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 Post subject: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 08 Oct 2011, 02:39 
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So, today I managed to update 35 of my discs in the LDDb listings. (I missed some stuff a couple of times, & had to go back, so I wound up generating a total of 37 updates.) Now I just have to wait for Julien to process them. Hopefully we can get that confusion about the US & Japanese releases of Here is Greenwood sorted out once & for all!

Of course, I do tend to make updates as I watch discs, but sometimes I just feel the need to improve the dataset. My procedure is to go to my "Collection Management" page, & play with the drop-down lists until I find a category with a large number listed under "undefined". Then, I go & pull them from the shelf, a few at a time, & fill out the Update form. As I go, if the discs are in those nasty U-sleeves, I put them into plastic-lined paper sleeves. What brought me to a stop this time was running out of sleeves.

I honestly don't know if anyone else goes on such "updating sprees". If you want to say something about your LDDb use habits, though, feel free to mention it here.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 08 Oct 2011, 04:52 
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I would like to add more pictures but I cant get a decent shot of the LD cover that I am trying to take. How can you take a good pic? Mine are always skewed from one angle or another.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 08 Oct 2011, 05:23 
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I've used an easel & a tripod, moving the camera about until the subject was square on. I've also used a copy-stand. Either way, lighting conditions are important, because there is a high risk of "hot spots" or glare. It's also important to white-balance on a piece of paper before you shoot, or if the lighting conditions change (eg sun goes behind a cloud), in order to get the colours to come out right.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 08 Oct 2011, 11:05 
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A few years ago I photographed covers for about 400 music LDs and uploaded. That took a while! I've mint covers of most music titles now so I'll do my best to get the others photographed as well. I tried to always photograph using natural daylight and not strong sun. Where I live there isn't much light or sun at this time of year so it is something of a challenge!

I also added complete track listing details for a pile of promo music LDs which I know music fans like to see the songs on the discs as the promo titles are pretty much undocumented. Again I have tonnes more of those to catalogue.

I found it a useful exercise as I could weed out the duffs and pair up the best ones to form pristine copies if I had duplicates when doing the above.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 09 Oct 2011, 13:17 
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To photograph covers straight-on you need to have two good side light sources to compensate for the absence of flash. I set up an easel (or something similar) near an open window with lots of sun (none directly causing glare) and a "true light" lamp on the other side. It takes some experimenting, and some covers refuse to cooperate.

Nothing brings out the colors better than flash, though, so when I'm preparing something for eBay, I shoot it with flash at an angle. In either case, a tripod is essential.

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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 09 Oct 2011, 18:52 
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I shoot at an angle as well. I need to try some more dead on shots. I think I need a better camera to do it though. Might give me a reason to go back and get one, lol.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 15 Oct 2011, 18:53 
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publius wrote:
I honestly don't know if anyone else goes on such "updating sprees". If you want to say something about your LDDb use habits, though, feel free to mention it here.


I have done a couple such updating sprees myself, but not for a couple of years. I'm at the point now where I go over the LDDb record each time I bring out a disc to watch, and add anything then.
  
 
 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 15 Oct 2011, 20:13 
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I used to do it more often than I do now. I've been tempted to go on another spree soon though. I still have over 20 discs waiting to be processed, some over a year old. I know Julien is very busy, and I'm sure this forum isn't going to help in that department, (have to forgive him on that one as I love this forum), but I wish there were some way we could help out with the time consuming work. We all seem to have our specialties ie; music, animation, anime, criterion, early years (my own), ect. It seems it would be less work for some of us who know these areas intimately and can spot inconsistencies in the data with a glance. There are a quite a few errors in the early years, 1981-83, that I can spot right away even though I don't own the discs and a lot of unnecessary duplicate listings that could be cleaned up. Please don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say here. Julien has done an AMAZING job and I for one will be eternally grateful for all the hard work he has done and continues to do including this forum. That he's been able to do all this and still have time for a job and life is mind boggling. I guess what I'm trying to say is that his project has meant a great deal to me and I wish I could do more to help.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 15 Oct 2011, 21:02 
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ratkins wrote:
I wish there were some way we could help out with the time consuming work. I guess what I'm trying to say is that his project has meant a great deal to me and I wish I could do more to help.


I agree, and have discussed this very point with others on another internet forum. Maybe if Julien receives enough offers of support from members here he will hand-pick a few experts and deputize them with selective admin access. It would be great to see updates processed quickly. I too have some pending stuff from at least two years ago. Perhaps there was a problem with my submission and he put it on the "to look at again later" pile. But I think my old pending submissions should be either deleted, fixed, or accepted. There are probably lots of submissions that require a bit of thought or tweeking, and a few volunteers with access to that area could clear them up quickly, I expect.
  
 
 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 15 Oct 2011, 22:15 
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I'm in the same boat myself as far as pending music updates are concerned - about 60+ currently.

Most are promotional 12 music titles that I'd love to have entered into LDDB but I totally accept that it isn't easy for Julien or anyone else for that matter to confirm these discs actually exist (short of sending him the physical discs!) as the companies who produced them sometimes did it with such haste that no catalogue numbers were actually used or mistakes were made with the numbers. I guess the companies were in such a rush to get the next batch of promotional music videos ready for broadcast that catalogue numbers just didn't matter since they were never intended to be sold to the general public.

Would photo's suffice as I really do have these laserdiscs in my collection and I'd love to be able to generate one definitive list from LDDB of my entire collection?
When you've got hundreds of promo music LDs which all look exactly the same with their generic white sleeves it is very easy to accidentally buy the same disc twice which can be a very costly mistake given the price of promo music LDs!
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 15 Oct 2011, 22:16 
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hueydeweylouie wrote:
I too have some pending stuff from at least two years ago. Perhaps there was a problem with my submission and he put it on the "to look at again later" pile.


That's exactly what's happening most of the time. Note that I'm not exactly slowing down! http://www.lddb.com/stats.php?id=81

There are 1,016 updates pending as of now... But do not overlook the 57,418 updates I have manually processed before :-P

The types of update that makes me think "I'll do this one later" are:

  • Music update with a lot of artists/song names/etc. that will require specific HTML formatting
  • Titles where I get a "my copy has digital audio" when the current title as analog only => should be split in two or the original post was wrong?
  • "Same edition but my cover is different" => should be split in two distinct entries?
  • "My copy has same reference but no barcode" => should be split in two distinct entries?
  • Updates where references are made to other LDs not using the #LDDB= tag but the plain text => I must manually look up for the correct number
  • Newcomers with very few exotic updates, hard for me to decide if they are expert or simply threw a few random values to test the updates
  • And probably a few more cases.

You might think your updates are sitting here for too long, but sometimes I'm waiting for someone else to come and make the very same updates: it raises the probability that this is actually legit and requires a new entry.

Among trouble sources:
  • Pioneer Music released a lot of 8"/12" in analog then reissued with barcode then with digital audio. Only for Pioneer Classics did they update the reference number.
  • When Disney started publishing LD via Image Ent, Image had to spin off they p0rn catalog to a separate company, updating the references at the same time.
  • When Vestron catalog got acquired, their VLxxxx became IDVLxxxx, lots of clean up needed for these.

If only the reference nomenclature for all publishers could be as clean as the Japanese one!!

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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 16 Oct 2011, 00:21 
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Julien,

You are right on the numbering system. It's a mess. A good example is MCA Home Video. A lot of titles were released as Discovision or MCA Home Video with a dash in the number, (like Mel Torme 74-009), then they dropped the dash in their catalogs but didn't change the cover artwork, (74009). There's two titles that could be merged.

My two cents: If a title was released pre-barcode (>1983), then released later with one, there should be one listing with a note that it was released earlier. The date on the cover rarely changes. There are a lot of small print variations on the MVC covers, but I don't think they should all have their own listing.

One of the things I was talking about in my post above are the obvious, (to the insane collector like myself), user mistakes entered.
An couple examples:

http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/10845/101 ... %281978%29

Warner didn't start releasing discs til 1983, but this title was released on VHS/Beta in 1981.

http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/22021/200 ... %281981%29

Dolby surround in 1982?

OK, ok, I understand why you probably hate me.
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 16 Oct 2011, 01:58 
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ratkins wrote:
If a title was released pre-barcode (>1983), then released later with one, there should be one listing with a note that it was released earlier.


I try to do that as long as these are minor changes. But if the cover is different or it has digital audio, better split them into two entries.

ratkins wrote:
Warner didn't start releasing discs til 1983, but this title was released on VHS/Beta in 1981.


=> There was a pending update moving it to 1983. Updated.

ratkins wrote:
http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/22021/20004/Chariots-of-Fire-%281981%29
Dolby surround in 1982?


And digital audio? Surely no :-)

I'll remove 1982 for now.

My main concern is that when interacting with search/collection/shop, the real common denominator when you have a LD in your hands is... whatever you can find on the cover that can give you clues that you actually are matching with the correct disk (specs logos, main cover picture, spine reference, etc.)

In this perspective, 2 discs even with close covers should be separated.

Julien
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 17 Oct 2011, 23:56 
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Any way to retract a submission? When I first started entering discs into my collection I couldn't find a Star Trek II disc. It turns out that I was putting in the identification info wrong which I didn't know at the time. I later found the disc but I have it pending. I was just trying to help but now there is an erroneous pending disc.

By the way, here is the link:
http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/submit/48984/LV-1180-WS/Star-Trek-II-The-Wrath-of-Khan-(1982)
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 18 Oct 2011, 00:11 
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Redundant submit... deleted.

You can also post a new submit and put in the "notes" something to my attention saying "please disregard my previous submit on title XXX".

I read them all :-)

Julien
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 06 Dec 2011, 10:14 
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Great Thread here....
Thanks for the helpful hints on photo taking.
Hats off to Julien for fighting the good fight !
Almost Tax time here in the states....
2011 has come and nearly gone.....
Please think of Donations to the LDDB for costs...........
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 Post subject: Re: LDDb : We do our part!
PostPosted: 21 Feb 2012, 05:26 
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mikeystoyz wrote:
I would like to add more pictures but I cant get a decent shot of the LD cover that I am trying to take. How can you take a good pic? Mine are always skewed from one angle or another.


As mentioned by many posts above, a tripod helps in taking cover photographs--it helps in getting a square-on shot and it helps in reducing blur. To avoid curving of the picture, which can occur even with a tripod, I've found that the best way is to fill the viewing screen on your camera not by getting close to the cover with your camera, but instead by being a decent distance way and then using the zoom function on the camera to zoom in to the cover. This changes the focal length on the lens, and greatly lessens the tendency of the camera lens to add curvature to the picture. This will allow you to to get straighter edges on the cover photos and makes for easier cropping.
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