MVG Library Manual

MVG Library works fully signed out. Signing in with Google only unlocks the features that need to remember you across devices.

The Welcome Gate

The first time you open the site in a browser, a modal offers two paths: Sign in with Google, or Continue as Guest. Both land you on the same homepage — nothing about browsing, TV Mode, or search requires an account.

If you continue as a guest and later sign in, a second, optional step appears: a genre-picker (see §17) asking "What do you like?" — skippable, and editable later in Settings.

What requires sign-in

The catalog can be browsed by three different keys, filtered six ways, and searched across every credited role — not just artist and song.

Browse tabs

Results group under whichever tab is active: By Director, By Artist, or By Song Title. Switching tabs re-groups the same underlying result set instead of re-querying.

Filters

Search

Typing in the search bar filters live, no autosuggest dropdown. It is:

• Accent-insensitive — dropping or mistyping an accent mark still matches.
• Typo-tolerant — small misspellings still surface the right entry.
• Full-credit — matches Artist, Song, Director, Producer, DP, Editor, Choreographer, Studio, and Description, not just the obvious fields.

Jump nav

The A–Z (plus 0–9) row above the results only shows letters that actually have entries — no dead buttons. Clicking a letter jumps straight to that group; clicking it again clears the jump.

Results layout

See §11 for the two-column/list toggle, thumbnail grid view, and bulk selection tools available on the results list.

Top to bottom, in actual page order — your own stuff first, curated picks next, the full catalog underneath.

1. Viewer's Choice — the top two entries by community vote, highlighted, plus a supporting grid. Pure votes, no editorial picks.
2. My Queue — see §07.
3. Maui's Picks — hand-curated, capped at six, oldest evicted as new picks are added.
4. News — latest blog posts, pulled in automatically.
5. Latest Submissions — a horizontally scrolling strip weighted toward genuinely recent adds, not old bulk-imported entries.
6. Featured — a separate curation lane from Maui's Picks, admin-flagged.
7. Discover — unbounded random browsing. "See more" keeps appending fresh picks with no repeats until the whole catalog's had a lap, then starts over. Lightly weighted by your genre preferences (§17) without ever hiding anything.
8. Main grid — the full catalog, grouped by letter under whichever browse tab is active.
9. Hub links — "Browse by Director" / "Browse by Artist," dedicated pages for search-engine discovery.

Clicking any thumbnail outside TV Mode opens the lightbox — the real detail page for an entry, and the most information-dense screen on the site.

Credits block

Every tracked field is laid out as structured credits, not buried in a paragraph: Director, Producer, Director of Photography, Editor, Choreographer, Studio, Country (with flag), genre tags, and release date.

Suggest an edit

Click any individual credit field to open a small form: pick the field, see its current value, type a corrected value and an optional reason, and submit. Corrections are reviewed, not auto-applied — a way to crowdsource accuracy without opening editing to everyone.

Related & Comments

Below the description sits a row of similar entries (Related), one click to jump to another lightbox, and further down a per-video Comments thread — public to read, sign-in required to post. This is distinct from the site-wide message board (§15).

Every entry can be downloaded as a shareable, collectible-style card — client-rendered, nothing pre-made.

In any lightbox, below the description, click Download trading card. Hovering the link first shows a live preview of the exact card you're about to get.

What's on the card

• Song title, artist, and director
• Category and year
• Genre tag(s), with a colored border — each genre hashes to one of eight consistent colors, so the same genre always reads the same way. Two genres split the border diagonally, Magic: The Gathering–style.
• Country flag
• Artwork pulled from the video's own YouTube/Vimeo thumbnail, at the best resolution available
• Description — or a separate Flavor Text Override if the submitter provided one specifically for the card (set at submission time, see §13)
• The MVG logo

The site's centerpiece: a channel-surfing, static-screen viewing experience, up to and including a synced live channel everyone watches together.

Entry: sidebar TV Mode, or the mobile bottom-nav TV icon.

Armed / static screen

TV Mode opens on real, per-frame analog static (not a looping gif) with the next pick's title and thumbnail deliberately hidden until you hit play — the channel-surfing feeling is intentional. A physical-styled power switch drops back to static on demand.

The filter panel

A CRT-styled panel (full side panel in windowed/4:3, minimized in 16:9 fullscreen) with four tabs:

Channel Mode

A single, shared, synced broadcast — everyone tuned in sees the same video at the same timestamp, like a real TV channel, not independent per-viewer playback. A status line reads "You're tuned into the Channel — up next: …" and, when enabled, a live comment panel runs alongside it.

Playback

No seek bar, by design — a deliberate remote-control feel: Prev / Play-Pause / Next / Mute / Volume, plus Report issue, Favorite, Vote, Add-to-playlist, Crop-to-4:3, Widen/shrink, Fullscreen, CC captions, Share, and Info. Every skip flashes a brief burst of static as a transition. Mute/volume changes surface classic on-screen remote indicators.

4:3 and fullscreen

4:3 cropping in the windowed player and 4:3 inside fullscreen are two independent toggles — they don't combine. Fullscreen itself supports both aspect ratios and auto-hides its HUD after a few seconds of no mouse movement.

A deliberate, straightforward clone of YouTube's Watch Later.

• A + sits on the bottom-right corner of every thumbnail across the entire site — hover, click, done, no need to open the video first.
• A one-click ✕ removes an entry directly from its thumbnail while queued.
• My Queue's title and its Play All both open the dedicated playlist player (§09), not TV Mode.
• Pinned first, above your own playlists and the default playlists, everywhere playlists are listed.

A simpler, single flat list — for videos you just want to keep, not organize.

• ♡ on any card, in the lightbox, or in TV Mode adds or removes a favorite.
• The dedicated Favorites page (sidebar) supports Play All.
• Share Favorites (Favorites page, or Settings) generates and copies a public, read-only link to your list. Requires sign-in.

Organized lists, split clearly between what's pre-seeded and what's yours, played back through a dedicated player rather than a modal.

Creating a playlist

Either + New Playlist from the Playlists page, or Create Playlist in the search filters row — which snapshots your current search results straight into a new playlist. New playlists always land at the top of your list, newest first.

Layout

My Queue sits fixed above everything. Below it, the page splits into two groups: My Playlists (yours) and Default Playlists (pre-seeded, one per major director — e.g. Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze).

The playlist player

Clicking any playlist chip — or My Queue's title/Play All, or "Play Selected" from bulk selection (§11) — opens a dedicated player, deliberately not TV Mode: a normal-looking video lightbox with a full track rail down the left side (thumbnail, song, artist, a remove button per track).

An automatic history strip — open anything, it shows up here.

Capped at the 12 most recent entries. Clear it anytime from Settings (§16).

Search-only tools for acting on many results at once, and for choosing how those results are laid out.

View modes

Next to the A–Z row, a small toggle switches the results list between a dense two-column list (the default on wide screens) and a pure thumbnail grid — one unified gallery, not broken up by letter. The choice is remembered across visits.

Selecting multiple results

Every result card carries a low-opacity checkbox in its bottom-right corner. Checking one or more reveals a Selection bar above the results:

The Selection bar only appears while you're actively searching with something checked — it clears out of the way once you leave Search.

Community-driven, currently free and unlimited.

• Vote from any card, the lightbox, or TV Mode — a "Voted!" flash confirms it.
• The top-bar Vote button opens a leaderboard of Top Videos.
• Voting is currently unlimited — no cap on votes per person.
• By default your name is never attached to a vote. An opt-in Settings toggle lets you show your name as a video's top or latest voter.

Every submission is manually reviewed before it's added — nothing goes live automatically.

We do not accept Gen-AI music videos.

The same credits data, working in the other direction: a directory of the people behind the videos.

The Watch / Connect pills at the top of the sidebar are a display filter, not separate account types — Connect jumps straight to Profiles.

Profiles is a director/artist/crew directory, auto-populated from credits already in the database, plus a request/connection flow. Requires sign-in to browse.

Direct messages — once connected with someone through Profiles, a Messages panel lets you DM them in-app, no email or social handoff required.

A persistent, site-wide public chat — separate from per-video comments.

A small chat-bubble icon sits fixed in the bottom-right corner on every page. Public to read; sign-in required to post.

Reached via the gear icon (top bar on desktop, bottom nav on mobile).

A weight, not a filter — the one deliberately gentle piece of personalization on the site.

Set once during onboarding, or anytime in Settings: check off the genres you're into. Discover leans toward those picks, but keeps mixing in everything else — nothing is ever hidden because of this setting, and it's just as easy to uncheck as it was to check. No hidden algorithm, no watch-history inference: you told it what you like, in plain checkboxes you can see and change.

Everything else worth knowing about, reachable from the sidebar or the footer.

Same feature set, two different navigation shells.

Every button, label, and icon referenced above, in one lookup table.