I'm sure this has come up before but I can't find any relevant topics...
The IMDB cast list could be improved.
From the XML files I've found, I can see why the list of actors is what it is today, which is some unordered pairing of actors and their roles.
However, there must be another request that can be made to the server that provides a better quality list of the stars. The IMDB website typically has the stars listed in the order of the end credits. I have to think that there is almost certainly a different XML request that can be made to IMDB to get the same list of actors that the web site uses.
As a developer who has worked with XML in the past, I am happy to help research this further. Please let me know who at Plex to contact about my offer to help and/or where to find documentation about the IMDB XML schema.
If you're referring to the default/official movie agent, IMDB is not used at all. Depending on your agent ordering, you may be receiving cast member info and ordering from Freebase, which unfortunately does not provide ordering information with this data. At this point I'd recommend enabling The Movie Database as a metadata source and ordering it above the others to improve the quality of cast member ordering.
Depending on your agent ordering, you may be receiving cast member info and ordering from Freebase, which unfortunately does not provide ordering information with this data. At this point I'd recommend enabling The Movie Database as a metadata source and ordering it above the others to improve the quality of cast member ordering.
Re-ordering the agents doesn't always work that well. It's not that the source has bad data, it's sometimes the API or agent isn't "ordering it properly". I do prefer The Movie Database agent as well, but I noticed that their API didn't always return the cast listing in the same order as it was displayed on themoviedb.org. I found out that by modifying a single line of code, I got the expected results. Please see my post here:
I basically made the agent sort the cast based on an "order" number that is provided in the cast listing when the agent does it's query. Order #0 is top billed, order #1 is second billed, etc. At least that's how I interpreted it and I am happy with the results.
Re-ordering the agents doesn't always work that well. It's not that the source has bad data, it's sometimes the API or agent isn't "ordering it properly". I do prefer The Movie Database agent as well, but I noticed that their API didn't always return the cast listing in the same order as it was displayed on themoviedb.org. I found out that by modifying a single line of code, I got the expected results. Please see my post here:
I basically made the agent sort the cast based on an "order" number that is provided in the cast listing when the agent does it's query. Order #0 is top billed, order #1 is second billed, etc. At least that's how I interpreted it and I am happy with the results.
-abjr
Actually reordering is EXATLY what is needed! TMDB allows for reordering by moving of cast members without deleting the entire or partial cast, but the values returned are not resorted within the scraping. N.B. for the movie to which you linked:
1. "cast_id" value is the initial order as entered into TMDB.
2. "order" value is the order in which the cast members should be displayed. If a cast member is reordered / moved, this value changes.
Note that TMDB takes 24 hours to cycle changes for scraping, yet the website changes are current.
If the cast member values returned from TMDB were always sorted via the "order" values, the cast would be displayed properly. I have thought of making the change myself to the code in: The-Movie-Database.bundle -> Contents -> Code -> __init__.py, but I haven't had the time to do so.
I have thought of making the change myself to the code in: The-Movie-Database.bundle -> Contents -> Code -> __init__.py, but I haven't had the time to do so.
I made this change and pushed the update a few days ago.
