Whats a good name for a base class for Movie and Episode?

Question

I've been refactoring Media Browser and have started to define a proper inheritance model for our domain objects

so I have

BaseItem
-> Video
--> <Need a name for this>
---> Episode
---> Movie
-> Folder
--> Season

Essentially tv show episodes and movies have some attributes in common (like actor or director listings) so I need a name for this common base class.

I don't want to chuck this in the Video base class, cause thing like mpegs that you record on your camera have no actors or directors so they are simply Videos ...

Any help with a name would be much appreciated..

Answer 1

I am fairly sure that the TV/cable industry has a term for this since scheduling a channel's lineup for a particular day involves scheduling these X's (feature movies and show episodes). I'm not sure what the term is in English though. I thought it was a program or broadcast, but I think it is more general.

Answer 2

Production?

Answer 3

Episode and Movie have professional production in common, as opposed to your outside case of personally-produced video. How about ReleaseVideo or CommercialVideo?

Answer 4

MediaItem?

Maybe even swap MediaItem and Video so you can extend it to audio?

Answer 5

What comes to mind:

• Distribution (this would allow you to have Professional and Amature too)
• Broadcast (not really, but might get you some other thoughts)

Answer 6

Well, in plain English, I've always just called them shows. "Going to see a show at the theater." "Did you catch that show on the History channel?"

Answer 7

I definitely agree with @Richard but I would suggest you skip the extra level "Video" and replace it with "Shows"... If the main aspect is to keep it user-friendly.

However, I think the main problem is that you are mixing up folder structure (user interface structure) and class inheritance (internal structure).

If it was for the code only you could have something like (example only, the terms may are just made up):

Media (ICollectionItem)
    Video
        Film
        Program
    Sound
        Sample
        Recording

Collection (ICollection)

But you could still show it to the user as:

Shows [Collection]
    Film [Film]
    Series [Collection]
        Episode [Program]
Music [Collection]
    Recordings [Collection]
        CDS [Recording]
        Vinyls [Recording]
    Sample Compilations [Collection]
        Sample [Sample]

Answer 8

Coming from the television industry the common terminology is usually:

• Broadcaster (YTV, Teletoon, etc.)
  • Series (Ben 10, Total Drama Island, etc.)
    • Episode (1:Pilot, 2:The Biggest Mistake, 3:Overboard, etc.)
      • Character
        • Actor (who played or voiced the character)
      • Director
      • etc.

The way I see it, its not such a big deal storing your actors inside the episodes since you can always consolidate them using a method or property on Series to get all the actors. For example:

allActorsInSeries = Series.Actors;

This format can still be applied to feature films since the episodes simply represent the film and its sequels.