Personalised Recommendations Library - Work in Progress

[dexus 17]

Wow!  Even though it is a completely different thing than the "Recommend to a user" plugin we discussed here in this thread, this feature is also awesome.
It can be like "Popular now" on Netflix, or just a custom list of things to recommend to everyone.. I like it.  I do still however want the per-user recommendation system as well..

[CarlosLima 148]

Is this something that can be used now or is it something for the future?

[chef 3745]

21 minutes ago, CarlosLima said:

Is this something that can be used now or is it something for the future?

Currently in the process of being developed.

 

[Cheesegeezer 3086]

53 minutes ago, CarlosLima said:

Is this something that can be used now or is it something for the future?

Near future actually.

[crusher11 851]

10 hours ago, chef said:

I mean it isn't a user based recommendation system,  Sure...  In order to actually pull that off,  things  would have to be implemented in the core, or you can implement what @rbjtech has suggested, which is also awesome.

 

What was that?

 

10 hours ago, chef said:

But this channel plugin will implement Bayesian Like Algorithms (like the ones that are used in platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Youtube)  and use them in Emby.

Auto calculates Top Pick items based on user views, and liked items.

Thing is on my server, I'm almost 100% of the activity. Others will pop in for one movie here or there, but it's not a frequent thing. I frequently recommend movies to family, but having that actually built into Emby was something I did look forward to.

[rbjtech 4265]

Guys - lets just take a moment to step back.

Rome was not built in a day.

@chef has worked his magic to build a channel from a set of defined ItemId's stored in an XML file.  It then does some very wizzy stuff using Skia to create the image graphics so they are numbered and 'stand out'.  It also brings this channel to the top of the order list.  There are also some algorithms to identify the top played item - personally, I will never use this because I do not have enough users to warrant it working effectively.

All great stuff for a 'Spotlight' feature.

Now the Recommendations feature IS different, in as much as you manually specify individual USER ItemId's to display for particular users.

So using the Spotlight framework - all that needs to be done is to modify the channel to read the 'user recommendations' playlists instead and display it for the appropriate user.

This is an ongoing development and I still hope to have the 'Recommendations' Plugin doing exactly as I originally specified - as for me, that is much more useful that a generic 'Spotlight' type approach.

If we can combine into one plugin - great - if not, then it will be a different plugin.

[akacharos 11]

@rbjtech, just wanted to share my deep appreciation on your personalized recommendations approach. I was really disappointed when emby devs turned Collections into a crippling function with version 4.6. It's a shame to see a pattern where any function of personal (human) interaction being stripped away little-by-little in digital platforms.
With Emby's recommendation feature being useless (and I am being polite!) and Collections being crippled, I am really hoping this development will pick some pace!



 

 

[rbjtech 4265]

19 hours ago, akacharos said:

@rbjtech, just wanted to share my deep appreciation on your personalized recommendations approach. I was really disappointed when emby devs turned Collections into a crippling function with version 4.6. It's a shame to see a pattern where any function of personal (human) interaction being stripped away little-by-little in digital platforms.
With Emby's recommendation feature being useless (and I am being polite!) and Collections being crippled, I am really hoping this development will pick some pace!



 

 

This is still in the pipeline - but 'life' has got in the way for a few of us on Plugin development and testing.  Hopefully things calm down a bit and we can get back into the improvements soon. 

[crusher11 851]

On 9/1/2022 at 2:54 PM, rbjtech said:

Guys - lets just take a moment to step back.

Rome was not built in a day.

@chef has worked his magic to build a channel from a set of defined ItemId's stored in an XML file.  It then does some very wizzy stuff using Skia to create the image graphics so they are numbered and 'stand out'.  It also brings this channel to the top of the order list.  There are also some algorithms to identify the top played item - personally, I will never use this because I do not have enough users to warrant it working effectively.

All great stuff for a 'Spotlight' feature.

Now the Recommendations feature IS different, in as much as you manually specify individual USER ItemId's to display for particular users.

So using the Spotlight framework - all that needs to be done is to modify the channel to read the 'user recommendations' playlists instead and display it for the appropriate user.

This is an ongoing development and I still hope to have the 'Recommendations' Plugin doing exactly as I originally specified - as for me, that is much more useful that a generic 'Spotlight' type approach.

If we can combine into one plugin - great - if not, then it will be a different plugin.

Assuming this could be shuffled, it'd be nice to have even for me just to see some different movies every now and then when I'm looking for something to watch. 

[InaudibleDirge 6]

i've been using the recommendations script since i first found it on here, but the most recent beta changes the playlists emby build from xml to m3u files and this breaks script. i was wondering if there is a quick fix for this, or maybe if there is any progress on a proper spotlight structure

[rbjtech 4265]

12 hours ago, InaudibleDirge said:

i've been using the recommendations script since i first found it on here, but the most recent beta changes the playlists emby build from xml to m3u files and this breaks script. i was wondering if there is a quick fix for this, or maybe if there is any progress on a proper spotlight structure

Hi - I can modify the script to just read the m3u file directly - as it contains the media path just the same as the original xml did.

tbh - I was waiting for a couple of things which haven't really materialized in the way I thought they would :-

a) Top Picks (from @chef) had it's roots from this original idea - and for 'Global' recommendations - it works well but for my intended purpose (user based recommendations) it doesn't achieve this.

b) The playlist permissioning - this was 'in the works' when I first did this, and back then, any user had permission to add/modify/delete any playlist.   @Luke advised here that this was being modified to allow user based permissioning - perfect I thought, we could add functionality to stop users adding recommendations for certain users (ie user x could not add Global recommendations) - but I don't see the promised context menu on how to add/remove permissions.

c) There was also talk of having 'user interactivity' via a plugin or maybe even via context menu's - ie rather than having to add a recommendation to a user 'playlist' to get it added - the user could just add it directly from that items 'context' menu.    This would be very tidy - and avoid the extra steps.   But again, this hasn't really progressed - although to be fair to Luke/sowtworkz and team a LOT of effort has gone into dev.emby.media with new SDK's etc - so things are moving without doubt.

@Cheesegeezer is also knocking out Channel plugins like there is no tomorrow - so we could possible create 'channels' per user - as opposed to libraries ...

So .. in summary ..

I'll take a look now at modifying the script to extract the file path from the .m3u instead - and then it should work again in it's current form.. but once all the pieces above are available, then I would hope it can become a proper plugin/feature.

 

[InaudibleDirge 6]

really appreciate it @rbjtech

the New Releases and Top Picks plugins to cover some stuff but I love the versatility this script has offered me. I just wish I could point to library items instead of creating duplicates and then merging them

[rbjtech 4265]

So a quick update to this feature.

• I've re-written the script to now automatically take all the suitable named playlist files (anything prefixed with [WATCHLIST] <name>) and create libraries from them for user <name>  - no need for parsing xml anymore.
• You can launch it from scripter-x on a schedule - rather than needing an os scheduler
• Makes full use of the new Playlist permissions - so as an Admin you can give users permissions to make recommendations / watch list for other users.   If they don't have access, then they can't add a recommendation for them.  If permissioned, they can also view (or edit) other users watchlists.
• 'All Users' is now 'Spotlight' - and this creates its own Library called 'Spotlight' - I restrict this allow only certain users to add recommendation/content.

I'll publish something soon.

[akacharos 11]

Hi @rbjtech,

thanks for the update  

any chance to get a hold of the revamped code?