page for the movie "Alien" in the WWW. By entering the full Adress (including "http://") KVideolist can show You this page everytime You selected the movie in the main window. You could also store pictures of movie-scenes or audio-files on Your local drives. In this case, You can choose them with the button "Choose File".
You can choose if KVideolist should view the linked-URL automatically or only by request, this is useful for example with WWW-Pages, to prevent KVideolist from going online.
Click on the button "Test URL" to see what KVideolist is doing with the link You entered.
If You have an internet-connection, You can use KVideolist to fill out most of the data automatically. Before You use this, see the section "Configuration" below, maybe You have to change some settings here.
Here is an example of how to autofill one of the best movies in the world:
"Alien" is a very popular movie, so the IMDb presents You *many* movies with the string "Alien" in it. Now please enter "Eat The Rich" (it's cult for true Motorheadbangers like me :-) ) in the title field. For this title the IMDb found one exact match, and it presents You the title-details directly. Now, click on the button "Autofill!" in KVideolist's Dialog.
If you select one movie in the list, KVideolist immediately shows all its infos in its main window. The selected movie can be edited by simply doubleclicking on it or selecting Movies->Edit from the menubar. You will then see exactly the same window as by adding a new movie, except that the contents are filled.
You can delete one movie from the list, if you select Movies->Delete. The current selected movie will be deleted and the list will be resorted.
If you want to follow this introduction, it needs to enter at least 3
movie entries, so you can see how sorting works. Select Sort and choose
what kind of sort you want. Sort by name means sorting the list in
alphabetical order. The others are self-explanatory.
Let's sort the list by tape number. You can always change the sort direction
in any sort mode, just select Sort->Change sort direction. The tapes
are now sorted either from the highest to the lowest or from the lowest
to the highest tape number.
Every sort mode and sort direction will stay as long as you choose another one.
In the next step we will search the list for any kind of data. Select Movies->Search and KVideolist will offer you a search selection window.
In the button named "no Search" you can choose what detailed data
type you search for. In the field "contains" you enter the data you
search for. Click on "Search" to enter the search mode. Like the sort
modes, KVideolist will not change the search mode until you select
Movies->Search and leave the data-type button on "no Search". This means
that from now on, only the movies where the search found an item will be shown.
These results are also sorted with the current sort mode and so on.
The search is always case-sensitive.
Searchmodes can also be quickly activated by clicking in one of the buttons in the main-window. You can always click on a director, actor/actress, producer or an age entry, and KVideolist will enter the search mode. You can also quickly deactivate any search mode by clicking on the "Reset Search" button.
For example searching the producers for "Stephen Spielberg" and sorting by rating shows you your best and worst movies produced by Stephen Spielberg.
Now, that you have built up a small movie collection, save the file using File->Save.
... is done by entering it's name into the 'Title' Field in KVideolists main window. In most cases, You only have to enter 2,3 or 4 chars and KVideolist found the correct one. Type the name until You see the complete title in the list, then press return.
Sometimes, You may want to know which movies are on a specific tape. Inside the main-window, You see a small input field called "Goto Tape:". Enter the tape number here and press RETURN. The list will be scrolled to the first movie that is on that tape, and a small window will be opened (the "TapeView" window) where You can see the contents of the tape.
You can reach all these functions very fast using KVideolists toolbar, just hold the mouse longer over an item, to see what it does.
If you want to limit the list to a specific genre, use the genrechooser
select Movies->Choose Genre. In this window, you can choose one of 21 genres
and from now on, only movies of this genre are shown. Note that if you have
selected a second genre, you will also see this film. For example, if "Alien"
is stored as a SciFi and Horror movie, "Alien" will be shown if you select
Movies->Choose Genre->Horror.
This function also works like search and sort, it is not changed until
you select Movies->Choose Genre->View All.
You can reach this function very quick by selecting a Genre in the main-window.
There is a ComboBox near the subclasses.
Also You can reset the Genre-search if You click on "Reset Genre" at the right bottom
of KVideolist's main-window.
The usage of the sort, search, genrechooser functions together enables lots of very interesting cominations. Just try it out.
You can sum up your complete movie collection by selecting Movies->Statistics. This opens a large window, where you can see how much movies you have, how much of them are in the VHS longplay format, and how much videos you have per genre. Note that the count per genre also counts movies where two genres are stored. That means, "Alien" (stored as "SciFi" and "Horror") will be counted in "SciFi" and "Horror". So the sum of the count per genre will most likely not be the same as the total number of movies.