Welcome to the Videophile II Forum

FAQ

OK, none of these has been frequently asked! Some have been asked by people testing the program and others have been asked by people who are aware of it's existence. But most were asked by a schizoid incarnation of myself. Who? Me?: Yes, you...!


1 Why would I want to go through the hassle of tagging all my videos?

Short answer: So you can find them easily when you want them!

But, seriously, not everybody is into classifying things - I guess it is a bit train-spotter-ish. If you are a train-spotter and are reading this and you have hours of footage of the locomotives that trundle through your nearest village, please do not be offended - and also be assured that you have found the right software with which to classify your mind-numbing (to the rest of us!) footage...

Plus, there is no saying that you have to classify your video files at all, with any tags of any kind, in order to benefit from using Videophile II. The fact is, it's difficult to organise large collections of anything using Windows' built-in file system (especially across removable drives) because, fair enough, it wasn't designed for that one specific purpose! That's why a Library comes in handy...

Sure, it takes time to catalogue any large collection of anything but there's nothing to say that you have to do it all at once: Why not create your Library and then classify (Tag) it as you go along? With Videophile II you can go as far with this as you like: Who knows, after a while, you may find that you end up Tagging and classifying habitually!


2 Is there a version available for other Operating Systems?

Sadly, no. I wrote this one using VB6 so I can't make it run on anything else other than Windows. Having said that, there are quite a few areas of the program that are cross-platform; it's just that the whole interface that ties them together is Windows-only...

If you want to help me convert/re-write the program for other platforms, I'd be happy to hear from you as part of the reason for creating Videophile II stems from my belief that there should exist a decent Media Library for video content. There are several for music files but what about video, damn it!

You may be interested in the answer to the next question...


3 Why on Earth did you write this in VB6?!! It's 2008 for God's sake!

Good question. That's the kind I'd have asked myself! The answer is, that 'Videophile I' was written way-back-when (2000) and never saw the light of day. I wrote it in order to catalogue a large collection of Boxing footage that I had ripped from VHS that was becoming ever-more grainy by the viewing. This year, I chanced across my old source code and decided to re-write it from scratch, for fun, and for (mostly-redundant!) learning. Plus, if I am anything, I am an interface designer and VB6 is still pretty good at that - even if it's aesthetics have fallen behind somewhat...

It's worth mentioning that most of the work-horse code was written by very capable peers (alright, alright, superiors!) without whose efforts my program would probably run like a pregnant sow in quicksand. My VB6 application is merely a front-end for most of this powerful behind-the-scenes stuff, although the interface and Library design are all my own.

So, there you have it; the VB6 program is really just a front-end; all the hard work is either done via direct API calls, non-MS libraries or through the deployment of tried-and-tested (read; old!) code...


4 Why aren't there options on the main menus for a lot of the functionality? I had to read the manual to work out some of the things that can be done!

How awful for you! He-heh. The answer to your question is that the interface design is intentionally minimalistic: Most users will probably utilise only minimum functionality but the rest is available and awaiting discovery by serious videophiles and compulsive classifiers of information. Besides, cluttered interfaces and menus make programs less intuitive, not more so. Because of this, context-menus are the chosen method of conveying the availability/appropriatenes of possible user-actions. So, bite the bullet and RTFM!...


5 Videophile II sometimes crashes when first populating a large Library. Why?

Because it sucks! But seriously, I wish it didn't too!

The fact is, that video formats are many and varied and they aren't always implemented to the required specifications. This invariably causes problems!

In my experience, and in defence of Videophile II, most top-end media-players can (and do) crash occasionally and, in the case of populating a large Library, please bear in mind that the program could potentially be trying to open and use many different implementations of many different formats. That would be a very difficult feat for most players to achieve back-to-back whilst remaining stable. So, a little tolerance please! Besides, in the event of a crash in this situation, Videophile II will have retained all data stored up to the point of the crash*, enabling you to resume without too much pain...

* except in exceptional circumstances


6 Why can't I join files with Videophile II? MPGTX can do it! ASFBin can do it! etc., etc.

Well, Videophile II does support these tools and it's certainly do-able but Videophile II is primarily a Media Library, not an editor! And it'll stay that way for now, with support for simple, minor edits (i.e. trimmming) on single files...

However, I may add this in the future, you never know...


7 Why are Unicode characters not supported?

Mostly because the prgram is written in VB6 which doesn't, readily, support unicode. I'm working on this but the effort to support Unicode may outweigh a re-write in another language...


8 Fair enough, but Why does the user's Locale setting have to be UK or US?

Because I am on a stealth-mission to evangelise the English language. And because I am a staunch-Europhobe. And lazy. I'll do it soon, I promise! For now, learn English! Anyway, commas where decimal places should be??!! Come on!!!!

Come to think of it, maybe it will work on a few other Locales - I just haven't tested it on them all. The way I see it, either I could do this testing and provide a list of working Locales or you could learn English. I think you know where I stand on that one. If you can't read English, you won't have made it this far into the FAQ anyway...


9 What time will you get there?

This is unrelated to Videophile II but is, genuinely, a frequently asked question. The answer is, when I get there...


10 Why did you include an un-related question when the topics title is specific to Videophile II?

Because most FAQ's have at least 10 questions and I only had 8