Quoting Magmadrag:

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And the dummy profile is my "guide", too:

Whenver one of the cast & crew in the dummy profile has a count higher than 1, I know that there is someone I need to check.

OK, I will  think about that. Of course it would be not hard to have a display of all cast / crew with count > 1.

I found it!!!

http://www.luigifilocamo.it/BY.html

What does it mean when an "accepted" By has "(19??)"? Does that mean BY=0 (no birth year)?

What does this mean: Robert Young (1935-2011)?

Why no middle names?

Thanks. I have so many ideas now. You will be amazed.

Quoting GSyren:

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Just a thought:

When you download a profile and it has a person w/o birth year, and your local database has the same name with a birthyear, the person in the downloaded profile will get that birthyear. This is the problem that Magmadrag wants to avoid.

But ... what's to say that the exact same thing doesn't happen if you add a profile (without a birthyear) through the API? It might be a good idea to test this - if not already done - before investing a lot of time and effort.

A good idea, although much of the effort that part of has already been expended. The other ideas I have are related, but independent of how the data arrives.

I agree it would be interesting to know the answer. If you have a couple of profiles I could use to observe, it would help, since I am on a thin line of understanding this stuff. No rush.

API stands for "application programming interface", it's a generic term for whenever a software allows a third party (in this case Invelos allows us plugin programmers) to connect to their software with our software.

DVD Profiler has an API that allows plug-ins to read and change the profile database. Not in all ways but at least in certain ways. We do not, however, have direct access to the actual database DVDP is using.

It's basically like you calling the pizza place and order a pizza. You get the guy on the phone (API) and can request your wishes but you do not have access to the kitchen itself (database). But in the end you get your pizza (profile). But if the API doesn't offer you to do something (no, you can't pick and chose your pizza toppings, we only offer standard items), you're out of luck.

Quoting mediadogg:

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Sausage and peppers please! 

LOL I just added the last sentence before I read your reply 

Quoting mediadogg:

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And if that does happen, I can envision a fix. Costly in terms of time, but it will work. Once the profile is saved, I can reload it with a refreshed database pointer and compare, and simply re-write to the database with the BY reset back to zero.

I'm not sure that that is going to work. If the added profile contains a birth year, that would mean that Profiler used the existing cast (or crew) record. So changing that birth year would not create a new cast record, but either change the birth year for the existing record or fail, depending on how Profiler handles it internally. At least that's what I think will happen.

What might have a better chance of succeeding would be to assign a fake birth year (like 9999) instead of zero when adding the profile. This would force Profiler to create a new cast entry, which could possibly be changed afterwards to zero. Not sure though if such a change would change the actual database record, or just temporarily change a copy in memory.

Quoting GSyren:

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Quoting mediadogg:

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So changing that birth year would not create a new cast record, but either change the birth year for the existing record.

In the API you don't really have access to the cast/crew as people. You just can tell a profile that it contains this first, last and middle name with that birth year. There is no way to edit an actual person.