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Advanced Settings
There are a number of advanced settings that you can use to control Comic Vine Scraper. You use them by adding special instructions into the "Advanced" section of the Settings window.
For example, if you don't want the scraper to load cover art from the Comic Vine website, you can type the following line into the Settings window:
SHOW_COVERS=FALSE
There are many other advanced settings that you can add. There can only be one instruction per line, but the order of the instruction lines doesn't matter. Capitalization and whitespace don't matter either.
What follows is a list of the advanced settings instructions that you can use.
If you know how to write regular expressions, you can use this setting to improve how Comic Vine Scraper searches for your comic books based on their filenames.
Your custom regular expression will be matched against the filename of each comic as it is being scraped. It must contain a named group called 'series' that matches the name of the comic book series. If possible, it should also contain a named group called 'num' that matches the issue number of that comic, and optionally a third one called 'year' that matches the year that the comic was published.
So if your comic book files were named something like:
0001, Batman Beyond, DC Comics (2009).cbz
0002, Batman Beyond, DC Comics (2009).cbr
you could provide a regular expression like:
ALT_SEARCH_REGEX=(?P<num>\d+),(?P<series>.+),.+\((?P<year>\d{4})\)\.(cbz|cbr)
Use this to cause the scraper to hide all comic book series that were first published after a certain year. For example, if you don't want your searches to show any series that started after 1994:
IGNORE_AFTER_YEAR=1994
Use this to cause the scraper to hide all comic book series that were first published before a certain year. For example, if you don't want your searches to show any series that started before 1980:
IGNORE_BEFORE_YEAR=1980
Normally, Comic Vine Scraper will only decide that two comics are part of the same series if their files are in the same folder on your hard drive (and even then, they must also have the same series names.) If you don't want the scraper to consider the location of each comic when deciding whether or not two comics are part of the same series, just add the following line:
IGNORE_FOLDERS=TRUE
Once you've done this, the scraper will only compare two comic books' file names when deciding if they belong to the same series. Their file locations will be ignored.
Use this to cause the scraper to hide all comic book series that are published by a specific publisher. You can also use the IGNORE_PUBLISHER instruction more than once to cause the scraper to ignore multiple publishers.
For example, if you don't want your searches to show any series published by 'Panini' OR 'Panini Comics', add the following two lines:
IGNORE_PUBLISHER=panini
IGNORE_PUBLISHER=panini comics
This setting causes the scraper to ignore a search term when trying to find a comic on Comic Vine.
When the scraper searches for your comic, it does so based on your comic's filename. If that filename contains certain terms like 'c2c' or 'noads', those terms will not be used as part of the search. You can use IGNORE_SEARCHTERM to specify additional terms that should never be used for searching.
You may only specify one search term per line, and it must contain ONLY alphanumeric characters (a-z and 0-9). Search terms may NOT contain spaces or other punctuation characters.
For example, if you want the scraper to ignore the words 'digital' and 'covers' when searching for comics, add the following two lines:
IGNORE_SEARCHTERM=digital
IGNORE_SEARCHTERM=covers
Use this to define your own imprint publishers in cases where the default Comic Vine Scraper imprints are not to your liking. This instruction allows you to define a new imprint or override an existing one. You can also use the IMPRINT instruction more than once if you want to create multiple imprints.
For example, if you want the scraper to treat 'Panini' as an imprint of 'Marvel', you can add the line:
IMPRINT=Panini => Marvel
You can also remove any of the default Comic Vine Scraper imprints by redefining them as imprints of themselves. For example, if you want Comic Vine Scraper to stop treating 'Maverick' as an imprint of 'Dark Horse Comics', simply add the line:
IMPRINT=Maverick => Maverick
This sets the maximum number of search results that the scraper will pull down from Comic Vine when search for a comic book series. The default value is 100, which should be fine for most purposes.
Increasing this value can cause the scraper to run more slowly as it will download many more (usually unhelpful) search results. Setting this value lower than 100 does not make the scraper run any faster.
MAX_SEARCH_RESULTS=100
This stops the scraper from ignoring comic series that have a large number of issues. For example, if you want to ignore all the comics that came out before 1980, EXCEPT for ones that have 100 issues or more:
IGNORE_BEFORE_YEAR=1980
NEVER_IGNORE_THRESHOLD=100
Use this to cause the scraper to include the current date and time whenever it writes out CVDB info into the "Notes" field of your comic books. But be careful; doing this will force the scraper to update all of your comic books every time they are re-scraped, even if their other metadata has not changed:
NOTE_SCRAPE_DATE=TRUE
Use this to change the name that Comic Vine Scraper will scrape for a publisher. You can use this instruction more than once to change the name of multiple publishers.
For example, if you want comics from the publisher 'Dynamite Entertainment' to be scraped with the publisher name 'Dynamite', just add the following line:
PUBLISHER_ALIAS=Dynamite Entertainment => Dynamite
Or if you want to rename 'Marvel', you could add something like:
PUBLISHER_ALIAS=Marvel => Stan Lee and Friends
You can force Comic Vine Scraper to pause for a certain number of seconds between each comic that it scrapes. This makes scraping take longer, of course, but it can be a useful if Comic Vine bans you from scraping because you are accessing their database too frequently:
SCRAPE_DELAY=30
WARNING: setting this value will make Comic Vine Scraper seem very slow and unresponsive. Use this feature at your own risk!
Use this to turn off issue cover art while scraping. For slower internet connections, this may speed up scraping.
SHOW_COVERS=FALSE
Use this to turn off the initial 'Welcome' window that appears when you first start scraping. BUT BE CAREFUL! That Welcome window is the easiest way to get into the Settings window--once you turn it off, you may have trouble finding your way back into Settings to turn it back on again!
WELCOME_DIALOG=FALSE