TV

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-28T23:04:18.0000Z

Cool; we're always looking for ways to improve the search/autocomplete features, so feedback is highly appreciated. Single-word searches often return many more results than can be displayed in the 10-item list, that "Midnight" failed to come up is not surprising. In the next release, you will be able to type in "midnight doctor who" and have a very good chance that the Doctor Who episode named "Midnight" will show up.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-26T16:40:24.0012Z

Hi there,

Don't spend too much time worrying about this, I've gotten a little more experience now with how things work here - and a bit more confidence on how things are 'expected' to work. The point about the non-exact matcher is well-taken, now I've seen the autocomplete more often suggest topics which are "useful" rather than exact, I have a few ideas how to use it to help me search as well. The main thing I've been doing lately is, if I definitely need a precise node that's unlikely to be high up the list, I open up another window and search for its guid.

As it happens, I was experimenting with 'previous/next episode' as a reciprocal relationship. (This has been added to TV episode now, but to experiment with it I added a "TV episode additional data" type in my default domain). So:

1) I was trying to fill a 'previous' property on a 'TV episode additional data' type.

2) I was looking for the Doctor Who episode 'Midnight' and used just 'Midnight' as the search string.

3) The right node doesn't show in the suggestions - but I understand why, now. Until this relationship was filled, the target node didn't have the 'additional' type, just the existing TV episode. So the type information wasn't helpful in the search.

My expectation that an "exact name" would take priority threw me a curve ball - once I got past that, I have no expectation now that somehow the machine will automagically work it out for me *every* time... 99.9% of the time is good enough for me - the corner cases are worth the extra work.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-23T00:27:07.0012Z

Hi Chris N,

You mentioned having problems with autocomplete, where the item you wanted wasn't on the list. Do you still remember what exactly you entered? I'd be interested to know: 1) the property you used autocomplete on, 2) the string you entered, 3) expected topic. Among other things I test the relevance engine that produces these results, so issues are of interest to me.

Also, autocomplete is not an "exact name matcher". You can enter additional information unique to your topic to help boost it to the top. For TV episodes, for example, entering the TV show's name in addition to the episode name helps, especially if the episode name is "The Rescue" or something that'd find many matches.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-23T00:05:52.0000Z

Yay, thanks Jeff!

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-22T18:29:28.0000Z

The properties are there now. Have at them!

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T22:46:27.0012Z

I started filling in cast lists from the 2008 end and working backwards, so perhaps we'll meet somewhere in about 1975 :) So far I've left character as an empty field in places where the character is unnamed - that at least means the information can satisfy actor queries. But you're right, adding scenery characters does allow extra facts to be added and other connections to be made that are not otherwise possible.

I've already run (several times) into an issue with Freebase with "common" topic names - you can't link to the right one - which makes me want to avoid them if I can, but if the right bit of juicy data comes up, I'll be sure to do so :)

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-19T21:51:12.0012Z

A lot of things are sequential, but I think an abstract type ("sequential thing"?) for all of them would be more trouble than it's worth. The pattern is just a variation of the parent/child pattern, which appears all over the place in Freebase, without an abstract type collecting them all. That said, I can't think of any reason that TV episode shouldn't have previous/next properties. If no one objects, I'll add them later this week.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T18:38:20.0012Z

First, thanks for doing this. I’ve recently begun attempting to watch all the Doctor Who episodes from the beginning, which is entertaining.

Secondly, please note that no value in Freebase is actually required. You don’t have to give the character.

That said, I don’t really see a problem with having a character for “Man in bar” as long as “Man in bar” from twentieth-season Doctor Who is not the same as “Man in bar” from Beverly Hills Cop, who is not the same as “Man in bar” from Babylon 5: The Gathering. Even those anonymous characters have gender and organizational affiliations, and for science fiction, species. I had a lot of fun fully populating the cast for the B5 pilot, though I haven’t gotten back to doing it for all the episodes.

TV: TV episode performance limitation

2008-08-19T17:15:04.0017Z

I ran into something of an annoyance when I started my freebase time filling out some Doctor Who cast lists. The "TV episode performance" requires a "TV Character". That's a bit much. There's always going to be credits entries like "Man In bar" or "Soldier #2". These aren't items that will need an entire "TV Character/Fictional Character/etc..." ontology - those entries require just a text string.

It seems to me there are two kinds of cast list entry - an actor performing a particular recurring character (TV Character Performance?) and performing an unnamed character (TV Extra Performance?). However the collection to formulate the cast list must order those in credits order - not as two separate lists, and must support reciprocal entries in either case (for instance, to support queries like "Which episodes of show X has actor Y appeared in?" (irrelevant whether the as a character or an extra).

Seems like this is an approach to handle the issue with "regular" appearances as well. There's one TV Character Performance node that says actor X has, at some time, portrayed character Y. All episodes where that's true, refer to that node. The reciprocal property on the TV Character Performance will enumerate all the episodes where that actor appears as that character.

TV: Previous and Next Episodes

2008-08-19T16:54:22.0012Z

To get the hang of things here I messed around with a type extending "TV Episode" and added "preceded by" reciprocating as "followed by". Agreed, it helps navigate, and it's also common on the wikipedia source articles as well.

However my guess is there should be a much grander type involved here for anything that can be ordered in a sequence, not just TV shows. Items may probably appear in more than one sequence as well (for example, story chronology isn't the same as release chronology - Star Wars movies are the cliche example).

TV: Watch Online

2008-08-11T16:26:26.0012Z

I think Web links are appropriate for now. My paranoid worry is that leaving a blank spot for online viewing to fill in would be perceived by some parties as inviting users to fill in unauthorized distribution channels, and we really don’t need that legal hassle.

TV Program: Watch Online

2008-08-11T16:26:26.0012Z

TV: Watch Online

2008-08-09T22:22:48.0018Z

I just added web links to the Monk topic to point to locations on the web (USA Network and Hulu) where the show can be watched online. Should this be a new property of TV Program or just keep adding them as web links?

TV Program: Watch Online

2008-08-09T22:22:48.0018Z

TV Episode: Dubbers

2008-07-07T22:27:21.0013Z

Use the "special performance type" column in the "Performances" property on TV Episode. You should be able to select "Voice" for these types of performances.

TV Episode: Dubbers

2008-07-06T04:31:18.0013Z

How should I model a specific person who voices a specific other person in a specific TV episode? e.g. Kent Frick voicing Chairman Kaga in the Iron Chef blue crab battle?

TV: TV filming location

2008-07-02T18:39:23.0012Z

I think we should have a type, "TV filming location", for things like "Survivor: Vanuatu" which was filmed in Vanuatu. Thoughts?

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T19:16:52.0012Z

tough one... my inclination would be to lead with the regular appearances, however, so it looks good to me.

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T17:09:03.0012Z

Good idea. Take a look now. It looks to me like it's only defaulting to the first property, which is now "Programs in which character appeared as a regular" (or something like that). Is this the best property, or would "Episodes appeared in" be better? I mention this because only some characters will have data for the "Programs" property, while all characters could have data for Episodes.

TV: Suggested changes to TV character

2008-06-19T16:16:31.0012Z

What would you guys say to moving actor and series up ahead of year of 1st and final appearance? The filter page defaults to the first 3 properties and these make for much more interesting filter criteria.

TV Program: TV Program: add 'tagline'?

2008-05-17T01:14:21.0026Z

Seems a lot of tv programs from the past decade or so have taglines (similar to Film's longstanding taglines).

Examples I found from IMDb trolling:

Nip/Tuck:

The deeply superficial series returns.

Beauty is a curse on the world.

Make me beautiful.

Truth is only skin deep

A disturbingly perfect new drama.

Beauty isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Tell me what you don't like about yourself...?

Change what you can. Hide what you can't.

Six Feet Under:

Every Day Above Ground Is A Good One.

Life is wasted on the living.

How's Death?

Your whole life is leading up to this...

Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.

TV Actor: Voice Acting?

2008-04-16T20:43:39.0000Z

Voice actors are tv actors - in their tv performances, you can specify that they are the voice for a character.

There is a distinction between tv and film actor, but they are similar in the sense that for both the tv and film performance, you can specify a special performance type of voice.

TV Actor: Voice Acting?

2008-04-16T18:53:26.0012Z

Does TV Actor include voice acting for animated series? Or should there be a separate type for that? Voice Actor appears to be a separate profession from TV Actor. Also, should there be a distinction between voice acting for TV vs film?

TV Program: Regular performances, but which episodes?

2008-04-14T19:56:47.0007Z

The next question is (having capitulated to adding seasons to the regular acting performance), do we still need the "to" and "from" dates? Arguably, no, since the seasons should tell us that. But sometimes we only have that data (e.g., from wikipedia infobox loades).

TV Program: Regular performances, but which episodes?

2008-04-14T18:51:10.0007Z

Right, but if you use the Performance for a regular actor, the data gets quite dense very quickly. It seemed like Performances was for additional actors beyond the regulars. There’s also an important distinction; sometimes a frequent guest star becomes a regular character, and sometimes a regular character returns for a guest appearance.

In fact, here’s a crazy idea… What if the Regular Performance CVT had additional disambiguators for seasons and episodes?

TV Program: Regular performances, but which episodes?

2008-04-14T18:22:07.0007Z

Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, crism? TV episode has properties "performances" and "personal appearances" which are for all people who appear on the episode, regular, guest, or otherwise.

TV Season: Season credits?

2008-04-14T18:16:22.0007Z

Oddly enough, we used to do this, but people complained about the complexity! It would be easy enough to put back in though, if people want it.

TV Regular Performance: Regular performances, but which episodes?

2008-04-12T08:34:47.0012Z

I think it makes sense to have the regular performances property. However, there is no way to indicate in which episodes a regularly-credited actor appeared, and it is silly to mark them as a guest actor.

What if the regular appearance (and I have copied this comment from TV series) had an additional disambiguator pointing to the episodes in which the actor actually appeared?

TV Program: Regular performances, but which episodes?

2008-04-12T08:33:23.0012Z

What if the regular appearance (and I think I will copy this comment there) had an additional disambiguator pointing to the episodes in which the actor actually appeared?

TV Season: Season credits?

2008-04-12T07:48:59.0012Z

Currently, an actor can be a series regular or an episode actor, but there is no way to model season credits. Long-running shows, and even some shorter-lived ones, change their main cast each season, and it is interesting to model.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2008-04-07T20:41:55.0007Z

Thanks -- that's a very interesting document. I like that they've modeled it as deeply as "episode versions". I doubt Freebase is likely to go that deep any time soon, but it's a useful concept in a lot of ways.

Superficially, it looks like the brand/series/episode model is very similar to our series/season/episode model, which is encouraging, and means that it should be fairly simple to create mappings between Freebase and applications using the Programmes Ontology.

TV: TV Series "seasons" and other naming

2008-04-03T21:59:15.0000Z

Only a year late... here's the BBC Programmes Ontology, built by Yves Raimond based on the BBC's internal data model:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/programmes/2008-02-28.shtml

You may also be interested in our programmes database, containing all programmes broadcast from about August 2007 onwards: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/

The idea is to release a machine-readable version of the /programmes site, marked up with the Programmes Ontology, some time soon.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2008-03-10T17:49:25.0007Z

Hi psych0fred,

This was also brought up in another discussion here. Hopefully with property borrowing, we can solve the problem you and duck1123 are describing.

TV episode performance: Bring back the Series display

2008-03-10T17:46:27.0007Z

I am in agreement with you - it is nice to know the episode/program information about a character that a tv actor played. However, entering the series information the type /tv/tv_guest_role would be a denormalizaton and would not link the series with the tv episode. It would require double data entry to populate the type /tv/tv_series_episode with the same information. A possible solution might be "property borrowing" - something that robert mentions in this discussion. This is something that we're trying to work on and hopefully we'll have support for it shortly.

TV episode performance: Bring back the Series display

2008-03-09T05:09:55.0012Z

With the new design of the site, it would be very helpful to have the series that the episode is associated with displayed on the actor's page.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2008-03-07T08:40:42.0000Z

I have a simple problem I can't figure out how to resolve. If an actor has a guest appearance on a TV show I can see it show up under the TV Actor schema but it doesn't correspond to the tv program/show that is also part of the schema. The example I am looking at is actor Tom Noonan who had a guest role in an episode of The X-Files called Paper Hearts. The episode title Paper Hearts shows up but it doesn't list what show it was from (unless you click on Paper Hearts). The way it's displayed in the scheme it appears that the TV show he starred in is also the TV show that he made a guest appearance on. Is it set up right? I figured you could see all of an actors appearances as part of their data set.

TV: Animated show?

2007-12-31T18:00:12.0007Z

The "other crew" property on "TV episode" is intended to be used for this sort of thing (i.e., any creative or production role that isn't addressed by any of the other properties).

TV: Animated show?

2007-12-29T20:35:52.0005Z

I don't know if this belongs in its own domain, belongs in Media Common, or if Animated shows are just part of TV, but it would be nice to be able to enter other roles, like "Animated by" to TV shows.. my favorite is the fact that No Doubt's original drummer, Eric Stefani, went on to be a Simpsons animator.... but there's no way to represent this in freebase right now. There are other examples of famous animators like Mel Blanc that would be nice to connect to their TV work. There are over 150 people designated as "Animators" according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animators

TV Season: Season Number

2007-12-13T00:20:43.0007Z

I added the property. Feel free to plug away at it!

TV Season: Season Number

2007-12-12T23:28:00.0000Z

That's not a bad idea. I think we had been thinking that this information could be caluculated based on the "from" and "to" dates on the season, but it's a lot easier to figure out the season numbers than it is the airdates of the first and last episodes.

TV Season: Season Number

2007-12-12T07:13:06.0012Z

TV Season should have a property expecting an integer describing what season this is for the show.

You can usually gather this from the title, (ex. "Fonzie's Shark-Jumping Variety Hour - Season Three") but this would give a way to find that information progmatically, as well as enabling the functionality that faye was looking for.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-25T22:10:36.0007Z

And I asked the question that should be answered every time a type is added -- are there properties unique to the type that a group of people would want to use? The answer seemed very clearly yes. This is one of the many reasons that the scope of domains is actually so small. Some of them may have dozens of types or even more.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-24T18:59:12.0007Z

I don't really know that it will lead us anywhere we weren't already going -- this is an ability implicit in Freebase's design, and is one we already make use of in a number of schemas. I would actually encourage people to copy this model, because it enables us to model general types with properties that will be broadly applicable, while at the same time allowing users with particular interests to model and capture data that is very specific to a group of related topics.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-24T05:06:32.0007Z

I love the Colbert report as much as the next guy - does it really deserve its own type? Does this mean we might have types for all our beloved shows? Can we add 'Twin Peaks Episode' with a number of pie sightings and references to 'hot, black coffee'? 'Lynch films Films exploring similar themes'? Don't get me wrong - this type is a lot of fun, just wondering what it might lead to.

TV: Schema renaming, additional properties

2007-07-23T01:03:46.0011Z

I made some changes to the TV episode schema. It should not break any code, but I have deprecated some properties.

TV: The Colbert Report

2007-07-23T01:02:15.0011Z

I just uploaded all episodes of the Colbert Report as of July 19, 2007. I also created a special co-type for Colbert Report episodes that stores "The Word" and the introductory quip for each show.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-07T18:01:49.0006Z

Cool - that would solve the problem.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-07T02:44:22.0006Z

We need property borrowing! That is, somebody will sensibly create a property on a type without knowing it should be shared by another type (like your IMDB TV/Film example). It is wrong to have on both, clearly, but it's also silly to put it on person, and really confusing and far too abstract put it on a new type called "actor".

Worse, this kind of refactoring would break the API once a schema is mature and being accessed by external applications.

With property borrowing (a currently unimplemented feature), If the TV actor type simply "borrowed" IMDB property in Film actor, then we would be able to keep the data model sane without having to read the future.

Interestingly, the Film IMDB property would be controlled by the film domain, so the TV domain would have no control over the name or other features of that property -- it would simply have to use it as-is and accept when the Film domain admins change the property.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T23:59:12.0006Z

This is a difficult question to answer in data modeling.

A while ago I asked a similar question regarding characters in different media that are represented as different types in Freebase: Book Character, TV Character, Theatre Character, Opera Character, Comic Strip Character, etc. Robert's reply to my post, although does not offer a solution to the emergence of a myriad of similar types across different media, does offer some explanation for why data is modeled this way in Freebase, and the advantages of that.

In the interest of sharing information, you can read my original post and Robert's reply here:
http://www.freebase.com/discuss/view?id=%2Ffictional_universe#%239202a8c04000641f8000000004ff9c64

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T22:57:35.0006Z

Re other media-specific entries - we already have computer game voice actor, and I suspect that will become Computer game actor to support video appearances as well. I could see Radio Actor as a possibility too.