Sharing Favoite Scenes - a tutorial

[josh]

One of the greatest things about Kaleidescape is the ability to have bookmarks on your favorite scenes from movies and quickly get to those scenes. It's great to quickly get to your favorite songs, action sequences, or funniest moments, and of course it's the first step to creating scripts that can put them all together into a seamless viewing sequence.

Once you create and name favorite scenes, it's easy to share them with other owners. And you can easily take scene files from other users and import them to your own collection.

The system has a nice interface for doing this... you can export some or all of your favorite scenes to a ".DAT" file, and you can import .DAT files from others.

IMPORTING FAVORITE SCENE FILES:

There are thousands of favorite scene markers you can download here on the Forum for free, the painstaking work of several of your fellow forum members. You can download ALL of the files you find here on the board, import each file to your server, and see if there are matches with the movies in your collection. If there are, you get the option to import one, several, or all the Favorite Scenes from that file.

• Download one or more of the Favorite Scene files (it will be a .DAT file) from the Downloads area of the forum.
• Go to your web console, "Movies" tab, and choose "Favorite Scenes" from the "Collection:" list at the top.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and choose "Import From File"
• In the dialog box, choose "Browse" and select the .DAT file you've downloaded.
• If the system finds a match between a movie in your collection and a movie that has some favorite scenes specified in that file, the next dialog box you get to pick which scenes to import... check the ones you want or pick "Select All" at the top.
• Select "OK" at the bottom of the window and the import will start.

EXPORTING FAVORITE SCENES:

Great, you're eager to share some of your own Favorite Scenes with others in the Kaleidescape community?

First, make sure you know how to make favorite scenes and name them before you share your file. (You rename your own favorite scenes using your web interface). It is best to share files with NAMED scenes that identify the sequence. Otherwise, those that import your scenes will just see the default names "Favorite Scene" or "Scene 1" for each marker, which isn't very helpful.

Once you have a set of named favorite scenes for some movies, you can export them to a file to share with others:​

• Go to your web console, "Movies" tab, and choose "Favorite Scenes" from the "Collection:" list at the top. You should see all the movies for which you've marked favorite scenes, and a check box next to each scene.
• Select the ones you want to export, or pick "Select All" at the top of the screen.
• Scroll to the bottom of your list and choose "Export to File"
• Save the file to your computer's disk with a name of your choosing.

It's a good idea to export all your favorite scenes every month or so and keep a copy on your computer as a backup. If you ever delete or lose your scenes, you can easily reimport them from a backup.

You can make separate files for each movie, or one giant file with all your bookmarks in it. The latter will actually be easier to share with others and less work for you.​

NOTES AND TIPS:

You will only be able to actually import favorite scene markers for movies you have on your system... and it needs to be the EXACT same edition as was used to make the scene.

Let's say a user posts a massive scene collection from his or her collection of 3,000 movies. When you go to import his scene file, the system compares the movies in that list with your collection, and presents you with a list of favorite scenes for which you own the movies! Very slick - you aren't bothered with a massive list of favorite scenes which don't apply to your collection of movies. If there's only one movie you have in common, it will just present the scenes from that movie.
​

This is also why you sometimes may download a collection of scenes from a particular movie, and when you import it nothing happens. It likely means you don't have that movie, or don't have that exact same edition of the movie.

This means that as your collection of movies expands, you may wish to try re-importing a power-user's favorite scene file again. That same file may now have additional matches with your collection and you'll suddenly have new scenes to use.

Jeff (JCHS) has posted a massive scenes file with markers from his 6,000 movie collection. Nice file to keep around and try a re-import a few times a year as your own collection grows - he probably has markers in there for new movies that you might have added.

You also don't need to worry about importing scene markers for a movie for which you've already marked your own scenes. Imported scene markers add to your own scene markers for that movie, unless they have the exact same name as a marker you've made. In that case, the importer will warn you during the import process of a scene with the exact same name and ask if you want to overwrite yours with the imported one.
​

So share your scene files as one big file with other users... and update it here as you add more. Grab other users' files and import them, and retry it again as your collection grows.

--josh

 

[JCHS]

I just added some more today...some great scenes...check them out in the other thread...
Jeff

 

[josh]

All -

Don't forget to download and re-import the various scene files you find here on the forums regularly. As your movie collection grows, re-importing the same file can result in new matches between your collection and the collection of the person that made the scene file.

Your system doesn't store imported scene marks for movies you don't own, so you must try re-importing scene collections for new movies you add.

As I buy new movies and add them, I reimport Jeff's scene collection and often get new matches.

--josh

 

[capedwonder]

Favorite scenes question from a new owner...

Hello,

Being a new owner, I decided to spend a good part of my last evening playing with the web utility, creating favorite scenes, importing my own artwork, etc.

My questions is this: I wish to create more than one favorite scene from a single movie. Is that possible? I was doing some scripting of my favorite Superman movie scenes, but it seems that I can only create one favorite scene per movie. Any tutorial would be very much appreicated. Thanks.

And thanks for the great detailed info above!

Jim Bowers
www.capedwonder.com

 

[regwood]

Hey Jim,
I'll take a wild guess that maybe you're not renaming the "Favorite Scene" once you can see it on the web interface. If you don't, the system will overwrite the previuosly saved scene.

I find this function useful when I'm not happy with an edit. I simply go back and record again. Only after a successful viewing will I name it.

Good luck.

 

[capedwonder]

Thanks!

I'll look into this issue further when I get home tonight. Thanks for the tip Reg!

Jim

 

[capedwonder]

Great photography Reg!

Holy Guacamole Reg! Great photo galleries! Your work is outstanding! What gear do you prefer? I, too, am a photographer. I'm a Nikon and Canon user. Here's a photo that my wife took of me at Lake Tahoe while I was shooting a country music band CD cover.

www.capedwonder.com/Jim_LakeTahoe.jpg

Enjoy your day.

Jim
www.capedwonder.com

 

[josh]

YES - as you'll see elsewhere in this directory, you can make LOTS of favorite scenes for a movie. Here's what's happening that's causing yours to keep overwriting eachother... (I think this is discussed over in the Feature Request area)


Each time you make a favorite scene, you DON'T need to go to your web interface, but you DO need to use your remote to put a temporary name on the scene.

Here's the sequence to do it properly:

1. Get to the point in the movie where you want the start of the scene marker.
2. Press "Favorite Scene Start" (hopefully your installer coded this onto your remote. If not, you can find it by pressing "Info" and using the onscreen popup by paging over to the right a few screens, but that will be tedious)
3. Get to end of the scene
4. Press "Favorite Scene End"
5. Now you have to name it. Press "Details" to pop up the movie details page. In the menu along the left that has the "Play Movie", "Play Disc", "Play Trailer", "Return" commands, you want to go down to "Name Favorite Scene"... then you'll see a choice called "Favorite Scene" (that's the scene you just made). Select that scene and hit your Enter button on your remote. Now you can enter a name (if you have a keyboard in your AV system or an onscreen keyboard in your Crestron setup) OR if you're like most people without an AV keyboard you can just hit enter again and it gives it a temporary name "Scene 1" (with incrementing numbers each time you do this.) You'll fix the name later.
6. Now repeat - go back to step #1 above for the rest of the scenes.
7. When you're ALL done, you go to your web interface to give the scenes proper names...
   1. go to web console
   2. choose "Movies" tab
   3. Select "Favorite Scenes" from the pulldown menu
   4. Find your scenes ("Scene 1", "Scene 2", etc.), click them, and you can rename them.

If you don't do Step #5 above, then you'll only be able to have one favorite scene per movie, each new one will overwrite the last one since it is simply called "Favorite Scene". We've been asking Kaleidescape to make Step #5 unnecessary by automatically adding the scene numbers each time you make a favorite scene. Stay tuned...

Some of us like to have a laptop open WHILE making the scenes so we can enter a name right after making a scene while it's fresh in your mind... your call.

THEN when you're all done and have a good collection of named scenes, you can share your file following the instructions here in this thread.

--josh

 

[capedwonder]

Thanks Josh!

Excellent Josh! I appreciate your help! I'll try your suggestions later this week. Take care!

Jim
www.capedwonder.com

 

[regwood]

Holy Guacamole Reg! Great photo galleries! Your work is outstanding! What gear do you prefer? I, too, am a photographer. I'm a Nikon and Canon user. Here's a photo that my wife took of me at Lake Tahoe while I was shooting a country music band CD cover.

www.capedwonder.com/Jim_LakeTahoe.jpg

Enjoy your day.

Jim
www.capedwonder.com

Thanks Jim,
I'm kinda all over the place with gear. I have recently started to lean more towards Canon because of my investment in their long lenses. Depending on where I'm going and who I'm going with, I could shoot 4x5, Medium and 35mm in either film or digital. I tend to remember why I like each format after I've had it out again in the field. It's only been in the last 12 months that I've found myself back in the Nikon camp with a couple D2x's (I love that camera).

Best,

 

[JerryL]

I find it useful to use a laptop when I am doing my scene markings. I use the java remote interface for the particular player- you can bring this up by going to the user page. Then I open up a second web window with the user page again and I go to movies and the favorite scenes index. I use the web interface because it has the favorite scene begin and end buttons right there. When I have the scene marked, I go to the window with the favorite scene list and I get the web browser to update the window. The favorite scene will now be there under the movie as "Favorite Scene" and now I rename it. This way I can do it "on the fly".

Btw- nice pic. I am not in either yours or Reg's league, but I am locked in to Nikon as I have a bunch of their lenses.

 

[EBITDA]

I saved a few .dat script files to my desktop but when I try to import through the web utility I get, "This file does not seem to be a Script that was exported from a Kaleidescape System". Guessing that since I'm new to the system this probably has an obvious solution (hoping, anyway).

Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

[josh]

Hmmm... I don't think you're the first to have that problem but thought it had been fixed with an update from Kaleidescape. Can you try to re-export the scenes into a fresh file and try again? Is it possible you hadn't checked (little check boxes) any seens during the export process?

 

[EBITDA]

Thanks Josh. They were actually .dat files I downloaded from the forum, not ones I created myself. I saved them to my desktop and tried to import them through the web utility. That's when it gave me the error message.

 

[josh]

ah, sorry. misunderstood. You should send them to "support@kaleidescape.com" and ask them why they're not importing.

I assume you're certain you have at least one of the movies that are contained in the scene files?

 

[EBITDA]

I'll mention it to my dealer and see what they think. While I'm not 100% sure I have at least one of the movies in the script file I downloaded, I have over 300 on my system, all of which are pretty mainstream. So I think its a pretty safe bet. I will post when I resolve the problem. Thanks for the replies.

 

[regwood]

I'll mention it to my dealer and see what they think. While I'm not 100% sure I have at least one of the movies in the script file I downloaded, I have over 300 on my system, all of which are pretty mainstream. So I think its a pretty safe bet. I will post when I resolve the problem. Thanks for the replies.

EBITDA,
I seem to remember having this problem when importing *.dat files on my Mac. Some of the header information was being truncated. K support fixed the problem in one of their updates. I would give them a call. Good luck

 

[Mars]

Ditto what Regwood said - I had problems when I would try to download on my Mac - but I thought that is had been fixed as well. I know that as of a couple months ago, that I could indeed download on my Mac now.

 

[EBITDA]

As I suspected, my issue with importing the favorite scene files was "user related" rather than K-scape related. I was confusing scene files with scripts and attempting to import the .dat scene files through the Scripts tab in the web utility rather than through the Favorite Scenes section of the Movies tab. Sad part is that I actually READ Josh's tutorial on exporting and importing favorite scenes. Obviously I didn't read it closely enough. After realizing the error of my ways, I was able to successfully import some scene files. I even pulled a bunch of 2.35 scenes together into a script! Look out!

 

[Houston]

I'm reading all this for the first time today, 2/26/2022...The last post was from 2009. Before I go down a rabbit hole with old information, can anyone tell me if all this still applies (to make/import scenes/scripts). Has it changed in the last 13 years? I've had my strato for about 2 years and now I'm finally wanting to put together a "demo" for my home theater.