
Show HN: Watch movies with the freedom to filter - marco1
https://github.com/delight-im/MovieContentFilter?hn=2016-03-24
======
callumlocke
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
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?

~~~
manachar
Looking at a political speech... just skipping to some of it is an abhorrent
idea. That's how you lose context and likely meaning to words.

Without condoning or condemning Trump's speeches, skipping to just parts can
radically change your impression of the man and his policies.

This is a problem journalism faces when covering events. They try to edit down
to the meaningful parts while retaining the meaning of the whole. I can't
imagine that filtering out certain triggering phrases/words would allow you
paint a fair picture of him or his policies.

~~~
DougN7
You're saying the inverse of the OP's solution. He'd skip over 5%. You're
arguing it's not OK to skip over 95%. Skipping 5% of a political speech would
probably not be bad, especially if you knew before hand what you specifically
didn't want to hear (because you knew what was going to be said). Maybe I've
made up my mind on the war on Iraq and I just do not want to hear any more
about it. If I don't care about a candidate's position on whether it was right
or wrong, don't I have a right to skip that part of their speech?

------
bosdev
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
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.

~~~
Terribledactyl
> The more categories you add, the more blurred do the boundaries become.

I think that's kind of the point. There isn't a single coherent dependency for
all cultures for all content.

To have a simplified single set is to place one (semi arbitrary) value system
over another.

You could study the correlations and common concurrent uses, and maybe provide
common suggestions, like Amazon does. But again, boundaries and weirdness.

~~~
baddox
But this is software that is intended to actually be used by humans. It would
be a far worse user experience to prohibit the "sex" category but then be
shown a rape scene because someone added "rape" as a custom category.

This concept really doesn't work without standardized categories. Of course,
you could argue that more granularity should be added to the categories, and I
don't necessarily disagree. You could even have a directed graph of
categories, so that (for instance) "rape" could be a descendant of both
"violence" and "sex" and thus rape scenes would be banned if the user banned
either violence or sex.

~~~
marco1
Thanks for these interesting suggestions for implementation!

The only downside I could think of is that things could get a bit
untransparent with such complex graphs. People could think: "Why did I miss
this scene? I haven't even enabled that particular filter."

------
gdw2
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.

~~~
burkemw3
I have often wanted something like this for the 1+ hour historical shows on
the likes of PBS and The History Channel. I've found that the shows repeat a
lot of things before and after commercial breaks that I don't need to hear
again. I enjoy the topics, but my impatience combined with the editing drives
me away from watching the shows.

I think the main hurdle would be actually doing the editing because of how
time consuming it is. Perhaps the edit lists could be sold, and the after
market editors could get paid.

I wouldn't want to get into the mess of distributing copyrighted content, so I
was thinking of using the seek mechanism built into video players. A user
would load original content and the edit list, and the player would handle
seeking correctly.

In the naive implementation of this scenario, time would have to be very well
synchronized between source materials. I'm not sure how much of a problem that
would be. While writing this comment, the possibility of using image and sound
recognition floated into my consciousness. Perhaps there would be a way to tag
the images and sounds around cuts, to make them work even if time were off
(e.g. commercial break ran longer in one time zone than another).

If you build it, I don't want my cut; I just want to know about it!

~~~
marco1
Thanks, this is definitely something that would be possible.

> I think the main hurdle would be actually doing the editing because of how
> time consuming it is. Perhaps the edit lists could be sold, and the after
> market editors could get paid.

That's exactly what was envisaged. This is just an open format. There could be
(commercial) platforms or markets that offer complete filter lists. You don't
have to do it yourself. Even more than that, you _shouldn 't_ do everything
yourself. This can be a community effort, where you contribute only small
parts.

> I wouldn't want to get into the mess of distributing copyrighted content, so
> I was thinking of using the seek mechanism built into video players.

This is what this project is about. You don't have to distribute source
material. You have to distribute the filter lists only. The format can be
"transpiled" to popular playlist formats that make use of the seek mechanisms.

> In the naive implementation of this scenario, time would have to be very
> well synchronized between source materials.

This is built-in. You may take a look at the converter/transpiler tool.

------
compiler-guy
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
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
Time-Travel Episodes [N] Technobabble [N] ...

------
Eric_WVGG
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"

~~~
marco1
> 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
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”

------
marco1
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!

------
gdw2
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
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.

------
smacktoward
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.

~~~
DougN7
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
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.

~~~
DougN7
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. However, I know film is art, but
movies are mostly watched for entertainment. Censoring entertainment seems
totally fine to me -- I should be able to skip watching part of a baseball
game if I want. Hell, it's MY mind and eyes -- why don't I get to control what
goes in? Maybe I like 95% of something. Is that to be withheld because I don't
like the other 5%?

~~~
9999
You absolutely do get to control what goes in, and I really don't care if
people use this tool only for themselves. I think you will not have seen the
work in question. I think you can not have understood it the same way that
someone who saw the entirety of the work can understand it, and I would
consider you to be a bit silly for wasting your time.

What do you feel you gain by excising the objectionable portions of a work?

~~~
DougN7
I gain not being affected by it. My buddy loves masacre horror movies. They
used to scare him and freak him out, but now he's numb and it's just
entertaining to watch someone get chopped up. Sure it's not real, but the
effect it had on him was real. I can't say this for certain (though I need to
test it now) but I'll bet I respond in a much different way to real world
violence than he does now. Your mind is affected by what you put in just like
your body is affected by what you put into it.

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

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

------
rmc
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
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.

------
rrowland
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
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.

------
scottjad
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
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 :)

------
shepik
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
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
... 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
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_.

------
kempbellt
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.

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

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

------
9999
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.

~~~
marco1
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.

~~~
9999
What you have created is an abomination. It is a tool that can only be used to
diminish and destroy.

------
calcsam
[https://www.vidangel.com/](https://www.vidangel.com/) does this as a service

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

------
gedy
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
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.

------
tsunamino
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.

------
al2o3cr
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
You could certainly do that, if you were interested ;)

------
robraven
Really cool idea!

~~~
marco1
Thank you!

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

------
johnloeber
How does this work?

~~~
marco1
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
What are the playlist formats? Are there video players which seamlessly buffer
and play content based on start/stop times defined in playlists?

~~~
marco1
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.

------
jcoffland
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.

~~~
bertjk
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.

~~~
jcoffland
Will they? Who wants their artistry chopped up by an automatic filter? This is
a lot like the movie rating system.
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/jordanzakarin/movie-ratings-mpaa-
are...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/jordanzakarin/movie-ratings-mpaa-are-insane)

Many people disagree but I don't like giving groups like the MPAA the
unfettered ability to label what's good and bad.

~~~
DanBC
You can see the MPAA is a system imposed by other people, and this is a self-
imposed system? And that this self-imposed system affects no one else?

