Page 1 of 1

Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:15 am
by acnescar
I've just installed Solo slides and linked it to our family google pictures account that has 30,000 plus photos in it.

I seeing the same photos from some of the earlier years pretty often when I watch it on shuffle. It should be over a week before it shows the same photo with so many for it to choose from. These are smaller files than more recent years as they were on old cameras. There are probably only 50 or so per year from some of the early years as apposed to 1-2000 per year for the latest years.

Is there something I can do so it wont show the same photos so often when on shuffle?

Thanks
Acne

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:39 am
by tim
Hi there,

What is likely happening is that your photos' dates are bunched in a way that makes SoloSlides shuffle algorithm not work well before it has finished discovering all of your photos. The root issue is that the Google Photos Library API which our app uses to get access to your photos does not actually support random / shuffle. And we cannot simply load all of your photos when the app starts: you might have 10 million photos. Google's servers would lock the app out if we did that.

So, SoloSlides slowly discovers your photos over time. While it is doing this, it has to pick a random photo still ... and it does this by year then month. If you have some photos that are the only photos in a given year, then they are very likely to get shown multiple times while SoloSlides is discovering your photos (which it has to do every time the app is restarted: per Google's terms & conditions we cannot store any data about your photos).

After SoloSlides has hit every year & month of your photos, ie. it has seen them all, then it will start being much more random, since from this point on it can randomly choose from all photos together instead of having to look at years/months. So my advice is to leave the app running for several days (depends how often you have set the photos to change!) to get to that point.

You can hide individual photos with the large round icon at the top of the screen (ie. if they show too often)

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:08 pm
by acnescar
Wow thanks for the quick reply.

I've actually uploaded these photos to an account specifically made to be used by Soloslides so I've got the facility to edit the dates and not worry as they are all stored elsewhere anyway.

If I change the date of the first 1000 or so photos to the same date (about 4 years worth) that should solve the problem then so if the app has to be restarted it wont have to learn them all again.

If I change them all (30,000) to the same date/time will that cause any problems for the app or would it just be random from the outset?

Thanks
acne

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:32 pm
by tim
You're welcome!

If you change all (30k) to the same date, the app will almost certainly get your IP address blocked by Google's servers because it'll make 30k x ~100 server requests very very quickly. Don't do it :lol:

If you change the first set of 1000 photos to the same date that might help, but only if the algorithm randomly picks that block.

If you care about this enough that you're going to spend time changing photo dates, then try to make it so that no years have radically fewer photos than other years (for example: change dates such that no year has less than 100 photos). If that doesn't help, do the same for months too.
Keep in mind that the algorithm does stabilize / reach completeness after some time so i'm not sure if this is really worth it for you: you could just start the app with a timer like 5 minutes and let it run for 3-7 days, I'm guessing it will reach completeness then.

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:36 pm
by acnescar
ok thanks

I'll not do that then.

I've got it set at 15 seconds a the moment and will review it in a week or so.

Will it need to relearn each time the app is restarted or will it remember?

Thanks
Acne

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:18 pm
by tim
Unfortunately because Google explicitly tells us we're not allowed to cache photos, it needs to rediscover your collection every time you launch the app.
The app is designed for constant passive use, ie. not expecting to be relaunched often

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:49 pm
by acnescar
Thats great thanks so much for your time and explaining it all so quickly.

Acne

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:53 pm
by tim
My pleasure

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2020 11:54 am
by corwin
Doesn't it suppose to work better in case the photos' dates are bunched? Since the dates will be the same it has to be mixed better I think. At least in a way that the shuffeling option works fine. I have the same problem about the shuffle: I have a lot of photos of our previous property in Germany dated in the same day and while in the shuffle mod I keep seeing the same pictures over and over. I don't wanna change the dates of the photos one by one, maybe there could be an option for changing the shuffeling frequency or something like that?

Re: Shuffle

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2020 11:55 am
by tim
Hi corwin, you need to wait until the algorithm has discovered all of your photos, then it is truly random. just leave the app running