Trailer and MovingPictures (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter kalif
- Start date
- August 30, 2006
- 408
- 36
- Home Country
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Afghanistan
Hi,
I've read the trailers feature request threads in the wiki and it's not just the most frequently requested feature, but it's one of the oldest.
It appears that the developers are stuck in a perception that to do local trailers right, it will require a complex architecture and a lot of effort.
While this might be true, I think this mind-set has resulted in killing a local trailer feature despite it being extremely sought after.
There are incredibly simple solutions available to bring local trailer suppport to MovingPictures, but the developers maintain the position that it needs to be done right and will be very complex.
There's nothing wrong with providing a very simple, quick and limited capability that would suffice and appease most people. You could clearly explain that there is no support, it's not an invitation for a flood of enhancement requests, etc. and that any future development may completely change the solution (so that developers don't feel locked in to bad early design decisions).
The simple solution is this:
Look for <moviename> - trailer.* in the same directory as the movie. If it's there, then play that instead of jumping to OnlineVideos. In PHP coding terms, this is about 4 lines.
Many people are more than happy to conform to this limitation. Those limitations would be:
- no ability to specify size (e.g. 720p vs. 640 etc.)
- no ability to specify language
- no ability to use alternative filenaming conventions
- no ability to locate trailer in alternative file location
- the <moviename> part must be the exact same as the movie's filename (or first part of a multi-part), in the same way that subtitle files must be the same
- no facility to actually download the trailer (although OnlineVideos does this for current movies already)
- no indexing, no entries in the database, no enhanced functionality apart from simply playing it if it's there.
It's really that simple and would take minimal effort to introduce.
Sure, it doesn't cater for a million different scenarios, but at least after 2 or more years of waiting, we'd all finally be able to link our trailers to our movies. I know several people with hundreds of trailers they've amassed over the years, because sites like Apple and IMDB may not retain them or source them.
The current capability to stream the video is fine for those people in countries and with ISPs that provide fast and cheap connections, but the rest of the world doesn't want to continuously download and wait for trailers to stream. And streaming usually is erratic and choppy. Eventually people stop using the facility because it's just too frustrating to watch streaming trailers. (Yes, I'm aware you can specify stream caching sizes but that misses the main point).
I can't really understand why, after several years, this functionality continues to be voted down by developers as a low priority when it's one of the most sought-after features. Evolution should not be halted because of the idealistic need for perfect solutions. Sometimes adopting an "It'll do for now" approach will suffice.
I've read the trailers feature request threads in the wiki and it's not just the most frequently requested feature, but it's one of the oldest.
It appears that the developers are stuck in a perception that to do local trailers right, it will require a complex architecture and a lot of effort.
While this might be true, I think this mind-set has resulted in killing a local trailer feature despite it being extremely sought after.
There are incredibly simple solutions available to bring local trailer suppport to MovingPictures, but the developers maintain the position that it needs to be done right and will be very complex.
There's nothing wrong with providing a very simple, quick and limited capability that would suffice and appease most people. You could clearly explain that there is no support, it's not an invitation for a flood of enhancement requests, etc. and that any future development may completely change the solution (so that developers don't feel locked in to bad early design decisions).
The simple solution is this:
Look for <moviename> - trailer.* in the same directory as the movie. If it's there, then play that instead of jumping to OnlineVideos. In PHP coding terms, this is about 4 lines.
Many people are more than happy to conform to this limitation. Those limitations would be:
- no ability to specify size (e.g. 720p vs. 640 etc.)
- no ability to specify language
- no ability to use alternative filenaming conventions
- no ability to locate trailer in alternative file location
- the <moviename> part must be the exact same as the movie's filename (or first part of a multi-part), in the same way that subtitle files must be the same
- no facility to actually download the trailer (although OnlineVideos does this for current movies already)
- no indexing, no entries in the database, no enhanced functionality apart from simply playing it if it's there.
It's really that simple and would take minimal effort to introduce.
Sure, it doesn't cater for a million different scenarios, but at least after 2 or more years of waiting, we'd all finally be able to link our trailers to our movies. I know several people with hundreds of trailers they've amassed over the years, because sites like Apple and IMDB may not retain them or source them.
The current capability to stream the video is fine for those people in countries and with ISPs that provide fast and cheap connections, but the rest of the world doesn't want to continuously download and wait for trailers to stream. And streaming usually is erratic and choppy. Eventually people stop using the facility because it's just too frustrating to watch streaming trailers. (Yes, I'm aware you can specify stream caching sizes but that misses the main point).
I can't really understand why, after several years, this functionality continues to be voted down by developers as a low priority when it's one of the most sought-after features. Evolution should not be halted because of the idealistic need for perfect solutions. Sometimes adopting an "It'll do for now" approach will suffice.
- Moderator
- #13
I am speaking for myself here but I think the other Moving Pictures developers probably feel similar. At my day job I continually have to make compromises with the software I write. This is based on many things, mostly stuff that is not relevant to this conversation, but it is often a fact of life that you have to take shortcuts when running a software company. At my day job I do not get to pick what we implement, when we implement it, and about half the time my protests about a particular dirty hack biting us in the ass are ignored.
With Moving Pictures on the other hand I get to do things right. I can take my time with the software and create a stable and expandable implementation that will last us years. Because of this approach Moving Pictures has a highly customizable menuing and filtering system. This has proved beneficial when implementing many other features such as parental controls, follw.it integration and BasicHome integration with skins like StreamedMP.
When movie-xml.com went down instead of hard coding a new scraper for IMDb we created a scriptable importer system. This took longer to implement but because of this we now can proudly say that we support over a dozen languages for importing movie data, mostly thanks to community created scripts. Scripts that could not have been made had we not taken our time with our original implementation and done things right.
At my day job I do not have the option to make sure we do things right. Here I do. I am sorry if this is upsetting for you but this is the method of development that is the most rewarding for me. And I think taking our time with things and doing things right will create a better product.
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As for trailer support I think the Online Videos integration that is now available with MediaPortal 1.2 is very good. I think a few usability issues need to be worked out and it needs to be made more clear to the user how to get things setup but it is a concrete solution that works now. We would still like to add support for locally stored trailers (and other types of 'bonus content') but this is a lower priority because a working solution is already in place.
With Moving Pictures on the other hand I get to do things right. I can take my time with the software and create a stable and expandable implementation that will last us years. Because of this approach Moving Pictures has a highly customizable menuing and filtering system. This has proved beneficial when implementing many other features such as parental controls, follw.it integration and BasicHome integration with skins like StreamedMP.
When movie-xml.com went down instead of hard coding a new scraper for IMDb we created a scriptable importer system. This took longer to implement but because of this we now can proudly say that we support over a dozen languages for importing movie data, mostly thanks to community created scripts. Scripts that could not have been made had we not taken our time with our original implementation and done things right.
At my day job I do not have the option to make sure we do things right. Here I do. I am sorry if this is upsetting for you but this is the method of development that is the most rewarding for me. And I think taking our time with things and doing things right will create a better product.
------------------------------------
As for trailer support I think the Online Videos integration that is now available with MediaPortal 1.2 is very good. I think a few usability issues need to be worked out and it needs to be made more clear to the user how to get things setup but it is a concrete solution that works now. We would still like to add support for locally stored trailers (and other types of 'bonus content') but this is a lower priority because a working solution is already in place.
- Moderator
- #14
AW: Trailer and MovingPictures
I tested the onlinevideos trailer support and it works indeed very well! But if you choose imdb as trailer site you can't see the video resolution do you? So you don't know if the trailer is HD or not.. and I always prefer HD but I don't wanna look at all trailers to see which has good quality or not.. I know for some movies there are no HD trailers anyway, but if there are I would like to see it right from the start. =) Although I guess this is not a MovPic problem.
Thanks for your work and take your time for your implementations!
I tested the onlinevideos trailer support and it works indeed very well! But if you choose imdb as trailer site you can't see the video resolution do you? So you don't know if the trailer is HD or not.. and I always prefer HD but I don't wanna look at all trailers to see which has good quality or not.. I know for some movies there are no HD trailers anyway, but if there are I would like to see it right from the start. =) Although I guess this is not a MovPic problem.
Thanks for your work and take your time for your implementations!
- Moderator
- #15
Re: AW: Trailer and MovingPictures
In OnlineVideos configuration for the IMDB site util you can set the following:
AlwaysPlaybackPreferredQuality = True
PreferredVideoQuality = HD480 or HD720
There definitely is HD trailers on IMDB, I always default mine to HD480
In OnlineVideos configuration for the IMDB site util you can set the following:
AlwaysPlaybackPreferredQuality = True
PreferredVideoQuality = HD480 or HD720
There definitely is HD trailers on IMDB, I always default mine to HD480
- Moderator
- #16
Depending on the video provider (IMDb has several different video providers) you can choose SD, HD480 and HD720. If you don't get the dialog that particular video is only available in a single format (either SD or HD). Most newer videos on IMDB give the quality choice though.
- Moderator
- #18
Its only available in MediaPortal 1.2 Beta.
- Moderator
- #20
AW: Trailer and MovingPictures
Thanks for your answers!
The problem is when I click the Trailer Button I get a whole list and don't see which quality the videos/clips/trailers are. See attached screenshot..
Am I doing something wrong? Should there directly a trailer be played? I checked prefer HD in the onlinevideos configuration.
Trailer Button Hyperlink is:
<hyperlink>4755</hyperlink>
<hyperlinkParameter>site:IMDb Movie Trailers|search:#(iif(neq(#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.imdb_id,''),#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.imdb_id,#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.title))|return:Locked</hyperlinkParameter>
Thanks for your answers!
The problem is when I click the Trailer Button I get a whole list and don't see which quality the videos/clips/trailers are. See attached screenshot..
Am I doing something wrong? Should there directly a trailer be played? I checked prefer HD in the onlinevideos configuration.
Trailer Button Hyperlink is:
<hyperlink>4755</hyperlink>
<hyperlinkParameter>site:IMDb Movie Trailers|search:#(iif(neq(#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.imdb_id,''),#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.imdb_id,#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.title))|return:Locked</hyperlinkParameter>
