I have been experiencing this for a long time and just decided to come looking for a solution.
I did some searching these forums and only came up with old threads with no resolution.
I am running plex server on windows 10, and watch on my appletv.
I have only noticed this behavior when watching TV series.
I “Go to Show” for the series i want to watch, then select “Shuffle”
then it starts and episode as you would expect, but I keep seeing the same episodes very frequently. Its not ALWAYS the same order but there seem to be a dominant set of episodes that appear very frequently.
Without logging every episode in a spreadsheet as they are shuffled I dont think i could cite a pattern that I have noticed, just that I keep seeing the same set of episodes over and over.
any idea how i can get shuffle to actually shuffle all the episodes?
thanks
I have noticed this it suffles allot of the same episodes instead of just unwatched items i can confirm this streaming on the ps4
I came here looking for this before filing my own bug report.
The order isn’t always the same, but the “random” episodes are definitely heavily favored amongst the possible choices in the set.
I’m not sure if logs would be relevant, but I can send them if necessary. I’m confident anyone can reproduce the issue:
- Select show
- Press Shuffle
- Watch a few episodes
- Return to Home, go back to same show and shuffle again. Almost guaranteed to be some repeats from the previous session
Anyone know if there is an intention to fix this. I basically always have tv series on shuffle and this is preventing me from being willing to really use or subscribe to plex as a service. I dont know a ton about programming but compared to some of the updates it would seem trivial to make the shuffle actually shuffle.
The “Shuffle isn’t random” bug is very annoying. We play kids TV shows for our children by putting an entire show on shuffle. There’s definitely about 6 episodes that always make it into the first couple episodes played. If I enable debug logging even in verbose mode, the random sequence generated isn’t captured. Regardless, the reason for the repeated patterns is usually caused by using poor random number generators. I’d bet $100 that’s the case here.
Plex devs, please go back to your code and use a cryptographically derived random number or bytes to use as a seed value. If you use something simplistic like RAND or a cruddy seed value that some programmer though would be clever, that’s exactly how you end up with these repeating patterns. This is a very well known phenomenon in software, especially those experienced with secure coding practices. In .NET, use RNGCryptoServiceProvider. For everything else, go straight to the BCryptGenRandom function in Bcrypt.dll. That’s the underlying function used by RNGCryptoServiceProvider in .NET. In OS X, you can get cryptographically secure pseudorandom numbers by reading bytes from the /dev/random device file.
Or perhaps better, use a real random number generator and find a way to weight recently played so they are excluded, ensuring you watch a series in a semi random order but you don’t repeat until all are viewed.
Suggest this is independent of the viewed flag.
This bug makes Plex almost useless for me watching long procedural dramas where I don’t care about the order, or revisiting old shows and I just want to see an episode thats different than the random ones I watched the night before.
Unfortunately this issues seems to have been around a long time and I have not seen a peep or any effort to even acknowledge it much less address it.
I am sure the developers are busy, but hold off on some new features and make the current ones function well. It would make me a happier user for sure.
Also I want some ability to skin the UI on Apple TV. The stock one compared to what I can have on a PC makes me sad I use an Apple TV
This is still an issue, and its annoying.
I get the same with music. I have studio and acoustic versions of the same song on some playlists and too often it will play both songs with the same title one after the other. It is very annoying.
Not only is it not random. If you go in and hit the shuffle button again (hoping to start a new seed). As soon a it plays a couple of songs it goes right back to the original shuffle list.
