7.0.31: Video Recording "Director" no longer appears in Creator column

tim820 · 2026-01-13T12:16:18+00:00

Prior to 7.0.31, the "Director" of a Video Recording item (eg youtube video) appeared in the Creator column of the main item pane. That no longer seems to be the case for 7.0.31, leaving the Creator column blank.

Windows 10

dstillman · 2026-01-13T16:04:09+00:00

Yes, Director is no longer mapped to Author for Video Recording ("Creator" is), so it doesn't populate the Creator column, which is just author/editor/contributor. We could consider adding a special fallback to Director for that item type, since there's no Editor there.

Note that Director is mapped to CSL "director", which is also a separate field from CSL "author" and isn't used automatically as the author in citation styles.

tim820 · 2026-01-14T02:02:07+00:00

It would be great if that column mapping of Director to Creator could be restored. Otherwise it's just a blank Creator column for Video Recordings (and there is no Director column ... which I wouldn't want to add just for Video Recordings anyway).

And Director is still mapped to Creator in Advanced Searches. I now have some Saved Searches for Video Recordings by a particular Director (Creator/is/xxxx) that show a result screen with a totally blank Creator column. There is no way to search for Director explicitly (and searching by Creator is fine ... as long as that is what is displayed). So Advanced Search and Columns are now inconsistent.

So restoring the column mapping is the simplest solution. ;)

Director has always been a bit of a kludge. For example youtube channel names - which end up in the "Director" field - are often not the name of the person whose channel it is, and who is in all the videos. If that person also has other published works (under their real name), it makes most sense to replace the auto-populated Director field for their videos with that person's name (eg so that *all* their works come up in Creator searches). I often then move the channel name to Series Title. Also there may be videos that are interviews with that person, but it is not their channel. In that case it may also make sense for subsequent searches to put their name as "Director" (but that doesn't work as well for citations). Or put their name in a single-line item note (and remember to always include notes in advanced searches).

dstillman · 2026-01-14T03:06:34+00:00

Just to be clear, the point is that Video Recording items now have a Creator type that's mapped to Author. That didn't exist before, and that's likely what should be used in most situations (e.g., most YouTube videos). Saving from YouTube now will populate Creator, not Director. So this is mostly an issue for existing items that have Director where Creator would be more appropriate. We don't currently have a way to move data like this en masse, but it's planned.

As I say, we could consider a fallback to Director, just as it falls back to Editor for books/etc. without authors. But that's what we would be doing — not "restoring the column mapping". It would still use Creator if that's what was available.

So Advanced Search and Columns are now inconsistent

The Creator column in the items list and Creator in Advanced Search have always referred to different things. The former is for the first 1–2 authors, editors, or contributors. The latter is just searching for any creator of any creator type on the item, including many types that are never shown in the Creator column (e.g., Narrator). Director is now just another creator type.

tim820 · 2026-01-14T03:40:38+00:00

So it seems that *existing* Video Recordings did not get that new Creator field added in 7.0.31 - only newly created items get a Creator now (and no longer have a Director field). Existing items still have a Director (only). In any case, that's why I totally missed the Creator field, until I just tried to create a new Video Recording item now and saw it.

So the best solution would seem to be to change the Director field in all existing Video Recordings to Creator, to be consistent with new items (basically the Director field would cease to exist ... assuming there are no other consequences of that ?). Which would get around the column mapping issue too.

dstillman · 2026-01-14T04:03:45+00:00

So it seems that *existing* Video Recordings did not get that new Creator field added in 7.0.31

No? Not sure why you think that.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6/rhot3ftkjdc86i0oinln.png
It just doesn't convert Director creators to Creator creators automatically, since that may not be appropriate. Director is a valid creator type, mapped to a distinct CSL creator type. It was just decided that Creator mapped to CSL `author` was a better primary creator type for this item type.

dstillman · 2026-01-14T04:13:38+00:00

(I mean, we could in theory decide that it made sense to convert existing Director values to Creator for Video Recording, while leaving Director as an available creator type, just because Director was effectively used as Creator. But I don't believe that's been discussed.)

adamsmith · 2026-01-14T04:15:32+00:00

@dstillman -- I don't think you should do this globally for all users, but think it'd be super helpful to provide javascript code for it for those who did use director as quasi creator previously.

tim820 · 2026-01-14T04:45:57+00:00

So all my existing Video Recordings still show Director (the default field name prior to 7.0.31, which persists ... and leaves me with the blank Creator column in the item pane). I do see now that in those existing items I can click on Director and change it to Creator - whereas new items since 7.0.31 already have Creator instead as the default. So in order to fix the (blank Creator) column mapping issue I would have to go through and change the field name in all existing items manually. Unless there's a global edit rolled out, or some javascript provided, as @adamsmith suggests.