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Ask HN: What is the engineering behind Netflix's 'Skip Intro' button?

11 points by rahulskn86 7y ago

karmakaze 7y ago
In the case of Netflix created content. It can be as simple as a number of seconds in metadata. Things get easy if you control both the production and consumption ends.
andreareina 7y ago
Don't know if it's what Netflix actually uses, but you can use perceptual hashing[1] to identify spans that are common to multiple episodes of the same series. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing
tastroder 7y ago
In addition to the other suggestion, I'd expect it to be something like this [0] or [1], a mix of data on what people skip in the first 10 minutes and the superstar of modern machine learning: human annotations. I've seen several shows where all episodes where consistently off by a few seconds, that might be either algorithmical bias or due to some annotators personal preference. [0] https://outline.com/BjsXnF https://outline.com/BjsXnF [1] https://medium.com/an-attempt-at-writing/netflixs-skip-intro-feature-how-the-hell-do-they-do-that-7c5db9408f82 https://medium.com/an-attempt-at-writing/netflixs-skip-intro... Edit: looks like these sequence fingerprinting patents might be relevant: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190028525A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190028525A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9418296B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9418296B1/en
darepublic 7y ago
Is it naive to think that just as the shiws provide previews, box art etc they would provide the length of their intro? Then skip intro just needs to increment the video time by that amount
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  It makes sense that they’d provide the length because they wouldn’t want it split in two by ads when shown on TV.
pontifier 7y ago
Is it so hard to believe that they are manually tagged? They only have several thousand videos. Each one has some sort of process that it goes through to be included in their service. Someone decides which screenshots will be shown, edits the intro video, writes the synopsis, etc.
- tsjq 7y ago
  this has been my assumption ! :)

11 points by rahulskn86 7y ago

In the case of Netflix created content. It can be as simple as a number of seconds in metadata. Things get easy if you control both the production and consumption ends.

andreareina 7y ago

Don't know if it's what Netflix actually uses, but you can use perceptual hashing[1] to identify spans that are common to multiple episodes of the same series. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing

tastroder 7y ago

In addition to the other suggestion, I'd expect it to be something like this [0] or [1], a mix of data on what people skip in the first 10 minutes and the superstar of modern machine learning: human annotations. I've seen several shows where all episodes where consistently off by a few seconds, that might be either algorithmical bias or due to some annotators personal preference. [0] https://outline.com/BjsXnF https://outline.com/BjsXnF [1] https://medium.com/an-attempt-at-writing/netflixs-skip-intro-feature-how-the-hell-do-they-do-that-7c5db9408f82 https://medium.com/an-attempt-at-writing/netflixs-skip-intro... Edit: looks like these sequence fingerprinting patents might be relevant: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190028525A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190028525A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9418296B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9418296B1/en

darepublic 7y ago

Is it naive to think that just as the shiws provide previews, box art etc they would provide the length of their intro? Then skip intro just needs to increment the video time by that amount

quickthrower2 7y ago
It makes sense that they’d provide the length because they wouldn’t want it split in two by ads when shown on TV.

pontifier 7y ago

Is it so hard to believe that they are manually tagged? They only have several thousand videos. Each one has some sort of process that it goes through to be included in their service. Someone decides which screenshots will be shown, edits the intro video, writes the synopsis, etc.

tsjq 7y ago
this has been my assumption ! :)