Topic by Truncated

Posted: 1/16/2008 10:17 PM

Post subject: Making the movie naming suck less

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Truncated

Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (968)

Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3107
Location: Sweden

Every time I want to dig out a movie file for watching with a particular game, it's more or less impossible to find it. This is because they are sorted by author. I know what game I am playing, but I do not remember all the authors who have worked on it or who made the last version. It is also impossible to know which version is the latest, because they are numbered by player, and not by game. You can guess from the file size or The PublisherGuidelines.html currently specifies TWO different naming conventions: one for AVIs, and one for emulator movies. This does not make any sense at all. My suggestion for naming is 1) make the AVI naming identical to the emulator movie naming. There is NO reason not to do this. (If you think there is, I also propose that we should have another completely different naming system for the .torrents) 2) change the format to "game-category-version(or time)-player(s)" or some other system which sorts correctly. For example "Sonic Advance 2 - 18:44.97 - JSP (aka. Nitsuja).vbm", or "Legend of Zelda, The - Link's Awakening (V1.0) (U) [!] - warp glitch - 04:00.5 - Jakob C. G. (aka. Soulrivers).vbm" See also http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5335 which is also good. The reason I leave out the M??? is that I hope this could also be implemented for submissions. If breaking old links is a problem, silently forward them to their new counterpart, or keep the zip name the same and change name of its contents. Yes? No? Yes.

Posted: 1/16/2008 10:39 PM
(Edited: 1/17/2008 9:18 PM)

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Wockes

Joined: 5/17/2007
Posts: 393
Location: Sweden

I say yes. I always have problems finding obsolete/gruefood runs.

"No love for the game gear"

Posted: 1/16/2008 11:03 PM

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moozooh

Senior Moderator

Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away

Something like "game name - category - publication/submission number - player" would probably be better than having time in the filename (some movies are longer for whatever reasons like category change), and movie version number is about as irrelevant to someone who doesn't track the movie's history as the publication number… except the publication number has a page associated with it, which is a huge bonus. I fully support the incentive, btw, the current naming conventions are indeed very counterintuitive (not to say bad). Same goes for screenshots, which could be SO much simpler going just by "publication number - screenshot version", since you don't need anything else at all.

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 1/16/2008 11:24 PM

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JXQ

Experienced player (750)

Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132

Could the rationale behind not using capital letters or spaces in the filenames be disclosed? Sub-Terrania TAS by JXQ.avi is much easier to read/parse than subterrania-tas-jxq.avi, for example. I also want to bring more emphasis to the counterintuitive version number in the publication's filename. Without knowledge of either of these particular movies' history, it's a guessing game as to which order these movies were created in: supermario64-tas-1star-mr_roberts_z,rikku.avi supermario64-tas-16stars-aka.avi supermario64-tas-16stars-spezzafer.avi supermario64-tas-1star-aka_and_swordlesslink.avi supermario64-tas-16stars-aka_and_swordlesslink.avi supermario64-tas-1star-rikku.avi supermario64-tas-0stars-aka_and_swordlesslink.avi supermario64-tasv2-16stars-rikku.avi superdemoworld_tlc-tas-jxq.avi superdemoworld_tlc-tas-skamasta,fabian,jimsfriend,jxq.avi superdemoworld_tlc-tas-mrz.avi superdemoworld_tlc-tasv3-jxq.avi

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Posted: 1/16/2008 11:44 PM

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upthorn

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Emulator Coder, Active player (388)

Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802

Agreed. TASvideos is in dire need of a unified naming scheme, and Game - categories - version - author(s) seems like the best format. Though, using the full rom filename seems a little excessive. As an example of how I'd suggest doing it, let's take the currently published Sonic 3 & Knuckles movies. Nitsuja's would be "Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Sonic (no emeralds) - V4 - Nitsuja" My own would be "Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Knuckles (all emeralds) - V1 - Upthorn" Or, avoiding capitals and special characters, as is currently done, "sonic3knuckles-sonic_noemeralds-v4-nitsuja" "sonic3knuckles-knuckles_allemeralds-v1-upthorn" Edit: appearantly three people posted between the time I finished writing this post, and the time I actually hit submit.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 1/16/2008 11:49 PM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

Perhaps instead of a pointless "Author's version number", it could be "Movie version". (Edit: forget it entirely, see edit) Also, perhaps instead of a version or somerthing, a simple date could be included. "2007-10-30", for example, to aid in sorting: [Game Name] - [categ] - [date] - [author list] The current system is complete balls and I hope it is improved. Addendum: Version numbers are stupid. They are impossible to keep track of for submissions and the fact they are "Author's version" and not "Movie" now just makes them even more worthless.

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Posted: 1/16/2008 11:57 PM

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Tub

Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377

this issue has bothered me as well, but I got around with ls -t *mario64* and similar bash magic. A proper naming scheme would be appreciated though.

m00

Posted: 1/17/2008 2:26 AM
(Edited: 1/17/2008 2:28 AM)

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superjupi

Joined: 10/15/2007
Posts: 685

I've been renaming them as I've downloaded the files since 2004. The naming convention I adopted: Game Name [objective] mm-dd-yyyy Author.extension I didn't bother including the play time, because the file size is typically indicative of movie length.

Kirby said so, so it must be true. ( >'.')>

Posted: 1/17/2008 2:27 AM

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Twelvepack

Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO

http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4678 Some more discussion about this. I really would like to see a better naming scheme, it would make watching older movies a little more convienient.

Has never colored a dinosaur.

Posted: 1/17/2008 3:12 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

superjupi wrote:

I've been renaming them as I've downloaded the files since 2004. The naming convention I adopted: Game Name [objective] mm-dd-yyyy Author.extension I didn't bother including the play time, because the file size is typically indicative of movie length.

This is basically the same thing as mine, except I use yyyy-mm-dd first (sortability). This seems to be the most readable format overall. Any other thoughts? It has all the important data about a run up front, if nothing else, and doesn't include "useless trivia" like version number or other such silly cruft.

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Posted: 1/17/2008 3:19 AM

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Quietust

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Joined: 7/14/2004
Posts: 250

superjupi wrote:

I've been renaming them as I've downloaded the files since 2004.

I've gotten around the problem by simply deleting movie files once they are obsoleted. In my case, this is made a bit easier by using a script which does it automatically (by querying the tasvideos DB), but I agree that it'd be nice for movie filenames to follow some sort of reasonable standard.

* Quietust, QMT Productions P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another

Posted: 1/17/2008 4:00 AM

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upthorn

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Joined: 3/24/2006
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Xkeeper: I don't see why you consider version number to be useless trivial cruft. Version number should be a movie's position in the chain of obsoletion. v1 if it's the first of it's game and category. And, say, 12 if it's like SM64, SMB1, or MM1 where there've been numerous publications worth of refinement.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 1/17/2008 6:00 AM

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superjupi

Joined: 10/15/2007
Posts: 685

Xkeeper wrote:

This is basically the same thing as mine, except I use yyyy-mm-dd first (sortability).

Er... that's actually what I meant to say, I'm just bit sleep deprived, and other silly excuses. At least I'm not alone.

Kirby said so, so it must be true. ( >'.')>

Posted: 1/17/2008 7:32 AM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

upthorn wrote:

Xkeeper: I don't see why you consider version number to be useless trivial cruft. Version number should be a movie's position in the chain of obsoletion. v1 if it's the first of it's game and category. And, say, 12 if it's like SM64, SMB1, or MM1 where there've been numerous publications worth of refinement.

As JXQ pointed out, the current system is really only helpful if only one author makes runs for a particular game. Otherwise, you get multiple version 1s, version 2s, version 3s... for different people, and there's no way of knowing what came before what outside of a single author's set. I guess you could have two version numbers for each movie, one for the author and one for the game, if you didn't want the new system confused with the old one.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 1/17/2008 7:36 AM

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upthorn

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Right, but what I'm proposing would be to have the movies versioned by categories, independently of author. So that, for instance, what's currently published as "knsonic3-tasv2-nitsuja" would be renamed "sonic3knuckles-sonic_noemeralds-v4-nitsuja"

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 1/17/2008 10:08 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

upthorn wrote:

Right, but what I'm proposing would be to have the movies versioned by categories, independently of author. So that, for instance, what's currently published as "knsonic3-tasv2-nitsuja" would be renamed "sonic3knuckles-sonic_noemeralds-v4-nitsuja"

Find a way to do this without: - knowing what set of movies this belongs to - where in the category chain it belongs - including reject movies that don't count towards versions This would be assuming that the submission queue also uses the same naming scheme. Categories could be simply given another field in submissions (which would also help if there are multiple runs in the queue), but game name is not always exact, so you end up with "Super Mario Brothers"/"Super Mario Bros."/"SMB1"/etc. Converting that to a publication chain is probably harder to do automatically, which is the goal of this. I suppose you could use NesVideoAgent's ROM-verification tool to get a good guess, but that could cause confusion if, say, rejected movies don't count towards the end. Case in point: Super Mario Bros (JUE) [!] - v2 - Apple.fcm Super Mario Bros (JUE) [!] - v2 - Bucket.fcm Assume one got rejected and another is in the queue. Substituting the date makes more sense than version numbers, and here's why: - There is no actual version number associated with movies; it's all done manually - Version numbers are currently arbitrary, making them automatic would cause problems (see above) - Dates are static, unchanging, and give a better idea of a run's history - Dates sort better (v1, v11, v2... versus "2007-11-01", "2007-11-11") I still can't see any benefit of version numbers that dates don't manage to cover.

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Posted: 1/17/2008 10:19 AM
(Edited: 1/17/2008 10:22 AM)

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upthorn

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Xkeeper wrote:

...assuming that the submission queue also uses the same naming scheme...

Uh, no. Submissions would be named however the author names them before zipping them. Only publications need to have consistent file naming. The submission page link could be updated to the new zip (containing the renamed gmv) at time of publication. Also, in response to date sorting better, that test fails if you give the version number a fixed length. Say, two hexadecimal digits, so you have v01, v02, ... , vFF

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 1/17/2008 10:20 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

What benefit is there to doing that? You end up having a mess of movie names that make no sense, unless you download the publication movie file again.

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Posted: 1/17/2008 10:25 AM

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upthorn

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Xkeeper wrote:

What benefit is there to doing that? You end up having a mess of movie names that make no sense, unless you download the publication movie file again.

As I understand it, the average viewer only actually watches published movies. So for them it would be a nonissue. Perhaps submissions could also be given a standardized, but different filename format, say "gamename_date_author", since not all the information is available at time of submission that is available at time of publication (categories, obsoletion or published-alongside, etc...)

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 1/17/2008 10:28 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

Did you completely miss my suggestion to have categories added to the submission queue?

since not all the information is available at time of submission that is available at time of publication (categories, obsoletion or published-alongside, etc...)

- categories: see above. - obsoletion: not used in movie filename, wouldn't be used if version was replaced with date - "published alongside": not used in movie filename Your argument is going nowhere.

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Posted: 1/17/2008 10:30 AM

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upthorn

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Xkeeper wrote:

Did you completely miss my suggestion to have categories added to the submission queue?

No, I intentionally disregarded it, as it adds needless complication to the submission process, and the judges generally override the submitter's category choice at publication time anyway.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Posted: 1/17/2008 10:34 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

I don't see how a dropdown list of common categories could be complicated. Category (select one):

None/Other 100% any% low% warpless 2 player

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Posted: 1/17/2008 10:35 AM

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Bisqwit

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Xkeeper wrote:

Category (select one):
None/Other 100% any% low% warpless 2 player

Posted: 1/17/2008 10:36 AM

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Xkeeper

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850

Note to self: do not remove "most common [trait]" from post again, lest somebody take something literally.

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Posted: 1/17/2008 1:04 PM

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JXQ

Experienced player (750)

Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132

I would prefer date of publication to version number, because version numbers rely on the obsoletion chain, which can be inconsistent between different games. For example, 2-player Contra by adelikat obsoleted 1-player Contra by Genisto. On the other hand, 2-player Battletoads by FODA did not obsolete 1-player Battletoads by Phil & Genisto. If we call adelikat's "v2" and not FODA's, it most reliably refers to being the second publication in the obsoletion chain at this site, without regard to if it is 1-player or 2-player. If that is the information that is put in the filename, the intent would be more clear to by including the movie publication number instead. Still, I think date of publication is the best option. | Defeats all on-map non-hidden hammer bros. |

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