Enhancement Of "Cinema Intros" Functionality

[HouseOfCards 71]

I've been gathering various collections of things which I'd like to integrate into my media shuffle.  Right now, cinema intros allow codec and trailers to be played, but since we are starting a new beta cycle, maybe we can work this in?

What I'd like is to be able to add special collection folders, and choose a random number of episodes/movies that should play before each intro category is played.  An example use case would be for classic commercials, or for those old WWII newsreels...  Let's say you had a small library of classic TV commercials.  You don't want a commercial to play all the time (most of us try to avoid commercials) but it might be fun to throw the random "Flintstones Winston Cigarette" commercial in between a shuffle of TV episodes.  Same with any other content that people want to collect.

Maybe make the interface offer an option to create a custom path, name it whatever ("Commercials"), with options to select how often a random file is selected to play...  Something like "Play Random Every X to X Plays", and allow selection for TV Content and/or Movie Content.  This way you could have it happen for TV episodes, movies or both.  If you were to specify "Play Random Every 1 to 1 Plays", a file would be chosen every episode/movie...  If you selected "Play Random Every 5 to 25 Plays", it would play a file no sooner than 5 episodes/movies, but at least every 25th episode/movie...

If that makes sense...?

People could use this to sprinkle whatever content they would like into their media shuffle... not just pre-roll videos.  Multiple collections could be configured with separate locations...  Commercials, Newsreels, Featurettes, Cartoons, Trailers, whatever a user could dream up.  I think this would make the server a lot more flexible, hopefully without much complication to code since the foundation is already there....

Thanks!

[Luke 37068]

Hi, yes it’s a cool idea about the commercials.

[Tremas 103]

I've been trying to do something similar very similar through tags and would love to have it automated. If you haven't I would suggest playing around with Vantage Point which is in the plugin catalog.

I would also mention that VirtualTV (also in the plugin catalog) can create "channels" with commercials/bumpers in between with controls on how often and how many. That's only for a "channel" though.

Now, these solutions don't t work completely for the cases you mentioned, but Vantage Point does provide for random bumpers, commercials, and other things. It comes much closer than the standard "Cinema Intros".

In my opinion, this falls under the heading of "your media your way." It's the type of feature that can delight users by surfacing and exposing your existing media in unique and interesting ways. It's something that you can only get my managing your own media collection and just isn't available any other way (you're not going to get it from Netflix). 

I would refine the FR to say that additional items could added to the "cinema intro cue" for defined folders based on criteria such as release year (commercials and music videos from the year the movie/show came out), Parental Rating, genre, and especially tags. Similar to VantagePoint, this could be ordered by section when setting up this dynamic cue. I also like your idea of dynamically adding items between TV episodes (or if you really want to get fancy - chapter breaks for old shows designed around having commercials with a cliffhanger before every break).

I also will mention that once I hit the limitation of Vantage Points being able to craft custom "Alamo Drafthouse" style movie pre-shows, I've just been making my own pre-show playlists for movies. So if I have have a family movie night scheduled, I have a whole custom pre-show of related shorts, music videos, advertisements, comedy bits, trailers, and intros leading in while everyone gets settled. Again - this is only possible with a personal media server. Now, this is still not ideal and I would love a more programmatic way to do it. As some feedback for the team, here's what frustrates me about this playlist workflow:

1. There is no way (currently) to filter playlists/collections by library or content in most screens. I now have movie pre-show playlists, music video playlists, and music playlists. When adding an item to a playlist it is very difficult to navigate and find the playlist I'm working on. Also, the fact that when adding to a playlist the view is of a large image and sorted by title, it takes a long time to identify the one you want. It would be easier to see a list or table view, or a way to filter by library/media type. Alpha picker would help too. Also, when I'm looking for just playlists on the home screen - it's a mess.

2. It's a pain to add trailers to a playlist. There has been plenty of discussion about trailers as extras or not, and I understand the design decisions involved. However, if you choose to add a local trailer so as to make it available in when pressing the trailer button you can not select it and add it to a playlist or collection. If you add the trailer as an extra, it can be added to a playlist but it won't work with the trailer button. So I tend use an extra STRM file or second copy of the trailer which is cumbersome.

Cheers.

[ebr 14913]

The same as this?

 

[HouseOfCards 71]

27 minutes ago, ebr said:

The same as this?

Sort of...  I think that post is looking for a few more options than just the "Play Random Every X to XX Plays" for each collection, which is fine...  The more options the better, but the key is to first separate out the ability for users to create not just the default "codec" or "pre-roll videos" collections, but allow us to also add additional categories.  I was thinking "commercials" or "trailers", etc... and in the case of the post you referenced, they would like to create a "bumpers" collection...  There really doesn't need to be a limit as to how many alternate collections a user could create.  The options which could be specified are up to the devs and the complication each would require to code, obviously.

Here's what I see as the workflow, if you will...

1.  The user is presented with an enhanced "Cinema Intro's" page.  This page allows for creating "Intro Collection's" which the user would want. 

2.  User creates a "collection" and calls it for example "Trailers".  A path to where the users trailers are stored is entered by the user.

3.  An option for that "collection" appears (or many options for that matter) which says "Play Random Every X to XX Plays" appears where the user specifies how often an item should be randomly selected for playback from that collection for the types of content played.

4.  An additional option appears that shows whether to play this collections content for episodes, or movies, or both...  Just check what categories you want this collection's options applied to.  This allows users to separate playing "trailers" only when movies are played, and "commercials" to play only if TV episodes are played, according to the frequency you specify.

5.  Each category of "collections" has a counter of some sort.  Every time appropriate content is played, it increases the collections counter.  If it matches the threshold specified, the collection content is played.  Counter resets.

This (relatively simple?) enhancement could cover all sorts of clever ways users would manage content.  In my case, I'd probably prefer if this function could be limited to "all plays" or just "shuffle" plays.  It's not the end of the world, but if I manually play something, I kinda want it to just play.  If I'm just shuffle-playing content for casual viewing, I wouldn't mind if playback was interrupted occasionally for random content.

In my case, I'd see the following ideas right off the bat...

"Trailers"- Only applied to shuffling movies, maybe every 3-5 movies...  This would allow the user to collect their own trailers and end reliance on the low-resolution trailers pulled from the web by existing trailer functionality.  It would fix some complaints I've read about low resolution trailers.

"Commercials"- Only for TV Shows, every 5-10 episodes...

"Bumpers"- Only for TV Shows...

"Intermissions"- For movies...  Wouldn't it be nice to occasionally get the "The show starts in 2 minutes..." between movies?  There are lots of intermissions with dancing food items out there... 

"Featurettes"- For movies.  Maybe every 10th movie, you might want to watch "The Making Of Jaws" or any other stuff you have like that. 

As is obvious, if the devs wanted to be clever, a few libraries could be dynamic, and based on content you already have in the appropriate folders in your library.  We all know the naming conventions for folders, so as long as you have a "featurette" folder under your movie, that "collection" could be auto-generated from those in your library.  Same with trailers and such.

One of the challenges I have (so others do as well, I assume) is what to do with all that other, special stuff we have that doesn't fit anywhere else.  This allows incorporating all that other stuff into a way where we might actually watch it now and then.  Maybe someone doesn't really want a "Music Video" library, but wouldn't mind seeing a music video every 15th TV show, or what-not.

It would open up a diverse world of customization, in a way I don't believe any other media server allows.  It allows the media server to do more than TV and Movies alone in a way that is only as intrusive as the user wants.  I think this would peel off more users from the competition.

Thanks for the consideration....

[HouseOfCards 71]

2 hours ago, Tremas said:

I've been trying to do something similar very similar through tags and would love to have it automated. If you haven't I would suggest playing around with Vantage Point which is in the plugin catalog.

Thanks, I'll check those out...

If you hadn't seen it, this is the type of insanity I'm doing...  LOL