Film suggestion (like itunes genius similar)

[samu-mac]

Hello,

sometimes my film library is that huge that i can't decide what to see.

i know here is already the "random" within a selection but it would be really nice to have a better suited feature for it.

I imagine a dedicated button that prompts you a kinda screen where you select one or more generes and then the DVDpedia starts purposing you films, then you just say "yes" or "no". When you say no he will push you another title!!

OFC a better algorithm than just select by genre can be built but that's enough to start with i guess

Please share your thoughts

[Waldbaer]

Hm, for us, the problem that occurs the most is that we have Persons a, b and d (no, c is somewhere else today) and a and d want to watch something they did not watch e.g. the last month and d wants to watch something that he/she has never seen before. We already note these things in the watched list of each film, but at the moment, there is no way to grab this data for searches or smart lists as far as I know.

This is a completely different approach than yours, but I think when you're alone, you can quite easily just build a smart list with every criteria you want (genre must include action, not watched for at least 2 years, at least 3 stars, no longer than 120min, maybe a group of cast or crew members that should be included) and you'll get a rather small group you can select from. I don't think that there is something like genius necessary for DVDpedia, because other than music tracks, you won't see more than one film at a time very often. What do you think?

[Conor]

Thank you for the feedback.

We did have an idea similar to your recommendation based on a selected movie, recommend similar movies. Just like many sales sites do, "people who liked this film also liked...". But that entitled not aggregating and anonymizing the rating of each movie so the we could know that person A that liked Die Hard also liked Lethal Weapon. It lead to all kinds of complex security issues to keep the data private as well complex algorithms, not to mention each person ended up being is so different that Waldbaer customized suggestion that DVDpedia allows is so much more useful. As it's completely tailored to your mood that day, then a computer guessing at a generic suggestion. DVDpedia will never know that today you want to watch Tom Cruise run (he runs in all his movies, cast includes Tom Cruise will do the trick) as well ass Michael McConaughey taking off his shirt (cast includes Michael McConaughey and title is not Dazed and Confused).

@Waldbaer. Where is the information for who watched the movie? If it's in the comments of the last seen history, you can create smart collections based on that info. With "Any last seen comment contains Person A". You can create a folder with these predefined smart collections. "Seen by A, Seen by B, ...". Then create a smart collection on the fly, for groups of people "Collection name is not Seen by D and Collection name is not Seen by A".

[samu-mac]

Thank you for the feedback.

We did have an idea similar to your recommendation based on a selected movie, recommend similar movies. Just like many sales sites do, "people who liked this film also liked...". But that entitled not aggregating and anonymizing the rating of each movie so the we could know that person A that liked Die Hard also liked Lethal Weapon. It lead to all kinds of complex security issues to keep the data private as well complex algorithms, not to mention each person ended up being is so different that Waldbaer customized suggestion that DVDpedia allows is so much more useful. As it's completely tailored to your mood that day, then a computer guessing at a generic suggestion. DVDpedia will never know that today you want to watch Tom Cruise run (he runs in all his movies, cast includes Tom Cruise will do the trick) as well ass Michael McConaughey taking off his shirt (cast includes Michael McConaughey and title is not Dazed and Confused).

@Waldbaer. Where is the information for who watched the movie? If it's in the comments of the last seen history, you can create smart collections based on that info. With "Any last seen comment contains Person A". You can create a folder with these predefined smart collections. "Seen by A, Seen by B, ...". Then create a smart collection on the fly, for groups of people "Collection name is not Seen by D and Collection name is not Seen by A".

Thanks Conor for the feedback.

I understand your point but i would not "trash" the feature.

To me without any complicate algorithm you could start from a fullscreen mode witch does same as ALT+CMD+R but it pushes your the random film and you may just have an options for select from unseen or whole library.


here a 5 min photoshop rendering:



Then, of course, you could put more field (filters i'd say) to put a genre or a specific actor and just randomly select within the new criterias.


I know this is something you can already do with a custom collection filtered \ selected within the same criteria but this would be a much more quick \ user friendly feature just to lazy-pick a random film to watch when you on the sofa with your mac connected to a HD TV or a projector...

I think many users, as i am doing, use DVDpedia as a media centre to store and select the move you wanna watch at night with your family. Please take this in consideration! Atleast this basic one

[Conor]

Thanks for fleshing the idea out. I understand better what you are looking for and an improvement in the interface to drill into the movies and select a movie for the night. I have added it to the add and explore list, for the next big major version.

[Waldbaer]

...
@Waldbaer. Where is the information for who watched the movie? If it's in the comments of the last seen history, you can create smart collections based on that info. With "Any last seen comment contains Person A". You can create a folder with these predefined smart collections. "Seen by A, Seen by B, ...". Then create a smart collection on the fly, for groups of people "Collection name is not Seen by D and Collection name is not Seen by A".

Hey, I did not know this until now, thanks for pointing it out. We'll definitely use this tip for pointing out the "never seen"-issue!

I just experimented with it and found 3 more or less related issues of different size:
1. the German "contains not" includes a typo: It should be "enthält nicht" instead of "enhält nicht". Seems to be independent from the text field checked.
2. I really miss the possibility to create "and"- and "or"-subgroups. In iTunes, you can do this by holding down the option key (the "+"-button will change to "…"). Yes, you can do this by combining smart lists, but this creates unnecessary smart list clutter.
3. The problem with your suggestion is my brother. He has seen nearly every movie anyone of us wants to see, but he only protests if he has seen it lately. To solve that, we need to cupple the last seen dates to their comments, I suppose. Sadly, I have no idea how to implement that into the current interface without changing it. Maybe a special "last seen comment (limited)" that opens up another indented line "limit to connected dates that is/is not/before/..."?

[samu-mac]

Thanks for fleshing the idea out. I understand better what you are looking for and an improvement in the interface to drill into the movies and select a movie for the night. I have added it to the add and explore list, for the next big major version.

Thank you for the consideration!

I'm quite sure this feature (also more fine-tuned in the near future perhaps) will be really appreciated and maybe also attract other casual user to get DVDpedia!!

Regards

Sam