Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

PC game presenation: vid scraper? general best practice tips?


usuallee76

Recommended Posts

Hello all, happy 2018! In the new year I've resolved to improve my PC game situation in LB, as it's quite a mess. I have games with duplicate entries, missing metadata, very few have gameplay vids, and I realize it will probably come down to a lot of manual labor. If I do spruce up certain games manually, I'll be looking to upload some of that to the games DB as it is very spotty for PC games currently. Anyway, just generally looking for some tips, if anyone has suggestions on making the best presentation for modern PC games, in particular. In Big Box, my PC section leaves a lot to be desired.

One specific thing is the fact that very few PC games have gameplay vids. Obviously Emumovies concentrates on older games as the name implies so it's very hit and miss, are there any alternate sources for scraping gameplay vids, like from Steam for example? (realizing that may not be permitted). Did some research online but didn't find too much.

How do you guys get the best metadata and gameplay vids, and overall presentation, within LB/BB for modern PC games in your setup?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If LB doesn't find anything by scraping, then it's been an all manual thing for me.  Whenever I add a PC game and nothing comes back, then I jump on image search and can usually find both boxes and clear logos.  I might have to do a little photoshop editing in some cases, but for the most part there's usually something out there.  

For gameplay vids I sometimes get a trailer from YouTube if i can never find decent gameplay footage, which is hard sometimes since everyone wants to start from the menu screen and talk over the entire thing. Using the YouTube filter to narrow it down to under 2 minute video sometimes gets you a good vid like emumovies (no intro just solid quick gameplay).  I have the video downloader plugin for Firefox which works great.  

Sometimes I will have to also manually add the key metadata that i like to have present when LB returns next to nothing.  

So yeah, it's really a manual process, but if you do each game as you add it, it doesn't seem as daunting as if you wait until you have a bunch to do. But if you already have it all imported then I guess it's just pecking away at it.

Edited by damageinc86
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dude, good ideas, thanks! Yeah I have 87 PC games so it's not too many, and at least some already have some or most of the media. That Firefox youtube downloader works well! And there are some online video editing/trimming apps but the one I used took a 4 minute video of 55 MB and turned it into a 30 second video of 73 MB!  I already have Handbrake so that works as well and you can compress the file size to where you're comfortable, I got a 30 second clip of Blazing Star down to under 10 MB and it looked fine, I'll play around with it more to get the file size smaller.

It'll be worth it to do some manual work, it's not that bad really. And yeah I've done the image search thing as well. Thanks for the suggestions!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...