My original intention <<parallel thought: remember to merge threads>> in the naming of the files went like this:
Ok, this is a Rockman 2 movie... so let's name it, Rockman2.
That's what everyone wants to know ― the game name.
The author is also nice to know, I'll add Morimoto.
But to avoid confusion, put "timeattack" in between because it's a timeattack after all.
So it became rockman2-timeattack-morimoto.avi.
Using the same formula, I published later supermariobros2-timeattack-bisqwit.avi.
But when I updated the movie… Version 2, I wanted to insert that version somewhere. The associated meaning of that number was that it is the author's Nth try. That worked well until someone obsoleted someone else's movie; after that it's been a mess.
In retrospect, I think JXQ's suggestion of publication date would have been an appropriate selection.
However, I'm opposed to changing the naming "starting from now" unless all previous movies are also changed at the same time; for consistency. (That would require regenerating the torrents, and consequently, having all the AVIs present; I could do the programming.)
The reason why I'm restricting the filenames to lowercase letters and avoiding special characters is that I wish to avoid certain technical issues:
― Having upper- and lowercase letters in the filenames causes another maintenance burden to attend to when publishing new movies; if one spells "Supermariobros", other spells "SuperMarioBros", problems will occur: URLs and unix filesystems are case sensitive, and having mixed case hinders greatly the finding of the right file.
― Having spaces in the filename makes URLs cumbersome, and makes it difficult to use the files or URLs in scripts that use spaces as parameter separators (such as .BAT files in Windows). The problem is even further intensified with special characters such as %, ', (, &, ! and so on.
I do not intend to remove that restriction.
So the following must stay:
― Game name in the beginning
― Filename restricted to the following characters: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz,-.0123456789 (space not included)
― Lowercase
― Author name appearing somewhere
― Indication that it is a TAS (subtle is good)
Anything else can be changed.
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
I also agree not using any special characters or spaces in the file names. As Bisqwit said, it's easier to use the files without them. But couldn't _ be used in the file names? (in fact it might already be in some)
Here are my suggestions:
darkwingduck-tas-v4-ans,randil
darkwingduck_tas_2007-08-24_ans,randil
Although it would be nice to have the category in those, which needs it. For example:
rockmanandforte-100cd-tas-v2-parrto14green.
For those that don't have any special category, I'd leave it out. Like this:
rockmanandforte-tas-v1-gigafrost
>all previous movies are also changed at the same time; for consistency.
This was my hope also.
I think we are converging at some kind of best suggestion here:
1. abbreviated gamename
2. 'tas'
3. goals, if there is more than one branch
4. date in YYYYMMDD (not version, as has been pointed out)
5. abbreviated player(s), separated by commas ",". order of players not important.
These 5 are separated by dashes, "-".
No spaces. Only lowercase and numbers. Underscore permitted.
We need a list/database for the publishers so that there is only one agreed upon abbreviation for every previously published game and player. Branch is easy when obsoleting.
Examples from this topic (dates are made up):
* rockmanandforte-tas-100cd-20061225-parrot14green
* rockmanandforte-tas-20021030-gigafrost
* darkwingduck-tas-20070824-ans,randil
* superdemoworld_tlc-tas-20060630-skamasta,fabian,jimsfriend,jxq
* sonic3knuckles-sonic_noemeralds-20070516-nitsuja
* sonic3knuckles-knuckles_allemeralds-20050324-upthorn
Does all this sound sane, or is there anything I missed?
Well, I'm more or less fine with that naming scheme, but I'd still prefer having movie# instead of date, just to be able to locate the appropriate publication page far more conveniently. Why do I not think date is that important in this case? Because if I need an exact date, I can check the movie page (the only action being typing in the movie#), and I can still sort by date in a window manager, because the files have this attribute already "built-in". Not having a movie#, however, would make me do excess actions like searching or browsing by game name before locating the actual movie page.
Just my two cents.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Having learned the current naming system, I really have no problems with it anymore (desensitized most likely). But moving to a new system might be nice. Though I don't much care either way I guess.
I agree with Bisqwit about lower case letters + special characters and also that it would need to basically be done all at once with all previous filenames. That sounds like a cumbersome task though. If Bisqwit wants to do that, I'd be glad to assist in any way I can.
moozooh> (stuff)
You make a good point. A minor irritant is that movie number does not sort accurately unless we pad it with zeroes. The date probably makes more sense to the average person who could come across the file. Either way is fine probably. What does everyone think?
adelikat> That sounds like a cumbersome task though.
The renaming (and future naming? we can hope.) can be automated because the server already knows 1, 2, 4 and 5. The branch might not always be correct for older movies, since it was introduced later.
I would prefer date of publication to version number, because version numbers rely on the obsoletion chain
This is actually the reason I prefer version number - a quick glance at the filename and you learn something about the movie. Knowing the date it was submitted, or published, doesn't tell you anything except the order in which to sort the files. Also, date requires 7 characters more than version, in what is already shaping up to be quite a long filename.
Truncated wrote:
Examples from this topic (dates are made up):
* rockmanandforte-tas-100cd-20061225-parrot14green
* rockmanandforte-tas-20021030-gigafrost
If the game has multiple selectable characters, and the TAS does not switch characters midway somehow, the character selections hould be included with the categories. so those would become
* rockmanandforte-tas-rockman_100cd-20061225-parrot14green
* rockmanandforte-tas-forte-20021030-gigafrost
moozooh wrote:
I'd prefer having movie# instead of date, just to be able to locate the appropriate publication page far more conveniently.
This is a better arguement than the arguement in favor of date, but unless tasvideos radically and badly redesigns the site layout, it's not too difficult to find the publication page if you know the system, game name, author, and length of input -- which are all easily available to someone who has the input file. And, except for the utility of being able to go directly to the publication page, the movie# ends up just being another number to sort-by, which has a 100% correspondence to sorting by file modification date and, as you pointed out, the date is already included in file metadata, so that someone can already sort by that if they so choose.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
I'm slightly opposed to encoding the movie ID to the filename.
It is not proper design to expose internal IDs to public audience, let alone make them a core component of the use experience.
The current movie URLs use IDs because it makes them succinct and I haven't figured any other way to compose the movie URLs automatically, reliably and in a user-recallable way.
I'd rather limit the scope of the IDs than to broaden it further.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
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This seems to have grown bigger then it needed to be.
I would be happy so long as the game was named first... the rest is nice, but that was the main point I would care about most. If the other ideas are troublesome, I would happily settle for game name first, followed by whatever.
I hate the nesvideos movie file naming scheme. I also hate the fact nothing will ever be done about this because certain people are lazy.
So, after spending several hours crashing the server with broken MySQL queriesreaquainting my desk with my headswearing working on something, I now have a "sane version" of the movie files.
Of course, idiots some movies don't have the right ROM name, so they break. Nothing I will do about this; contact your Site Maintainer to fix it.
In other news, this is an archive I made. Therefore, do not bitch and moan if it does not follow your guidelines because it is unofficial and it uses scary concepts like spaces, capital letters, and symbols (thanks, xipo)
It's also in one directory. Anybody who has a graphical file manager and a "Sort by filetype" can fix this themselves in about 10 seconds, so I did the Tasvideos thing and delegated that work to you, the downloader. Enjoy!
7z archive, 5MB
Some (early) movies aren't included because people couldn't be bothered to add a ROM name.
Yes, we have seen that side of your personality quite a lot... ;)
By the way, it would be nice if the movie/avi file name somehow unambiguously made it clear which other movie/avi (if any) it obsoletes. Just putting the category/goals in the name is not always enough because there are cases where a movie obsoletes another with different categories/goals. It would be nice if it would be possible to see from the file name which movie is the latest, yet still keeping, unambiguously, the possibility of having different categories for each game.
Of course this is made even more difficult by the fact that in a few cases a movie might obsolete more than one older movie of the same game...
I don't know how this could be done, but I just wanted to throw the idea.
So what suggestions do we have here for point 4 in the list above?
a) movie id. Not liked by Bisqwit, and as such not likely to be implemented.
b) version id, branch specific. Tricky with obsoletion chains. Difficult to automate.
c) date.
Which I think leaves only date. So what needs to be done next to implement this?
Bisqwit, you are the site maintainer, it sort of has to start with you. Is there anything we can do to help with this?
I really must say having the date in would just be too strange. Too many numbers just to make them get sorted correctly. I'd rather you used just v+version# (v01) and regardless of if it's in a different category, the numbers would essentially just sort them by date. Then we could still add the category as extra information.
I'd prefer this a lot over including the very unintersting and more redundant information of the exact release date, which the files have, as moozooh pointed out, already built-in.
But those dates in the file names would hurt my eyes. :(
If I'm searching for a file, I won't look at the dates. At first I'd look at the game name, that's the easiest one to remember, lol. Then I'd know it's pretty old, but not the exact date. A made up version# would keep the file name shorter. It's then easier for me to locate the rest of the relevant information within the file name.
Then why use a "made up version #" ? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the movie number?
Simply removing the date and changing it to "M####" would be fairly easy.
Then why use a "made up version #" ? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the movie number?
Because Bisqwit said he doesn't want to.
Also, why use 5 characters, if it can also be done by 3? I don't care for the date, nor do I care for the movie id when I'm searching for a file.
Of course it wouldn't be good to include that made up version# into the database. But I'd include it into the file names to make searching for movie files as user friendly as possible.
Then why use a "made up version #" ? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the movie number?
Because Bisqwit said he doesn't want to.
Also, why use 5 characters, if it can also be done by 3? I don't care for the date, nor do I care for the movie id when I'm searching for a file.
Ignore Bisqwit. This isn't about what's being implmeneted, since we've already seen that isn't going to happen any time soon.
I want your view.
MovieID over version number provides more usefulness (direct link to movie, sorting) rather than an arbitrary number that has limited usefulness (sorting).
So, uh. Yeah, this. Will we ever see anything regarding it? #nesvideos's topic changed to it and I was reminded of when I was doing this.
Example movie file:
Super Mario All-Stars (U) [!] TAS (glitchfest) - 2007-12-24 M1035 - Genisto.smv
It provides useful information without being completely random. Not only that, but minimal arbitrary data (no stupid version numbers or other lame crap). I only ask because it's been almost a year and the filenames are still ridiculous.
Though they seem to have at least stabilized:
author-arbitrarygamename-type
...which is still a suboptimal solution for a site that is all about optimizing things. No way to tell what is the latest TAS (except by sorting by date, which can be inaccurate), searching requires knowing an arbitrary abbreviation or the author's name, no easy way to go back to movie page, etc.
Basically the file naming system sucks and I hate it and I want to see it improved.
Super Mario All-Stars (U) [!] TAS (glitchfest) - 2007-12-24 M1035 - Genisto.smv
I don't like spaces in filenames, but I suppose under Good* convention it's unavoidable, so you're suggesting a template like:
$rom ($type) - $date $mnum - $author.$ext
Bad thing about putting all this information in the filename is they're very mutable. I'd rather have this data put in the file metadata.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
7z archive, 5MB
Some (early) movies aren't included because people couldn't be bothered to add a ROM name.
