[tvdb-scott]

We're not asking for the ability to automatically download the trailers (yet). We're asking JUST for the ability to play a trailer that's associated with a movie. AMT is perfectly fine for movies that have recently been released, but what if I want to watch the trailer for a movie that came out 10 years ago? It's no longer on AMT, so it can't be watched through there. I'm happy putting the work in to maintain my trailers and name the properly, but there's no decent way of associating these with movies right now.

As both myself and timdog pointed out, being able to choose the movie you want to see by watching the trailers is a perfect example of why this would be a good addition. Yes, the movie summary is fine, but sometimes a 60 second trailer does a better job explaining the movie than 2 paragraphs of text that takes 2 minutes to read outloud for people. Trailers also provide a way of showing the cinematography style, which the summary can rarely do.

[Gamester17]

Unless you get XBMC to automaticly stream or download trailers and assosiate them with specific movies somehow in someway then you first have to come up with an to all acceptable scheme of naming trailers to associate them to specific movie-file, simplest way is probebely the ones suggested in this other topic-thread here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=22138

[Gamester17]

See also this other suggestion to add Movie Trailers association for database items in the video library view:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=26186

[tvdb-scott]

Yeah, I read that thread. The one that makes the most sense is your suggestion:
Movie_Name.Trailer.avi

The only thing I'm concerned with is that XBMC allows movies all in one directory or with each movie having its own directory. This suggestion works for the former setup, but does it work for the latter?

Another possibility that makes it easier for the developers would be to have a source for trailers completely separate from the movies (or multiple sources... whatever). Then each trailer would have to be named movie_name.avi. This would probably make it easier for the scraper as well, since instead of multiple regex's that could possibly conflict with certain movie names (think movies that have 'trailer' in the name), it's just one extra file system call to see if a file exists.

[Nuka1195]

remember if a movie's filename is already 42 characters long, you can't add .trailer to it.

[tvdb-scott]

So another reason for the 2nd option I gave. Having separate sources for trailers seems like the best solution for a number of reasons.

[HarshReality]

OK, here is an even sillier idea.. we are taking png and jpg files and simply changing the extension so xbmc can use them as thumbs. Why not simply establish .trl as a trailer extension and then take trailers and define that as the distinguishing factor.

Movie.tbn
Movie.nfo
Movie.avi
Movie.trl

[tvdb-scott]

Because changing the file extension is confusing (for some users) and unnecessary.

I use my media on systems other than my Xbox, so I'd have to add .trl as a file association on those systems and hope that it's handled properly. Also, what if I want to find all of my mpg trailers and replace them with avi trailers? It's much more complicated when you can't look at the file extension.

Isn't it just easier creating trailer sources and putting all of the trailers in that one (or multiple) location(s)?

[tvdb-scott]

Ahh... also, AMT would be able to download movie trailers directly to that folder, named accurately (movie_name.avi), and then the library would be able to use them as well. Easy integration of the two interfaces.

[Gamester17]

OK, here is an even sillier idea.. we are taking png and jpg files and simply changing the extension so xbmc can use them as thumbs. Why not simply establish .trl as a trailer extension and then take trailers and define that as the distinguishing factor.

Movie.tbn
Movie.nfo
Movie.avi
Movie.trl

Like I argued in the other thread, because then you would not be able to play it back easily on other platforms other than XBMC. That is why the actual extention should not change, unless it already is a broadly adopted standard to rename .AVI or .MOV file-extentions to .TRL in that way (which as far as I know, it is not).

[ShortySco]

I also think this would be a great feature.

I've been thinking about this and have made some observations.

I was looking at one of the new unsupported linksbox builds and noticed this python script....

Code:

# This 2-line script brings up the Wikipedia entry for the artist of the
# currently playing song

import xbmc
xbmc.executebuiltin('XBMC.BrowseURL(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/'+xbmc.Player().getMusicInfoTag().getArtist()+')')

I'd imagine it's also possible to get the currently playing movies files name and pass it to a search url, then parse said results for a trailer url and play it.

Then just wack it into your Favourites, and we have context sensitive trailers.

Is it possible in for python to know the currently highlited file (last one highlighted before the script ran)? Then we would not need to start our movie to lookup trailer.

If it's not possible to go straight to the trailer, then we could just go to the imdb results page in links (But then this would not work on standard builds of course)

I'll need to have a look at learning some python!

Shorty

[ShortySco]

Oops sorry i meant to post this in the other thread, but i guess it's still a little relevant.

Shorty

[ShortySco]

I've been thinking about this and have made some observations.

I was looking at one of the new unsupported linksbox builds and noticed this python script....

Code:

# This 2-line script brings up the Wikipedia entry for the artist of the
# currently playing song

import xbmc
xbmc.executebuiltin('XBMC.BrowseURL(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/'+xbmc.Player().getMusicInfoTag().getArtist()+')')

I'd imagine it's also possible to get the currently playing movies files name and pass it to a search url, then parse said results for a trailer url and play it.

Then just wack it into your Favourites, and we have context sensitive trailers.

Is it possible in for python to know the currently highlited file (last one highlighted before the script ran)? Then we would not need to start our movie to lookup trailer.

If it's not possible to go straight to the trailer, then we could just go to the imdb results page in links (But then this would not work on standard builds of course)

I'll need to have a look at learning some python!

Shorty

P.S

Just wrote this and then saw what Nukka said it mostly already, but like i said, we could use the favourites menu too, making it fewer clicks, i think?

[KidKiwi]

I also would like to see a "trailers" option. Like many, with a system available to others - friends coming over, distant family staying etc, the option of being able to "preview" a flick would be great. Any further happenings on this? (I was just about to start a new topic about this very thing when I found this thread)

[KidKiwi]

I've researched the "trailer" idea among the forums here and while there is a lot of interest, it would appear the devs focus is elsewhere (no disrespect meant here), which is okay because it means XBMC is still getting better elsewhere. While I would like a "trailer" option myself, I don't have the skills to do the programming work (or time to learn), so all I can do is hope

One way I thought I could achieve this is to create a preview source area and run trailers from there. Meaning, the window opens and you have your 3 wide-icons on screen (if you run it this way)...Movies, TVShows, Previews. Selecting "Previews" takes you to the available previews area, setup just like the movies area (even online info grabbing). Being a trailer it could be a one file deal (ISO stored locally all in the same folder perhaps) named for the movie so the online grab could take place. This could be setup as a constantly running playlist if desired.

Any thoughts?