Question:

How does the server synchronization functionality work?

Answer:

My Movies for Mac OS X automatically synchronizes with the My Movies online servers, which means that your collection follows your user account though the online service. This approch have several benefits:

• The online servers functions as a backup of your collection. If your computer breaks down, you can at any time re-install the application and log onto your user account, and your data is still there after you let the application re-sync with the servers. Similar, if something corrupts the internal database in the application, you can remove the full program and re-add it, and let it re-sync your data with the servers. Having purchased the My Movies Pro application in the iTunes App Store, you will not have to pay for the application again when removing and re-adding it.
• If you add or remove a title from a mobile device software such as My Movies for iPhone, My Movies for iPad or My Movies for Android, it will automatically be synchronized to My Movies for Mac OS X the next time you open the application and answer yes to synchronize. Similar, if you add or remove a title from My Movies for Mac OS X, it will automatically be synchronized to your mobile device. There are no manual processes in exporting and importing databases or similar.
• Titles added to your collection by searching for the title, or adding titles by barcode is a general common profile for all users of the My Movies online system, which means that the same title is shared between hundreds or thousands of users, and any improvement to the profile made by any user and contributed to the online system will be available to all users having the same title profile by having enabled the automatic title update option (default). If you would like to block a title from having data updated from the online servers, you can use the title locks to lock either the data, the covers or both.

The approch with sharing titles between users also means that there are some things to pay special attention to:

• If you contribute data to a profile, this data will be made available to everyone. This means that you may not add any personal preferences to the title profiles, such as a different cover art, writing personal information into the title description, changing titles to personal preferences or similar. The personal data section may be changed to your personal preference, and contains the option to overwrite both titles and sort titles, all data outside this section is required to follow the contribution guide.
• If your contributions to the online system does not follow the contribution guide, our staff will decline your contributions, and optionally give you a warning for incorrect contributions. Continued contribution of incorrect data, having received multiple warnings for the same mistakes can force our staff to block your user account.

There are with My Movies for Mac OS X some exceptions to the automatic synchronization, created to allow you to create new titles manually, that later can be contributed to the server as general public profiles, and allow you to make changes to your collection, even when your device is not connected to the internet:

• By changing data on a title profile (outside the personal section), the title will get a status "Changed" with an icon indicating this status on the title profile page. This change is stored only locally in your My Movies for Mac OS X client, and is not automatically synchronized to the online servers, and therefore not synchronized to your online collection or mobile devices. You should here make sure your changes follows the contribution guide, and contribute the changes to the online service, which will make the changes available on the online servers, and remove the "Changed" indicator. If you have made changes that you would like to get rid of, you can also in the menu choose to revert the title back to the data from the online service, removing your local changes.
• When creating a new title using the create title button in the add titles button area, the title will get a status "Offline" with an icon indicating this status on the title profile page. This title is stored only locally in your My Movies for Mac OS X client, and is not automatically added to your collection on the online servers, and therefore not synchronized to your online collection or mobile devices. You should here make sure the title does not exist already in the online service, and that the data on the title follows the contribution guide, and then contribute the title to the online service, making it available to everyone else, and making it available on your online collection and mobile devices.
• If you make any changes to the personal data at a time where you are not connected to the online servers, the title will get a status "Unsynced" with an icon indicating this status on the title profile page. Titles having this status will have the changes synchronized to the online servers next time the client is synchronized, either on startup answering yes to synchronize, or by pressing the synchronize button. Any change that results in an "Unsynced" state will be unavailable on your online collection or mobile devices until next time synchronized.

The information above refers to using the online servers as synchronization between My Movies for Mac OS X and the My Movies mobile softwares, but it can just as well be between multiple Mac OS X devices, allowing you to use the software on multiple computers. There are no limits to how many clients that can be used to synchronize with the same user account.

Notice! The synchronization can also be used with My Movies Collection Management for Windows, which however uses a different approch for synchronizing, where you manually have to confirm changes made from other clients, which is not automatically synchronized. The Collection Management software uses a semi-automatic synchronization approch, where any changes made to the personal data is automatically uploaded to the online servers when you make them, but where the titles do not receive special statuses if this fails - the software will instead automatically upload these changes when it is connected.