Trailers

[deazo]

 Whenever I want to see the trailer of a movie, I use the following Web search from within PVD:

 http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s+trailer&aq=f%u

 95% of the times, the first video found on the youtube website is the trailer I was looking for, and Youtube is RICH in trailers.

 Isn't there a way (I'm not sure how best this could be integrated into PVD's interface) that this could be used to quickly watch the trailer of any of the movies in the database?
 I'm seeing an internal flash player that could play the trailer directly from PVD's interface?
 Or a direct link to the streaming video (that would have been grabbed by some kind of youtube scraper) that would directly open in VLC or any other player able to play streaming videos?
 I don't know I'm basically thinking of an improvement that would not require the opening of any browser to the youtube page.

 Just an idea.

[rick.ca]

As I've mentioned a number of times elsewhere, I hope the ability to display HTML is added at some point. It would be handy for importing and displaying entire pages of data that are already formatted appropriately, displaying actual search result pages, and just providing an embedded browsing capability. I don't know whether such a thing would be a separate window, a skin function for displaying a specified URL in a memo-like HTML field, or both...

An embedded browser capability would allow the viewing of trailers and a variety of other things within PVD. How it would be integrated into the existing interface is an important question. Now that I think about it again, I suppose a separate window doesn't make much sense. We can do that with an external browser window now. It could be a panel below the info panel, with a splitter separating the two (just like the current list/info panel splitter). The splitter could include a toggle control for opening to 50% of the available height and closing it. That would allow you to pop it open to view a trailer or search results page, and then close it again. The ability to embed a web page or object within the skin is a cool idea, but I suspect that might be difficult to implement and use.

Another possibility for handling trailers is to download and save them "beside" the movie. That is, named the same as the movie file, with a suffix that places it before the movie. It and the movie would then be added to the file path, and both would play when Play is selected. If you just wanted to watch the trailer, you would stop the player after it had played the trailer. If you just wanted to view the movie, you would command your player to skip the trailer. I would do this myself, if it weren't for the difficulty in finding and downloading original trailers of consistent high quality. Watching a trailer within the interface is fine, but it's not a good substitute for a full screen trailer similar in quality to the movie itself.

[Hyomil]

 Whenever I want to see the trailer of a movie, I use the following Web search from within PVD:

 http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s+trailer&aq=f%u

 95% of the times, the first video found on the youtube website is the trailer I was looking for, and Youtube is RICH in trailers.

My success rate is a bit lower.  When Youtube fails, I use Google Video, which includes sites from many different countries.  The challenge there, though, is that there are so many streaming sites now (for Chinese movies, anyway) that stream the entire movie that you can't find a single one that's just for the trailer.  (You can sometimes tell by the duration of the video that's listed.)  So I thought I'd add the word "trailer" to the search--the Chinese version of the word.  The Google Translate translation of it didn't work, but I used Google Translate to translate a Youtube video where the text was all in Chinese and the word that translated to "trailer" was 預告片.  Haven't had much luck with it so far, though.

Best other site for trailers I've found is http://www.videodetective.com  And for saving them, the Video DownloadHelper addon for Firefox.  With Youtube, it enables you to save them at different quality levels up to 1080p (where available).  I would suggest saving the ones you really want to keep because videos frequently disappear from Youtube, whether because they're removed by the user because their account was deleted or for Terms of Service violation (which is particularly annoying when you're uploading a trailer that gives the movie free advertising).

I don't like watching trailers within the web browser either, in my case because there's tearing in the playback which I haven't been able to find the reason for yet.  Youtube does have a fullscreen option, though, that's similar to a dedicated player like VLC, minus the ability to open in fullscreen by default.  You can jump backward and forward with arrow left and right keys (though the distance is 10% rather than a fixed duration) and increase or decrease the volume with arrow up and down keys.  And there's the "Always play HD when switching to fullscreen (when available)" option in Youtube's Playback Setup.

[deazo]

 My suggestion did not contain any "downloading trailer" suggestion because basically I really do not want to do that.
 This would take a big amount of memory and really what I was after was only a way of watching a streaming video without having to open firefox (or any other browser).

 This is why I suggested a kind of "scraper" (?) that would take the streaming link.
 This link could be automatically recognized by a video player (say VLC or MPC) and played within it.

 Also I guess this would eliminate the possibly heavy work needed from Nostra to build a browser within pvd... (i've seen this in Utorrent actually)
 

[rick.ca]

If you had a trailer stream URL it could be launched in VLC using a PVD hyperlink. But I don't know how a YouTube stream could be hijacked from it's Flash player. Ironically, as Hyomil points out, it is possible to save them.

[deazo]

 Actually there is no need for Hijacking, the video page URL is the only thing needed, just paste it in the network field of VLC (latest build) and it will read it.
 So what could work is a script that would take/scrap the link to the first result of a Youtube search result page.
 Then set VLC or the default player to open it in its network option.

 For example the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucXWZ13W-0 (Grabbed on the search page: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paraiso+travel+trailer&aq=f) can easily be read by VLC.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

If VLC is in the windows environment PATH variable, or you use the full path, you can play the video simply:

vlc.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucXWZ13W-0

I can see a couple of issues:
1) any link in PVD will open the link with the default program
   (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucXWZ13W-0 will open in a browser)
2) links cannot pass parameters to a file...the link goes to the file named and parameters are considered part of the file name
   (vlc.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucXWZ13W-0 won't be found as a file)
3) you can use the PVD web search facility to run vlc with parameters, but there's no automated way to get the url into the search
4) playback is dependent on the server, so performance / clip availability becomes an issue
5) network playback is not supported by all players, so you may not be able to use your preferred player

On the other hand, a direct link to a file on your local drive will open with your default player.  The existing scripting interface for image selection (poster / person) could be manipulated to show the thumbs of the videos and contain links to the files, so they could be previewed in a browser before being saved to disk.  With the new scripting features in the last PVD release, something could probably be cobbled together to save the file outside the database.  Of course, you'd have to hijack the proper link.  This duplicates functionality already found via add-ons in firefox.  Ten years from now, is it more likely that a cobbled script is working properly or firefox?

It might be better to use a separate program to download the videos, then add them to the PVD file path.

One automation solution would be a firefox add-on that could connect to the PVD database.  I'd look at this but I have facial recognition software and a wysiwyg xml editor to write first <grin>.

[rick.ca]

2) links cannot pass parameters to a file...the link goes to the file named and parameters are considered part of the file name
   (vlc.exe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucXWZ13W-0 won't be found as a file)

Thanks for clarifying. I was trying to do this with a version of VLC that wouldn't have worked anyway.

I don't think a script or plugin is going to work on anything other that a site that serves up only high quality, relevant (i.e., "official") trailers. Sites like YouTube, which might have a few good ones buried in a heap of crap, need the capabilities of a full browser (with the necessary add-ons) just for selection. I wonder if even an embedded browser would be effective (if that were Mozilla, would it use add-ons installed in Firefox?).

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

I had to upgrade VLC too.  That's typical...I never upgrade anything until I have a reason to.

There's an embedded firefox browser control that uses the locally installed firefox:
( http://firefoxbrowser.codeplex.com/releases/view/34065#ReviewsAnchor ) 
Since the control doesn't include Firefox, you'd have to install Firefox before the control could be used.

Everyone will have their own preference in browsers (or heaven forbid) in a network environment, you may not have a choice, so tying the trailer feature to any specific browser would limit it's usefulness.

Searching youtube would require more than a title, I think.  The year, for example, and as mentioned earlier, "trailer".  There's lots of remakes out there.  I certainly wouldn't trust a fully automated process to select the correct or best one (given that a search only returns values in relation to relevance, and you don't know "how" relevant the results are).

[buah]

I must admit that I avoid to watch trailers, in order not to be mislead.

Now when I think of it, considering the time to find reviews and trailers for a certain movie, then to read and watch 'em, isn't it better to spend that time on watching movie itself? You'll spend less time to start watching it, and to stop if you don't like it, then for what I wrote in previous sentence. And I'm talking here about movies you already have in your collection.

[rick.ca]

There's an embedded firefox browser control that uses the locally installed firefox:

So it seems this is all nostra needs to add embedded Firefox, and it's easy to do. We, of course, don't care about preferences for inferior/evil browsers.

The problem with finding trailers is not ambiguity in the title (although that has to be dealt with as well), it's that they all get buried in the crap posted by users. I've heard that many of the official trailers that do get posted there have to be taken down do to copyright or terms of use violations.

My personal experimenting isn't over, but it seems the most efficient way to get trailers is to simply use the IMDb URL and use the trailer links there. From what I've seen so far, if there's nothing acceptable, it would seem a good idea to forget about looking further. The quality varies, but I'm not finding anything better on YouTube. And the huge advantage is that whatever they do have are valid trailers for the movie in question. It's taking me about a minute per movie to choose, download and add a trailer to the File path.

...isn't it better to spend that time on watching movie itself?

You could ask the same question about everything we're doing.

[Hyomil]

The problem with finding trailers is not ambiguity in the title (although that has to be dealt with as well), it's that they all get buried in the crap posted by users.

Here's a few more sites dedicated to trailers I've got in a search group in the Web Search Pro addon, though I haven't done many searches with them yet: http://www.movie-list.com/index.php, http://www.comingsoon.net/trailers/, http://trailers.apple.com/, http://www.alltrailers.net/.  Should be lots of HD trailers for newer movies.

I usually use Web Search Pro rather than PVD since you can't use the Title instead of the Original Title for searches.  For Youtube, I use:

Youtube Trailers - "trailer"

Code: [Select]

http://www.youtube.com/results?sourceid=captaincaveman&aq=f&search_query={searchTerms}+trailer
YouTube Trailers for anime - "amv" OR "pv" OR "trailer" OR "op" OR "opening"

Code: [Select]

http://www.youtube.com/results?sourceid=captaincaveman&aq=f&search_query={searchTerms}+amv+OR+pv+OR+trailer+OR+op+OR+opening
Doesn't include the year, but I haven't found that helps very often.

My personal experimenting isn't over, but it seems the most efficient way to get trailers is to simply use the IMDb URL and use the trailer links there.

IMDb used to hardly have any trailers, but it looks like they're getting better, though it still says BETA when you click on the link to the videos section.  I didn't realize one of the choices under the Update button was for adding trailers, but I just did that for a movie and I'll see if it gets added.  Took over 3 weeks to be added last time when I added a TV series.

[Hyomil]

I must admit that I avoid to watch trailers, in order not to be mislead.

Now when I think of it, considering the time to find reviews and trailers for a certain movie, then to read and watch 'em, isn't it better to spend that time on watching movie itself? You'll spend less time to start watching it, and to stop if you don't like it, then for what I wrote in previous sentence. And I'm talking here about movies you already have in your collection.

  Trailers are sort of meant to be misleading so as not to be spoilers; they don't spell much out, just give an idea of the general tone of the movie and the acting.  They don't often "mislead" about those.

For movies you've already seen, watching a trailer is a refresher of what the movie was like.  For movies you haven't seen, I've found trailers are an excellent way to quickly rule movies out.  I rarely dislike a trailer, then end up seeing the movie and like it.  I've gotten so once I've marked a movie Not Interested based on the trailer I'm very resistant to seeing it.  Sometimes I'll be undecided after seeing a trailer and mark the movie Maybe, in which case I may see it if other people recommend it.  If I like the trailer, I'm likely to watch the movie without further research, though its best to read reviews or at least check some statistics.  If there is no trailer at all, I'm reluctant to try something, even after reading reviews.

And watching trailers does save time:  3 minutes of time taken, say, versus having to find a movie download/rent/buy it and watch, say, at least 15 minutes of it to decide if you like it.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

For movies you've already seen, watching a trailer is a refresher of what the movie was like.  For movies you haven't seen, I've found trailers are an excellent way to quickly rule movies out.  I rarely dislike a trailer, then end up seeing the movie and like it.

Sounds reasonable.  Wish I'd thought of that.  I've always avoided trailers because they always (?) show the best parts of the movie in quick succession as if the whole movie would be that way.  I guess that's the misleading part.

I usually go straight to reviews, then add the movies to my database with a marker (in my case the 'seen' checkbox is cleared so it's highlighted...if I didn't like / keep the movie).  This way, I keep track of what I don't want to see and what I "own" (ownership is maybe a bad word if you didn't buy it).  Regardless, this usually keeps me from being mislead twice...another benefit to having a movie database.

I took a quick look at some of the trailer sites and a couple look promising...fairly quick and the video links aren't hidden.  

There is an issue with the large number of links for some movies...interviews, various codecs / sizes / operating systems, making selection difficult.  That means a selection dialog is necessary in any trailer script, which means that "silent mode" is not an option.  You wouldn't be able to select all the movies in your database and expect to have the trailers in your database some hours later.  You'd have to manually select each and every one.  

It would still be a "kewl" feature.

[kompjuta]

I agree with Hyomil.
I have added a text field where I put the link to the trailer file, which I keep on my hard disk. There are tons of sites with trailers, with variying quality. It takes a bit of trial and error to find good quality, but usually you can find decent quality, often even HD versions. You can use freecorder to record the trailers, as they are usually flash videos.
What I would like to see is a feature similar to the one for storing the file location for the movie files, but then for the trailer files, and of course a "play" button to launch the trailer in a player.
I don't like the idea of combining the full movie and the trailer when you hit the "play" button. I prefer to keep them apart.

Another feature request: I would like to see a tool to add an existing movie as an episode to a series. Drag & drop would be great... In fact I'm "abusing" the episode feature to group sequels together (like Ice Age, Toy Story, Hellraiser, etc..). Is there a way to do this manually, by modifiying some "properties" of a movie record ?

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[deazo]

 Even though I find the possibility of locally playing trailers interesting, I would like to clarify that my personal suggestion was not about that, but more about the ability to search for trailers directly from PVD'd interface and view them, as streaming videos, from PVD or a player software.
 Saving thousands of trailers on my hard drive is really not something I ever want to do.
 
 Nostra might hence want to count TWO feature suggestions instead of one. Just more work hey?

[rick.ca]

Welcome, kompjuta.

I don't like the idea of combining the full movie and the trailer when you hit the "play" button. I prefer to keep them apart.

That's fine, but I doubt we'll see a separate field and play control until it's feasible to create a plugin that can find and download HD trailers of reasonably consistent quality. If you have to do that manually anyway, you may as well save the path as URL hyperlink. Clicking on that will launch the trailer in the default player—exactly the same way Play launches the movie.

Is there a way to do this manually, by modifying some "properties" of a movie record ?

No. Others have asked for this, but I don't recall nostra's response. I prefer to use a separate field (the otherwise unused Release field) to record the "movie series." I can then filter and group by that field, and not suffer the consequences of having those movies classified as series.

Saving thousands of trailers on my hard drive is really not something I ever want to do.

I don't know why not—they're much smaller than movies.

But that's okay. There's nothing wrong with your suggestion. But is seems prudent to consider the different ways in which trailers might be collected and viewed, and different user preferences for handling them. It's clearly not a matter in which we all want the same thing and just need to figure out how to best implement that capability. If there were a plugin that automatically found and downloaded trailers, you might be happy with that. If there were a plugin that automatically found a URL and would stream that to an embedded browser, I might be happy with that.

[Hyomil]

I took a quick look at some of the trailer sites and a couple look promising...fairly quick and the video links aren't hidden.  

There is an issue with the large number of links for some movies...interviews, various codecs / sizes / operating systems, making selection difficult.  That means a selection dialog is necessary in any trailer script, which means that "silent mode" is not an option.  You wouldn't be able to select all the movies in your database and expect to have the trailers in your database some hours later.  You'd have to manually select each and every one.  

I came across a program called Media Center Master, which auto-scans folders and auto-downloads info from IMDb, TMDb, and TVRage, and trailers from movies.yahoo.com, trailerspy.com, and movie-list.com, so those may be the most amenable to scripting.  

If there were any that allowed searching by IMDb ID, a script might be able to run in silent mode, but none of those trailer sites do (nor does hd-trailers.net, another one I found).  However, you can search TMDb by IMDb ID (and the program does, once its decided on the IMDb ID), and it has trailer links, though I would imagine there might be some that were to sites other than Youtube.  IMDb itself has trailer links to trailers from an unmanageable variety of sources.  criticker.com is another site that has links to trailers and the IMDb links on every movie's page, but I can't find any way to search by those IDs, even with a Google Site Search.  Also, allowed sources for videos are Youtube, Google Videos, or Metacafe (though there are sites like keepvid.com that say they can create direct download links for all those).  listal.com is similar, and only allows Youtube videos, but some of the videos for a title are things like "Making of" or interviews.

Most interesting to me was that Media Center Master was doing Advanced Title Searches at IMDb.  Added as feature request here.

[mgpw4me@yahoo.com]

If there were any that allowed searching by IMDB ID, a script might be able to run in silent mode, but none of those trailer sites do (nor does hd-trailers.net, another one I found).  

Now that's an interesting thought.  Most trailer sites have some supplemental information (actors, release year, etc.) which could be related to information already in the PVD database (regardless of source).  This would have to be dealt with as unformatted data, but SOME logical conclusions could be drawn...a 4 character number would "probably" be a release year for example.  With a title and (year or partial cast list), a script could draw reasonable conclusions for "most" movies.  That might mean you end up with a nudie of Adrienne Barbeau from the Swamp Thing instead of a trailer, but maybe that's not such a bad thing <grin>.

If a person were presented with a list of thumbnails (as with posters), such a "thing" (ugh) could be controlled.

At any rate, It's an interesting "challenge", so I'll commit.  I'll look at a couple of sites and see if a script can reasonably select trailers (over the next week or two).  Hopefully it won't end up like my "find an image for each person in my database" programs...100gb and growing.

[rick.ca]

I've now downloaded about 200 trailers. In each case, my objective was to find the best quality original (i.e., valid, not some fan-made crap) trailer available. Also, I wanted a trailer for every movie on my wish list, that I have media for, and that I have viewed in the recent past. So the age and type of movie varied greatly, as did the quality of trailers I ultimately found.

The main thing I learned was that there are really two separate issues involved in this question. First, whether or not a trailer exists and the quality of those that do depend on the age and popularity of the movie. Any recent release of a popular movie will have HD trailers, and they will be very easy to find. Tricks may needed to download them, but that's another matter. Movies more than just a few years old are not as likely to have HD trailers. Some searching will be required to find them among more common lower resolution trailers that were the standard at the time of release. As the movie gets older, it becomes less likely a HD (or anything that can be viewed full screen) is available. Very popular movies, of course, are re-released with a new trailer. Or, more likely, re-issued on DVD with a remastered trailer which is made available by the publisher or otherwise finds it's way onto the Internet. I originally assumed there would be more good quality trailers for old movies—provided by people who have ripped them from DVD's—but that doesn't seem to be the case.

So the second issue is the determination of the best method for searching for a trailer—given the nature of the movie (i.e., the first issue). If it's a current release, it makes sense to avoid the crap on Youtube and go straight to where there are only HQ original trailers posted. I found HD-Trailers.net a good choice for that (once I decided downloading a 100+ MB file for a 2 minute trailer wasn't totally insane). The same trailers are readily available elsewhere, in different formats and resolutions. For older movies, Youtube often seemed the best source. It's frustrating searching through the crap, but using Greasemonkey scripts to identify and highlight the HD versions makes it a lot easier. In some cases, I found doing a Google search that excluded Youtube helpful. Interestingly, the Youtube results are still included (obviously because it's owned by Google), but shown separately after any other results. That search often confirmed there was no other good source available, so I could then be more focused on finding the best available on Youtube.

Looking at it this way, it's difficult to imagine how the search process could be automated. I don't see any effective substitute for the necessary user judgments in determining the best source to check first, which trailer to choose based on attributes and descriptions available, when it's necessary to play the trailer to determine quality or validity, etc. Also, I wonder if it's feasible or practical to duplicate the various "tricks" used to download via Firefox (i.e., modifying pages using Greasemonkey, and downloading using DownloadHelper).