As the iPad is about to be released within a month, we are working very hard on 2 iPad apps which we plan to release just before the iPad launch.

One of them is Movies - our flagship app which is already available on the iPhone. As the iPad offers a whoppy 1024 by 768 pixels screen, this allows us to add lots of detail into the already gorgeous screens of the Movies app. Below you'll some screenshots of the early development stage of "Movies for iPad".

Movies for iPad - Landscape

Movies for iPad - Movie details

If you want to suggest a feature, or comment on the interface: speak freely!

As of today, Movies supports moviemeter.nl as a data source.

Movies is designed to fetch movie details from a datasource which can be chosen by you at runtime. In Movies, just go to the [Settings] tab, and tap on [Data Source]. A list of data sources will be shown, and depending on the one you choose, different movie information is returned (if you live in the Netherlands, you might prefer moviemeter.nl, as they return a dutch plot for a movie).

From time to time, we add new data sources (or update existing ones in case additional fields are made public), and today we added moviemeter.nl as a data source for dutch users.

If you want your site to be added as a data source, feel free to contact us (and provide us with a nice API to fetch the movie details).

This page describes the data format used in Movies to export and import your movie collection. You can use this page as a guide to write a converter from your favorite desktop movie application to Movies.

The data format for Movies as a standard, UTF-8 encoded XML file. It contains 1 top-level element, <XMM_Movie_Database>. Then, for each movie, a <Movie> XML element is added, whereby all movie fields reside in their own XML element. The elements supported are:

A sample XML file, with 1 movie in it, might look like this:

export.xml

In order to upload this to Movies (through FTP), you should ZIP the XML file as well as all cover art. Make sure the ZIP file does NOT contain any folder structure (i.e. all files should reside in the ROOT of the ZIP file).

After working for quite some time on the new Movies release, w're pleased Apple has pushed the approval process to its limits and approved Movies in less then 8 hours after initial submission - thank you Apple!

Movies 2 contains a lot of cool new features:

• Fullscreen CoverFlow (improved performance, new detailview)
• Improved barcode engine (live scanner)
• Filter tab to filter on media type, lend-to and genre
• Multiple data sources (including UK, Germany, Japan, ...)
• Cover-on-the-web - to seek for covert art through Google Images
• Classic black and classic white themes
• Option to clear whole database (prior to e.g. restoring)

As you can see, the list is quite long - and we have more features planned for next updates (TeaserView being one of the big ones). If you have suggestions too, you're always welcome to share them with us (either by adding a comment to this post, writing something in our support forum or mailing us).

We just added a conversion script to convert the movie exports from MBase2 and Personal Video Database (PVD) into the Movies format. This allows you to easily import "backups" from MBase2 and PVD into Movies - without the need to type in anything!

We already had support for ANT, Extreme Movie Manager and DVD Profiler. We added a small tutorial in order to help you with the conversion process.

In the meantime, we are also working very hard on Movies 2 which we plan to finalize at the end of this week. We recently added a "web cover search" option, which allows to lookup covers on the web within Movies and use those instead of the ones provided by our data source.

So hold your breath a few more days, and start your download engines as soon as Movies 2 hits the App Store!

We have set our internal deadline for releasing Movies 2 to Apple at the end of 2009 - so we're working hard on making sure we make the deadline.

In the meantime, we want to keep you informed on our progress, and the first issue we tackled was the not-so-fast CoverFlow(tm) in Movies 1. Below you find a screenshot of the new CoverFlow(tm) in action - fullscreen, bloody fast.

Stay tuned for more sneak previews of new Movie features becoming available in 2.0!

As more and more users are integrating Movies with their PC/Mac movie catalog, we implemented a conversion page to convert exports from your favorite movie catalog to the Movies format

We first introduced the XSLT convertors, though using those was pretty technical and hard to understand. So we wrote a wrapper around them, and to the conversion on our webserver! Take a quick look at our Movies Convertor and start converting database exports from ANT Movie Collection and DVD Profiler. If you want additional movie catalogs to be added, just send us a sample XML and we'll try to get it converted.

As always, we try to improve your Movies experience. Please let us know what you think of it!

We just submitted Movies 1.8.2 to Apple - our latest bugfix release of Movies. It features a few minor new things and fixes some bugs. As we're working towards a 2.0 version of Movies, this will probably be the last 1.8.x release.

As of Movies 1.8 you can rotate your iPhone/iPod Touch 90 degrees and Movies will show a Coverflow(tm) alike interface to browse through your movie collection!

What's new/fixed in 1.8.2?

• Added Spanish, German, Norwegian langauges
• Improved barcode scanning (optionally enter barcode manually)
• Improved duplicate detection
• Fullscreen coverview shows lowres cover in case no highres cover is available
• Crashes when barcode is not found in the database

So if the Apple elves allow the update, it should become available in the App Store soon.

This morning, we found some tweets flying around from Will Shipley regarding Movies and abusing his wood texture.

We quickly investigated the issue and even though we fetched our textures through Google Images seeking for royalty-free textures, it seems it was indeed Will's texture. We changed the wood texture to one we created ourself now, and submitted 1.8.1 to Apple. Problem solved. Even a public apology would not have been a problem.

Too bad (famous/powerfull) people don't feel the need to contact the small fish out there. If we knew it was their texture, we would have changed the texture without hesitation, just as quickly as we did now. Without needing to embarras us in public. Or calling us thieves. Since we are not. We just try to make the best Movie app for the iPhone. Like they try to do the same for Mac.