Movie Roulette

[marshallwyoung 5]

If there was a feature where you could clump all of the movies thumbnails from a library into a bowl and spin or shake it and a random movie or collection appears out of the library to watch. Like putting a bunch of names in a basket to draw a random name but as a feature on the server. That'd be cool.

[ebr 16184]

Hi.  If you created a playlist with the movies you want in this "bowl" and then shuffle-played that playlist, that would do exactly that - play a random movie from a specific list.

[sydlexius 297]

I kind of like the paradigm that @marshallwyoungdescribes. I think it'd be kind of cool if a plugin developer would implement a WebGL or WebGPU UI that could animate posters in such a fashion.  Probably overkill when pre-generated visual sequences would be better performing (albeit at the cost of not being unique).  Obviously this wouldn't do anything for the native clients.

Edited March 30, 2023 by sydlexius

[marshallwyoung 5]

Yeah, it's just an idea. We've been using the shuffle feature for our weekly movie night. Keeps it interesting. However, sometimes, it would be nice to be able to spin a wheel or shake a bowl and have a visual image appear so that we can see if it's a movie we want to watch before we start it. Could be a neat little visual experience to add to the already abundant features Emby has.

Another idea, suggestion, I personally and deliberately assign the primary images on my shows library to an image that has a specific network logo on the image. For example, The Office: I will assign a primary image that has the NBC logo included in the image. This way, as I scroll through the different series in the library I can visually see which streaming platform or network produced the show. That insight can somewhat inform me as to the quality or content of the series, an appealing or unappealing association, if you catch my drift. Having an option in the settings to automatically have the server assign an image with a network logo would save a lot of time spent going back through after the scanner and replacing each series with a unique image that contains the network logo. 

[visproduction 315]

This feature is built into Youtube.  You can go to any channel, click on playlists, click on View Full Playlist and you get the list showing with thumbnails and a [Shuffle] button. 

You could collect trailers and make playlists in a Youtube account that match media you may have.  You can then invite anyone with a link in an email to have a look and choose media to watch. Yes, this is third party and not inside Emby, but it does the same thing you are looking to do and anyone can access the playlist.

I personally think if this is available and it's the same amount of work to setup, then why bother putting a fairly complex feature inside Emby that can easily have many issues and require support fixes.  Consider to make a page work, you ideally need to style it differently for Workstation browsers, mobile portrait, wide, tablets and test across browsers and then add it separately to Emby app.  I think that is a lot of work.

Here is an example of a youtube public playlist with the [Shuffle] button. 

[marshallwyoung 5]

On 3/30/2023 at 2:20 PM, sydlexius said:

I kind of like the paradigm that @marshallwyoungdescribes. I think it'd be kind of cool if a plugin developer would implement a WebGL or WebGPU UI that could animate posters in such a fashion.  Probably overkill when pre-generated visual sequences would be better performing (albeit at the cost of not being unique).  Obviously this wouldn't do anything for the native clients.

This is almost exactly what I was envisioning. Not sure it's necessary to "animate all posters" as that would be a heavy load but here is what I'd envision the programming layout to possibly look like

- Get library titles list 

(auto generate note list) list in notepad would be lite right?

- create wheel (animated widget)

(Doesn't need to actually display any images from the library, just an illusion, or I guess you could integrate a handful of "titles/corresponding images)

- execute animation 

- generate random selection from titles note list.

- generate corresponding image

(linked tag ID)

I'm not a programmer and maybe this is an over simplification. Maybe a plugin is possible.

Maybe there is finished coding which can be found on open source platforms like GitHub for Wheel of Fortune or Farkle Apps

[marshallwyoung 5]

Just looking at the library, the system is already designed to load 4 images to display the library folder. It's the same concept but inserting into a pie shape.

Even a bowl of popcorn that shakes wouldn't require loading any images from the library and could generate from the shuffle list. That would definitely be a small lite plug-in?

[chef 3810]

On 3/30/2023 at 2:20 PM, sydlexius said:

I kind of like the paradigm that @marshallwyoungdescribes. I think it'd be kind of cool if a plugin developer would implement a WebGL or WebGPU UI that could animate posters in such a fashion.  Probably overkill when pre-generated visual sequences would be better performing (albeit at the cost of not being unique).  Obviously this wouldn't do anything for the native clients.

I know three.js. (webgl) pretty well.

 

 

 

[marshallwyoung 5]

I've purchased a few plug-ins, I'm always down to support the developers.

[sydlexius 297]

6 hours ago, chef said:

I know three.js. (webgl) pretty well.

 

 

 

Interesting.  I can't seem to find any information about limitations around textures (can they be streamed, are having lots posters at resolutions up to 6PM (2000x3000) too much?  I know it can handle textures larger than that, but it's not clear how much it'd take to bog down.