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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Lack of proper trailers.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubbmembers/1277b.jpg)
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-22-2015 04:43 PM
It seems to be increasingly common that when we book a film, particularly from the smaller distributors, no proper trailer is available, and we get pointed to something on Vimeo or Youtube, and we have to download the best that there is, usually 720p but sometimes 1080p, and build our own from that. I have just had to do that for two of our nine August films.
We get sent dozens of download links to trailers for films which we don't want, and are never going to show, but often can't get the ones for the films which we will be showing. The trailers obviously exist, or they couldn't be on Vimeo, Youtube, HD Trailers etc., so why are proper copies not being made available to cinemas which are actually showing the films?
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Stephen Furley
Film God
![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubbmembers/1277b.jpg)
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-23-2015 04:06 PM
Our trailers come from various places. Our booker always asks for a quad (poster) and trailer when he books a film. The majority of distributors seem to use the MPS site, they just put them on the trailers page in our exhibitor's portal, and the link seems to stay there permanently; some have certainly been there for well over a year. We get an e-mail telling us that it's been put there for us, but about 80% of the ones we are sent are for films which we are never going to show. The site also needs to have Aspera Connect software installed on the client to be able to download. This seems to work well, it is possible to pause and resume a download, or re-start if something goes wrong, and to throttle the throughput if needed. The only real problem is that it uses some non-standard ports, which can be a problem if you're behind a firewall which you don't have control over.
The next most common, which several distributors use is 'Mel', don't know what it stands for, from Soho. There are sections called 'Trailer Park' for err trailers, and 'Screenfast' for features, come back to that later. Trailers which are posted here don't seem to stay there very long, but we do get sent a e-mail notification, it doesn't use any special ports, and we don't get sent lots of junk which we don't want.
Several distributors have used their own download sites in the past, and one just sent us the IP address of a FTP server, and didn't even give us the names of the files, we had to open a FTP session, change into the appropriate directory folder, do a ls to find the files, change to binary mode, and then FTP them over. Probably enough bother to put some people off doing it. These 'do it yourself' systems seem to be dying out.
We still occasionally get sent trailers on DVD-ROMs; MPS don't want theirs back, but some others do. This is a bit of a pain, because the DVD drive was removed from our server when it was re-installed and the hard disks were moved to a vertical position for some reason.
We also get sent USB sticks from Deluxe and Technicolor, almost all of which are for trailers which we don't want which is particularly annoying because both want them back, so I have to spend time and money to take them to the post office and send them back, when we never wanted them in the first place.
We eventually get most of our trailers by one of these methods, but the two out of nine in August for which we are offered a link to Vimeo or Youtube, or just have to find something ourselves, is fairly typical.
We were offered one feature, 'White Bird in a Blizzard', by download from Screenfast, but had to decline the offer as the only Internet connection available was just too slow, but we now have about 17.5 Mb/s available, so we're going to give it a try with 'The Goob' at the end of July. I'm also hoping to get a visit to Imperial College soon to have a look at their Lansat box.
We have been sent one feature so far on a USB stick, and a few on small 'pocket' USB disks, mainly ones which have been sent from abroad. For some reason Toshiba ones seem to refuse to mount on our server, it's not a power problem, and we have to copy the files to another disk on a laptop first.
It does seem ridiculous that today we still have to use a courier to deliver, and collect, large boxes, some of which are just cardboard or thin plastic, and give almost no protection to the contents.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 07-02-2015 04:12 AM
quote: Carsten Kurz There is https://directcinema.eu/
That is dcinex/YMAGIS, so, basically, a pan-european company. But I don't know how they handle registration requests now.
You need to be a "European" corporation to register, but YMAGIS just recently announced they're also starting DirectCinema content delivery operations in North America.
I really don't understand why those independent publishers often screw up with their trailers. If you don't want to setup your own infrastructure, why not use one of the many on-line file sharing services availabe?
quote: Stephen Furley Several distributors have used their own download sites in the past, and one just sent us the IP address of a FTP server, and didn't even give us the names of the files, we had to open a FTP session, change into the appropriate directory folder, do a ls to find the files, change to binary mode, and then FTP them over. Probably enough bother to put some people off doing it. These 'do it yourself' systems seem to be dying out.
FTP is still a great way to transfer files, if you ask me, still the best and it's a non-vendor specific protocol... Why don't you use a proper FTP client like FileZilla, to make your life easier? No need to manually switch to "passive" or "binary" mode, just drag-and-drop.
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