Alternative Movie Database 1.3 (C) 2001 S. Siebert (AMDb@SteffenSiebert.de) =========================================================================== This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Please note that the Internet Movie Lists and the database files, which are generated by the Alternative Movie Database, are protected by the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) copying policy. This policy can be found in the file copyimdb.txt; also any Internet Movie List contains a copy of this policy. Among other restrictions, the policy prohibits the CD-ROM distribution of the Internet Movie Lists or the database files created by the Alternative Movie Database! For further information on the Internet Movie Database, please read the files imdb.faq and addition.txt. Installation: 1. The program consists of one exe-file, which must be executed to install AMDb. It will copy the AMDb files to the disk and create a program group with icons for the AMDb tools. 2. The Alternative Movie Database uses two environment variables to store the location of the movie lists and the movie database. These variables are set during the installation to the lists and dbs subdirs in the installation directory. If you have enough free space on the drive containing the AMDb installtion to hold both the IMDb list files and the generated AMDb database, you don't have to modify these settings! Set AMD_PATH to the path, where the database should be created. Set AMD_LISTS_PATH to the path of the internet movie database lists. For example: SET AMD_PATH="c:\program files\amdb\dbs" SET AMD_LISTS_PATH="c:\program files\amdb\lists" 3. Get the internet movie lists and copy them to the path, AMD_LISTS_PATH is set to. The Alternative Movie Database supports every list from the Internet Movie Database. This doesn't include the lists from the contrib subdirectory. Please note that billing positions of the cast are currently ignored. You can uncompress the lists, or use them in gzipped format as stored on the IMDb ftp server (the file extension must be .list.gz then)! If you store the lists on a partition which can not handle long filenames, they must be renamed as follows (if they are compressed, the extension must be .gz instead of .lis): These are the names of the supported lists: original filename 8.3 short filename ========================================================== actors.list actors.lis actresses.list actresse.lis aka-names.list aka-name.lis aka-titles.list aka-titl.lis alternate-versions.list alternat.lis biographies.list biograph.lis business.list business.lis certificates.list certific.lis cinematographers.list cinemato.lis color-info.list color-in.lis complete-cast.list complete.lis complete-crew.list completc.lis composers.list composer.lis costume-designers.list costume-.lis countries.list countrie.lis crazy-credits.list crazy-cr.lis directors.list director.lis distributors.list distribu.lis editors.list editors.lis genres.list genres.lis german-aka-titles.list german-a.lis goofs.list goofs.lis italian-aka-titles.list italian-.lis language.list language.lis laserdisc.list laserdis.lis literature.list literatu.lis locations.list location.lis miscellaneous-companies.list miscellc.lis miscellaneous.list miscella.lis movie-links.list movie-li.lis movies.list movies.lis mpaa-ratings-reasons.list mpaa-rat.lis plot.list plot.lis producers.list producer.lis production-companies.list produc-c.lis production-designers.list produc-d.lis quotes.list quotes.lis ratings.list ratings.lis release-dates.list release-.lis running-times.list running-.lis sound-mix.list sound-mi.lis soundtracks.list soundtra.lis special-effects-companies.list special-.lis taglines.list taglines.lis technical.list technica.lis trivia.list trivia.lis writers.list writers.lis 4. Create the database by running gendb.exe. In case of trouble you may use the option -d to produce lots of debug information on stderr. If you supply a filename after -d, gendb redirects stderr to this file (WARNING: the file will be overwritten if it already exists!) Please append this file to any bug-report you email to me. If you use the gendb icon, gendb will run with debug output enabled. The output will be stored in gendb.log in the subdir log. If gendb fails due to an out of memory failure, you have to create/increase the permanent swapfile for Windows95/Windows NT. Please consult your system manual for further information on this topic. The size of the swapfile depends on your hard- and software configuration; on systems with small main memory up to 200MB can be necessary! 7. Query the database using the GUI: The AMDb for Windows now comes with a nice GUI called AMDbFront which was written by Thorsten M. Wahl (Thorsten_Wahl@iname.com). If you have questions or feature requests for AMDbFront, please contact him directly! 6. Query the database using commandline tools: The database created by gendb.exe can be queried using the programs name.exe and title.exe. Running them without any arguments enters the interactive mode, which asks the user to input the name of a movie/person and displays the matching information on screen. To end the program just enter at the prompt. To use the batch-mode, start title.exe with the arguments -t and the searchstring, enclosed in double-quotes. Use option -n for name.exe. If the searchstring contains double-quotes, escape them with a backslash: title -t "\"M*A*S*H\"" You may supply several searchstrings as arguments to title.exe; the output displays the people who worked on all movies whose titles are matched by the searchstrings: title -t "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" -t "True Lies (1994)" A similar query is possible with name.exe to find all movies where all persons worked on whose names are matched by the searchstrings. You can use the following flags instead of -n to indicate in which function the next supplied person must have worked in the production: -ar = Actor -as = Actress -d = Director -w = Writer -c = Composer -ph = Cinematographer -ed = Editor -m = Miscellaneus -pd = Production Designer -cd = Costume Designer -pr = Producer Examples: name.exe -ar "Schwarzenegger" -d "Cameron, James" name.exe -ar "Allen, Woody" -d "Allen, Woody" -w "Allen, Woody" The searchstrings are not case-sensitive, names must be supplied as "Lastname, Firstname". Title have the article, if any, put at the end of the title, separated by colon. Any title includes a year enclosed in braces. It is possible to supply only the beginning of a title or name. If the string matches more than one title/name, a list of all matching strings is displayed. The option -o given as last argument to name.exe or title.exe in batchmode redirects the output to . Any existing file with this name it will be overwritten! 7. Updating the database Every week a file containing the diffs for the Internet Movie Lists is uploaded to the IMDb ftp-servers and mirrors. This is a convenient way to keep the lists up to date without the need to download the complete lists again. For applying the diffs the program applydif.exe is supplied. Read the file applydif.txt on how to use this tool. Please note that the pathname supplied to applydif must not contain a trailing separator (slash or backslash). If you use Win-Zip for unpacking the weekly diffs, please note that you must disable the option "TAR File Smart CR/LF" found under "Options/Configuration". You have to recreate the database with gendb.exe to include the information of the updated lists. 8. Support The Alternative Movie Database comes without any warranty or support, but if you have problems, questions or any comments about it, feel free to send me an email to the following address: AMDb@SteffenSiebert.de Please visit the Alternative Movie Database Homepage to learn about new releases: http://www.SteffenSiebert.de/amdb/index.html