I’ve been quietly hacking away at my local videoDB installation and added some wonderful new features to the elegant template. All changes have now been committed to CVS and are available for testing.

Updated Elegant Template

All new and updated functionality has been simplified and streamlined from the programming perspective (which makes it easier to extend and enhance) and is integrated into the “elegant” template in a similar fashion. All new features are unobtrusive and will only be shown when data is actually available. No screen cluttering otherwise.

Purchase videos directly from videoDB

videoDB can now directly integrate external sites to provide links for purchasing new or used DVDs, BluRays etc:

Available data providers are amazon.com (now without the need for an additional developer key) as well as the excellent trade-a-game.de. Trade-a-game allows German users to purchase also used DVDs at fairly reasonable prices, something I’ve used quite intensively over the last weeks.

Note: both amazon.com and trade-a-game.de data providers contain code that allow me to receive benefits (via an affiliate/ partnership program) if anybody purchases items using this way. I hope this is seen as appropriate by the community as small exchange for the time and effort I’ve invested in developing videoDB!

Download files directly from videoDB

In the same way videoDB allows to search for merchandise on external sites, it is now also able to look for available downloads. Current capabilities are contributed by the mininova.org and isohunt.com torrent search websites, however integration could also be used for displaying local files and similar.

Note: of course we expect you to purchase your content, be it as physical media or online- this is meerly to be seen as a technology demonstration that can easily be adopted for other purposes.

New Data Providers

A number of data providers has been enhanced or the usage simplified

• YouTube: can now be used without the need for an additional developer key
• Amazon Associates Web Services: connects videoDB to the huge Amazon database and can now be used without the need for an additional developer key
• Google Image search: has been rewritten to use the Google Ajax API instead of screen scraping to provide better stability

Any feedback is welcome- looking forward to your thoughts and ideas.

Best,
Andreas

Especially the demo installation has been abused to place spam. In fact, about every 5 to 10 seconds, a new spam entry has been created in the database. I’ve taken measures to prevent this and hope the demo system is usable again. Please report any new problems here.

• Elegant template finally enabled with AJAX fancyness
• Database upgraded to utf8 – you can now have videos of various languages in one db
• Out-of-the-box thumbnail generation for better image quality and performance
• Out-of-the-box support for PDF export
• Various performance fixes
• Total rewrite of the multiuser code- better performance and easier extensible in the future

To grab your copy, please visit our SourceForge projcet site:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88349

http://sourceforge.net/community/cca08-nominate?group_id=88349

Thank to all you for your support!
Andi

Main changes are bugfix of user cookie error when public access was disabled and removal of Amazon ECS (amazonxml) engine. Amazon has discontinued this service. Potential replacement could be the new A2S- plugin is under development.

Demo no longer requires login but can now be accessed as anonymous user.

To see all the latest features, make sure you’re using the “elegant” template. Currently “elegant” is the only ajax-enabled tempalte providing all functionality.

This beta contains ajax enhancements (image zoom) and partial rewrite of the multiuser permissions systems- this was necessary as the old code contained various bugs and ambiguities. Rewrite also allowed drastic decrease in number of SQL queries which should improve performance in hosting environments.