Trouble finding a scene
The search mechanism does an exact string match, that means that whatever you put in a search box will have to appear precisely that way in the corresponding field.
Here's a typical entry:
Record number: 1117
Title: The Professionals (1977)
Medium: TV Series
Actress: Unknown
Description: Episode: "A Stirring of Dust" (2.8)
Bodie and Doyle race over to a solicitor's office (this is a British TV series, obviously) having received a tip that a wanted man was lurking inside. When they arrive the secretary is bound and gagged with duct tape on the floor. She struggles and mmmphs mightily for several seconds. Short scene.
We used to have the title written in old the IMDB style, with the article following the text: Professionals, The. That was recently changed when the IMDB did the same. The best thing to do is leave off the articles completely. In fact, it's recommended that you focus on one key word to search for.
Another possible problem is if there is search data in another field because you used the form for another search, and Match all fields is set to True. Then it would be looking to match up your new search with the old unrelated data. You can use the Reset Form button to clear it out completely.
You should very rarely set Case sensitive to True. The only real reason for it would be to search for acronyms or something like that. Remember, these entries are put in by people who aren't always consistent with their capitalization. We try to clean up entries, but some will slip through.
In similar fashion, the name or title entered could have a spelling error in the Title or Actress name. If you don't find it, try some other keywords and see. If you do find such an error, please let us know on the Database Corrections forum.
Too many hits returned
Again, selection of a distinct search string helps. Don't search titles for things like "death" because you'll get a number of hits, many unrelated.
You can also use a combination of fields to try to narrow your search. If you know that it's a TV show or movie, use the Medium to weed out some of the others. But be sure set Match all fields to True, otherwise you'll get a combination of various things. For instance, searching for "hospital" in Title and with "soap" in the Medium with Match set to False would give you ALL the soaps scenes plus any from TV or movies with "hospital" in the Title. Probably not what you want.
Unrelated hits
If you get scenes returned that don't seem possible based on what you just entered, it may be a case of you reusing the form, and having something still in one of the other fields. Say you searched for some Heather Locklear scenes using the Actress field, then went back to search for ones from "Walker, Texas Ranger" and didn't clear the actress field. Then you'd get a combination of seemingly unrelated scenes. Again, you can use the Reset Form button to clear it out the form.