As some of you may know, I have been critical of copying cast and crew from other releases. I like to go back and check the contribution notes from those earlier releases to see who made them and how they are documented. It is, though, not always easy to find the original contribution. For one thing you need to know how to look up contribution notes for profiles that are not in your own collection. And furthermore even if you do know, you need to know what locality they are and what the locality suffix is for that locality - if it's not a US profile.

This is why I wrote this tool. It lets you search for contribution notes even if you don't know the locality. And it uses an integrated web browser, which I find easier to work with when you need to follow contributions in several steps to find the original.

Note: Because of the web browser component that I have chosen, this program only works on 64 bit Windows. If anyone should need a version that works on 32 bit, I can create a "light" version that opens the contribution notes in your standard web browser instead. Just let me know.

ContribLookup 1.0.0

CefSharp

Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
Have you done enough with it to know whether it would solve my scraping issues?

Afraid not. I just use it to load the webpage. I tried the MS webbrowser control, but I just got script errors. Not really happy that CefSharp comes with so much baggage (lots of dlls and what not) but at least it works and seems relatively fast.

Updated to version 1.1.0.

- Fixes a bug that could cause a crash on program start.
- Adds two requested features:
- - Last locality settings is remembered for next run.
- - Highlighting an UPC/EAN/DiscId in the browser text and pressing Ctrl-c copies it to the search field.

Quoting GSyren:

Quote:
CefSharp

Please check the CLT thread for a message. Don't want to go off-topic here.

Things did work better, so here is ContribLookup 2.0.0

My original reason for creating ContribLookup was that when I saw a new contribution that copied cast and crew from another contribution I wanted to be able to track the original contribution, even if it was several steps away. And version 1 would let me do that.

But then I thought it would be nice to be able to track not only from new contributions, but from any contribution notes for profiles in my own collection. You can, of course, open the contribution notes from within DVD Profiler, and that works fine ... for a single profile or two. But if you want to check many profiles it's a bit cumbersome. So I created the contribution note browser, as shown below.



Just select a title and the contribution notes are shown. It even searches for "cast" to make it easier to see if there is a reference to another contribution. Just highlight the profile id and press Ctrl-C (or right click and select "Copy"). The id is automatically copied and pasted to the search field. And in Settings you can configure if you want an automatic search of all localities when an id is pasted there.

Going through the contribution notes is as simple as selecting one title in the list and then just pressing down arrow to select the next and the next and the next ...

Of course, if you only want to check a new contribution you don't have to load your collection export file. You can just use it like before.

Very, very nice indeed! Yet another useful tool 

I was wondering if you considered going back also to the old Intervocative contributions? Some older profiles have been created on Intervocative before 2007 and, generally, the details are not reproduced on Invelos.

Take The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) (UPC=012569517424) for instance:


The contribution notes on Invelos do not show the source and contributor of cast and crew. Those details are on the profile notes on Intervocative.

Version 2.1 is in the works and should be ready soon.

I have added Intervocative lookup as Wigram suggested. I have also added checkboxes in the browser list so you can flag profiles that you think may need auditing. Checked titles can be saved as a flag set in Profiler so it's easy to find the profiles in question after you have finished with ContribLookup.

The checkmarks are remembered between sessions, and the place in the list where you left off is also remembered, so you can continue where you left off.

I have a couple of minor items left on my todo-list, and I probably should take the time to create a help file. But we're close ...