Making it more obvious a trailer or the main media is being played

[brothom 177]

I'm not sure if this was requested already so here goes.

Recently I've been adding trailers to media and this works pretty well. When starting a movie however it's not really clear that a trailer is being displayed at the time (unless the trailer itself begins stating it's a trailer in the sense of traditional trailer "Coming this May!", of course).

I'd like to see if we can make it more clear to viewers that a trailer is being played at the current moment by (for example) adding the logo/icon/banner of the source of the trailer somewhere. For example: 

Using the box art:

Using the logo: 

This is just a suggestion of course.

Maybe also adding the "Trailer for X" text would make it clearer a trailer is currently playing and not the main media.

Edited July 22, 2025 by brothom
Clarification

[visproduction 315]

Bro,

Your feature request is fine.  This is just another approach to let the user know that a trailer is being shown.

With Cinema Intros, I make the title uses the word trailer in the name.  The title should appear for a few seconds when the trailer starts.  I've also noticed that unless you start the filename of the trailer with a dash, the file name will be abbreviated to whatever comes after a dash.

The lower left area of the player shows the title when it begins to play.

For example:

How to Train Your Dragon 2 - Trailer (2025).mp4

Will appear in the player as:
Trailer (2025)

 

- How to Train Your Dragon 2 trailer 2025.mp4

Will appear as:

How to Train Your Dragon 2 trailer 2025

I've already reported this issue.  I think it's caused by code that strips away the title when different resolutions are used for media, so the video resolution pull down on the media page will just show:

1080P 

720P

This treatment from the code is not needed for trailer titles, but it seems to run anyway which I believe causes this issue.  The fix is to use only one dash and no parethenticals in the trailer title and add the word trailer if you want the user to realize they are watching just a trailer.

Hope that makes sense.

Edited July 22, 2025 by visproduction

[brothom 177]

@visproductionabsolutely, messing with the filename is one way but after the UI "fades out" there's no identification left so just to make sure a trailer is shown, I think it would be best to make trailers appear just a little different from normal media entries.

Besides; some movies start so abrupt they might as well be a trailer if you're not looking at the title for those 3 seconds they're gone.

We could also just edit the metadata and all that jazz, but that doesn't change the fact that from my screenshot, other than the logo/image there's no way to tell if a trailer or movie is shown.

[Luke 42077]

HI, yes there is room for improvement here. Thanks.

[Smitty018210 143]

On 7/22/2025 at 7:50 AM, brothom said:

I'm not sure if this was requested already so here goes.

Recently I've been adding trailers to media and this works pretty well. When starting a movie however it's not really clear that a trailer is being displayed at the time (unless the trailer itself begins stating it's a trailer in the sense of traditional trailer "Coming this May!", of course).

I'd like to see if we can make it more clear to viewers that a trailer is being played at the current moment by (for example) adding the logo/icon/banner of the source of the trailer somewhere. For example: 

Using the box art:

Using the logo: 

This is just a suggestion of course.

Maybe also adding the "Trailer for X" text would make it clearer a trailer is currently playing and not the main media.

Yeah I like this logo look, but not in the bottom right there, Maybe top left?

[brothom 177]

23 minutes ago, Smitty018210 said:

Yeah I like this logo look, but not in the bottom right there, Maybe top left?

I think top left would be difficult because the on-screen controls are there usually (back button).

Also had one of my users asked me why every time she picked a movie to watch another random movie showed up. Apparently I had enabled trailers for movies and forgot about it so it showed her random trailers but that apparently wasn't clear enough for her so I disabled the feature again for now.

Edited August 10, 2025 by brothom

[Smitty018210 143]

34 minutes ago, brothom said:

I think top left would be difficult because the on-screen controls are there usually (back button).

Also had one of my users asked me why every time she picked a movie to watch another random movie showed up. Apparently I had enabled trailers for movies and forgot about it so it showed her random trailers but that apparently wasn't clear enough for her so I disabled the feature again for now.

I was thinking top left because that is were it is when a movie is playing and you interact with the UI. (with mouse/key or remote controller) 

Maybe the Dev team could add a way to put a bumper in front of trailers. Something like "Coming Soon" or for local trailers "Movies already in Library"

Something like that. 

Edited August 10, 2025 by Smitty018210