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Show HN: Watch movies with the freedom to filter

125 points by marco1 11y ago

jasonkostempski 11y ago
I only things I find offensive are commercials and Kardashians, will this work on those?
- marco1 11y ago
  Commercials, yes. Kardashians, less so, unless you find a category that fits ;)
johnloeber 11y ago
How does this work?
- marco1 11y ago
  Thanks for your question! The README tries to explain a lot of the things, but I can answer questions here, of course, and give an overview. All in all, the idea is quite simple and the project doesn't really do that much, yet. As an alternative to commercial providers for content filters, family filters, etc., this project tries to establish an open format that can be used to describe any video source. The filters are split into several categories where each has "severity" level. This way, you can adjust the filters to your personal needs and wishes when using them. Example: You are terribly frightened by fire because you have some childhood trauma. But you don't care about violence and blood splatters at all. For me, this might be the other way round. So if we can adjust the filters to our needs, they can be useful to both of us. Since nobody supports this format today (nobody even knew of it until today), a web tool is provided that lets you "transpile" the filters to three popular playlist formats.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    What are the playlist formats? Are there video players which seamlessly buffer and play content based on start/stop times defined in playlists?
    - marco1 11y ago
      As outlined in the README, the playlist formats are: * XSPF for VLC media player * M3U for VLC media player * EDL for MPlayer And yes, they do support seamless plaback based on start/stop times.
calcsam 11y ago
https://www.vidangel.com/ https://www.vidangel.com/ does this as a service
- marco1 11y ago
  Thanks! VidAngel is actually listed in the README: https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter#commercial-providers https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter#commercial-... The README does also explain why an open format and open contribution might be better.
bosdev 11y ago
I dislike that the filters are strictly defined. What if I wanted to create a category for 'rape' or 'animal-cruelty'? I should be able to add those notes, and have them be silently ignored by unsupporting clients. Even better though, I don't see why the client wouldn't include those new categories in what can be filtered for this specific clip. Edit: Also, it seems like the severity levels (low/medium/high) are arbitrary, meaning they will vary from film to film. It might make more sense to give categories sub-categories or tags. So for swear words, it would have the sub-categories of all the various words which might be used. For violence, it might have the tags of ('simulated', 'on screen', 'bloody'), etc. That way the viewer could decide what they want to see, and it would be somewhat consistent.
- marco1 11y ago
  Thanks for your feedback! At present, the list of available categories and filters has been kept short to ensure simplicity. We might think about allowing any custom categories, as you suggested. So we should definitely keep that idea in mind. But let's assume you added "rape" as a category (which we thougth about as well): Then when do you add "rape" versus the existing "violence", "sex" or "nudity"? Do you have to add them all for most rape scenes? On the other hand, what do the consumers do? Do they have to tick dozens of boxes to ensure that no unwanted scenes are shown? The more categories you add, the more blurred do the boundaries become.
  - luma 11y ago
    Having this sort of control seems to be the only way for something like this to be useful across a wide range of audiences. My wife will watch people being murdered and maimed in the most horrifying of manners, but the second an animal comes to harm she'll get up and walk out of the room (and then blame me for making her watch it). "Violence" doesn't cover her specific use case, so without the ability to narrow that to "animal cruelty", it wouldn't address our own requirements.
    - marco1 11y ago
      Thanks, that's definitely a valid concern! You're both right in that we should perhaps change the severity schema to category-specific keywords instead of general levels.
jcoffland 11y ago
This is basically a platform for movie censorship. Who gets to decide which parts of what movies are, violent, sexual, etc. I know I don't have to use it but regardless I hope this does not catch on. If you don't like the content in movies you don't have to watch them.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > If you don't like the content in movies you don't have to watch them. Your comment is incoherent. This website is a tool for people to use for themselves to decide if they want to see a movie or not. How do they know if they don't like the content in a movie? this site will tell them.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Incoherent? Please explain?
    - DanBC 11y ago
      What is being censored, and how is it being censored?
      - jcoffland 11y ago
        If you choose to use this filter you are choosing to watch censored movies. If we have a censored version of Huckleberry Fin and a non-censored version, you could say I have a choice of which to read but it is still censorship and we still live in a world where books are censored.
- bertjk 11y ago
  But isn't this kind of the point? This gives you a programmatic way to specify to your media player just what content you don't want to watch. If this stuff gets popular, then the publishers should feel less pressure to censor themselves.
  - 11y ago
robraven 11y ago
Really cool idea!
- marco1 11y ago
  Thank you!
deleted 11y ago
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gdw2 11y ago
Is there an existing collection of free filters for popular movies anywhere? What would it take to get this working with streaming services (like VidAngel does -- I think they pull from Google Play, but not sure)?
- marco1 11y ago
  There is one example in the repository. To get this working, all you need is some source material that VLC media player or MPlayer can play back. That should be possible with video files, DVDs, Blu-rays, but, unfortunately, perhaps not with streaming providers.
vdwijngaert 11y ago
Makes it way easier to directly skip to the raunchy scenes! ;-)
- marco1 11y ago
  Actually not, except you modified the converter to invert the filters ;) (Or if you read the timecodes and then seek manually.)
gdw2 11y ago
Aside from filtering based on moral/taste/etc grounds, I've often thought it would be interesting to filter for the sake of time. Could you conceivably trim a 3hr movie down to 90 minutes and have it still make sense? It would be an interesting experiment.
- chroma 11y ago
  Have you tried watching at a faster speed? I typically watch stuff at 1.2-1.3x, and 1.5x+ if it's animated (where the sped-up movements don't seem unnatural). It can be odd at first, but your mind quickly gets used to it. If you go back to normal speed, dialog seems to draaaaaag onnnnn foreverrrr.
- Retr0spectrum 11y ago
  There's a "Cinematic Recap" of all 5 seasons of Breaking Bad, which compresses the main story down to about 2 hours. It's quite hard to find though, due to the inherent copyright issues. Edit: Some links here: https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/3jt531/does_anybody_know_where_to_watch_the_2_hour/ https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/3jt531/does_an...
  - nfoz 11y ago
    This is a great example of creative work that is not allowed to exist in a system with copyright.
    - derefr 11y ago
      I don't see why; the ideal format for such a thing isn't a derivative video, but a timecode script (like we're discussing here) that takes a legal copy of Breaking Bad as input. Similarly, I've been thinking about using a bunch of copyrighted music in a game I'm making... not by shipping the songs, but rather by just using the copies people may or may not have in their iTunes libraries, with fallbacks to non-copyright ambient music. Remix culture is too focused on embedding. Everybody forgets about the possibility of transclusion.
tsunamino 11y ago
Hi! I have a similar project called Feerless that provides crowd-sourced, preemptive notifications for Netflix at feerless.us Would love to chat about a possible collaboration.
deleted 11y ago
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callumlocke 11y ago
Somehow this makes me really uncomfortable. I know it seems very reasonable, inviting people to choose what they want to censor for themselves... but it just feels wrong. I'd much rather someone didn't watch my film at all than watch a butchered version. As a separate point, I think it's often more traumatic/damaging to cut away from a scene just as it's getting distressing, and then cut back after the bad thing has happened. I often had this kind of viewing experience imposed on me as a child, and I honestly think it screwed me up a little, sitting there speculating about whatever I'm missing, and generally being taught that when things are getting unpleasant you just skip that part. Not a good attitude for life. It's true there are films that are inappropriate for a young kid, but in that case, choose a different film.
- DougN7 11y ago
  I don't understand that. Using a chef reference I made below, if you cooked a nice dinner, but someone didn't like the brussel sprouts, should they not have eaten anything and skipped your dinner party? If you listen to some of The Donald's speech, should you not be allowed to skip some of it? Why is art all-or-nothing?
  - callumlocke 11y ago
    Those are very good counter examples. I wouldn't want someone to miss a whole dinner because they don't like sprouts :) I still feel like there's a difference though... At least the person can see the sprouts, they have the option, the chef can say "Ah go on, try some, they've got little bits of pancetta in them!" and maybe they try one, and maybe they realise sprouts are great! Or maybe they don't, but at least they considered it. Compare that to (bare with me) someone wearing magic AR goggles that somehow bleep out any mention of sprouts, and automatically pre-warn the chef to not put any sprouts on their plate and not to mention them. Absurdity aside, I think there's something insidious about people setting up automated filter bubbles for themselves and their children
    - DougN7 11y ago
      > filter bubbles for themselves and their children We do that all the time. I don't let my kids watch some content because of their age. I filter their activities (don't let them drive until they're able). I try to filter what they eat (less junk food), and their waking hours (try to get them to go to bed). This is no different. It's all cost/benefit, and if some people think some content of any sort is not appropriate for them and their families, fine. But why not allow them the 95% of the content that they like? What if Netflix said you only got to watch a series if you guaranteed you'd watch every episode? The idea is preposterous.
smacktoward 11y ago
Freedom to filter? "Freedom to deface a work of art" is more like it. A work of art is an artist trying to tell you something. Chopping out bits based on your petty personal prejudices is like going through the Louvre and drawing clothes on all the nudes with a Sharpie. Even if you're the only one who ever has to see the defaced version -- and you can't tell me that your "freedom to filter" won't eventually start being forced down the throats of other people, like children in schools -- who gave you the right to make the decision on the artist's behalf that the defaced version doesn't compromise their work? If you don't like art, you have always had the only freedom that matters, which is to choose not to look at it. You can live in your bubble and never risk offense if you want to; you just have to be willing to have the courage of your convictions and forgo the things you oppose. "Filtering" is just a way to try and have it both ways, to have your cake and eat it too. It's every bit as venal and cowardly today as it was when Thomas Bowdler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler) was doing it in the 19th century. Art is what it is. If you don't like it, don't pollute it by trying to "fix" it; leave it alone and maybe try making some of your own that meets your standards.
- callumlocke 11y ago
  I vaguely agree with your sentiment, but vandalising artworks at the Louvre is a bad analogy. You're making out this tool is for censoring art for other people, but that's exactly what it's not.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- DougN7 11y ago
  Hogwash. What other part of life is a "if you get a little you're forced to have it all"? Like that meal at the restaurant? You better damned finish it all or the chef would rather you not eat any!
  - 9999 11y ago
    That is very much the case at some restaurants that consider food to be art. Art is different. To be able to appreciate and understand it, it's all or nothing.
Eric_WVGG 11y ago
This sounds like complete bullshit to me, and I find the the entire idea pretty reprehensible. But on the off chance that this helps someone whom is a survivor of sexual assault and buys into the idea of trigger warnings, there perhaps ought to be a differentiation between "sex" and "sexual violence" or "rape"
- rmc 11y ago
  > there perhaps ought to be a differentiation between "sex" and "sexual violence" or "rape" I suspect the "sex", like "nudity", is really for prudes who don't like seeing any hint of anything.
- marco1 11y ago
  > there perhaps ought to be a differentiation between "sex" and "sexual violence" or "rape" Rape is "violence" and not "sex" in this classification. But this should be documented, of course. > This sounds like complete bullshit to me I don't understand how you come to this point of view. You might personally not be interested in this. But that's not what you wrote. Anyway, as you can see in the README, there are several commercial providers for such filtering, so it's obvious that there are people who want and need this.
  - Eric_WVGG 11y ago
    I’m not arguing that there’s no market for this product* . I just find artistic censorship morally objectionable in much the same way that others find violent or sexual content abhorrent. Just on the other side of this particular culture war I guess. * surely plenty who want, but I disagree that anyone “needs”
scottjad 11y ago
Are there some tools that make it easy to make these filters? It would be nice to have something built-in (as a plugin?) to mpv or VLC. I've created several filters for personal use with EDL. mplayer has a decent UI way of doing that while watching the film by pressing 'i' to start a cut and 'i' again to end the cut. It's nowhere near perfect though because you still have to edit the edl file to decide whether to cut video or mute audio. One nice feature you could add to this editing UI would be to use the subtitle file to allow jumping to the locations of certain language in order to edit them (times in subtitles aren't enough to edit a single word).
- marco1 11y ago
  Tooling definitely has to be improved! So this is the very beginning, and since nobody even knew of it until yesterday, manually editing the lists was fine with me. By the way, the textual filter lists are easy to write and edit :)
rmc 11y ago
Interesting idea. However there is nothing for racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia, so I added a pull request for it[1]. It does seem like a weirdly specific list of categories. Why not let people filter whatever they want? [1] https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter/pull/2 https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter/pull/2
- zhemao 11y ago
  Because for each new category, you would have to tag all the scenes in the movie that fall into that category in order to filter it out. I think the categories chosen are those that the MPAA use to set the content rating.
- marco1 11y ago
  Thank you! Regarding the composition of the category list: "specific"? -- probably, "weird" -- not at all. The initial selection of categories has been inspired by other providers and rating systems. Further, they are broad and general categories that encompass a lot of other topics such as those you suggested. Yet again, something like "gambling" on the list might make this seem "weirdly specific". But when re-structing the current category list, one should certainly add your suggestions. Either as top categories or sub categories that could be introduced instead of severity levels.
confusedLearner 11y ago
I thought it would use deep learning to do this. Silly me..
- deleted 11y ago
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compiler-guy 11y ago
I doubt I'll use this technology myself--I generally prefer to see movies as they were created--but recuts and derivative works can be works of art in and of themselves. One could have use this technology to create "Star Wars--the Phantom Edit", for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Edit Production companies often create airplane and television versions of movies, and it isn't any big deal. I see no reason why customization of this sort is immoral since no one is required to use it.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Yep, they should have a category for "idiocy" and things like that. Parts with annoying characters, or where they spout off nonsense. Some works are far better when they resist the urge to say dumb things. Example: "We tracked the bad guy down" vs "We tracked the bad guy using the Human Genome Project."
  - EdHominem 11y ago
    Time-Travel Episodes [N] Technobabble [N] ...
- dogecoinbase 11y ago
  A couple favorites of mine (more on the artistic/creative side than strict restructurings): Mad Max Black & Chrome: https://blackandchrome.wordpress.com https://blackandchrome.wordpress.com Steven Soderbergh's "Psychos": http://extension765.com/sdr/15-psychos http://extension765.com/sdr/15-psychos (Plus multiple other recuts he's done: http://extension765.com/sdr http://extension765.com/sdr )
- marco1 11y ago
  To the point! Thank you! Airplane versions are just another examples where such filtering is employed already and could benefit from an open format. Just like censored TV versions. Custom edits are possible, and encouraged, as well. And, as you said, nobody is required to use it. I really didn't expect these accusations of immorality. Those must be misunderstandings, because one can objectively say that this is not immoral in any way.
deleted 11y ago
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shepik 11y ago
Niice. So if somebody were to mark all non-action scenes (like dialogues) in action movies as "language", i' be finally able to watch some real action. Nice.
- derefr 11y ago
  I don't expect any human would have a similar-enough concern to bother doing that for you—but that sounds like a problem amenable to automation. You could pull it off pretty easily by running the audio track through speech recognition—not for content, just for detecting speech is happening—and then snipping out an overlapping fat-margined timeslice of the video around each instance of dialogue.
  - etjossem 11y ago
    ... I think original commenter is being sarcastic. There aren't a lot of movies that stand up well to having their dialogue heavily cut.
    - derefr 11y ago
      I don't think the original commenter (if not being sarcastic) would mind. They're basically asking for an unending stream of "ambient" action scenes, rather than a movie per se.
al2o3cr 11y ago
On the flipside, reverse the sense of how that tool generates EDL and you've got a "shorten Hollywood blockbusters to the good bits" system... ;)
- marco1 11y ago
  You could certainly do that, if you were interested ;)
kempbellt 11y ago
First thing that came to mind: Game of Thrones. I imagine episodes would be 10 minutes long and you'd have no idea what's happening. Not saying they don't go over the top at times, but the brutality of a show like GoT is a very powerful illustration tool, and filtering out bits and pieces because they make you uncomfortable would ruin the entire purpose of the show. I'm sure some people will find use for this tool, but I will likely forgo.
gedy 11y ago
This is very handy, sometimes there's a really enjoyable movie you'd like to watch at home, but has few parts that are not appropriate for kids. I don't see the need for a high-horse about censorship in this case.
- marco1 11y ago
  Thanks for your understanding! This is what was the "vision" of this project, the current use case and all that has ever been thought about. This is not forcing censorship upon all movie viewers.
rrowland 11y ago
Maybe fewer people would be complaining about opt-in filtering if the thread were titled "Watch movies with the freedom NOT to filter". This protocol would actually help those that want to watch their TV unfiltered because because it could replace the current system of filtering being forced on everybody.
- marco1 11y ago
  Thanks a lot! This is exactly what the vision (or a large part of it) was. But having phrased the title as you suggested, people would have countered that the best way "NOT to filter" is to play back the material as-is.
9999 11y ago
A tool to "filter" a work of art for yourself is also a tool to censor a work of art for someone else. In this case, and judging by the reactions from some parents here, most likely for your own children. So, despite the interesting framing of this as something that will create the "freedom to filter," it inevitably will be used to oppress. Regardless, the end effect on the viewers (both willing and unwilling) is that they have not seen the work. They may in fact have a completely different understanding of the film or show than someone who actually has seen the work. A morally ambiguous character becomes wholly righteous. A villain becomes the hero. Violent acts cease to have a consequence of gore, perhaps of pain or death. Romance no longer leads to sex. Dialogue cut for swearing completely changes the perception of a character, the story, and the world. In the end you have seen something worse than nothing at all--a cartoon caricature of what the creators intended. You have wasted your own time, perverted the aims of the artists behind the work, and done your children a disservice.
- npsimons 11y ago
  I feel very similarly, but also feel very strongly that is is very welcome thing in a world that seems more and more obsessed with shoving culture/content down our throats (ad-blocking software comes to mind as a similar thing). That being said, while I do use ad-blocking software, boycott companies that do excessive advertising and go out of my way to avoid advertisements (I pay for Netflix and Amazon prime and don't watch regular TV), I will not use this filter, for reasons you have stated. If I don't approve of the artist's vision (such as Michael Bay or McG, although that's more a case of artistic merits versus the content), I simply won't watch it at all.
- marco1 11y ago
  Thanks for your thoughts, but I feel many of you are way too focused on the "big picture" and arguing about moral and ethical issues. Don't always try to make philosophic arguments about what should be and what shouldn't be. This is just a tool, a utility, something pragmatic, for use in practice. Something to help people, creating value by doing what they wish for. Somebody is always the one who shapes what you (or your children) see. If you watch uncensored movies, it's (mainly) the director who decides. If you apply some selected filters, it's you who decides and shapes the movie. This is not inherently bad. And not all scenes contribute to the development of characters and story. Some are just for shock value, etc.
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marco1 11y ago
Apparently, an important part that was missing in my description is that this is a two-step process: (1) The community (or even you alone, or some (commercial) provider) tags the source material with categories and severities of things that can be filtered. (2) Either in the UI of the video player (if supported), or using the currently provided "transpiler", you get to choose what you want to filter and what you want to see. Sorry for having forgotten to explain this in a prominent place!

125 points by marco1 11y ago

jasonkostempski 11y ago

I only things I find offensive are commercials and Kardashians, will this work on those?

marco1 11y ago
Commercials, yes. Kardashians, less so, unless you find a category that fits ;)

johnloeber 11y ago

How does this work?

marco1 11y ago
Thanks for your question! The README tries to explain a lot of the things, but I can answer questions here, of course, and give an overview. All in all, the idea is quite simple and the project doesn't really do that much, yet. As an alternative to commercial providers for content filters, family filters, etc., this project tries to establish an open format that can be used to describe any video source. The filters are split into several categories where each has "severity" level. This way, you can adjust the filters to your personal needs and wishes when using them. Example: You are terribly frightened by fire because you have some childhood trauma. But you don't care about violence and blood splatters at all. For me, this might be the other way round. So if we can adjust the filters to our needs, they can be useful to both of us. Since nobody supports this format today (nobody even knew of it until today), a web tool is provided that lets you "transpile" the filters to three popular playlist formats.
- walterbell 11y ago
  What are the playlist formats? Are there video players which seamlessly buffer and play content based on start/stop times defined in playlists?
  - marco1 11y ago
    As outlined in the README, the playlist formats are: * XSPF for VLC media player * M3U for VLC media player * EDL for MPlayer And yes, they do support seamless plaback based on start/stop times.

calcsam 11y ago

https://www.vidangel.com/ https://www.vidangel.com/ does this as a service

marco1 11y ago
Thanks! VidAngel is actually listed in the README: https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter#commercial-providers https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter#commercial-... The README does also explain why an open format and open contribution might be better.

bosdev 11y ago

I dislike that the filters are strictly defined. What if I wanted to create a category for 'rape' or 'animal-cruelty'? I should be able to add those notes, and have them be silently ignored by unsupporting clients. Even better though, I don't see why the client wouldn't include those new categories in what can be filtered for this specific clip. Edit: Also, it seems like the severity levels (low/medium/high) are arbitrary, meaning they will vary from film to film. It might make more sense to give categories sub-categories or tags. So for swear words, it would have the sub-categories of all the various words which might be used. For violence, it might have the tags of ('simulated', 'on screen', 'bloody'), etc. That way the viewer could decide what they want to see, and it would be somewhat consistent.

marco1 11y ago
Thanks for your feedback! At present, the list of available categories and filters has been kept short to ensure simplicity. We might think about allowing any custom categories, as you suggested. So we should definitely keep that idea in mind. But let's assume you added "rape" as a category (which we thougth about as well): Then when do you add "rape" versus the existing "violence", "sex" or "nudity"? Do you have to add them all for most rape scenes? On the other hand, what do the consumers do? Do they have to tick dozens of boxes to ensure that no unwanted scenes are shown? The more categories you add, the more blurred do the boundaries become.
- luma 11y ago
  Having this sort of control seems to be the only way for something like this to be useful across a wide range of audiences. My wife will watch people being murdered and maimed in the most horrifying of manners, but the second an animal comes to harm she'll get up and walk out of the room (and then blame me for making her watch it). "Violence" doesn't cover her specific use case, so without the ability to narrow that to "animal cruelty", it wouldn't address our own requirements.
  - marco1 11y ago
    Thanks, that's definitely a valid concern! You're both right in that we should perhaps change the severity schema to category-specific keywords instead of general levels.

jcoffland 11y ago

This is basically a platform for movie censorship. Who gets to decide which parts of what movies are, violent, sexual, etc. I know I don't have to use it but regardless I hope this does not catch on. If you don't like the content in movies you don't have to watch them.

DanBC 11y ago
> If you don't like the content in movies you don't have to watch them. Your comment is incoherent. This website is a tool for people to use for themselves to decide if they want to see a movie or not. How do they know if they don't like the content in a movie? this site will tell them.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  Incoherent? Please explain?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    What is being censored, and how is it being censored?
    - jcoffland 11y ago
      If you choose to use this filter you are choosing to watch censored movies. If we have a censored version of Huckleberry Fin and a non-censored version, you could say I have a choice of which to read but it is still censorship and we still live in a world where books are censored.
bertjk 11y ago
But isn't this kind of the point? This gives you a programmatic way to specify to your media player just what content you don't want to watch. If this stuff gets popular, then the publishers should feel less pressure to censor themselves.
- 11y ago

robraven 11y ago

Really cool idea!

marco1 11y ago
Thank you!

deleted 11y ago

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gdw2 11y ago

Is there an existing collection of free filters for popular movies anywhere? What would it take to get this working with streaming services (like VidAngel does -- I think they pull from Google Play, but not sure)?

marco1 11y ago
There is one example in the repository. To get this working, all you need is some source material that VLC media player or MPlayer can play back. That should be possible with video files, DVDs, Blu-rays, but, unfortunately, perhaps not with streaming providers.

vdwijngaert 11y ago

Makes it way easier to directly skip to the raunchy scenes! ;-)

marco1 11y ago
Actually not, except you modified the converter to invert the filters ;) (Or if you read the timecodes and then seek manually.)

gdw2 11y ago

Aside from filtering based on moral/taste/etc grounds, I've often thought it would be interesting to filter for the sake of time. Could you conceivably trim a 3hr movie down to 90 minutes and have it still make sense? It would be an interesting experiment.

chroma 11y ago
Have you tried watching at a faster speed? I typically watch stuff at 1.2-1.3x, and 1.5x+ if it's animated (where the sped-up movements don't seem unnatural). It can be odd at first, but your mind quickly gets used to it. If you go back to normal speed, dialog seems to draaaaaag onnnnn foreverrrr.
Retr0spectrum 11y ago
There's a "Cinematic Recap" of all 5 seasons of Breaking Bad, which compresses the main story down to about 2 hours. It's quite hard to find though, due to the inherent copyright issues. Edit: Some links here: https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/3jt531/does_anybody_know_where_to_watch_the_2_hour/ https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/3jt531/does_an...
- nfoz 11y ago
  This is a great example of creative work that is not allowed to exist in a system with copyright.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I don't see why; the ideal format for such a thing isn't a derivative video, but a timecode script (like we're discussing here) that takes a legal copy of Breaking Bad as input. Similarly, I've been thinking about using a bunch of copyrighted music in a game I'm making... not by shipping the songs, but rather by just using the copies people may or may not have in their iTunes libraries, with fallbacks to non-copyright ambient music. Remix culture is too focused on embedding. Everybody forgets about the possibility of transclusion.

tsunamino 11y ago

Hi! I have a similar project called Feerless that provides crowd-sourced, preemptive notifications for Netflix at feerless.us Would love to chat about a possible collaboration.

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callumlocke 11y ago

Somehow this makes me really uncomfortable. I know it seems very reasonable, inviting people to choose what they want to censor for themselves... but it just feels wrong. I'd much rather someone didn't watch my film at all than watch a butchered version. As a separate point, I think it's often more traumatic/damaging to cut away from a scene just as it's getting distressing, and then cut back after the bad thing has happened. I often had this kind of viewing experience imposed on me as a child, and I honestly think it screwed me up a little, sitting there speculating about whatever I'm missing, and generally being taught that when things are getting unpleasant you just skip that part. Not a good attitude for life. It's true there are films that are inappropriate for a young kid, but in that case, choose a different film.

DougN7 11y ago
I don't understand that. Using a chef reference I made below, if you cooked a nice dinner, but someone didn't like the brussel sprouts, should they not have eaten anything and skipped your dinner party? If you listen to some of The Donald's speech, should you not be allowed to skip some of it? Why is art all-or-nothing?
- callumlocke 11y ago
  Those are very good counter examples. I wouldn't want someone to miss a whole dinner because they don't like sprouts :) I still feel like there's a difference though... At least the person can see the sprouts, they have the option, the chef can say "Ah go on, try some, they've got little bits of pancetta in them!" and maybe they try one, and maybe they realise sprouts are great! Or maybe they don't, but at least they considered it. Compare that to (bare with me) someone wearing magic AR goggles that somehow bleep out any mention of sprouts, and automatically pre-warn the chef to not put any sprouts on their plate and not to mention them. Absurdity aside, I think there's something insidious about people setting up automated filter bubbles for themselves and their children
  - DougN7 11y ago
    > filter bubbles for themselves and their children We do that all the time. I don't let my kids watch some content because of their age. I filter their activities (don't let them drive until they're able). I try to filter what they eat (less junk food), and their waking hours (try to get them to go to bed). This is no different. It's all cost/benefit, and if some people think some content of any sort is not appropriate for them and their families, fine. But why not allow them the 95% of the content that they like? What if Netflix said you only got to watch a series if you guaranteed you'd watch every episode? The idea is preposterous.

smacktoward 11y ago

Freedom to filter? "Freedom to deface a work of art" is more like it. A work of art is an artist trying to tell you something. Chopping out bits based on your petty personal prejudices is like going through the Louvre and drawing clothes on all the nudes with a Sharpie. Even if you're the only one who ever has to see the defaced version -- and you can't tell me that your "freedom to filter" won't eventually start being forced down the throats of other people, like children in schools -- who gave you the right to make the decision on the artist's behalf that the defaced version doesn't compromise their work? If you don't like art, you have always had the only freedom that matters, which is to choose not to look at it. You can live in your bubble and never risk offense if you want to; you just have to be willing to have the courage of your convictions and forgo the things you oppose. "Filtering" is just a way to try and have it both ways, to have your cake and eat it too. It's every bit as venal and cowardly today as it was when Thomas Bowdler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler) was doing it in the 19th century. Art is what it is. If you don't like it, don't pollute it by trying to "fix" it; leave it alone and maybe try making some of your own that meets your standards.

callumlocke 11y ago
I vaguely agree with your sentiment, but vandalising artworks at the Louvre is a bad analogy. You're making out this tool is for censoring art for other people, but that's exactly what it's not.
- deleted 11y ago
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DougN7 11y ago
Hogwash. What other part of life is a "if you get a little you're forced to have it all"? Like that meal at the restaurant? You better damned finish it all or the chef would rather you not eat any!
- 9999 11y ago
  That is very much the case at some restaurants that consider food to be art. Art is different. To be able to appreciate and understand it, it's all or nothing.

Eric_WVGG 11y ago

This sounds like complete bullshit to me, and I find the the entire idea pretty reprehensible. But on the off chance that this helps someone whom is a survivor of sexual assault and buys into the idea of trigger warnings, there perhaps ought to be a differentiation between "sex" and "sexual violence" or "rape"

rmc 11y ago
> there perhaps ought to be a differentiation between "sex" and "sexual violence" or "rape" I suspect the "sex", like "nudity", is really for prudes who don't like seeing any hint of anything.
marco1 11y ago
> there perhaps ought to be a differentiation between "sex" and "sexual violence" or "rape" Rape is "violence" and not "sex" in this classification. But this should be documented, of course. > This sounds like complete bullshit to me I don't understand how you come to this point of view. You might personally not be interested in this. But that's not what you wrote. Anyway, as you can see in the README, there are several commercial providers for such filtering, so it's obvious that there are people who want and need this.
- Eric_WVGG 11y ago
  I’m not arguing that there’s no market for this product* . I just find artistic censorship morally objectionable in much the same way that others find violent or sexual content abhorrent. Just on the other side of this particular culture war I guess. * surely plenty who want, but I disagree that anyone “needs”

scottjad 11y ago

Are there some tools that make it easy to make these filters? It would be nice to have something built-in (as a plugin?) to mpv or VLC. I've created several filters for personal use with EDL. mplayer has a decent UI way of doing that while watching the film by pressing 'i' to start a cut and 'i' again to end the cut. It's nowhere near perfect though because you still have to edit the edl file to decide whether to cut video or mute audio. One nice feature you could add to this editing UI would be to use the subtitle file to allow jumping to the locations of certain language in order to edit them (times in subtitles aren't enough to edit a single word).

marco1 11y ago
Tooling definitely has to be improved! So this is the very beginning, and since nobody even knew of it until yesterday, manually editing the lists was fine with me. By the way, the textual filter lists are easy to write and edit :)

rmc 11y ago

Interesting idea. However there is nothing for racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia, so I added a pull request for it[1]. It does seem like a weirdly specific list of categories. Why not let people filter whatever they want? [1] https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter/pull/2 https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter/pull/2

zhemao 11y ago
Because for each new category, you would have to tag all the scenes in the movie that fall into that category in order to filter it out. I think the categories chosen are those that the MPAA use to set the content rating.
marco1 11y ago
Thank you! Regarding the composition of the category list: "specific"? -- probably, "weird" -- not at all. The initial selection of categories has been inspired by other providers and rating systems. Further, they are broad and general categories that encompass a lot of other topics such as those you suggested. Yet again, something like "gambling" on the list might make this seem "weirdly specific". But when re-structing the current category list, one should certainly add your suggestions. Either as top categories or sub categories that could be introduced instead of severity levels.

confusedLearner 11y ago

I thought it would use deep learning to do this. Silly me..

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compiler-guy 11y ago

I doubt I'll use this technology myself--I generally prefer to see movies as they were created--but recuts and derivative works can be works of art in and of themselves. One could have use this technology to create "Star Wars--the Phantom Edit", for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Edit Production companies often create airplane and television versions of movies, and it isn't any big deal. I see no reason why customization of this sort is immoral since no one is required to use it.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Yep, they should have a category for "idiocy" and things like that. Parts with annoying characters, or where they spout off nonsense. Some works are far better when they resist the urge to say dumb things. Example: "We tracked the bad guy down" vs "We tracked the bad guy using the Human Genome Project."
- EdHominem 11y ago
  Time-Travel Episodes [N] Technobabble [N] ...
dogecoinbase 11y ago
A couple favorites of mine (more on the artistic/creative side than strict restructurings): Mad Max Black & Chrome: https://blackandchrome.wordpress.com https://blackandchrome.wordpress.com Steven Soderbergh's "Psychos": http://extension765.com/sdr/15-psychos http://extension765.com/sdr/15-psychos (Plus multiple other recuts he's done: http://extension765.com/sdr http://extension765.com/sdr )
marco1 11y ago
To the point! Thank you! Airplane versions are just another examples where such filtering is employed already and could benefit from an open format. Just like censored TV versions. Custom edits are possible, and encouraged, as well. And, as you said, nobody is required to use it. I really didn't expect these accusations of immorality. Those must be misunderstandings, because one can objectively say that this is not immoral in any way.

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shepik 11y ago

Niice. So if somebody were to mark all non-action scenes (like dialogues) in action movies as "language", i' be finally able to watch some real action. Nice.

derefr 11y ago
I don't expect any human would have a similar-enough concern to bother doing that for you—but that sounds like a problem amenable to automation. You could pull it off pretty easily by running the audio track through speech recognition—not for content, just for detecting speech is happening—and then snipping out an overlapping fat-margined timeslice of the video around each instance of dialogue.
- etjossem 11y ago
  ... I think original commenter is being sarcastic. There aren't a lot of movies that stand up well to having their dialogue heavily cut.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I don't think the original commenter (if not being sarcastic) would mind. They're basically asking for an unending stream of "ambient" action scenes, rather than a movie per se.

al2o3cr 11y ago

On the flipside, reverse the sense of how that tool generates EDL and you've got a "shorten Hollywood blockbusters to the good bits" system... ;)

marco1 11y ago
You could certainly do that, if you were interested ;)

kempbellt 11y ago

First thing that came to mind: Game of Thrones. I imagine episodes would be 10 minutes long and you'd have no idea what's happening. Not saying they don't go over the top at times, but the brutality of a show like GoT is a very powerful illustration tool, and filtering out bits and pieces because they make you uncomfortable would ruin the entire purpose of the show. I'm sure some people will find use for this tool, but I will likely forgo.

gedy 11y ago

This is very handy, sometimes there's a really enjoyable movie you'd like to watch at home, but has few parts that are not appropriate for kids. I don't see the need for a high-horse about censorship in this case.

marco1 11y ago
Thanks for your understanding! This is what was the "vision" of this project, the current use case and all that has ever been thought about. This is not forcing censorship upon all movie viewers.

rrowland 11y ago

Maybe fewer people would be complaining about opt-in filtering if the thread were titled "Watch movies with the freedom NOT to filter". This protocol would actually help those that want to watch their TV unfiltered because because it could replace the current system of filtering being forced on everybody.

marco1 11y ago
Thanks a lot! This is exactly what the vision (or a large part of it) was. But having phrased the title as you suggested, people would have countered that the best way "NOT to filter" is to play back the material as-is.

9999 11y ago

A tool to "filter" a work of art for yourself is also a tool to censor a work of art for someone else. In this case, and judging by the reactions from some parents here, most likely for your own children. So, despite the interesting framing of this as something that will create the "freedom to filter," it inevitably will be used to oppress. Regardless, the end effect on the viewers (both willing and unwilling) is that they have not seen the work. They may in fact have a completely different understanding of the film or show than someone who actually has seen the work. A morally ambiguous character becomes wholly righteous. A villain becomes the hero. Violent acts cease to have a consequence of gore, perhaps of pain or death. Romance no longer leads to sex. Dialogue cut for swearing completely changes the perception of a character, the story, and the world. In the end you have seen something worse than nothing at all--a cartoon caricature of what the creators intended. You have wasted your own time, perverted the aims of the artists behind the work, and done your children a disservice.

npsimons 11y ago
I feel very similarly, but also feel very strongly that is is very welcome thing in a world that seems more and more obsessed with shoving culture/content down our throats (ad-blocking software comes to mind as a similar thing). That being said, while I do use ad-blocking software, boycott companies that do excessive advertising and go out of my way to avoid advertisements (I pay for Netflix and Amazon prime and don't watch regular TV), I will not use this filter, for reasons you have stated. If I don't approve of the artist's vision (such as Michael Bay or McG, although that's more a case of artistic merits versus the content), I simply won't watch it at all.
marco1 11y ago
Thanks for your thoughts, but I feel many of you are way too focused on the "big picture" and arguing about moral and ethical issues. Don't always try to make philosophic arguments about what should be and what shouldn't be. This is just a tool, a utility, something pragmatic, for use in practice. Something to help people, creating value by doing what they wish for. Somebody is always the one who shapes what you (or your children) see. If you watch uncensored movies, it's (mainly) the director who decides. If you apply some selected filters, it's you who decides and shapes the movie. This is not inherently bad. And not all scenes contribute to the development of characters and story. Some are just for shock value, etc.

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marco1 11y ago

Apparently, an important part that was missing in my description is that this is a two-step process: (1) The community (or even you alone, or some (commercial) provider) tags the source material with categories and severities of things that can be filtered. (2) Either in the UI of the video player (if supported), or using the currently provided "transpiler", you get to choose what you want to filter and what you want to see. Sorry for having forgotten to explain this in a prominent place!