[Ragnarok]

Looks like download permissions for the file have not been enabled. Anything would be helpful, there's a ton of data to parse in those quizzes. My biggest challenge was pulling the correct answer and stepping through the next question. Still scratching my head about that bit.

[mcorcoran]

Try now http://rapidshare.com/files/1914626632/1539.csv . I guess rapidshare changed how the handle downloads. What I did for my scrapper was just go to the wrong answer screen (http://polls.amctv.com//chart/data/1539-wrong-1.html for example) and scrape the answers from that page. It only works if you don't have javascript enabled but for most scripts that shouldn't be a problem.

[Ragnarok]

Brilliant! That's exactly what we need, but it does look like it's parsing kinda funny on a few questions. #2 and #13 look like it parsed the question wrong.

[mcorcoran]

Ahh I see the problem, The text has quotes in it which is screwing it up when it get's imported into excel. I'll take a look at fixing it tomorrow, once that is corrected I'll run it for all 40 of the quizzes. I think scrapping the other type of quizzes (Ultimate Fan Movie Games - Quizzes) on the bottom half of that page is beyond my know how though unfortunately.

[Ragnarok]

Quotes break PhotoShop too most of the time, so if we can change quotes to single quotes, that'd be ideal. We'll also want to change 3-D to 3D, because... well, that's what it is. I think those other quizzes are broken currently. They look like they're Java, but they wont load for me. If I can get them to, I might recreate them too. Maybe I'll pull the info from the source. They look like they're about 10 questions each. Thanks a ton for your help sir.

Once we get it done, would you mind if I include your scripts in the development kit?

[mcorcoran]

Ok I've scrapped all the questions from the movie quizzes and cleaned them up a tiny a bit. You can download the csv's at http://rapidshare.com/files/215030762/TriviaCSV.zip .

There are three different files:
trivia_master_clean.csv - This file has double quotes and will load correctly in excel
trivia_master_SingleQuotes.csv - This file has the double quotes replaced with single quotes, rows that contain a comma in them are still encapsulated with double quotes, File should still load fine in excel.
trivia_master_noQuotes.csv - This file contains no double quotes. (Not sure if this file will be useful at all though as rows that contain commas in them will mess things up)

Looks like the total questions came out to 854, so that should keep you busy for a while . I just did a quick glance over the data to make sure everything appeared ok and lined up correctly. I actually haven't read many of the question so I'll leave any proof reading to you if you care to do it, although the data does look pretty clean.

As for the script, I've uploaded it here although I'm not sure how much good it will do anyone as it really can only scrape the data that's in the CSV. It might be more useful for people if just included the CSV files. It's a simple .net application using the HtmlAgilityPack (went with .net because that's what I'm currently using at work) with no comments and not much of an interface. I just hacked it together in some free time at work.

I've poked around the other quizzes a bit and getting the questions isn't hard, its getting the answers that looks tough. It looks like its doing an ajax call to their server to return the correct answer. I might mess around with it some more later if I get time but I think the 854 questions we got so far is a good start.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help, I like figuring out how to get the data, it's all the proofing I find a bit tedious .

[Ragnarok]

Brilliant! I'll get working on them. Let me know if you're able to grab the other quizzes. If you do, throw them in csv files named for the quiz. Then I'll grab screens and doll up a template in PhotoShop. Great work on the scraper. I'm a systems admin, so about as far as I get with coding is scripting and some web applications.

I'm about half way done processing the question slides now. Once that's done, I'll go over them all to make sure they look alright, and get working on scripting the answer layers (the tough part).

Edit: I didn't like the way they looked - so I reformatted the template a bit. Reprocessing now. I'll release them in four packs I think, just to keep the size of each relatively manageable.

[mcorcoran]

Success! I was able to scrape out the data from the other quizzes. Here's the exports: http://rapidshare.com/files/1418181058/MoreTrivia.zip
I've created a CSV in the same format as before for each quiz and I've also included the background image of the quiz incase you wanted to you that. I looked at about 5 of the files and the data seems good. Let me know if you find any major problems and I can correct and run it again. I probably won't be able to get to it till sometime later next week though. In total there is 392 Quizzes with 11 questions in each quiz. Should total out to be another 4312 questions. That should keep anyone busy for a long time .

Not sure how your are going to script the Answers slide, it might be easier to just create a new slide and output the 'CorrectAnswer', and 'CorrectDetails' columns, instead of reprinting all the answers and coloring just the correct one. I guess it just depends on how much time you want to spend on it.

Great work on getting the first half of the slides done, can't wait to add them into the collection.

[Ragnarok]

That... is a ton of quiz. Great work. All I need to do is whip up a template for the quizzes (the trouble is finding full 1080p screens that look good with the text overlay) and we'll be golden.

I got the answer slides all scripted up. All I need to do is hide some layers and start processing and let PhotoShop do the rest. I'd bet I have the trivia sets up tomorrow evening at the latest. At this point, it will really only depend on processing time and upload time.

[mcorcoran]

Yeah it's to bad the backgrounds from the AMC site to blow up to 1080p very well. Glad to hear you answer slides scripted let me know if I can help out in any other way.

[Ragnarok]

The question slides are all compiled (finally) so I'll begin proofing them and making adjustments where needed tonight. Hopefully it wont take me too long. I'll try to work on them in sections.

[deutsch2382]

Hey there,

These are awesome. Your hard work is appreciated! I am having some troubles though. The slides load up just fine for me, but I am not sure how to set it up to have them display in A-B order. They seem to display randomly. Any help would be great!

[Skank]

Videos

For those of you that missed it, I've also created some XBMC Intro Videos and an XBMC Intermission Video with After Effects.

XBMC Pre-show Entertainment [Download|Mirror]
This video is an original video made in After Effects, and is intended for use before the trivia slides are played.

XBMC Coming Soon to Theatres [Download|Mirror]
This video is an original video made in After Effects, and is intended for use after the trivia slides are played, and before the movie trailers begin.

XBMC Feature Presentation [Download|Mirror]
This video is an original video made in After Effects, and is intended for use after the movie trailers are played, and before the feature presentation begins.

XBMC Intermission 10 [Download|Mirror]
This video is an original video made in After Effects, and is intended for use as an intermission video. It's ten minutes long, but can be compiled into different lengths by editing the files in After Effects. It comes complete with a ten minute countdown in the corner, and a tone will play at the two minute mark to notify people that the next feature presentation will begin soon.

watch gallery

Nice,
Is there a simple way to adjust the text used?
I would like to get rid of "xbmc" and just show:

"coming soon"
and
"feature presentation"

Anyone have dutch trivia slides?

[mcorcoran]

deutsch2382 You need to include a file in the directory called "slides.xml" the file should contain the following:

Code:

<slides>
    <slide>
        <question format="([a-z])_a\.jpg" />
        <clue format="q([0-9]{1,3})c\.jpg" />
        <answer format="([a-z])_b\.jpg" />
        <mpaa = "N/A">
    </slide>
</slides>

For more information read this post.

[Ragnarok]

Nice,
Is there a simple way to adjust the text used?
I would like to get rid of "xbmc" and just show:

"coming soon"
and
"feature presentation"

Anyone have dutch trivia slides?

You can remove the XBMC logo (or replace it with any logo of your choosing) and reposition, or change the size of the text using Adobe After Effects. All of the project files have been released to the public for modification. If there's a good bit of interest in videos without the XBMC logo, I'll gladly make the modification and upload the new videos.

There's no real easy way to change the text since the slides are all image files. Perhaps some sort of dynamic (HTML based maybe?) slide system is something giftie could add in a future release, but I'd bet that's a ton of work for everyone, including those that make the slides. All of my slide packs come with all of the English info in an Excel document. You could modify those files and convert them to any language you want, but it also means you'll have to create a new set of slides using my Photoshop templates and scripts (which are released in the Development Kits for each slide pack).

Sorry for the delay in releasing the trivia sets - I had a death in the family and literally dropped everything I was working on. I'm still working on a way to dynamically resize the text to fit the box so that I don't have to touch most of the 1,700 slides.