How To Properly Rate Movies

[Abyzz]

I see where you're going with your extended idea, but it's a dangerous path to choose, cause it leads to that same place we're trying to escape from: where only a segment of the community can participate, and do so seriously. Rating systems are based on the simple principle that precision comes in numbers - the more who vote, the more representative it will become, and the less statistical inference you'll have to worry about. Limiting the tick boxes to a select number of members would kill the project in its birth, and actually have the opposite effect than was intended.

Besides, I for one wouldn't be able to tick them seeing that I haven't submitted any movies. This thread goes to show I take rating more seriously than the average visitor I daresay, but your idea would leave people like me out in the cold. How could you!

[Hacky]

true good point

[Martinfalch]

I partially agree with Soosdon; for instance, to some people h264 encoding means EVERYTHING and you're pretty much a retard if you don't use it in their opinion To others, watching it on youtube works for them, so it's rather biased in each category from the start - hence people often rate based on how they feel after having watched the movie, perhaps only considering the different categories for guidance, if they feel the movie shouldn't get full 5's.

I currently don't have that many issues with the system; high ratings motivate authors to create more machinima, which is a good thing, so even though they may not always be correct (at least in the eyes of people with another opinion than the rater), I don't think it's the end of the world to anyone.

I must admit, what can sometimes piss me off a bit, though, is when people downrate continuously for no good reason - a good example is Kenion's Black Rose, which is an incredible jump in many editing areas and at the same time includes a quite interesting story, well put together and well thought out. It's also quite creative and in generel, it would be one of those movies that I'd definitely say deserves a 5/5/5/5. Yet, despite this people are downrating for reasons out of the mentioned categories, for instance the often-used "LOL DRAGONBALLZ!", which I've gotten some off myself as well. But in the end there's not really much to do about it - you can of course report and restrict people continously, but I guess people will continue to rate how they feel, rather than how the rating system tells them to - afterall, rating isn't something that can be objectively decided. Maybe, though, the new rating system will help make the "good" comments shine and the "bad" ones go into the background!

- Martin

[Abyzz]

The current rating system definitely has its advantages, and with the new additions that keep coming it only gets better and better. I think the discussion we've been having over the last few pages is more whether or not the rating system is going in the wrong direction - that is, trying to solve inaccuracy by consistently making things more and more complex. If we need to rate based on (say) creativity, why can't we rate the skills displayed, which - for certain genres - is in fact the bearing element in making a movie successful? If rating is based on various perimeters then those perimeters need to be relevant and sufficient in all cases, and seeing that that's almost an impossible task, we're back to square one, which is a single bar called "RATING".

If my 'guide' came across as being biased for h.264 then I'll need to edit that right away, cause that would be embarrassing. With that said I like to think I've seen a fair few movies, and if there's one universal encoding that always seems to work, and work well (that is, zero artifacts, in-game clarity at 1680x1050 resolution), it's the h.264 or the x264 (are those the same? I honestly don't know). If you have examples of other encodings that deliver same quality as the linked video references I'll be more than happy to add them to the list.

Martin from CPH, out.

[Martinfalch]

Hehe well I don't think your post highlighted the h264 in such a way It's more of a general thing I've noticed - but the h264 codec is without doubt good, though it's also somewhat more tricky to get to work - added that it doens't always play unless you've got the right codecs installed or a VLC player, you will risk limiting your audience dramatically to the hardcore viewers who will bother spending time figuring it out - at least that's my experience

[Abyzz]

Ah but that's why I've advise everyone to put up both LQ and HQ links. It's a service any movie maker would be wise to provide. And by the way, Movie Player Classic is the better player (puts on flamesuit).

[Hacky]

For me this isn't so much a wanting for a better rating system as an ability to be able to classify my rating so that we can then SEARCH by the ratings themselves. Hence my idea of ticking the various boxes. Once a movie goes off the front page of WCM which it does very quickly and most people only check WCM maybe every month or more, that movie slips into oblivion and is buried forever. But if we had a way to search by little check boxes or something, we could dig out movies we may have missed, or that we want to re-find, etc.

And re h.264. There are good arguments against using it as well as for it. I don't like codex which don't work for many people and require a level of geekness to get them playing, and which will generate a LOT of 'tech support' type questions from people because they can't play the movie. Also many people down-rate the movie and put others off because: "It doesn't work ffs! I only hear sound there is no picture wtf I just spend 4 hours downloading this crap!". I see that happen a lot.

Also, making something in h.264 is really complex and I couldn't even do it on my machine because it doesn't let you encode to an external HD and on my laptop there wasn't enough HD space so even if I wanted to I couldn't use that codec for a separate mirror link or something if I wanted to give an h.264 optional download, which is what I would have loved to do but couldn't :-(

But anyway back to my original idea, if I could change one thing I REALLY would love the ability to be able to say what a movie contained that was cool, and those things need to be able to be searched and ordered by in the search box too.

I mean this is a website where you roughly get 3 types of movies, PvP, PvE and machinima. Yet you can't actually search by, find and/or rate and classify something by 'machinima'! There has to be something fundamentally flawed with that? :-/

[Abyzz]

Well for me the rating discussion is actually more twofold. There's the issue of being able to actively use the ratings to narrow the potential entertainment you're looking for, but the primary one still is to be able to rate as accurately as possible, and without breaking a sweat at that.

Concerning how difficult or demanding H.264 is I'd say that's neither here nor there. A release in this quality should never come alone, and as such it should always only be a service for those who care about such things. Personally I hate streams with a big H, but I respect that making a movie successful to a great extent is about hitting the largest possible audience, and for that you need good as well as poor quality releases.

Concerning the idea where you comment on what works and what doesn't about a specific movie, they have been using that at www.Newegg.com (which is probably one of America's largest internet hardware retail sites) for a long time. Does it work? Well, I'm split in two to be honest. For the generally immature community that is World of Warcraft, serving everything on a silver plate that says "Write cons here" and "Write pros here" does make some amount of sense, but I'd hate to be limited to putting it up like that. The content of my comments vary greatly depending on what feedback I wish to give, so to me it would definitely be a limitation.

I think the current PvE, PvP, Old Instances, Server etc. categories work fairly well, though indeed there's no Machinima. But isn't this category a tough one to figure out? I mean music is often Machinima, but so is story-line, and even a PvE movie can be Machinima if made in a specific way. Instead, how about adding additional Top 50 lists for each category? Few would want to watch more than the 50 best of each category, so I reckon that'd go a long way, and with relatively little effort and risk from the programming team.

[Hacky]

Streams are an interesting one, you basically HAVE to have streams, because even if a movie is a kind of good classic great movie where people will want to download it they still need the stream to check it out. I use streams primarily to watch and/or skip through a movie quickly to see if it's one I think I will like and if it is then I download it to watch it properly.

[Dwârv]

Thats exactly the way I handle it and want my movies to be handled.

About the top fifty Abyzz mentioned:When you click on each category / show all,and then click on "rating" if thats not your default listing type - there you go:the top fifty.So why adding another list?

Still like the idea Hacky brought up here (rating wise) but I am afraid that this one will add to my eternal list of wishes that will never be fullfilled.

And Martin-high-ratings-motivate-authors-to-create-more-machinima-Falch : Good to hear that.So you are mostlikely EXTREMELY motivated and working on your next one, I dare guessing.