6 ms·

Share with HN: A good movie recommendation engine

32 points by rokhayakebe 16y ago

I like to watch movies. But my biggest problem is to get good recommendations. I have been using clerkdogs for several months. It is kind of slow, but their engine is great at suggesting movies that I may like. I do not think the site is popular, but as a happy user I wanted to share it with HN. If you know of any great recommendation web app please share it.

please 16y ago
No recommendations for the first 5 movies I entered. Looks a bit to generic and mainstream to me.
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
  What titles did you try?
  - riffer 16y ago
    Here is one that I was hoping it would work for: http://clerkdogs.com/movies/51923-intacto-2002/matches http://clerkdogs.com/movies/51923-intacto-2002/matches Obscure, but that's kind of the point with this sort of app On a sidenote: You can definitely resolve the speed issues people are talking / complaining about by pre-computing and storing everything, instead of doing it on the fly
kurtosis 16y ago
Honest Criticism: Too slow. I don't like being put on hold. Please just make it fast.
- viraptor 16y ago
  Same. Registering a new account took ~1min. Waiting to add a movie to favourites - around 30 sec. Way too slow.
- amix 16y ago
  Their site should be so easy to scale as most of it is static data that can be cached by something like Varnish.
sgt 16y ago
I went to the site and it had prepopulated "A Fish called Wanda" in the search box. I remove it and type in "The straight story", and hit search. It went on to give me matches for a "A fish called Wanda". I repeated this several times, and reloaded the page. Sorry, but your service does not work. I'm using Chrome on OS X.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- dkasper 16y ago
  You have to wait for it to autocomplete the title and then click on one of the completions.
  - minalecs 16y ago
    this is a terrible ui decision. I'm typing in names, and pressing match, then godfather continously comes up. *star wars isn't even in the drop down, when i type star wars.
- mgrouchy 16y ago
  I had the same problem. Also very slow.
rokhayakebe 16y ago
The site is slow. When you type the title you have to wait for the autocomplete and click on the movie. The speed is the biggest problem, but it gives good recs.
covercash 16y ago
I've gotten good results from http://nanocrowd.com http://nanocrowd.com in the past.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
carbocation 16y ago
I typed in Star Wars, clicked on one of the options from your dropdown, and waited for a long time. That sucked. But then, I got some really detailed suggestions and long explanations of why each movie was a match. That was awesome! I think if you fix the UI and expand your repertoire, you'll have a useful, interesting, popular tool.
yurifury 16y ago
After I finally got it to work, the recommendations were good! I don't want to see an explanation like "Similar Twist" when searching for matches with Fight Club, though.
omnipath 16y ago
Netflix
sharpn 16y ago
Very good matches when found, and excellent clear descriptions to justify the match. If this is driven by algorithm, it's brilliant. Slow & incomplete, but hey it's beta. Bookmarked - thanks for posting. [edit] - just read the 'about us' page & it's not an algorithm. It's compiled by video store clerks, hence the name (doh).
- psyklic 16y ago
  I thought the site's URL (clerkdogs.com) was a cross between Clerks and Reservoir Dogs! :)
allenbrunson 16y ago
Not directly related, but about movie recommendations in general. I use and like Netflix. Their recommendations are not horrible, but based on the way they are presented to me, I think they must be doing it wrong. They'll show me something that says, in essence: "So, you liked this one particular 'gritty crime drama', so here's a bunch more of them you might like." NO. I did not like the film because it was a "gritty crime drama." I liked it because it explored novel ideas that most movies won't touch, or because the people involved had the strength of their convictions and did not stoop to sensationalism and sloganeering, or because it wasn't full of car chases and gun fights and other insipid cliches, like 99 percent of films indulge in these days. Personally, I couldn't care less about genres. I'll watch a sports film, or a kid's film, or a foreign film with subtitles, or anything else, so long as it's well-made.
tansey 16y ago
Judging by the comments here, it's clear that if you just prefaced this link with "Hi HN, here's my site, it's a little slow right now since it's in beta, but we plan on scaling it up before we launch.", then it may have been more positively reviewed. For what it's worth, I typed in Usual Suspects and I do like all the top 5 results. The "creative pick" for me was a movie called Unknown, which I've ironically never heard of before. I'm going to watch it tonight. Also, I don't understand why you say "In association with Netflix" at the bottom, but all the results have a tag for Blockbuster-- am I missing something here? One thing I did not like was that if I hover over white space in the results, it still displays the summary of the movie. I found that jarring, because I expect to actually be hovering over either the thumbnail or the link(s) for the item before seeing additional info. I think the feature that shows you why you're recommending (e.g., "less complex") is really cool. However, one of them seemed kind of spoilerish, because it was recommended as "less double crosses"-- most of the time with a whodunit, part of the story is wondering who's going to get double crossed. So it may not be as specific as a complete spoiler, but it's still not preferable to me. I do have to second hating the forced auto-complete clicking. I could tell by the way the UI was acting that it's how it worked, so I didn't have a problem, but I see how a lot of users would. On the movie detail page, you don't need the three links to Related Movies, Movie DNA, and Details; they're all right there in plain sight. I'd also be interested in seeing a complete "Movie DNA" breakdown, since you're clearly only making the top 10 or so available. Maybe that's proprietary knowledge and you don't want to let go of it. Not a big fan of the tag cloud for filtering results. When I look at that, I just see a big blob of text and my brain shuts off without processing it. I don't know what approach would be better off the top of my head, but the tag cloud is not working for me. In general, there's a cluttered feel to the details page. I like the info, but the design could use some TLC. Question: where did you get the movie data? I'm assuming based on the info at the bottom that you're using Muze, which I've never heard of until now. How does it compare to IMDB's web service? How do you use it? Are you happy with it or are there things that really bug you? Was it easy to integrate into your site? I like the site, love the recommendation engine which is clearly where 95% of the effort probably went, and think it could be a really useful service. Make the changes I noted above and you may just have me hooked. :)
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
samratjp 16y ago
FYI: These two just as good, if not different. http://www.jinni.com/ http://www.jinni.com/ I do also like http://www.nanocrowd.com/ http://www.nanocrowd.com/ too...
rokhayakebe 16y ago
Hi guys, I am not affiliated with ClerkDogs in no way, shape or form. Below is the email I sent to the person Linkedin suggest owns it. I just like the site and I thought I would share it. .................... Hello Mr Skorman, My name is Elly. I have been using Clerkdogs for more than a year now. It seems the service has been on autopilot and most of the time it is extremely slow. I just wanted to note that I think you have the best recommendation engine for movies. CD is one of those few apps I would really love to see get bigger and better. I hope this few words will reencourage the team to keep working on it, make it faster, faster and faster. Great job, great site, great tech ... just slow :). Cheers guys,
binbasti 16y ago
I really like the recommendations. Already found a bunch of movies I should've stumbled over before but never have. Some things, in no particular order: * The SuperMatch UI needs some more love! Just watch someone new to the site use it and you'll see what I mean. * I think you should remove the footnote "Clerkdogs supports Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7". If you have requirements show a notice only when they aren't met. * You need to fix the search field not working as expected as soon as possible. Seriously.
michuk 16y ago
Filmaster (http://filmaster.com http://filmaster.com) has an open source movie recommendation engine based on the ideas developed during the Netflix contest. It's documented at the Filmaster wiki: http://filmaster.org http://filmaster.org and its source is freely available at bitbucket. Worth a try.
mistermann 16y ago
1. Great idea, if it works, doesn't imdb already do this though? 2. Enter Book of Eli, press enter. Peruse "21 handpicked matches for Crocodile Dundee". Hmmmm.

32 points by rokhayakebe 16y ago

please 16y ago

No recommendations for the first 5 movies I entered. Looks a bit to generic and mainstream to me.

rokhayakebe 16y ago
What titles did you try?
- riffer 16y ago
  Here is one that I was hoping it would work for: http://clerkdogs.com/movies/51923-intacto-2002/matches http://clerkdogs.com/movies/51923-intacto-2002/matches Obscure, but that's kind of the point with this sort of app On a sidenote: You can definitely resolve the speed issues people are talking / complaining about by pre-computing and storing everything, instead of doing it on the fly

kurtosis 16y ago

Honest Criticism: Too slow. I don't like being put on hold. Please just make it fast.

viraptor 16y ago
Same. Registering a new account took ~1min. Waiting to add a movie to favourites - around 30 sec. Way too slow.
amix 16y ago
Their site should be so easy to scale as most of it is static data that can be cached by something like Varnish.

sgt 16y ago

I went to the site and it had prepopulated "A Fish called Wanda" in the search box. I remove it and type in "The straight story", and hit search. It went on to give me matches for a "A fish called Wanda". I repeated this several times, and reloaded the page. Sorry, but your service does not work. I'm using Chrome on OS X.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dkasper 16y ago
You have to wait for it to autocomplete the title and then click on one of the completions.
- minalecs 16y ago
  this is a terrible ui decision. I'm typing in names, and pressing match, then godfather continously comes up. *star wars isn't even in the drop down, when i type star wars.
mgrouchy 16y ago
I had the same problem. Also very slow.

rokhayakebe 16y ago

The site is slow. When you type the title you have to wait for the autocomplete and click on the movie. The speed is the biggest problem, but it gives good recs.

covercash 16y ago

I've gotten good results from http://nanocrowd.com http://nanocrowd.com in the past.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

carbocation 16y ago

I typed in Star Wars, clicked on one of the options from your dropdown, and waited for a long time. That sucked. But then, I got some really detailed suggestions and long explanations of why each movie was a match. That was awesome! I think if you fix the UI and expand your repertoire, you'll have a useful, interesting, popular tool.

yurifury 16y ago

After I finally got it to work, the recommendations were good! I don't want to see an explanation like "Similar Twist" when searching for matches with Fight Club, though.

omnipath 16y ago

Netflix

sharpn 16y ago

Very good matches when found, and excellent clear descriptions to justify the match. If this is driven by algorithm, it's brilliant. Slow & incomplete, but hey it's beta. Bookmarked - thanks for posting. [edit] - just read the 'about us' page & it's not an algorithm. It's compiled by video store clerks, hence the name (doh).

psyklic 16y ago
I thought the site's URL (clerkdogs.com) was a cross between Clerks and Reservoir Dogs! :)

allenbrunson 16y ago

Not directly related, but about movie recommendations in general. I use and like Netflix. Their recommendations are not horrible, but based on the way they are presented to me, I think they must be doing it wrong. They'll show me something that says, in essence: "So, you liked this one particular 'gritty crime drama', so here's a bunch more of them you might like." NO. I did not like the film because it was a "gritty crime drama." I liked it because it explored novel ideas that most movies won't touch, or because the people involved had the strength of their convictions and did not stoop to sensationalism and sloganeering, or because it wasn't full of car chases and gun fights and other insipid cliches, like 99 percent of films indulge in these days. Personally, I couldn't care less about genres. I'll watch a sports film, or a kid's film, or a foreign film with subtitles, or anything else, so long as it's well-made.

tansey 16y ago

Judging by the comments here, it's clear that if you just prefaced this link with "Hi HN, here's my site, it's a little slow right now since it's in beta, but we plan on scaling it up before we launch.", then it may have been more positively reviewed. For what it's worth, I typed in Usual Suspects and I do like all the top 5 results. The "creative pick" for me was a movie called Unknown, which I've ironically never heard of before. I'm going to watch it tonight. Also, I don't understand why you say "In association with Netflix" at the bottom, but all the results have a tag for Blockbuster-- am I missing something here? One thing I did not like was that if I hover over white space in the results, it still displays the summary of the movie. I found that jarring, because I expect to actually be hovering over either the thumbnail or the link(s) for the item before seeing additional info. I think the feature that shows you why you're recommending (e.g., "less complex") is really cool. However, one of them seemed kind of spoilerish, because it was recommended as "less double crosses"-- most of the time with a whodunit, part of the story is wondering who's going to get double crossed. So it may not be as specific as a complete spoiler, but it's still not preferable to me. I do have to second hating the forced auto-complete clicking. I could tell by the way the UI was acting that it's how it worked, so I didn't have a problem, but I see how a lot of users would. On the movie detail page, you don't need the three links to Related Movies, Movie DNA, and Details; they're all right there in plain sight. I'd also be interested in seeing a complete "Movie DNA" breakdown, since you're clearly only making the top 10 or so available. Maybe that's proprietary knowledge and you don't want to let go of it. Not a big fan of the tag cloud for filtering results. When I look at that, I just see a big blob of text and my brain shuts off without processing it. I don't know what approach would be better off the top of my head, but the tag cloud is not working for me. In general, there's a cluttered feel to the details page. I like the info, but the design could use some TLC. Question: where did you get the movie data? I'm assuming based on the info at the bottom that you're using Muze, which I've never heard of until now. How does it compare to IMDB's web service? How do you use it? Are you happy with it or are there things that really bug you? Was it easy to integrate into your site? I like the site, love the recommendation engine which is clearly where 95% of the effort probably went, and think it could be a really useful service. Make the changes I noted above and you may just have me hooked. :)

rokhayakebe 16y ago

samratjp 16y ago

FYI: These two just as good, if not different. http://www.jinni.com/ http://www.jinni.com/ I do also like http://www.nanocrowd.com/ http://www.nanocrowd.com/ too...

rokhayakebe 16y ago

Hi guys, I am not affiliated with ClerkDogs in no way, shape or form. Below is the email I sent to the person Linkedin suggest owns it. I just like the site and I thought I would share it. .................... Hello Mr Skorman, My name is Elly. I have been using Clerkdogs for more than a year now. It seems the service has been on autopilot and most of the time it is extremely slow. I just wanted to note that I think you have the best recommendation engine for movies. CD is one of those few apps I would really love to see get bigger and better. I hope this few words will reencourage the team to keep working on it, make it faster, faster and faster. Great job, great site, great tech ... just slow :). Cheers guys,

binbasti 16y ago

I really like the recommendations. Already found a bunch of movies I should've stumbled over before but never have. Some things, in no particular order: * The SuperMatch UI needs some more love! Just watch someone new to the site use it and you'll see what I mean. * I think you should remove the footnote "Clerkdogs supports Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7". If you have requirements show a notice only when they aren't met. * You need to fix the search field not working as expected as soon as possible. Seriously.

michuk 16y ago

Filmaster (http://filmaster.com http://filmaster.com) has an open source movie recommendation engine based on the ideas developed during the Netflix contest. It's documented at the Filmaster wiki: http://filmaster.org http://filmaster.org and its source is freely available at bitbucket. Worth a try.

mistermann 16y ago

1. Great idea, if it works, doesn't imdb already do this though? 2. Enter Book of Eli, press enter. Peruse "21 handpicked matches for Crocodile Dundee". Hmmmm.