Read the contribution rules:

Basically Cast and Crew are to be taken from the credits.

Quoting Sakuramboo:

Quote:
Any help here otherwise I'll just not contribute and cast info.

You have two solutions :

1/ follow rules and contribute data that is generally unusable (no linking for same actors, linking of different actors with same name, adding spelling mistakes for accented names....). In this case, most of people who really care with correct data will simply delete those data in your contributed profiles.

2/ Use correct data, with good linking and correct spelling (for example taken from IMDb with DJ Doena's CastCrewEdit2 plugin), and keep data for you (no contribution). That is what I chose when rules where stupidly rewritten the way they are now.

To add to what others have said, while you can't use the IMDB as a source directly, in some cases sources like that might point you to the original title of a movie. You might find that someone else has already contributed cast and crew after all under a different movie name, in which case you can copy over the cast and crew from the earlier profile.

At first I was annoyed about not using IMDB without checking credits, but I've seen so many errors there (including the same cast member listed twice under slightly different names) that I'm glad there's that buffer. What you can get away with is, if the info *matches the credits exactly* use the IMDB to copy and paste info and save a little time typing, but compare each cast/crew member individually and tweak as needed. It takes longer than copying and pasting without looking at the credits, but it results in a much higher degree of accuracy, which is likely why the rules only allow credits or existing profiles as a source.

Quoting scotthm:

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While that is correct, it's a bad practice as it very often propagates data that does not follow the rules (i.e. it does not match the film credits).
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True, though it at least follows the rules. Of course what you can also do is copy the credits over and then fine tune using the credits. It'll still be faster than typing the credits or copying and pasting individual credits one by one. It also has the benefit that common names are more likely to be captured that way then just using the credits by themselves. Even if a later version of DVD Profiler had the ability to scan credits (which would be the ideal), common names would still need to be checked.

Quoting HellRazor:

Quote:
I have an old silent movie on BR that has NO onscreen cast/crew credits (although there ARE known credits on IMDB and elsewhere).  Should I contribute this profile without any cast/crew credits?

Here's what the rules say :
"If there are no credits, the film's official site may be used as a source, as long as the inclusion does not violate the site's published policy (if any)."

For silent movies, in addition to the publishers web-page, usually accompanying booklet or cover is accepted as source if there's zero on-scren credits. Also some silent movies have on-screen credit when the characters are first seen on screen instead of traditional intro credits.