I am in my 7 day trial for Movie Connect evaluating the possibility of transitioning from Movie Collector. The upper right search box in not returning complete information unless I am using it incorrectly.
Example:
If I search for Cillian Murphy the results are Peaky Blinders Season 1 & 2. Seasons 3,4,5 & 6 are not included. Attempted same search with a different actor with same non inclusive results. When I looked a bit closer, it appears it is only picking up the name if it appears on within the text on the plot screen. It does not pick the name up from the cast, crew, episodes or anywhere else.
To search by Actor, you can get the most reliable results using Actor folders.
(actually the same holds for Movie Collector)
- Click the folder button top left
- Choose Actor as the folder field
- then use the search box top LEFT to search for, e.g. “murphy”
- click the Cillian Murphy folder
- and it will give you the exact movies in the movie list.
Thanks for reply. I understand I can use folders, but not without several more iterations. I just tried the identical search in Movie Collector from the top search box and it gives perfect results, and the results are highlighted as well. That’s what I was used to, thought this would work the same way. If this is how I have to do it, that’s fine, but then what purpose does this search box serve?
The search box in Connect just searches less fields, that is all.
We think this gives better, more focused results when searching by titles.
In general, Connect will not always work exactly the same as the desktop software.
When creating and further developing Connect, we were able to make different design decisions.
If you are looking for all movies that actor played in, then using the search box top right in Movie Collector is not accurate at all, Because that box also searches titles, plots, notes, cast and crew etc… So you may get more movies in the results than you want.
But when using.Actor folders, you exactly get what you need: all movies that person is an actor in.
So even in the Movie Collector desktop software, using actor folders was the correct way to do this.
In Movie Collector I just select actor from from the dropdown arrow if need be and it works fine. I’m still going to swap over regardless. Now that I know how it works, I’ll just use it the intended way. Not a game changer at all, just a different way to do it.
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Another oddity noted when using this search box. It seems that if you choose to use the “View all results” box since the drop down is limited to five items, you only will get results if the exact word is found. My example is if I start typing the word black I get the five titles populating the drop down, one of which is Blackboard Jungle. When I choose the view all results, these results no longer include Blackboard Jungle, nor The Blacklist for that matter. No titles containing black are shown only those with the single word black in the title, Black Sails, Black Mirror, Black Widow, among others.
That is indeed how it works.
The web-based software uses a real SQL database and for searching a real efficient text search engine (Elastic Search).
So when typing in the box, it uses a real “suggest-type” Elastic index, that gives super-fast dropdown suggestions, even on huge databases. This is very scalable.
When performing the actual search, it uses a real whole-word-based Elastic index, which can search huge databases on the fly and provide results with all entries that use the typed words. This too is super scalable and can search hundreds of thousand of records instantly.
On Windows however, no SQL database, no Elastic engine, no indexes even. It is a simple object database that the program just “runs through” from start to end, finding matching entries using a very basic “contains” match.
Which means that if you are searching for “black”, it also finds “blacklist”, which is of course incorrect.
It is still quite fast because the entire database is in memory, but this is in no way scalable and becomes slower and slower once the database grows bigger.
Different platforms, different technologies.
And before you ask, yes, the sorting works different too 
On web, the sorting is purely alphabetic, on Windows it uses natural sorting, which recognizes numbers in titles.
It certainly sounds more efficient. So which search term would I use to find blacklist if I happened to be old and could only remember it had black in the title?
You got me. That’s not possible.
Thanks for taking the time to answer and explain how this works, it’s just different from what I’m used to when conducting a search from the desktop version. I’ll still try it to the end of trial period but based on how I use the program I think I’m in that population that should stick to the desktop version for at least the time being. As always your response time to any issue is the fastest and most thorough around and much appreciated.
I am sorry to hear that. If that was because of huge missing features, like User Defined Fields, episode editing, cataloging movies files… I would understand.
But these are tiny differences in how the search works, not worse, just different.
It’s probably me but this is why it seems odd to me. The first screen shot from web version is what I mean. I type in “blackl” and it populates with five seasons of The Blacklist. I know there are more than five seasons so I hit “view all results” expecting to see these five plus the other seasons as well. What I get is the left side saying no results found.
The second screenshot is from the desktop version with identical search word of “blackl” in the title and the results when I hit “show all results”. This is what I expect to see.
This is the way I currently search using the software, so from what you’ve stated the web based version will never give the results I’m looking for. I know you guys put a lot of time into your product and I’ve used it for many years, but this actually does seem worse to me.
Yes, because the dropdown is a “suggestions-type” search, which searches for partial words (otherwise it would not be able to provide suggestions “as you type”).
The ACTUAL search is a whole words search. That is quite normal. I mean even Google works the same way: if you type in the box you get partial word suggestions, but if you search, it uses a whole words search.
It is just different from what you are used to. But I think it is more correct and more what most users would expect.
Try typing “blackl” in a google search box.
You will get suggestions like blacklist, blacklane, blacklight, etc…
But hit the search button and you will get results for “blackl”.
Anyway, I would be sad if tiny differences like the above would keep users from switching to Connect. I mean, it’s just different from what you’re used to.
From all the users who started out with Connect from the beginning, we would never ever hear the same comments. Because they just use it how it works, no complaints, never even a thought about how it could or should work differently.
Interesting that Google works like you state but Bing includes blacklist, etc. I don’t want to waste any more of your time, I believe I can work around the difference as long as I sort differently before the search so it’s really a non issue.
Wanted to see what movies by director Sidney Lumet are in my collection. A search on “Lumet” showed four … 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and Serpico. It did not show “The Verdict” which is there. Removed and re-added “The Verdict” … it still does not appear on a search on “Lumet”. But if I sort the “Director” column, it does appear with the other four. So, do I now trust the results of a search on anything in my collection??? I’m doing this on a Win11 platform via Chrome, all at the latest level.
To search for a director, set your screen to Director folders first, then search using the search box on the LEFT, above the Director folder list.
The search box top right does not search the director field.
