I thought this should be as good a time as any since were approaching the new year to write about a topic of an old sore spot regarding Catraxx and that's Support for DVD/Blue-Ray concerts and other video formats.

Catvids deals with entertainment forms such as "Movies", "TV Shows", etc and it does that well but it doesn't handle the specifics of the musical form of entertainment such as concerts, videos, etc...very well.

However because it's the Music Genre that we are dealing with I think that this type of media format (VHS, DVD, Blue-Ray, etc) should be dealt with by Catraxx since it already handles other various types of music media such as mp3's, lps , cds, etc...

The one major flaw or feature lacking from Cattrax database and continues to plague collectors like myself is how it deals with this type of media format (Music Video/Concerts). I'm not sure if there is a planned resistance to having the Catraxx database expand into this type of format, but it seems to me with all the feature upgrades and developments that Catraxx has done over the years including polls regarding new features, that this area continually seems to be severely overlooked and underdeveloped.

We are not shooting for the moon on this one...but we would really just like to see some of these features in Catraxx.

1) The ability to download any basic information regarding this type of media (Music Video or Concert Film) (A feature that Catvids has but doesn't have the ability to handle individual track-listings, credits and other information of a musical nature).

2) Cattrax has various designations for types of audio files (even color coordinated as well), it already lists mp4 as one of the audio formats, but mp4 is also a video format as well, why not create some of the most popular formats or at least allow us as users the ability to create their own formats such as vob, avi, mpg etc.. with the ability to link that format to any specific player we choose such as vlc, Windows Media player, etc... Just like Cattrax Audio Player does for audio. Just having the ability to create designated formats with optional handling features would be a beginning.

3) Cattrax has the feature to download from CDDB and also a manual query from various sites such as discogs and Amazon (note: these sources should be expanded), and Catvids has "download from Internet" feature, why not expand that same feature from Catvids into Catraxx...if it's the format from these external sites that are causing problems, why not just have the information being downloaded go to a preliminary template for editing like you do from "download from CDDB" with an option such as a checkbox to either accept/deny the particular information so the user can decide what information is wanted before having it be transferred to the database.

Too bad VFC was no longer an add-on product, being able to get info from freedb and allmusic and other sources and have the ability to edit tracklistings before it was transferred to the database was so efficient and cool.

Now what I've said above may be a series of ramblings and maybe possible or not, but as collectors we would all love to have a simple method of entering this type of data...but if it means that we have to type it in... We Will (we are collectors after all)

Overall what we would like to see are the tools and designated formats/fields to allow us to enter this information at hand, without constantly having to use the "Custom Field" boxes that may or may not do what we want or be clunky doing it, Because there is a series of standard formats that have already been established such a avi, mpg, vhs, dvd, etc... that these could be used immediately but as time proves that new formats are generated and some become non-standard formats, so the ability to create your own becomes necessary.

I'm guess what I'm trying to convey is that we are not here to make either Catraxx or Catvids obsolete by creating so many overlapping features, abilities or similar types of field information between the two products that they become indistinguishable from one another and that it might make one or the other databases useless to buy and cost Frederick money.

But unfortunately we have one specific genre of entertainment which is Music and a format that is Video and that format happens to be in both of these distinct databases, and neither of these types of databases handles that type of Musical format very well.

I believe as users of this program we want a solution to this problem and a decision will have to be made about how to approach it, however let me interject this thought...the only overwhelming factor of consideration here should be that subject that we are dealing with is "MUSIC" no matter whether it's an audio format or video format that we're talking about, and I believe and so do many others that this type of subject should be dealt with by Catraxx.

I'm not about to put Movies or TV shows in the Catraxx database and visa-verse, I don't like putting Music in the Catvids either and I definitely don't want all the features that Catvids handles in Catraxx except one that I discussed before.

I've bought both Catvids and Catraxx to deal with the various collections of these two distinct genres, but I believe we have to start addressing this cross platform problem in order for Catraxx to become a more complete database, being able to handle all types of musical forms.

I would like to thank Frederick for all the work and development he has undertaken regarding this series of databases, and thanks to all the users who continue to contribute and push this product on to be the best in it's field, I truly believe that this sharing and passionate approach for this product is both unique and amazing.

And to all who are celebrating at this time of year, here are some of my favourite "F" words...

Here's to
Friends
Family
Food
Forgiveness

Happy Holidays

I agree, The the feature i would find very useful in catraxx is to be able to split Discs into more than Just Aside Bside sections. As many sectioans as needed and be able to label them. example would be a DVD with Audio\Music Videos\Documentary content. I would like to split this disc into 3 sections for Audio\Music Videos\Documentary content. As of now i am creating 3 seperate discs but it is not correct.

Thanks

Well, 4 months have gone by since I suggested the possibility of Cattrax handling Music Video/Concerts as part of an ongoing way to enhance and improve the database. So far I've not heard from the general users out there about how to handle this problem and neither have I heard from Frederick regarding his thoughts on this subject... just because you ignore a problem doesn't make it go away.

I'm wondering how other users of Catraxx tackle this problem either with specific templates/fields or by using Catvids in a different way....none seem to work well.

Music Videos and Concerts are about MUSIC and should be available in the Cattrax database, I have started to use some other databases (Video and Music) [Sacrilege! ] to see if something would work, some have greater advantages (access to many sources) that Catraxx sorely lacks but the lack the flexibility in other areas that Catraxx does so well prevents me from totally switching. So the search continues.

So what are everyone's thoughts on how to tackle this problem or is this a problem that both Frederick or the Cattrax users find beyond their capability and will always be a itch that can't be scratched.

Music4al

I agree completely with this and it is something I have been searching for, for many years now.
I now find that I use catraxx very rarely because it can not handle video, and so most of the time I'm able to use iTunes for my needs, but likewise, iTunes can't handle video the way that i need it.
If Catraxx could be improved to handle the video formats mentioned it would be extremely useful to me.

Hello everyone on this particular forum,
Being a user of catraxx and catvids myself i could find a reasonable workaround for thie matter.
And although some typing is still neccesary imdb from catvids already finds some concert dvd's with the appropiate data.
This includes the contents field used in catvids. from there i'll create an txt export field and export it to catraxx with the fields needed in catraxx. In catraxx i import this text fields and i have about 70% off all the data needed the only restriction is the amount of data provided by imdb but that's not the problem of catraxx or catvids but this dataprovider itself.
For me this is working for a couple of years now.

Greetings pieter