Shuffle/Random sucks and needs fixing. RE: TV Shows

[King Pin 28]

Sorry to be blunt but it's getting really annoying.  I've mentioned this before a couple times starting about a year ago. 

I have a playlist with about 20 shows inside.  Says 3700 episodes up top.  

Been using the playlist for weeks now and not only does it play the same episodes over and over again but it only plays from 5-6 shows. 

To add to that sometimes it will just play from 3-4 shows unless I start and stop and then it will adda couple other series. 

Some series not even one episode has been played.  

Friends - plays random episodes

How I met Your Mother - plays random episodes

Three's Company - never played

Rules of Engagement - never played

Just Shoot Me - never played

Dharma & Greg - never played

Married With Children - never played

According To Jim - plays random episodes

Hot In Cleveland - never played

Melissa & Joey - plays random episodes

My Name Is Earl - never played

Two & A Half Men - plays random episodes (seldomly)

Everybody Loves Raymond - plays random episodes

Scrubs - plays random episodes (seldomly)

Home Improvement - never played

Night Court - never played

Seinfeld - never played

The Big Bang Theory - plays random episodes

Anger Management - plays random episodes (seldomly)

WKRP In Cincinatti - never played

 

Attached a log in case it helps. 

embyserver.txt

[Spaceboy 2505]

it is very poor but it has been brought up many many times before and we are told that this is the best they can do. i seem to remember luke posting that they had made some improvements to the randomness of the shuffle within the last year but i don't notice any change. i regularly shuffle from one series which has 14 seasons and between 6 and 8 episodes in each. i almost always get one of the same 10 episodes first up every time i do this and never had a single episode from a number of seasons at any point. so very similar to your experience but on a smaller scale

i understand that true randomness and completing the playlist is difficult to achieve but the user experience is pretty rubbish here

[King Pin 28]

I did a search first but didn't see the info you posted about it being the best they can do.  

It's very unfortunate if that's the case.  

Especially these days where people are cutting the cord, for me personally Putting playlists on shuffle is 75% of my viewing during the day. 

I can't watch the same show for hours on end.  

[rbjtech 4333]

Is it supposed to be totally random (shuffle) across all shows and all episodes - and it does not take into consideration the played status, nor the order of the episodes ?

So it could pick the finale of a show for example and then at some other time play a mid season episode ?

I've never used this 'feature' so can't really comment - but would it make more sense to include only show items you have already watched ?  Maybe it does .. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by rbjtech

[hstamas 153]

What ever algorithm is being used seems to not take into account any sort of weighting - a show that has 500 episodes gets the same amount of randomness as one that has 100 so your constantly getting the 500 count show and never getting the 100 count for example. 

I also dont beleieve that its taking into account the number of plays a show has gotten in previous shuffles over time.

Smarter logic like that would make a world of difference but it must be a next level programing thing that the devs can't or wont do?

Edited December 15, 2022 by hstamas

[crusher11 861]

I've definitely noticed VirtualTV seems to play the same handful of things over and over again.

[pwhodges 1539]

I don't know if there's any way to apply this here, but when I've programmed a random playlist to be played continuously, what I did was:

Make an initial copy of the list;
Make a new active list by removing each item randomly from the initial list and appending to the new list;
Play active list in order (it is guaranteed that every item gets played and no item gets played twice);
Start again using the just played list as source for randomising into new list.

The re-randomisation means that between the first play through and the second, some items may be played at an interval considerably less than the length of the list - but that's inevitable.  If it's a concern, then simply splitting the initial list into two and processing each alternately as above would solve it.

Paul

[ebr 14959]

2 hours ago, hstamas said:

What ever algorithm is being used seems to not take into account any sort of weighting - a show that has 500 episodes

Hi.  Important to understand that Shows are not being shuffled here - episodes are.  So what show the episode belongs to is irrelevant.

[hstamas 153]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Important to understand that Shows are not being shuffled here - episodes are.  So what show the episode belongs to is irrelevant.

Oh I completely understand its not as basic as I make it out to be. Just my observations as to what it seems its NOT doing.

Its interesting though that we all seem to be experiencing the exact same pattern? It seems to be selecting episodes from a very narrow "bucket" of show and playing those episodes over and over.

Ive used my Family Guy channel as an example in other threads. Why is it playing S3E2 every other night and not playing S12E4 at all, ever? That's where some sort of last played logic would seem to be needed?

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by hstamas

[ebr 14959]

15 minutes ago, hstamas said:

Ive used my Family Guy channel as an example

What is your "Family Guy channel"? 

The OP here has a playlist.  When you add a "show" to a playlist, what you are actually doing is adding all the episodes of that show to that playlist.  A playlist is a linear list of some number of items.  There is no attention paid to the contextual information about those items (e.g. what show they belong to).  So, the fact these items are related to shows is lost at that point from the perspective of how the playlist is going to treat them.

The bottom line here is that true randomization in computer systems is impossible because computers are, by definition, not random .  At this point in time, we are relying primarily on established randomization routines provided by external libraries.  No doubt we could attempt to build more intelligence into these and I'm sure we will at some point in the future.

[hstamas 153]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

What is your "Family Guy channel"? 

 

Sorry ebr, Im using the VirtualTV plugin.

Same thing happens with a true Christmas playlist I use this time of year as well.

Wonder if the elusive smart playlist feature we have all been clamoring for over the years would help in this situation?

[King Pin 28]

On 12/15/2022 at 10:28 AM, ebr said:

What is your "Family Guy channel"? 

The OP here has a playlist.  When you add a "show" to a playlist, what you are actually doing is adding all the episodes of that show to that playlist.  A playlist is a linear list of some number of items.  There is no attention paid to the contextual information about those items (e.g. what show they belong to).  So, the fact these items are related to shows is lost at that point from the perspective of how the playlist is going to treat them.

The bottom line here is that true randomization in computer systems is impossible because computers are, by definition, not random .  At this point in time, we are relying primarily on established randomization routines provided by external libraries.  No doubt we could attempt to build more intelligence into these and I'm sure we will at some point in the future.

I guess this means that it won't be anytime soon, since this has been going on for quite a long time?

Does it make a difference if a new library is made with those 20 complete shows instead of a playlist and shuffle the whole library? 

[ebr 14959]

10 hours ago, King Pin said:

Does it make a difference if a new library is made with those 20 complete shows instead of a playlist and shuffle the whole library

Hi.  No, that would be the same as the logic would assemble all playable items (episodes) in the library and then shuffle them.  It is just a single list that has a pseudo randomizer applied to it.

[King Pin 28]

I can't begin to imagine the complexity with this stuff because I'm just a basic user.  No knowledge in the technical aspects whatsoever.  
When you said "The bottom line here is that true randomization in computer systems is impossible because computers are, by definition, not random" that kinda blew my mind because it's the exact opposite of what I would believed to be true.  

Would you be able to explain this to me in laymans terms? 
At this point in time, we are relying primarily on established randomization routines provided by external libraries

[pwhodges 1539]

1 hour ago, King Pin said:

When you said "The bottom line here is that true randomization in computer systems is impossible because computers are, by definition, not random" that kinda blew my mind because it's the exact opposite of what I would believed to be true. 

To get a sequence of number is a calculation; repeating a calculation will always give the same sequence, from a the same starting point.  However you can start the sequence with a number chosen by another means - for instance, the time.  Another issue is that the concept of "a random number" is not well defined - or rather, there are many definitions according to what aspect of the numbers you want to be random.  Furthermore, when selecting a play order for a list of items, you want to ensure that individual items do not get repeated too often or too close (which true randomness does not exclude), which is a requirement to make the sequence at least "a bit less random"!

1 hour ago, King Pin said:

Would you be able to explain this to me in layman's terms? 
At this point in time, we are relying primarily on established randomization routines provided by external libraries

The calculations to approximate any particular kind of randomness are quite picky - not so much complex as requiring to be done just so.  People have already done the work of writing programs to get good results, so it is usual to use the work already done rather than trying to do it oneself.  There is still the matter of exactly how to use the sequence of numbers which the chosen random number generator gives you, and this is an area in which I believe Emby could be significantly improved (I gave a hint earlier in the thread, but it may have been a bit lacking in detail).

Paul

[ebr 14959]

Just to add a bit, in the context of something like Emby  you don't even really want random.  True randomness could potentially give you the same item four times in a row.  You want an order that is different each time and takes into account other attributes about the media and even the context in which you are consuming it.

At this point in time, we are just using pseudo random techniques on a list - all the other stuff is room for improvement.

[crusher11 861]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

Just to add a bit, in the context of something like Emby  you don't even really want random.  True randomness could potentially give you the same item four times in a row.

That depends on whether you take the whole list and order it randomly, or pick a random episode from the list each time an episode is due to be played.

[pwhodges 1539]

Exactly so.

Paul

[Spaceboy 2505]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

  True randomness could potentially give you the same item four times in a row. 

while thats possible the chances of that from a set of 10 numbers is 1 in 10,000. up that to a set of 20 it would be 1 in 160,000.

that would be many orders better than what we have now. i'd estimate the chances of getting a given episode up first are 1 in 10-20

[ebr 14959]

18 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

while thats possible the chances of that from a set of 10 numbers is 1 in 10,000. up that to a set of 20 it would be 1 in 160,000.

that would be many orders better than what we have now. i'd estimate the chances of getting a given episode up first are 1 in 10-20

That's just proof that computers suck at true randomness.

19 hours ago, crusher11 said:

That depends on whether you take the whole list and order it randomly, or pick a random episode from the list each time an episode is due to be played.

My point is that you don't really want "random".

[crusher11 861]

26 minutes ago, ebr said:

My point is that you don't really want "random".

Only if you redefine "random" between each episode.

[ebr 14959]

10 minutes ago, crusher11 said:

Only if you redefine "random" between each episode.

You are the one redefining "random" which is just making my point .

What is desired here is not random. It is a very specialized, intelligent selection and ordering based on a lot of context.

[King Pin 28]

@ebr

PLEX has something called a smart playlist and you can tell it to hide watched episodes for whatever duration of your choosing.  I guess it's by day, week etc.  

Wouldn't something like that be a great alternative? 

[Luke 37254]

Smart playlist support is planned for future updates. Thanks.

[PuffyToesToo 281]

Is it possible to use some sort of rules as part of Emby itself, or a plugin?

For example, online radio stations and even IRL ones mitigate repetition through the use of rules. You can specify that a song can only be played once during any given "x hours/days". It can be applies to artists, albums etc - so is it possible to integrate that into Emby itself? Or an option within shuffle/playlists could include "only play an episode/show/whatever if it hasn't played in "X' amount of time". Maybe with Smart Playlists?