Search YouTube Edit

Official Channels

Always use videos from official sources when they are available. Trailers, teasers and other promotional videos are frequently uploaded to the official YouTube and Vimeo accounts of the production companies and/or distributors. This includes theatrical distributors, television networks, streaming platforms and physical distributors.

It's also common for official videos to be part of a specific movie channel on YouTube (e.g. 3 Days to Kill) or even a specific franchise channel (e.g. Need for Speed, both video games and movie stuff in one channel).

Please be aware the first YouTube search result is often not the official trailer. Take some time to browse further and you will eventually find something official.

In rare cases, the trailer can be added to the official channel of a person connected to the movie (actor, producer, director, etc).

Semi-Official Channels

If there are no official sources, semi-official channels can be used. This includes, for example, film festival channels (e.g. HotDocsFest), theater chain channels (e.g. AMC Theatres), and the Fandango channels.

Always use the original trailer if possible. Avoid using trailers with intros or outros created by the uploader.

General Guidelines

Be careful to only use official videos. Fan-made videos are very popular on YouTube, but they're not allowed on TMDb.

Full movies are not allowed.

YouTube videos that have no region restrictions are preferable. Tools like this one will help identify them.

Official videos are not spoiler-free. If you don't want to see spoilers, do not watch the videos. ;D

Deleting good official videos will result in a warning or ban.

Malicious edits will result in a ban.

Language Edit

Videos are country/language specific. For example, you have to select the "Danish (da-DK)" translation to add Danish videos. You can easily switch to a different translation using the drop down menu. If a language translation is missing from the menu, you will first need to create it. The procedure is explained here.

The language of a video is usually determined by the main language spoken in the video. For example, the trailer for a Hindi movie with a Romanized title and an English description should be added to Hindi (hi-IN) if the language spoken in the trailer is in Hindi.

Subtitles: A video with English audio and hardcoded subtitles in French should be added to the French language translation. In contrast, a video with French audio but hardcoded subtitles in English should be added to the English language translation.

Type Edit

Trailer

Teaser trailers are usually added as trailers, not teasers, with the exception for teaser trailers shorter than 75 seconds.

Teaser

Teasers are shorter than trailers (and will typically have "teaser" in the title).

A trailer tease should—of course—be added as a teaser. It's usually a few seconds of footage promoting the upcoming trailer.

TV commercials—preferably added as "TV Spots"—are usually added as teasers.

Clip

Any scene from a movie—usually listed as a Clip—should be added as a clip.

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes (BTS) or Making Of videos peak into the making of the film. It typically features footage of the cast and the crew on set during the production.

Bloopers

A montage of mistakes and other amusing moments featuring the cast and crew during filming.

Featurette

Any material that is not a trailer, a teaser (including TV Spots), a BTS footage or a clip, should be added as a featurette. This include BTS interviews (e.g. "Behind the Bricks" Featurette).

Opening Credits

The opening credits sequences feature the on-screen title as well as the main cast and crew credits.

Quality Edit

Please select the right one: Standard (360p or less), HQ (480p), HD (720p), HD (1080p), 4K (2160p)

The quality can be found by clicking on the little wheel located at the bottom right corner of each YouTube video. We want the maximum resolution available for the video.

Source Key Edit

The source key is a series of eleven numbers, letters, underscores and hyphens that can be found in the URL of a video directly after "watch?v=" e.g. "INLzqh7rZ-U" from this URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INLzqh7rZ-U

No embed codes!

Name Edit

The names are now auto-generated.

If you wish, you may edit out the movie title and unnecessary info. e.g. "T2 TRAINSPOTTING - Official Trailer (HD)" can be edited to "Official Trailer"

When a movie has two or more trailers, the official sources usually use numbers to differentiate the trailers. e.g. "Sing - In Theaters This Christmas - Official Trailer (HD)" can be edited to "Official Trailer" and "Sing - In Theaters This Christmas - Official Trailer #2 (HD)" as "Official Trailer #2"

When the first trailer is titled "Official Trailer", you can leave it like that (no need to add a 1). But when an official trailer is titled "Trailer 1", feel free to add it as "Official Trailer 1".

Subtitled trailers should be marked as such. This is often the case for non-English movies released in the US. Many countries (e.g. France) release two versions of the same trailer: an original subtitled version (e.g. "Bande Annonce Officielle (VOST)") and a dubbed version (e.g. "Bande Annonce Officielle (VF)").