Approx Len instead of just Len [DONE somewhat]

old granted and denied feature requests

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nwa
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Approx Len instead of just Len [DONE somewhat]

Post by nwa »

I'm talking about episode lenthgs here... that doesn't usually happen with normal anime episodes, but with hentais (or any OVA in that case) have 2 kind of values, the actual value and the round value... round value is good for the eye and is usually exactly 30 min or 60 min etc. when the actual length is most of the times less/bigger than the round value. The official sites show you the round value for example 30, if you watch the file (credits included) then the length is like 28 or 32... and now I got a lot of creq's wanting to change the actual value to round value, since I prefer the actual value, I ingored them, but if the play lenght would be rephrased to "Approximate play length" then the round value could as well be there...

The problem would be that in the base page for an anime, there isn't much room to add such a long word like approx, only if you position it on top of Len, there would be no problem in the edit/add page

this shouldn't be hard to do... :P
wahaha
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Post by wahaha »

A common abbreviation of "approximately" is "~" - and that would fit easily. Anyway, I'm in favor of staying with the actual runlength, and not pretty values, because I don't like the idea of reducing the accuracy.

And as usual, I'll try to take the feature-request a bit over the top: Since it's actually files with different runlengths that cause problems, one could assign an exact runlength (mmm:ss) to the files and display an ~ value as the average of those. If desired, that value could be rounded to whole 1, 2 or 5 minutes.
DonGato
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Post by DonGato »

I would do as wahaha said (*going to collect the money*).
hentai

Post by hentai »

BUT!, different release groups have different lengths for the same anime episode... so I say put the 'official' length there.... How are you going to determine the EXACT correct value of it :?
wahaha
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Post by wahaha »

hentai wrote:How are you going to determine the EXACT correct value of it :?
The values have to be rounded to whole minutes already, so that leaves enough space to disregard minor differences. Anothing more than that would probably result from release A including something that isn't part of release B. The main question is then: Which parts should count towards the episode's runlength - and which should not?

Let me repeat a possible answer I wrote earlier on IRC: >> length = rounded runlength of the whole ep. "The whole ep" means the whole op-ep-ed/credits-preview and only excludes credits added by fansubbers or other content not related to this anime (previews of anything but this exact anime) <<
hentai
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Post by hentai »

Still, there are japanese credits, english credits and yeah sometimes previews of the next ep, there are logo's showing up before it starts, and probably another few things... How are you gonna determine the correct length, it can be different rules for every anime's etc. and some release groups cut out ending credits or startup logo's etc. who will know it then? :(

I still say stick with the 'official' runtime's provided by the ditributors, this is simple and can prevent confusion. And anime episodes are put on the market as an 30 min or 45 min episode. I've only seen 1 that had officialy 36 min :D IMO that is what matters. Plus binding rules to the length will make the add/change episode page a lot more crowded. And im guessing that there is probably a real small percentage correct when you start making rules for the length. :P

BTW, this is not gonna 'cost' me anything right?? :D ;)
egg
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Post by egg »

hentai, I don't think you understand wahaha's solution. It actually easier, and makes the add/change episode page cleaner, since the information will not be editable there anymore.

This is one way to handle the enhancement:
1) Have create the ability to put the runtime in a file
2) Update the API so that Client Applications can update the value
3) Have AOM upgraded to support reading the runtime and the new API
--- Here exp will probably wait for a little while for values to be populated
4) Remove the ability to add the time on the episode page, and make it an average of all of the files that are linked to it.

If done this way, AOM does most of the work of populating the new data. If you use the information from the actual files, you don't have to find an official source (which can be quite challenging for older animes) for the correct length.
exp
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Post by exp »

well,

this certainly is a possibility, however you have to keep in mind that this would yield some pretty useless results if the difference in file length would be very large.
I don't know if we have such cases in anidb though :P

another point would be that many file formats are not supported by AoM yet so there would actually be a lot of files where the length info would need to be added manually.

BYe!
EXP
hentai
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Post by hentai »

And some episodes are cut in pieces by release groups...
egg
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Post by egg »

hentai wrote:And some episodes are cut in pieces by release groups...
True, but generally the individual files are then put into individual episodes that are part x of y. I have only come across one recently that isn't this way, but I haven't created made a request to change it yet...
hentai
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Post by hentai »

but then you would have to change episode's that are cut into pieces to "special" episodes and then your collection would not be complete??
egg
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Post by egg »

hentai wrote:but then you would have to change episode's that are cut into pieces to "special" episodes and then your collection would not be complete??
In this particular case, maybe. That's why I haven't made the request yet... :lol:

Usually this is done with movies ane it ends up being:
ep 1 = Full Movie
ep 2 = part 1/2
ep 3 = part 2/2
ep 4 = part 1/3
ep 5 = part 2/3
ep 6 = part 3/3
and it does not matter which ones you get, you will have more than one ep, so it will be complete.

What I was thinking of leaving part 1 there, and making:
sp 3 = Part 2/3 for ep 3
sp 4 = part 3/3 for ep 3

It was either that or start downloading the DA release...
hentai
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Post by hentai »

How about this 1?:

You make the episode length the official length, and you make an extra length field for the file...

OAM can never detect correctly the propper length when some release groups add or remove stuff. And letting the users put in the propper lenght based on rules will just give confusion.
wahaha
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Post by wahaha »

hentai wrote:And letting the users put in the propper lenght based on rules will just give confusion.
I can imagine that the confusion might be worse with "this file is only 28 minutes, but it says that the whole ep is 30! (They cut something!!)"
hentai
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Post by hentai »

That't just paranoid :P
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