Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Embedding trailers in websites

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-14-2012, 07:20 PM:

I have recently been "embedding" YouTube trailers for our movies in our website, but lately it's getting harder and harder to find trailers that don't start off with an unrelated commercial, or have links to other sites built into them, or other useless crap.

Is there a reliable YouTube channel or some other source for all (or most) trailers? I'm surprised each movie studio doesn't have their own channel for that purpose.

Posted by Ron Funderburg (Member # 4561) on 07-14-2012, 07:25 PM:

You can a direct link to the official quicktime trailer or I could put you in touch with my wife. She does our heritage-happenings.com website for here and has the trailers there. Not sure how she does it as she is the web-writer not me.

If you want just email and I will forward it to her she would be happy to answer any questions. She lives for the damn web bro! That is how we meet all those 15 years ago. Had to import the best from Down Under.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-14-2012, 08:42 PM:

That would be great... you can find my email address under my profile info.

I did find a site that hosts all the trailers in Quicktime versions via IME, but that doesn't seem to allow embedding. I like YouTube because I can make the viewer fit the dimensions I need and it only takes one line of code. Simple = good.

Posted by Ron Funderburg (Member # 4561) on 07-14-2012, 08:48 PM:

I will have her email you but she is having the same problem but eventually finds them with out the ads. You can save Quicktime with pro and put them on the site but they take to long to load for viewing.

I will grab the email and send it to her. Jeanette will probably email tomorrow or late Monday. I have a not fun day Monday with doctors where they are going to accuse of not following my restrictions on the surgery. They may be right but I am not going to admit it! LOL

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-14-2012, 10:22 PM:

Another way to do it is to use a youtube video downloader. It'll give you the actual flv movie file, which you could upload to your site or set up your own embedded flash player that uses that file instead of going to youtube. And of course, if the original file has random ads (as opposed to the ones that youtube automatically plays that are separate), you could edit the file before uploading back to your website.

Posted by Ron Funderburg (Member # 4561) on 07-15-2012, 09:41 AM:

Chris he does that already the problem is the ad's you have to edit them out. There are more ads all the time. My bad he doesn't it do that way. Sorry my wife can but doesn't! I guess I should pay better attention. Still you have to edit out the ad if you do it and takes up a lot of space on your website.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-15-2012, 10:56 AM:

We are looking to this as well and already go thru the same process embedding audio. My assumption is that it will be the same process we use for audio can be use for video.

For audio, we first captured the audio content we want by whatever audio software you like (we use a very simple NCH WavePad). Once we've got it (or INGEST it, in DCI parlance) as an audio file, it's edited to suit, then we use Flash's Shockwave embedding code to place it on the page. This is what I hope will work with video content as well.

Using a video capture program (haven't decided what that will be as of yet), capture whatever I want from wherever I can find the content that I want, edit it in a video editor, then use Flashes video embedditing code to place it on the site. And you are right, this will eat a chunk of space site space, but we do have enough space for at least a few of them and as long as I am judicious in how many I want to include, it should be fine.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-15-2012, 02:28 PM:

quote: Ron Funderburg
Chris he does that already the problem is the ad's you have to edit them out. There are more ads all the time. My bad he doesn't it do that way. Sorry my wife can but doesn't! I guess I should pay better attention. Still you have to edit out the ad if you do it and takes up a lot of space on your website.

Again, just because an ad plays when I view a youtube video doesn't mean it has to be edited out because all the ones I've seen with ads have the ads separate from the actual video. So when you use a youtube video downloader, it'll download the actual video alone.

And if the video did have an ad that needed to be edited out, it'd be easy. Also, while you'd have space taken up by the trailer being on your website, it'd be something short-term (no need to keep the trailers up after you've gotten rid of it).

Posted by Ron Funderburg (Member # 4561) on 07-15-2012, 07:19 PM:

I wasn't arguing with you on it Chris. It is what my wife does not me I just miss spoke what was being done. :-)

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 07-19-2012, 09:37 PM:

Mike,

Many of the studios do have YouTube Channels, and their trailers rarely have ads before or after them. I use those channels whenever possible, so as to avoid those kinds of problems (and I don't want to run into a situation where someone decides to have fun and insert something into the video).

Take a look at our Trailers & Videos page for several movies, and you'll see what kind of selection there is:

Dark Knight Rises: http://www.bigscreen.com/NowShowing.php?movie=94089&view=media

Ice Age: Continental Drift: http://www.bigscreen.com/NowShowing.php?movie=123062&view=media

Amazing Spider-Man: http://www.bigscreen.com/NowShowing.php?movie=72822&view=media

If you click on the title in the video window, it will take you to the full page on YouTube, which shows the channel it came from. Just subscribe to each channel you want.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-19-2012, 10:10 PM:

Embedding videos in a web site can be a tricky issue.

First, you need to make sure your web hosting account is providing enough bandwidth for the amount of times the video will be accessed by users. This can be really important if you embed videos in 720p or 1080p. That'll use up a lot of monthly bandwidth quick if the video is getting hit hundreds or even thousands of times.

Most people accessing the web site via traditional desktop and notebook computers have no problem playing trailers in Quicktime or Flash format. The situation is getting goofed up by tablets and smart phones.

Apple's various pad and pod products don't support Flash. And the newest version of Android, 4.1 "jelly bean" does away with Flash compatibility too. This is all an attempt to push "HTML5." The problem is HTML5 support sucks on commonly used web browsers like Internet Explorer 9 (and is all but non-existent versions 8 and earlier). Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox support HTML5 relatively well on the desktop. Mobile device support for HTML5 is all over the map from good (the latest iOS and Android devices) to bad (lots and lots of other phones and tablets).

HTML5 will allow you to embed a video into an HTML document by simply using the <video> tag. No plug-in required. But the video must be encoded in a codec any new browser can understand. Google Chrome won't read MPEG-4 video files from the video tag since MPEG-4 isn't open source. The <video> tag isn't compatible with older web browsers like IE8 -what lots of people with Windows XP computers are still using. You have to add more attributes to the code for player controls, customization, etc.

Basically it's a big mess. Let's throw a bunch of JavaScript and JQuery in there for good measure!

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 07-25-2012, 02:49 PM:

That's the handy thing about embedding trailers from YouTube. YouTube takes the bandwidth hit, and they also deliver the video in the format that the requesting browser/device can handle.

For instance, if you go to this page:

http://www.bigscreen.com/NowShowing.php?movie=94089&view=media

Trailer #4 will be shown via Adobe Flash on a Windows 7 PC running either Firefox or IE. But if you pull that page up on an iPad (which won't do Flash), selecting the video will pull it up in the YouTube app. Unfortunately, I don't have any Android devices handy to see how they handle it exactly.