Either I’m nuts (possible) or Plex’s shuffle functionality does a poor job randomizing from the set. What’s your take?
I’ve been trying to figure out if it is just my perception or potential bias since our memories are fallible and whatnot.
It seems like TV show > Shuffle and Playlist (containing all episodes) > Shuffle yield different favored episodes (so maybe a different shuffle algo). And then when I play in episodic order, I recognize episodes that seemingly haven’t played in a while.
I suppose I could pull play counts off my server, but that’s no fun! Sooooo, is it just me?
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Or, it is doing a good randomisation. Random does not mean play each thing once, it means everything has an even chance to play.
Spotify had this issue, people were complaining the shuffle wasn’t working because some things aren’t played or some things are played more then others. What you want is a weighted random where things that have played have less chance to be picked.
That’s because of the designers misunderstanding what “shuffle” means. When I shuffle a deck of cards, there’s zero chance that I will deal out two of the same card.
That’s a great way to put it. You found the analogy I was looking for. :-)
I hear what you’re saying. You’re right weighted random addresses watching in series order vs random. It doesn’t address the two shuffles yielding different high level patterns, though.
While it could totally be randomization and coincidence, the consistency in the different episode repeats with Show > Shuffle vs Playlist > Shuffle catches the pattern sensing part of my brain.
I had this same experience. The best solution I found was to make a smart playlist of the show. The filters I used were something like:
- show title | equals | X
- episode last played | is not in the last | X days
You can also filter out single episodes from this playlist too. It works really well
I like this, thanks for the suggestion!