I'm not sure I see the point; you get the occasional film where some actors will be listed up to three times; once in the opening credits, once in the end credits as in the LotR example you cited, and again in the full end credits block. I don't even see what is gained from adding them twice.

As Lopek says, it's so people can use the Movie Pick and run reports etc. and know they'll get the stars of the film listed as opposed to whoever appeared first or whose name begins with 'A'.

As I said in the other thread... I personally prefer it the way it is now.

My method utilizes functionality of the program that was not present when the rules were written years ago. This is something that became an option with 3.0. I can also say that it's not an "occasional film". Since I've been looking for these in my local db, I've found it to be quite frequent...or at least frequent enough that it's kept me pretty busy setting all of these up on my own.

Pete mentioned in the other thread that using only the end credits is more accurate to the disc itself. However, I find this dual method to actually be more accurate as it represents the full cast credits of the film. There's nothing that affects 'as credited' here. In fact, it's more 'as credited' than just using the end credits! The end credits are preserved exactly as credited, while the beginning credits are added to utilize functionality of the program.

Quoting Nadja:

Quote:
I'm not sure I see the point; you get the occasional film where some actors will be listed up to three times; once in the opening credits, once in the end credits as in the LotR example you cited, and again in the full end credits block. I don't even see what is gained from adding them twice.

It helps when you are scanning profiles because you can see who the main actors are in the cast. With an alphabetical or 'order of appearance' listing, you don't get that. Here's another example from my collection:



With the cast from the end credits, in my PDA, I would see Holly Hunter and Dan Hedaya listed in the details view as the main actors for this film. By adding the top billed actors from the beginning credits, I now see Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz as the main actors. In this case, it's a better choice for the top 2 actors since they are the main stars of the film:



In the standard layout provided by Invelos for the cast list, on my monitor, I see the top 10 actors in a cast list without scrolling. With "Alexander", for example, this means that I don't see Colin Farrell unless I utilize the dual credit method since he is the 20th name listed in order of appearance in the end credits.

This method helps with reports too since often reports will list just a few of the top actors from the cast list.

As goodguy pointed out in the other thread:
Quoting goodguy:

Quote:
It should be pointed out that the current rules damage program functionality in various areas, including:

Movie Pick

Detail View

Reports

PDA

I've just found it helpful for me and I shared it in the other thread in case others would find it useful.

Quoting northbloke:

Quote:
I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing it!

No problem.

I like it, but am also thinking about the amount of work that would be required to do all this.

Also, we would need to come up with a better divider title.  "Actors" doesn't seem to quite cut it.

Quote:

Also, we would need to come up with a better divider title.  "Actors" doesn't seem to quite cut it.

That's not a divider and not part of the data entry. That's just how I chose to crop what's seen in the "My Profiler" version of this profile.

I don't know... it all made sense to me. But that could be because I read the other thread too.

I'd personally prefer to leave them as they are now