More Like This

[dc12345 4]

Hi,

First ever feature request here so apologies if this has been asked already (I did search beforehand)

Wanted to start by saying I have been an Emby Premiere user for quite a while now and one of the things that I really love is the ability to customize. I spend way too much time building collections, making my own artwork and  creating dedicated genres. 

My only downside at the moment is how the 'More Like This Feature' works. Based on what I have found it seems to match based on things such as genre, collection and tags and as a result it throws up some random results.

 

For example, I may have a movie that sits within my 'Heist' genre and also sits within my self-built 'IMDb top 250' collection. A lot of the matches are suitable as it will pick movies from the 'Heist' genre but a lot are totally unrelated as it is pulling random results from my 'IMDb top 250' collection. Note: I have plenty of movies in my Heist genre i.e enough to cover a full recommendation list without needing to fill it based on collection matches.

 

As a feature suggestion it would be great if:

 

a) You could customize how the 'More Like This' Feature works and had a dedicated menu in the Dashboard settings where you could toggle on/off 'match by genre', 'match by collection', 'match by tag', etc' so it only matches on what is selected.

b) Even better,  you could then order this so it matches by Genre first and then collection etc.

c) Finally, when adding collections it would be great if you had the option to toggle off "include in More Like This matching" on each individual collection. 

 

I hope this makes sense. As I say really love Emby and to me, this would be the cherry on the cake! 

 

Thanks

[Luke 42077]

@dc12345

Hi, collection matches are actually part of it as well. In fact they get equal weight as genre or tag matches.

Does this help answer what you were looking for?

[ebr 16169]

6 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, collection matches are actually part of it as well. In fact they get equal weight as genre or tag matches

Yes, that's what he discovered and what he would like to change - because it is producing bad results due to his extreme use of collections.

[dc12345 4]

@Lukethanks for the reply. As @ebrmentioned the issue is that I would like the option to  a) toggle collections off from being included in 'More Like This' and also b) have the option to toggle off each individual collection from being included in More Like This

 

Hope this helps

[Luke 42077]

OK understood. Thanks.

[user24 313]

This is an interesting idea and may even be more useful if (when?) Smart Collections become available...

FWIW, here’s some additional “More Like This” feedback for Emby...

With my Music library and only really using Genres and Tags until very recently, the “MLT” Artist results returned have been very general and sometimes highly irrelevant – even to the point where I was hiding this section with CSS.

Presently, I am trying out creating “Related Artists” Collections (e.g.):

• (The Beatles + George Harrison + John Lennon + Paul McCartney + Ringo Starr)
• (George Harrison + The Beatles + The Traveling Wilburys)
• (The Traveling Wilburys + Bob Dylan + George Harrison + Jeff Lynne + Roy Orbison + Tom Petty)

With only having just made a start with this, across 2000+ Album Artists, the Artist results for “MLT” are starting to change from sometimes irrelevant to much more relevant. I guess this is because individual Artists and the musical groups they are in typically perform a similar musical style - and now the "Related Artists" Collection entities are 'seen' by Emby.

So, this is a case where having Collections contributing to “MLT” is giving a reasonably good result (so far).

Taking the OP request even another step further (for music), if a choice was ever available, I would probably want to “MLT” priority match Artists by Collections (e.g. self-curated Related Artists) BUT “MLT” priority match Albums by (self-curated) Genres.

One problematic area I have just found now with “MLT” is that for an Album, there are two rows:

• More From Album Artist
• More Like This

Is the Album “More Like This” row meant to exclude results from the Album Artist?

I am getting mixed results, sometimes the Artist Albums do not appear on the second row at all (good), but sometimes they fill up the whole row (bad). I have only randomly checked about a dozen so far.

Edited January 3, 2025 by user24

[Scott1980 4]

I would love to see the option to put several "more like this" on the main homescreen....

Give me the choice to put on a "More like last TV show watched" and "More like last TV show watched+1" and "More like last movie watched" and etc.

Honestly it would really be great to be able to have 2 or 3 recommendations for each on my homescreen....

[ebr 16169]

14 hours ago, ScottTaylor1980 said:

I would love to see the option to put several "more like this" on the main homescreen....

Give me the choice to put on a "More like last TV show watched" and "More like last TV show watched+1" and "More like last movie watched" and etc.

Honestly it would really be great to be able to have 2 or 3 recommendations for each on my homescreen....

 

[Scott1980 4]

Unfortunately this  doesn't seem to be what I would like. I am imagining a new Home Screen Section like "Latest Media" "Continue Watching
 etc. As in the section I have attached a screenshot.

 

This plugin just adds a new library or collection. I would like to just have another row under all my other slides on the homescreen... I guess I will keep wishing... tbh, its what has kept me from buying Emby Premiere... I'm still semi searching for what scratches all my itches...

 

Thanks for pointing this plugin out, maybe I am missing something. But it just crashed my server and made a couple new libraries...

 

EDIT - I just get really confused because this functionality is literally in the movies library. You get suggestions. When I go into a  movie, I get a "more like this". I just want that on the main homepage

Edited January 7, 2025 by ScottTaylor1980

[Luke 42077]

21 minutes ago, ScottTaylor1980 said:

Unfortunately this  doesn't seem to be what I would like. I am imagining a new Home Screen Section like "Latest Media" "Continue Watching
 etc. As in the section I have attached a screenshot.

 

This plugin just adds a new library or collection. I would like to just have another row under all my other slides on the homescreen... I guess I will keep wishing... tbh, its what has kept me from buying Emby Premiere... I'm still semi searching for what scratches all my itches...

 

Thanks for pointing this plugin out, maybe I am missing something. But it just crashed my server and made a couple new libraries...

 

EDIT - I just get really confused because this functionality is literally in the movies library. You get suggestions. When I go into a  movie, I get a "more like this". I just want that on the main homepage

HI, yes stay tuned for more home screen options coming in future updates. Thanks.

[Scott1980 4]

Just now, Luke said:

HI, yes stay tuned for more home screen options coming in future updates. Thanks.

Sweet deal. Thank you, I hope my previous post didn't come off as rude. I love emby, I just really really wish it had that. As like I said, its elsewhere! I just want to have it on the homescreen!

 

Glad to hear there may be more homescreen options in the future! I look forward to them!

[ebr 16169]

11 hours ago, ScottTaylor1980 said:

This plugin just adds a new library

By doing that, it also adds a row to the home screen for the "Latest" from that library...

[Scott1980 4]

On 1/7/2025 at 8:11 AM, ebr said:

By doing that, it also adds a row to the home screen for the "Latest" from that library...

Well that might work for me then, but it was crashing my Emby docker whenever I installed the plugin.... I might try again, or wait and see what happens as @Lukesaid might be coming...

[TVTech 7]

I went back and manually removed all tags from all my media but Emby still includes oddball movies and shows in the 'More Like This' section. So I did some more rummaging around and discovered that one of the criteria that Emby uses to populate that list is the studio(s) which produced the movie or show. The most jarring example of this is when I go to the display screen for 'The Big Bang Theory', 'S.W.A.T' and 'Person of Interest' are part of the 'More Like This' secton because all three of those shows are produced by CBS. Come on guys, does anybody really care to get recommendations based on the production studio? I would like to request that you please at least have an option to remove that criteria, or better yet, make it the default setting to group movies together only by genre. If anybody wants to add to it there could be check boxes for additional criteria.

Edited January 13, 2025 by TVTech

[visproduction 315]

10 minutes ago, TVTech said:

I went back and manually removed all tags from all my media but Emby still includes oddball movies in the "More Like This" section. So I did some more rummaging around and discovered that one of the criteria that Emby uses to populate that list is the studio(s) that produced the movie. Come on guys, does anybody really care to get recommendations based on the production studio?

I disagree.  I know film directors, producers and studio employees who very much have a specific type of production and story telling that they prefer.  Library content from MGM U/A, Paramount and Fox are quite different. Especially if you go overseas to BBC, or Babelsberg.  These content were often grouped together in the old video rental shops.  It really is a good measure of "more like this", even if you don't notice it.

[Scott1980 4]

On 1/13/2025 at 8:07 AM, TVTech said:

I went back and manually removed all tags from all my media but Emby still includes oddball movies and shows in the 'More Like This' section. So I did some more rummaging around and discovered that one of the criteria that Emby uses to populate that list is the studio(s) which produced the movie or show. The most jarring example of this is when I go to the display screen for 'The Big Bang Theory', 'S.W.A.T' and 'Person of Interest' are part of the 'More Like This' secton because all three of those shows are produced by CBS. Come on guys, does anybody really care to get recommendations based on the production studio? I would like to request that you please at least have an option to remove that criteria, or better yet, make it the default setting to group movies together only by genre. If anybody wants to add to it there could be check boxes for additional criteria.

I dunno, maybe I just haven't experienced it what you have yet, but I do find that most of the time items in "more like this" fit in well enough. At least well enough for the point of IF we were able to have more options on the Homepage for something like "Because you watched last movie played" it would be enough info to have a recommended movie that is "close" enough to what I watched last. Ideally we would have unlimited options "Because you watched last movie played+X" but obliviously would slow downb your loading. But I would love to be able to have 3-5 last movies and 2-3 last TV shows...

 

You do bring up a good point on how Emby scrapes the data for recommendations...

[dc12345 4]

@Lukefollowing up to check if Emby has any further thoughts around this feature suggestion please?

I have a bit more feedback on this.

I have been playing around with using tags instead/in addition to try to improve the More Like This suggestions but it now seems to me no matter what I do, I cannot seem to improve this and get it to work how I want it to. I may be wrong. but based on my results it seems that it is even sometimes matching on 'Studio' which seems pretty pointless to me.

I think this to be the case as some of the suggestions in  'More like this' results did not match any tag, collection, genre, actor or director. I found the only thing that matched was one or more of the studios.

I opened up several tabs and although some of the matches were fine (and the same), each tab also contained a number of random matches that seemed to be matching against just the studio

Can you maybe share how the algorithm currently works. Ie what is the current logic behind how it matches.  I have even tried testing by adding some of my genres as an additional tags also to see if that would increase the weighting of matching more on the genres but it doesn't seem to have much bearing due to the random studio matches for example.

From what I can make out I have no way of getting the desired outcome without the original feature suggestions I made. If my original request is not possible,  as an alternative I would like the default to be that suggestions all match by genre initially and then use other match types if (and only if) there are no other matches by genre.

As I originally posted I find the More Like This section to be the only flaw in what is otherwise a great platform. However, I do feel that this part of the offering still needs a bit more work. I think my suggestion seems a good way of managing this?

Thanks again

Dan

 

 

[dc12345 4]

@LukeI can confirm deleting the studio removes the matches so it does seem to be matching based on studio. Thanks

[Luke 42077]

5 minutes ago, dc12345 said:

@LukeI can confirm deleting the studio removes the matches so it does seem to be matching based on studio. Thanks

Great, thanks for the update.

[dc12345 4]

@LukeFYI I have now completely  deleted all of my studio tags from all of my movie files and 'More Like This' is working so much better. 

I have no need for Studio tags so no real hardship with doing this my end but thought I would share this with you.

Thanks