Downloading local trailers

[the.chad 0]

Hi

 

I'd like to start off saying I've used Emby (oringally MB3 when I started) for the past year and have found it an absolute treat to use.

It's been the perfect HTPC solution that has been easy to configure & 100% non-tech savy partner approved (which was the biggest stumbling block for every other front end solution).

 

 

 

I've had the trailers plugin downloading through to a local folder on my HTPC which has been running for the past 6 or so months.

It was configured to download 'x' amount of trailers and refresh them every month.

 

To memory, I recall setting this up in the settings of the trailer plugin.

 

I had this local folder configured into the advanced intros plugin so anytime I played a movie it would pick 2 random files (just like the movies  )

 

Just over the past couple weeks I noticed the intro had stopped working and have only had the time to investigate it recently.

 

When attempting to backtrack my setup, I can no longer see the option to cache a designated number of local trailers in the plugin.

And my local folders has emptied out (presumably from reaching the refresh period and then not being able to download due to settings no longer existing?)

 

I have dabbled in using Cinema Mode for these intro trailers, but my HTPC is on a wireless link which can be quite choppy at times which makes streaming difficult.

 

Is there still a setting in the trailer plugin, or another setup someone could recommend, which allows me to download/refresh trailers locally on the HTPC so I could have either Advanced Intros or Cinema Mode point to bypass slow internet?

 

 

Any assistance or recommendations are much appreciated 

[MrFlibbles 21]

I have only just noticed this myself. Is this no longer available permanently?

[derekd 3]

Came to ask the same question. Trailers seemed to stop downloading for me near the end of Feb.

 

I am unable to stream, my Internet connection is very poor so trailers only play for a few seconds before buffering.

 

Setting used to be in the Plugins > Channels area:

 

 

Nothing anymore:

 

[BeppoMonkeyBoy 98]

I actually wrote a cheeky plugin to downlaod youtube trailers for items in your existing collection, its pretty easy to do, but i've not made it publically avavialbe as youtube downloading is a big no no in some area's

[BATTLE DONKEY 98]

Though it won't be hosted in the plugins section for the reasons you mention, is it possible to make it available from eg. Dropbox or whatever else along with instructions on how to use it?

[ebr 14910]

He needs to deliver it on a separate site.  Not this one.  Thanks.

[BeppoMonkeyBoy 98]

He needs to deliver it on a separate site.  Not this one.  Thanks.

Yep, Last thing i want to do is annoy ebr.

[the.chad 0]

Came to ask the same question. Trailers seemed to stop downloading for me near the end of Feb.

 

I am unable to stream, my Internet connection is very poor so trailers only play for a few seconds before buffering.

 

Setting used to be in the Plugins > Channels area:

 

 

Nothing anymore:

 

 

 

Yep, that's the image I had in my head

 

Does anyone know if these options are still available somewhere?

[MrFlibbles 21]

Is there an official word on this? Is it broken or is the removal of local trailer downloading intentional? If so, what are our options to restore similar funtionality?

[speechles 1917]

 

Do you not have the local trailers scheduled task after install the plugin?

Hint: it downloads them into your media folders now, so you must have the movie to get a trailer for it.

 

The channel plugin settings you are talking about relate to streaming. All it was doing was pre cache these streams locally. This ability yeah, I no longer see how to accomplish. You have to stream new trailers fresh every time now I guess.

 

But I never used that method. I always used the local trailers scheduled task and put trailers with my media.

Edited April 16, 2015 by speechles

[AlmasKabir 4]

 

Do you not have the local trailers scheduled task after install the plugin?

Hint: it downloads them into your media folders now, so you must have the movie to get a trailer for it.

 

The channel plugin settings you are talking about relate to streaming. All it was doing was pre cache these streams locally. This ability yeah, I no longer see how to accomplish. You have to stream new trailers fresh every time now I guess.

 

But I never used that method. I always used the local trailers scheduled task and put trailers with my media.

 

 

Yes, I have the Local Trailers in the Scheduled Tasks, and it used to work fine. But, now I see that it's not working. Whenever I click the button to run it, it runs and stops immediately saying it took zero seconds! Is it broken, or is some of my settings got reset?!?

 

Thanx.

[MrFlibbles 21]

Thanks speechles, guess I need to pay more attention. I missed (or had fogotten) local trailer download was now a scheduled task. It has been running on my server and while some trailers are missing, it has downloaded some recently so it appears to be working intermittently. Or, there are no trailers avaliable for the newer movies added.

[speechles 1917]

Yeah, maybe I spoke too soon. I don't even see the local trailers plugin anymore at all in the plugins/ folder. So it seems an update uninstalled it on us and no longer makes use of it. I get an instant completed in 0 seconds now as well. Odd.

 

Was this intentional? Did my post exposing it still functioned cause its removal? Should I have said nothing? It seems rather "indian giving" giving us the feature to snatch it away rudely. Without official word on what is going on all we can do speculate. Why they want us to speculate is weird. Perhaps now this with nudge someone into a reply?

 

As an after the fact, can we please get this feature added back. This is another moment of moving too fast likely, where things get overlooked. Please move the priority up for this to be addressed.

 

Thank you, sincerely, teh speechles. ...

 

-- BTW freenode / #emby via irc has a growing and thriving community. Everyone is welcome to join and digress about issues such as this, and we can collaborate on ideas to resolve.

Edited April 30, 2015 by speechles

[Happy2Play 8270]

I know all I get when scheduled task is triggered is.

2015-04-29 19:45:58.8626 Info - App: Executing Download local trailers
2015-04-29 19:45:58.8782 Info - App: Download local trailers Completed after 0 minute(s) and 0 seconds

Edited April 30, 2015 by Happy2Play

[ebr 14910]

The local trailer plug-in was discontinued about a year ago I think.

[Happy2Play 8270]

The local trailer plug-in was discontinued about a year ago I think.

They worked a month or so ago (Trailers plugin).  So has local trailer download been eliminated?  If so is the scheduled task going to be removed?

 

 

edit I see in the MediaBrowser.Plugins.Trailers.xml the setting <EnableLocalTrailerDownloads>true</EnableLocalTrailerDownloads> controls the schedule task if this feature is truly gone.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Happy2Play

[speechles 1917]

@@ebr

 

So we are going to play that game? You have no idea why shortly after I posted how to download them, suddenly it doesn't work? This is too suspicious. Without comment from @@Luke this makes it even more suspicious.

 

Just asking for honesty and transparency here, nothing more. Legally, downloading the trailers is a very grey area. Is this the reason for its deprecation? Can you elaborate what is going on? Is this just going to be a thread "swept under the rug"? Time will tell...

Edited April 30, 2015 by speechles

[Luke 37046]

Yes, it is that, and also, the fact that we ever had a downloader was really just a carry over from MB2. We can only handle so many projects. There hasn't been enough people using it to justify us continuing to maintain it. The few users who do use it constantly require support for "i added xyz movie and got no trailer"...we just don't have the capacity to research all of those. There are tons of other tools that can do this, like metabrowser, or radeon also has one. I would just look at those.

[CBers 6769]

You could always try @@radeon's YouTube plugin:

 

http://www.ballingtons.com/products/

[speechles 1917]

@@CBers

 

Why?

 

Let's focus on the emby core team for a moment. Why haven't they replied? They want to discourage, disenfranchise, and disrespect users. Without transparency and honesty this is what you get. I want a legit answer, not a ridiculous substitute offered. No offense. But this thread deserves an answer like any other. Can we get an answer?

[Luke 37046]

@@CBers

 

Why?

 

Let's focus on the emby core team for a moment. Why haven't they replied? They want to discourage, disenfranchise, and disrespect users. Without transparency and honesty this is what you get. I want a legit answer, not a ridiculous substitute offered. No offense. But this thread deserves an answer like any other. Can we get an answer?

 

I thought I just did. That's really all there is to it. 

[speechles 1917]

@@Luke

I understand now why. In the best interest of insulating emby from infringement. This is all you had to say.

 

Trailers

Under the 1976 Copyright Act, all works of art, including trailers, are copyrighted as soon as they are created. Since the U.S. joined the Berne Convention (a copyright treaty) in 1988, no formalities (such as copyright registration with the Copyright Office or a copyright notice) are required to maintain one's copyright.   However, in order to be able to make use of the various remedies found in the U.S. Copyright Act, such as infringement damages, injunctive relief, etc., it is important to register your work with the Copyright Office and place a copyright notice with the date on it.   Therefore, trailers after 1976 will be copyrighted and will require permission for usage from the copyright holder whether or not they have a copyright notice or are registered with the Copyright Office. 

 

However, prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, there was a previous copyright act, known as the Copyright Act of 1909.   Under this statute, once an artist had created a work of art, he immediately was granted what was called an "unpublished copyright."  Until such time as he published his work, he had a common law copyright.   Once he published this work by an act such as making thousands of copies and handing them out to the public, and did this without putting a copyright notice on his work, his work was considered published without notice and went into the public domain, where all were free to use this work without permission from or compensation to the copyright holder. Registration consisted of depositing 2 copies of your work with the Copyright Office once you had published it with a copyright notice. So not having a registration in the Copyright Office does not mean that as work is not copyrighted. The true issue is whether it contained a copyright notice when it was distributed to the public.   The initial term of copyright under the Copyright Act of 1909 was 28 years.   In the 28 th year, the owner of the copyright had to renew the copyright.   If he did not, his work went into the public domain.   If he did, he received another 28 years of copyright protection.   Once the 1976 Act was enacted which gave all works of art 75 years, a 12 year additional term was added onto the 28+28 years = 56 years, thus granting a total of 75 years to these works.   With the Copyright Extension, these works all have copyright protection for 95 years. 

 

As you can see, there are 2 ways for a work to go into the public domain:   1) either through not placing a copyright notice on it in the first place or 2) through not renewing it.

 

The trailer issue falls into the first way.   Most of the trailers prior to 1976 were created as new works, which contained new material (such as" Coming Soon" etc.) as well as scenes from the films they were advertising.   The trailers did not contain copyright notices nor were they registered in the Copyright Office or the Library of Congress.   Consequently, the new material at the very least went into the public domain.   Many of these trailers also contained material that appeared to be from the movie but was actually shot directly for the trailer.   That material, since it did not contain a copyright notice, would also fall into the public domain.    

 

The major argument has been that the scenes from the film itself were protected by the copyright on the complete film.   However, one could argue that once you cut a clip from a film, it is a separate entity and without a complete and separate copyright and notice, it too becomes public domain by its publication.   Because of this, most studio contracts have required licensees of clip material to copyright their productions so as to maintain the studio's copyright in the clip. 

 

  Courts generally tend to back the copyright holder, since the Constitution has granted copyright holders rights to their works in order that they may prosper.   Generally, publication is not defined as handing out three copies to your friends.   However, running a television commercial prior to 1976 without a copyright notice has been construed as publication.   On the other hand, one broadcast of "Peter Pan" on NBC (to millions of people) was held not to be.   Recently, the Martin Luther King estate lost their lawsuit over the "I Have a Dream" speech when a Georgia court held that the dissemination of his speech to all the newspapers and the news cameras without a copyright notice on the written speeches which he had given to the news media before he made the speech, constituted publication without notice and therefore his speech was in the public domain.   This is currently being adjudicated in another court of law which may rule in the opposite direction.

 

In any event, industry custom and practice has been to use trailers prior to 1972 based on the above information.   Most stock footage houses, which sell this material, can give you this same explanation.

 

Furthermore, trailers prior to 1960 offer an additional incentive, since under SAG rules, theatrical feature films prior to 1960 do not require residuals to be paid to actors, writer and directors when the entire film is broadcast.   Consequently, writers and directors in clips and trailers do not have to be paid and actors do not have to be cleared or paid as long as the trailer clearly identifies the film on screen over the clip as it is played or it is identified verbally.   This information is not contained in the SAG Code Book but can be obtained from a SAG representative via a telephone call.

Edited April 30, 2015 by speechles

[ebr 14910]

Two points:

 

1) Luke's point about us not having the resources to continue to maintain this as a working solution is just as big of an issue as the legality (both are deal-breakers).  The truth is that these types of things require constant maintenance because the content owners (or at least deliverers) are trying to thwart the very thing you are trying to accomplish - downloading the content permanently.

 

2) The legality will not necessarily lie with copyright of the original work but, rather, with the copying of a stream delivered by someone like YouTube - who expressly prohibits that in their TOS.

 

Those two things together just make it not possible for us to continue this.  But, as Luke stated, there are other options.

[speechles 1917]

@@ebr

 

regular expression maintenance isn't fun, agreed (if there was an api, then of course it wouldnt be a grey area..heh..regex parsing).. nor is adhere to every tiny detail on the http transaction to a point they feel is acceptable (until they fail and chase the logic in the http sessions to find the differences is a chore) to begin the stream. In that regard, surely #1 is the bigger reason why this is the case. But #2 will become the bigger issue as we draw further into the "digital" future. If someone were to decide to implicate this software, along with several other such examples and the hammers start to fall. You don't want to become a nail for them to pound on. I completely see why you have to curate your plugins the core team decides to keep long term, versus "experiment with". The experiment with local trailer support is over. Others hopefully have the same rationale as I do on the subject.

Edited April 30, 2015 by speechles

[AlmasKabir 4]

I believe, the Local Trailers download was one of the best features of EMBY. I am shocked to learn that you have purposely discontinued it!!

 

I, on behalf of a thousand more users, request you to re-enable the feature ASAP. If you still think it is not worth spending your time upon or giving support for, please make it a paid plugin. Those of us want to have trailers stored locally would even pay for it to justify your tech-support.

 

Thanx!