Is it possible to determine the no. of clips associated with a card other than by looking at the number on the website, or by looking at the clips in the GUI if the card is part of one's collection?

I was hoping the answer might lay in the .xml file in the card data directory - but I cannot see how to do it.

For cards without transition clips the <show><count>...</count> in the /Data/cardno/cardno.xml files gives the no. of vghd files - so that is not a problem. The problem is cards with transition clips because the count in the xml file continues to be simply the no. of vghd files, including all the transition clips.

Maybe an expert can tell me?

Similarly, I find that the no. of photos and videos is sometimes wrong in the xml file. This is true even when the xml file is current,

Yes, but it's not easy. The information is in a binary file named models.lst in the data folder. This file describes all the cards in your collection plus the demos currently on your hard drive. It is difficult to decode, but with some guidance from Wyldanimal, I was able to do it.

It's past my bedtime, so I can't go into the details now, but I've posted this information here a number of times over the past 2 years. I also have a Microsoft Access database that decodes the models.lst file and some other files and builds a database of your collection that I'm willing to share.

@Dorsai6
Yes, ofcourse! I had forgotten.
You helped me before in de-coding models.lst when I was trying to use VBA to activate/deactivate cards.
I did finish that ***** project, so I will revisit it.

I got blinkered by the individual card .xml file because one can get so much information from that (e.g. category, model name statistics etc.)

I am doing similar programming to you, except I use Excel and VBA rather than MS Access.
I think your approach is probably better, but I have no experience with MS Access, so I got started with Excel, and that is how it continues. I believe you use a MAC, whereas I use Windows 10, so our work isn't necessarily easy to compare.

Yes, I use a Mac, but MS Access only runs under windows. I use VMware Fusion to run a virtual Windows 7 environment on my Mac so that I can run Access, Visio, ERwin, and System Architect now of which run on a Mac. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint I run as Mac applications. Since, my decode logic is in VB for Access it should be relatively easy to modify it to run in Excel. I make very extensive use of VB in both Access and Visio to create special purpose tools for my work.

Since you already have my email address, send me a regular email message if you'd like the latest copy of my Access application.

There is a technique that is a lot simpler than looking at the models.lst file. I also use VBA in Excel for a sophisticated spreadsheet that I use.

Why don't you simply read the list of files in the folder and count the ones that have a file type of ".vghd" but don't have "_it" in the filename? If you need to include demo clips in your count, then you can include those too in your count. That's real easy to do by using a simple loop. I assume you will be able to figure out how to do this since you program in VBA. But if you need help with this, just let me know and I'll share with an example.

@VirtualPad

Good point. If all you need is an inventory, all you need to do is examine the contents of the various model folders. I originally decoded the models.lst file because I wanted to change the cards and clip enabled status and that was the way to do it. There is also addition information about cards and their tags in that file, but that isn't needed for a clip inventory.

@DrDoom,
I sent you a PM that informs you of a link to where you can get a file that has a VBA function to get the clip count. Enjoy 😀

@VirtualPad, @Dorsai6

Many thanks for your constructive comments.

Actually, I did do as you suggest. I used VBA to count *.demp, *_it*.demo, *.vghd, *_it*.vghd in the Models card directory and derived the clip count by adding *.demo count to *.vghd count then subracting the counts of the transition files.
However, this only works for cards actually in my collection. I was hoping that between the .xml file and models.lst file I might get the clip count for cards not in my collection. It seems that the web site is the only source for that.

The models.lst file is no help. It merely counts all the .vghd files - no distinction that I can see for the transition files. It is pretty much the same for the card.xml file.

Incidently, the web site clip count is not correct. It counts preview files and these are deleted a day or so after a card is downloaded. So the website says Katya Clover, e0221, is 20 clips. It is - for a short time. Then it reverts to 17 clips. I have asked Totem to comment on this the the Bugs & Fixes Section. It may be a feature, not a bug.

Yesterday I caught the software trying to play a (preview) clip that it had deleted!