Screenscraper.fr

[Fablog]

 

What do you think about screenscraper.fr?

Could be a very good alternative to emumovies. Moreover for french people, like me, or Spanish/German/Portuguese people all the games datas are translated. Integrate this scraper to Launchbox could be a good promotion.

[DOS76]

Probably more likely if someone made a plug in to scrape it. If they have an API which I don't know.

[Fablog]

The video show a tool named Universal XML scraper so it should exist an API.

Moreover I read a post here of someone from Screenscraper saying that it would be great to be integrated to Launchbox.

[DOS76]

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice I'm saying that I highly doubt this will be implemented unless you could generate a high interest in it

[Fablog]

Yeah, I hear you. I won't do a promotion campaign here but still think it would be a very nice Launchbox promotion outside this forum because we'll be seen by all the Recalbox and Retropie community. More Launchbox users we have more we assure his longetivity.

[Moukrea]

I would second this, the multilanguage support would be neat for games information!

[Ern_Ani]

Cant´t the lauchbox integrate screescraper in the program and the user choose where the midias is download as alternative? they have videos and don´t need to pay for the video like emumovies, they just ask to colaborate with the database to receive extra velocity for midia donwload.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Ern_Ani

[BadFurDay]

12 hours ago, Ern_Ani said:

Cant´t the lauchbox integrate screescraper in the program and the user choose where the midias is download as alternative? they have videos and don´t need to pay for the video like emumovies, they just ask to colaborate with the database to receive extra velocity for midia donwload.

You could use Skraper: http://skraper.net/

[Ern_Ani]

If the the lauchbox integrate screescraper in the program I don´t need another software to pick the media. Make simple for the user have a nice collection.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Ern_Ani

[Freestate]

On 3/24/2020 at 6:27 PM, Ern_Ani said:

Cant´t the lauchbox integrate screescraper in the program and the user choose where the midias is download as alternative? they have videos and don´t need to pay for the video like emumovies, they just ask to colaborate with the database to receive extra velocity for midia donwload.

@Jason Carr Jason, what do you think? The video scrape with emumovies fails a lot due to strict naming conventions or the lack of launchbox to make recursive calls when a game is not found. Also skraper using the screenscrapper source as an API uses CRC checks + naming returning in more acurate scrapping. What's your preference? Integrate screenscrapper as a source?, add CRC checks to improve scrapping in launchbox? Add video game clips as an extra to launchbox db?

[neil9000]

8 minutes ago, Freestate said:

@Jason Carr Jason, what do you think? The video scrape with emumovies fails a lot due to strict naming conventions or the lack of launchbox to make recursive calls when a game is not found. Also skraper using the screenscrapper source as an API uses CRC checks + naming returning in more acurate scrapping. What's your preference? Integrate screenscrapper as a source?, add CRC checks to improve scrapping in launchbox? Add video game clips as an extra to launchbox db?

I doubt this would ever happen, most of the screenscraper content is simply stolen from emumovies, so i doubt that we would integrate that as we have a existing business relationship with emumovies. We also do not do gameplay snaps for the same reason, that is emumovies territory, and we dont want or need to step on their toes there.

[Jason Carr]

56 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

I doubt this would ever happen, most of the screenscraper content is simply stolen from emumovies, so i doubt that we would integrate that as we have a existing business relationship with emumovies. We also do not do gameplay snaps for the same reason, that is emumovies territory, and we dont want or need to step on their toes there.

We do have a friendly relationship with Circo from EmuMovies, but we do not have a business relationship. Money has never exchanged hands. Just wanted to make that clear.

1 hour ago, Freestate said:

@Jason Carr Jason, what do you think? The video scrape with emumovies fails a lot due to strict naming conventions or the lack of launchbox to make recursive calls when a game is not found. Also skraper using the screenscrapper source as an API uses CRC checks + naming returning in more acurate scrapping. What's your preference? Integrate screenscrapper as a source?, add CRC checks to improve scrapping in launchbox? Add video game clips as an extra to launchbox db?

EmuMovies is working on a better API. The current API is the reason for the lackluster search; in fact, there's not much we can do to improve it ourselves. When the next version of the EmuMovies API comes out, it should be a significant improvement.

[Freestate]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

We do have a friendly relationship with Circo from EmuMovies, but we do not have a business relationship. Money has never exchanged hands. Just wanted to make that clear.

EmuMovies is working on a better API. The current API is the reason for the lackluster search; in fact, there's not much we can do to improve it ourselves. When the next version of the EmuMovies API comes out, it should be a significant improvement.

Thanks for the fast response Jason. And what about including videosnaps in launchbox database? Our community is really big and work a lot for providing good media, i think is good to boost some competence in the video snaps media, emumovies was the only source for many years, maybe it could boost emumovies attitude (they laid being the only ones), i paid for a few years and in my opinion is so expensive and the last years they don't update so much. 

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Freestate said:

Thanks for the fast response Jason. And what about including videosnaps in launchbox database? Our community is really big and work a lot for providing good media, i think is good to boost some competence in the video snaps media, emumovies was the only source for many years, maybe it could boost emumovies attitude (they laid being the only ones), i paid for a few years and in my opinion is so expensive and the last years they don't update so much. 

This is not currently in the plans. There are several issues with the idea:

• It's a legal gray area still (much more of a legal gray area than fair use with images, and it might not be likely, but it could get us into hot water with overbearing companies like Nintendo)
• Our games database server costs are already extensive, and it's only getting more expensive as it is; therefore, I'm not really interested in the massive additional server costs that would be required
• We don't want to deal with the likelihood that people will just start uploading EmuMovies videos to our servers; we have no good way of preventing that and we don't want the bad press or drama involved with it

[Freestate]

37 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

This is not currently in the plans. There are several issues with the idea:

• It's a legal gray area still (much more of a legal gray area than fair use with images, and it might not be likely, but it could get us into hot water with overbearing companies like Nintendo)
• Our games database server costs are already extensive, and it's only getting more expensive as it is; therefore, I'm not really interested in the massive additional server costs that would be required
• We don't want to deal with the likelihood that people will just start uploading EmuMovies videos to our servers; we have no good way of preventing that and we don't want the bad press or drama involved with it

I totally understand the points 2 and 3, but about the first one, we already have videos for platforms that include gameplay. What i'm missing? And also one more thing and a million of thanks for take a break to answer my questions. What's in your mind about changes in the database? There's a lot of room from improvements like adding some extra tags (reconstructed and fan tag to some media like 3d boxes or carts) to avoid moderation feuds and workarounds to dodge their limitations, a notification system to see rejection messages (now it's imposible to be aware of them if you don't check submissions one by one) and the always postponed game language information in every game (listing official and fantranslated).The last polls about new features didn't include database changes. As you can see in my profile i'm a heavy contributor and moderator for the database and sometimes is really frustrating that issues about correct scrapping of flaws triggers a lot of handmade work to curate collections. Please take in consideration to add some CRC use for scrapping, i've tried skrapper and it works like a charm, check the api, is really fast and acurate, we tried to solve the issues adding alternate naming but still is a problem.

Do we could expect legal issues about allowing translation patches like romhacking.org? If you add CRC check could be perfect to detect fantranslations available and notify to the users if they want it or download byy demand.

That's enough for today, apologies if i'm kinda tiresome with some issues. I'm a huge fan of your work. It opened a good path after crazy days of frontends like hyperspin or others and the real diference is the database in my opinion, just needs some love :).

Edited August 19, 2021 by Freestate

[Jason Carr]

55 minutes ago, Freestate said:

I totally understand the points 2 and 3, but about the first one, we already have videos for platforms that include gameplay. What i'm missing?

Yeah, we do, but I feel that those are much less intrusive than having gameplay videos of so many different games on our servers. That's not really as big of an issue as the other two, though.

1 hour ago, Freestate said:

What's in your mind about changes in the database? There's a lot of room from improvements like adding some extra tags (reconstructed and fan tag to some media like 3d boxes or carts) to avoid moderation feuds and workarounds to dodge their limitations, a notification system to see rejection messages (now it's imposible to be aware of them if you don't check submissions one by one) and the always postponed game language information in every game (listing official and fantranslated).The last polls about new features didn't include database changes. As you can see in my profile i'm a heavy contributor and moderator for the database and sometimes is really frustrating that issues about correct scrapping of flaws triggers a lot of handmade work to curate collections. Please take in consideration to add some CRC use for scrapping, i've tried skrapper and it works like a charm, check the api, is really fast and acurate, we tried to solve the issues adding alternate naming but still is a problem.

We do have a lot of changes/fixes planned for the database, and also quite a bit in progress. It doesn't sound like our vision completely matches yours, but we do recognize that a focus on improvements to the games database is a good idea. We didn't put it on the poll, because it's in progress, and we're working on it regardless of poll results.

1 hour ago, Freestate said:

Do we could expect legal issues about allowing translation patches like romhacking.org? If you add CRC check could be perfect to detect fantranslations available and notify to the users if they want it or download byy demand.

That's not a bad idea, but it would also be a huge undertaking and I'm not necessarily convinced that it would appeal to the majority of the audience. Still, it's a great idea for the next poll.