Movie Stills

[homepc]

I noticed that in the skin I'm using, in the movieviewer screen, there is a section for movie stills. I also noticed that non of my movies have stills. I used the internal spider to retrieve movie information and a image. But it did not retrieve stills. How do I get the spider to also retrieve movie stills? Or is there another way I should do it.

Also on the same subject, how do I get movie trailers for the movies that I already have? Is there an automated way?

thanks
Ray

[tswhite70]

For stills you need to use the IMDB.com spider in the database editor. Once you've selected the movie you want from the spider results click the Download Stills button under the IMDB stills tab. This will create a "stills" folder inside your movie folder and download up to about 10 stills from IMDB if they are available. You'll see them flash in the spider window as they are downloaded. (note this is on the last non-expiring version, I don't know if Steven has changed the new version). Oh yeah, if IMDB doesn't have stills you can manually get stills from elsewhere and create a stills folder for them under the movie folder and refresh your db and Xlobby will pick them up. For some movies (home movies, independent films, etc) I just use ZP to do some screen caps of the film and dump them in the stills directory.

As for trailers there's not an automated method available. Personally whenever I get a new movie I rip any of the trailers/previews on the disk as single Vobs regardless of whether I have the movie or not. I also use the Apple Movie Trailers Import Utilityto get some trailers. All of these go into a "movietrailers" directory on one of my shares. In this directory each movie gets a folder (named the same as the movie database title field). I put whatever trailer(s) I have for the movie in the respective folder. Then on my movie details screen I have a play trailer button that passes "\\share\moviettrailers\%movies>title%" to ZP to queue the trailer(s) in that folder. I've got a few movies where I haven't been able to find a quality trailer for but for 95% of my collection I have quality Vobs ripped from the original disc or from another movie's disc or hd trailer from Apple (in a few cases I've gone to the trouble of getting them from the HD-DVD website).

good luck,
tsw

[homepc]

tswhite70,

GREAT!!! Thanks!! you have been so helpful!! I now have the stills playing. I'm still working on the movie trailers, but I have a good understanding on how to get that to work thanks to you.

Thanks again
ray