foghat 65 Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Hi, Any way to make it so MB Intros will remember the trailers it has already played and not play them again (when watching a different move)? I know mb server tracks what trailers have been watched - maybe can key in on this? I love the idea of being able to play trailers before a movie, but having the same trailer play more than once kind of defeats the purpose (at least for me) of using the plug-in. Thanks. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 Just to better show where I am coming from: I've watched 4 movies over the past week. I have mb intros set to play 2 trailers. On 3 of the movies Transcendence has played. On 2 of the movies Captain America: winter soldier has played. Currently have 77 trailers showing up in the Trailers section (set to plugin to 45 days or newer) with only 12 showing as watched. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Some of this is due to the fact the Intros tries to select appropriate trailers based on the movie you are watching. But, I think I can improve it to favor un-watched ones. It will take changes to both the plug-in and MBC, however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 (edited) hmmm. Thanks for considering, though I am using MBT... And, honestly - if I have seen the trailer before and your algorithm can't find another appropriate trailer, I'd rather not see any trailers. Edited February 22, 2014 by foghat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Whether or not it works in MBT will depend on exactly how it handles intro playback. MBC isn't currently marking them watched when they are watched in this manner (via the plug-in). I'm not sure about MBT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 Whether or not it works in MBT will depend on exactly how it handles intro playback. MBC isn't currently marking them watched when they are watched in this manner (via the plug-in). I'm not sure about MBT. MBT is marking them as watched after viewing from mb intros. Does this mean you'd just need to change the plug-in to ignore watched and it should work for MBT? If so, would be awesome if you could do that. And maybe just provide the option to 'only play trailer once' or something similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 It won't ignore watched ones but it will favor unwatched ones. I don't want to add another option and I don't want to just not play anything if it is marked watched. If you set it up to play 2 trailers, it is going to play the 2 best trailers it can find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 (edited) It won't ignore watched ones but it will favor unwatched ones. I don't want to add another option and I don't want to just not play anything if it is marked watched. If you set it up to play 2 trailers, it is going to play the 2 best trailers it can find. Thanks for doing this. Though I hope you will reconsider adding an option to ignore watched ones. Or at the very least, if there are no unwatched trailers that meet your 'best it can find' criteria, that it plays an unwatched trailer that is not a best match. If I've seen the trailer once, I really don't want to sit through it again; it is a little annoying - especially when you wife is sitting there saying, "this is dumb, we just saw that trailer last time." and your kids are echoing that sentiment. Edited February 23, 2014 by foghat 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
memc 22 Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 Yeah I have also found that trailers are often repeated. I have 2 trailers play before a movie and there will always be one that's repeated. Thanks for looking into it EBR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 If I've seen the trailer once, I really don't want to sit through it again; it is a little annoying - especially when you wife is sitting there saying, "this is dumb, we just saw that trailer last time." and your kids are echoing that sentiment. Hit the "stop" button on your remote once you realize it is one you have seen. The system should advance to the next trailer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
memc 22 Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 Hit the "stop" button on your remote once you realize it is one you have seen. The system should advance to the next trailer. I have tried this but it just goes straight to the movie and skips the second trailer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 Try "Next Chapter" on your remote then. We play these items as a batch in WMC and I think there is a way to advance them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
memc 22 Posted February 24, 2014 Share Posted February 24, 2014 The only media controls that work during the trailers are pause and stop. Can't seem to advance or go back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 24, 2014 Author Share Posted February 24, 2014 Using MBT, I can advance 10 sec at a time (assuming enough of trailer has downloaded to do this). Chapter skip does nothing. Stop kicks me right out and back to movie detail screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted February 24, 2014 Share Posted February 24, 2014 Update to the MBIntros Beta. It will favor un-watched items. If you use MBC, you'll need to update to the dev version of that for it to mark the intros as watched. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 24, 2014 Author Share Posted February 24, 2014 Update to the MBIntros Beta. It will favor un-watched items. If you use MBC, you'll need to update to the dev version of that for it to mark the intros as watched. Thanks for the super quick return on this! I've set my updates for MB Intros to be Beta. Is there a way to actually kick off the update? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted February 25, 2014 Author Share Posted February 25, 2014 Never mind. Got it. Button right on the dashboard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
memc 22 Posted February 25, 2014 Share Posted February 25, 2014 Thanks ebr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted March 22, 2014 Author Share Posted March 22, 2014 @@ebr, now that MBT is properly displaying movie duration if a trailer has been played first (think the latest server update resolved), I have started using MB Intros again (1.0.1.0) Right now I only have it set to play one MB Trailer. I watched a movie (Clash of the Titans - 2010) last night and another one this morning (Predator), for both movies the same trailer played: Jupiter Ascending. I assume you are matching up trailers to movies based on genre? Can you give the cliff notes version on how you match? I know for sure I have other trailers that contain at least one of the genres of the movies played. Would you please reconsider providing an option to just not play a trailer if it has been marked as played? Or maybe look at tweaking how your match/marked as watched logic works? As, honestly, having the same trailer playing again and again sucks, especially since there is no way to skip past it (at least when using MBT). If this were happening as more of the exception, would not be a big deal, but it seems to be more of the rule - I don't know, maybe I am just unlucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 It is more likely you are watching very similar movies and don't have that many current trailers that also match that movie. If you look at the trailer that played in MBT, does it show as watched? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted March 22, 2014 Author Share Posted March 22, 2014 Hi, yes it shows as watched in mbt. That is why I am wondering what your match logic is. I know for certain that I have other trailers with at least one of the same genre as the the 2 movies I watched. If you are looking to match as many genres as possible than it could be the case the jupiter ascending has the most matches when compared to other trailers. If this is the way it is done, I'd suggest that if a trailer is marked as unwatched, that should take precedence. So an unwatched trailer that has only one matching genre should play before a trailer that has 3 matching genres, but has already been watched - imo, anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Your question doesn't have a simple answer. The plug-in uses a scoring algorithm that takes a number of factors into account and gives different weight to each of them. And items are scored not really by the fact they contain a genre but what percentage of the original items genres to they contain. So, if your original movie is defined with Thriller, Action, Drama, then a trailer that has all three of those genres as well will score very high where one that is just Action will not. The flip side of this is if your original movie only has one genre defined, then many more trailers will get a high score. Then things like the trailer have the same primary actor as the movie you are watching will add to the score and having the same director will add very highly to the score. My latest changes are attempting to do exactly what you requested but it is tricky to figure out exactly what the right amount to weight the fact something is un-watched is - as I don't want ALL un-watched trailers to usurp all the other scoring factors by just bumping the score based on this. I can play with it some more though. Perhaps I can increase the score by a percentage based on watched status and that will be more accurate. Or, maybe taking the opposite approach and decreasing the score of a watched trailer would give a better result. I'll try that and give you a dll to test. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Try the dev version I just put up for the next few sessions and see if it works better for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted March 23, 2014 Author Share Posted March 23, 2014 Will do. Thanks for the explanation and thanks for tweaking the algorithm ebr. Just watched wrath of the titans (before I saw this post) and while it didn't play Jupiter ascending, it did play the new x-men, which has been played few times before. Fwiw, IMO, matching on genre would be the most important. And rating would be good as well, but probably not realistic as I imagine most trailer do not have a rating. The vast majority of the time I don't even know who the director is and would not even clue in that the trailer and movie director are the same. Seems kind of odd that there is such a high score being applied to a director match. But maybe this is just me. Can I ask why you are so opposed to just providing the option to not play watched trailers? While I appreciate not everyone may feel the same way, from my perspective, if I've seen the trailer, I don't want to see it again - even if that means no trailers play. I think this coupled with an option that basically ignores your algorithm (so any unwatched trailer will play) would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Rating is taken into account as well and it is even more selective on genre than I laid out. There are special cases like, if the movie you are playing isn't a Horror movie then it will be sure not to play a trailer for a Horror movie. This type of selection logic is very important for households with kids. Director is very important in movies. If you start paying attention to the directors on films you like, you may discover how similar a single director's movies are. For instance, Michael Bay films are always gonna be big "bang" affairs. So, if there is a trailer for a movie with the same director as the one you are watching, it is very likely it will be similar in "feel" even if not by genre and likely you will be interested in it. I feel that kind of selection logic is much more important to the average user than whether or not the trailer has played before. I am reluctant for the option for a few reasons: 1 - Every option adds to the complexity for the user and program. 2 - Therefore, I have to weigh pros and cons of each one and that includes demand. So far, you and one other person have mentioned this. 3 - Having that option turned on will mean that the system may play nothing even though you set it up to play x number of trailers. This has the potential to be confusing to a novice user and make them think something is broken. Having said all of that, get about 10 people to chime in on your side in here and I'll consider it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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