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[WIP] The Paper Street Soap Company (mockups and development of a new skin concept) - Printable Version

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- blacklist - 2010-12-13

Rad_ Wrote:Wouldn't it be easier to petition TMDB folks to add more image fields to their actor db? Would require more user-input than just scraping google images for stuff that already exists, but the added bonus is that the results would be more uniformly useful and straightforward to scrape....

I know thetvdb folks have been threatening to upgrade for a long time without much external progress, but don't know about TMDB.... In that case, does it make sense to try to set up a new site for this? Seems like it wouldn't be terribly involved:

* Import all actor info from TMDB, and use their ID as primary key for lookups
* Add fields for fanarts and other ratios of images, and return multiples for each when they exist....

Certainly not a trivial task, but much more useful in the long term than any clever workarounds.

Kode has put together a great framework for something just like this for the TV Logos: http://fanart.tv

It's freshly redone and moved to that URL, but he's said adding support for other "types" of info (logos, season thumbs, [presumably] actors) will be trivial once everything's ironed out....

I'm sure if we all pitched in, we could have a perfect solution in a reasonable time.

I think this is a fine idea, and I would love to see is developed! My issue with themoviedb once I started looking through is the quality and amount of their data. I think before you go down that road, you need to consider where are you going to get your information? If the idea is pulling bio, i would argue it makes more sense to add to wikipedia and pull from there than start a new source.

Actualy... How about pulling from wikipedia as a source for the actor bios? Hm.


- Rad_ - 2010-12-13

blacklist Wrote:I think this is a fine idea, and I would love to see is developed! My issue with themoviedb once I started looking through is the quality and amount of their data. I think before you go down that road, you need to consider where are you going to get your information? If the idea is pulling bio, i would argue it makes more sense to add to wikipedia and pull from there than start a new source.

Actualy... How about pulling from wikipedia as a source for the actor bios? Hm.

Well, if their bio information is preferable, then that shouldn't be too much trouble. I don't imagine you could get them to add multiple images in any consistent format, though, which is the bigger problem as I understood it, right?

Scraping Wikipedia would probably be a can of worms, too. If there's a historical figure with the same name, no script would no to add "_(Actor)" [or whatever] to get to the correctly disambiguated page.

But if we were controlling the site, we could easily have three or more fields for biographies for each actor in the db....

* Scrape IMDB for their bio, store it as such
* Same for TMDB
* Wiki
* etc?

Then skins could even choose to pull the one they prefer without reinventing the wheel yet again....


- blacklist - 2010-12-13

Rad_ Wrote:Well, if their bio information is preferable, then that shouldn't be too much trouble. I don't imagine you could get them to add multiple images in any consistent format, though, which is the bigger problem as I understood it, right?

Scraping Wikipedia would probably be a can of worms, too. If there's a historical figure with the same name, no script would no to add "_(Actor)" [or whatever] to get to the correctly disambiguated page.

But if we were controlling the site, we could easily have three or more fields for biographies for each actor in the db....

* Scrape IMDB for their bio, store it as such
* Same for TMDB
* Wiki
* etc?

Then skins could even choose to pull the one they prefer without reinventing the wheel yet again....

I think you would find a potential legal issue taking imdb bios and re using them on another site. Wiki would at least be more consistently scrape able.

I'm with you though. If you dedicated the site to actor information (theactordb?) and could contain bio, multiple images, tmdb id, imdb I'd, etc...

It could actually be an add on resource for a stie thetvdb or tmdb.

I'm not trying to discourage you at all, i think it's a great idea, i just honestly dont have the time to devote to such a project.

Oh, don't forget about the potential legal issue resulting on rights to the images....


- MarkTaunton - 2010-12-13

How about making it even simplier.

Why not just create a website yourselves that contains the main actors, like an tvdb site, probaly wouldn't take that much to get a few people on board to keep it up and running.


- blacklist - 2010-12-13

(points up)

MarkTaunton Wrote:How about making it even simplier.

Why not just create a website yourselves that contains the main actors, like an tvdb site, probaly wouldn't take that much to get a few people on board to keep it up and running.



- blacklist - 2010-12-13

Look at this site:

http://www.spill.com/Actor/Default.aspx

There may be a viable resource out there already!

It looks like they are pulling their data from rovi who operates allmovie.com


- Rad_ - 2010-12-13

blacklist Wrote:I think you would find a potential legal issue taking imdb bios and re using them on another site. Wiki would at least be more consistently scrape able.

I'm with you though. If you dedicated the site to actor information (theactordb?) and could contain bio, multiple images, tmdb id, imdb I'd, etc...

It could actually be an add on resource for a stie thetvdb or tmdb.

I'm not trying to discourage you at all, i think it's a great idea, i just honestly dont have the time to devote to such a project.

Oh, don't forget about the potential legal issue resulting on rights to the images....

Right. Hadn't considered that in this slightest.... Just wanted to consolidate the information.

Maybe the site just stores external links and gets safe harbor like Google search results, but the links themselves are returned through a custom API?

I know you're already way invested in your own thing here, but since it's your itch (primarily), I'm just trying to suss out how best to scratch it.... What would you design if you had the time, and then maybe we can pitch in and make it happen for you (and then everyone that wants to do something similar)?


- MarkTaunton - 2010-12-13

Apart from images then any information regarding an actors movies, or date of birth etc etc is not copyrighted.

I think that you shouldnt worry too much about copyright, unless someone complains. They will ask nicely first to pull any pictures, but as you are only skinning, then they have no address to trail back to, so in some respects all this worry about copyright is nothing really.

If you do produce a website though, and use copyright images, then you will have some fall out.


- blacklist - 2010-12-13

Rad_ Wrote:Right. Hadn't considered that in this slightest.... Just wanted to consolidate the information.

Maybe the site just stores external links and gets safe harbor like Google search results, but the links themselves are returned through a custom API?

I know you're already way invested in your own thing here, but since it's your itch (primarily), I'm just trying to suss out how best to scratch it.... What would you design if you had the time, and then maybe we can pitch in and make it happen for you (and then everyone that wants to do something similar)?

I think right here is how I would solve it most simply...

1. Expand the xbmc actor database to include more information including bio, birthday, aka, birthplace, etc.
2. Develop scrapers to pull this information as how the current scrapers work.
3. Create a way to store actor "fan art" or "extra thumbs" for additional images.

I think that's the most long range solution that all of xbmc can make use of. Then we can pick multiple sources for information such as google, etc that have been mentioned here.


- blacklist - 2010-12-13

MarkTaunton Wrote:If you do produce a website though, and use copyright images, then you will have some fall out.

My point exactly.

And the bio may be owned by whoever produced the content. Again, no big deal for scraping to xbmc - but a big deal if you're producing your own website.


- MarkTaunton - 2010-12-13

Bio information is nothing, how many websites are using the same information.

Someones date of birth e.g 25/05/1970 is not copyrighted.

Using someones words can be unless they are free to use.

I personally think you are worrying about nothing for creating a website, so that you can use to scrape.

You can have images but as long as you acknowledge the owners, they usually let you get away with things.

Do you think that Google pay for all the images that they hold?


- ppic - 2010-12-13

i don't think we could add these info in xbmc db, will be external.


- blacklist - 2010-12-13

MarkTaunton Wrote:Bio information is nothing, how many websites are using the same information.

Someones date of birth e.g 25/05/1970 is not copyrighted.

Using someones words can be unless they are free to use.

I personally think you are worrying about nothing for creating a website, so that you can use to scrape.

You can have images but as long as you acknowledge the owners, they usually let you get away with things.

Do you think that Google pay for all the images that they hold?

They don't hold any images, just link to them. Trust me when I say that these concerns can be real especially in the US.

That being said, if we are scraping from each source individually it's not an issue. The problem is if you are talking about creating your own site to redistribute the info.

At the end of the day I don't think itsnreally a viable plan anyway - I would rather see the info just scraped from existing sources.


- blacklist - 2010-12-13

Another scraper idea: http:\\http://www.palzoo.net

Celebrity database, looks like bios are scraped from wikipedia. Does link to some gallery images...

Right I'm thinking of a script scraping a combination of wikipedia and google images. I think we could get decent results with that combo for the majority of mainstream actors.


- MarkTaunton - 2010-12-13

Have you actually checked your link it is a parked domain name