Hi all,

I would like to clear up a couple misconceptions about the Most Recent page and clarify a bit about views, since these seem to be the two topics that the most heated in the forums and the emails that we receive from you.

Metacafe uses a few different factors that decide what videos are released to the Most Recent page. I can’t go into details about what makes up this system, called VideoRank™, but I would like to let you know a bit about how it works.

The release of your video to the Most Recent page does not depend on the date you submitted the video, nor does it depend on the date that your video was released (meaning it was out of review). There is no time limit on when your video can be released to the Most Recent page, so if your video doesn’t make it in the first two days, it does not mean that it will not be released later on.

Metacafe doesn’t decide what videos are released and which aren’t. VideoRank™ is made of an algorithm that takes into consideration many factors that make up the rank of your video. As long as your video maintains a rank of at least a 3.0, its chances of being released to the Most Recent page are very high.

Videos are queued to be released, but if a video’s rank falls beneath a 3.0, then it loses its place in line. Don’t worry though – if the rank goes back up again, it will get in line again.

Also, I wanted you to know that the timestamp by a video is the time that the video was released to the Most Recent page (i.e. 3 hours ago...) If a video doesn't have a time stamp on it, it means that it hasn't been on the Most Recent page yet. So if you see a video on the Most Recent page that says "2 hours ago" it doesn't mean that the video was uploaded 2 hours ago.

As for views, I know many of you want to know exactly what constitutes a view. What I can’t tell you is the secret behind how our system works. What I CAN tell you is that we guarantee that every time someone watches a video, the view counts. We do not manipulate ranks and we do not manipulate views.

Keep on submitting more videos, and good luck with all of them!

Thanks Talia for the explanation. I assume by your answer that you are unable to clarify what a view exactly is ie... watched for 5 seconds, stopped or all the way through to the end. If you can't, that's fine, you have the right to keep secret some things. But if you can and maybe overlooked that in your answer, I think that is the most common question about views.

I realize I haven't answered this particular question completely, and it is not with the intention of ignoring you or the others. This is one of the things that I cannot reveal to anyone, both because it is not for the general public to know and because I do not want to open any gateways to different types of fraud.

Thanks for your understanding. :-)

That's all we wanted to hear. Understandable and thank you!

Kip - I added another paragraph - second to last.

Thanks for the explanation Talia...

I'm here to serve... (pretend I have an icon bowing down).

I just get confused because I'll submit a video directly to Producer Rewards and it'll sit at 0 views for a few days and then it'll start getting views. What is happening then?

Zack,

It's likely just in the review queue waiting to be viewed by the reviewers at MC. When you submit to PR, it can only be seen by the MC reviewers. Talia, correct me if I'm wrong.

Kip

Talia,

you've said that an item that falls under a rate 3 gets out of the line:
- it is out of line or get some places behind and when it raises it will get back in line again or moves forward?
- Now, if it is with a rate 3 and is in line, if it gets 3,5 or 4 does it move forward in line?


Delpitos

Hi Delpitos,

I'm sorry, but that is classified information that I can't give out since it's part of the VideoRank system. I will say that even if your video falls below a 3.0 and loses its place in line, it can still get in line again if and when its rank goes up again.

Ok!

Thanks Talia

Hello Talia. It seems that there are now approximately 144 videos being released to the front page per day. Is the implementation of these changes due to an increase in uploads or a release backup? Are these changes permanent? This is a major change and has drastically changed the view counts as we knew them. I haven't heard any info on this change, and I'm sure all producers would appreciate some detail on this. Any info you are at liberty to provide would be appreciated.

Hi Lucidious,

We have increased slightly the amount of videos released each hour to approximately one every 10 minutes, meaning 144 videos a day.

I can't make any claims over whether or not these will be permanent because anything can change in the future. I'll keep you updated about big changes, don't worry.

And...the Producer Rewards featured video rotates about every 60 seconds.

I think everyone would prefer more time on the Most Recent page than 10 minutes. Based on whatever technical problem is occuring today. No new videos in 2 hours!

People are on the Most Recent page for more than 10 minutes, it just means every 10 minutes another one is released.

I realize that you all are frustrated that your videos are being released fast enough to the Most Recent page, but we can't keep it at 2 videos an hour and have more videos released at the same time.

It's an either-or situation. Either we have 2 videos an hour, and they get more time on the front page, or we have 6 an hour and they are on it a bit less time. There isn't any way to have both. Sorry. :-)

Talia,

the big problem is not the time the videos show on the most recent page. The problem is that some videos have 6 views with rate 3,5 appear on it and the videos that have 7000 views don't appear (like mine) and they have rates of 3,2/3,3.

What I thinks is that VideoRank is not fair because one video with 7000 views and a rate of 3,3 it's better than a video with 4/200 views with a rate of 3,5.

That's what I think.

Delpitos

Sorry to ask again, but i have 2 vids that have been uploaded for 2 weeks and not yet released, and the rate have been above 3 since. i know there is no time limit etc, but just to ask if 2 weeks is normal? Thanks.

Cleared up alot. Thanks.

Ooh, Andspit - sorry, I must've missed your message here. Yes, two weeks is definitely normal for your video to not have been released, don't worry.

Hi.

I posted a couple of videos, some of which have a rating above 3, say 3.24, and has not been released yet. These are in PR.
I later posted another video, not in PR, and has a rating of 3.02, and got released already (relatively speaking, because it took 1-2 weeks, compared to the other which has been accepted, but not released for 5 weeks)
How come?
Does the fact that it is in PR make a difference? Even if so, having a rating of above 3, for the last 5 weeks and not being released is frustrating!

Thanks

Hi,

No, it doesn't make a difference if it is in PR or not. It depends on many different factors, one of them being above a 3.00 constantly, meaning if it drops even for an hour before a 3.00, then it loses it's line in the queue to be released to the Most Recent page. Don't worry, though, it can still be relased.

Right now, in the most recent page, I can see half of the page has videos below 3.00.And my vid, which has a rating of abt 3.20, is not there even till the 9th page...
How???


I know there are many videos above 3 in metacafe, but it's been 2 weeks and it has just 89 views...

Hi Pheonix,

There are several factors that go into what is released to the Most Recent page other than the rank, which I cannot dilvulge. As long as your video has a rank of at least 3.00, it will most probably be released.

Hi,
I'm a total novice to metacafe. Just submitted first video yesterday, a simple one to try it out. Currently it shows me 88 views and a 2.7 rating. Probably needs some improvement to get above 3.0 rating. Wondering if someone can say how many reviewers there are. Do the reviewers pick and choose the ones they want to review? Or if a video is submitted and the first few reviewers give it a low rating, are other reviewers likely to pass over reviewing it? Maybe these are things that are secret... ?
- kneadingpaws

Hi Kneadingpaws,

Welcome to Metacafe and the Metacafe forums! :-)

Reviewers don't choose what videos are sent to them to review, though they can technically choose if they want to watch it or not.

As for the rank, yes, the reviewers give the initial rank, but once the video is released to Live (Public Distribution) it is available in searches (and you sending links to everyone you know), and if the rank is at leas ta 3.00, it will eventually be released to the Most Recent page, though it may take some time.

If you have any more questions, I'm here 7 days a week. :-)

Thanks Talia
Are you allowed to say approximately how many reviewers the video gets sent to? This would give me a rough idea of whether my video is already doomed (with 95 views and 2.73 rating) or has any chance at all (if there are still many more reviewers who will see it).
- kneadingpaws

Hi Kneadingpaws,

I can't share that information with you, sorry. Don't give up. You can Digg your video, send your friends links, etc. to promote it on your own as well.

Thanks Talia

Talia - Thanks for the great forum page to explain so much to me! Ok I can sleep now! LOL no the posts and comments were all very helpful and answered about 99% of my questions!

HIi John,

I'm here to answer the other 1% too. :-)

Thanks Talia and Shrek! LOL (cool photo by the way!)

Thanks - it's from the job I had before Metacafe. :-)

On the view count, I heard from my friends that the system uses ip adresses, first, does it?and secondly what are these

Hi Pieman,

I'm not sure what you mean, sorry. Our system does track IPs to make sure fraud isn't going on, if that's what you mean, and refreshing the page every few miuntes (manually or automatically) won't add views. Is that what you meant?

And I can't remember if I welcomed you yesterday, so if I didn't, welcome to the forums! :-)

Oh, my friend saw my video, but the view didn't go up. is it because he's not a member? Also, you welcomed me yesterday but hi...again!

Hi Pieman,

Views are only updated a couple times an hour, so you won't see the view count immediately. The ranks change constantly, so you may see the rank change without the views changing immediately - don't worry, that's normal.

i had a rating on one of my vids for 3.65 and it wasnt on recent page and theres vids on there with crap ratiings and they r on there.... to late now anyway my rating dropped like a bag of s**t with a few views so thats the end of that!!! how come its had to get rating up even when people hitting 5 stars loads but then it only takes a few 1 stars etc to make it drop real quick?

how do you know if your videos have ever been on the most recent page? do you have to sit for weeks on end viewing that page to spot you video?

You know if a video has been released to the Most Recent page because once it has been released it has a time stamp on the video itself (3 days ago, 2 hours ago, last week, etc.)

Neat. Most of it makes sense. I woudl assume the system somehow weights the votes - so a 5 and a 1 don't really count as a full 5 and a full 1, because all your family/friend/5sap will vote 5, and then I'm sure there are people surfing that just vote 1, 1, 1, 1 - have you ever gone to HotorNot.com? It's just like that, only slower

No one can talk about this (it's the first rule of metacafe), but being a non-employee, I would guess that the system will count the "view" after a % of the video is complete. It's safe to say that most videos reach their climax, the point of the video, maybe 80-90% into it, and the rest is credits or other some such. So perhaps a viewer has to watch the video for at least 75% of the way before the view counts. It would be silly for them to count every view that clicks for 1% of the time, but equally silly to force peopel to watch the entire thing, when a lot of the end is pointless.

Large drops in ratings can be attributed to a lack of updates to the database from the backbone app.

So, here's my question then.... I asked in another post, but it's more apprpriate here. One video went to public distribution in about 10 minutes. But it also had a rating on it. My other videos have been viewed more, but have no rating. Is it safe to say that without the rating, it won't be going into "public distribution"?

So many questions, but I really like to understand these things

Andrew Slater

Okay, when videos are under review, the views don't count - only the ranks too. Because of VideoRank, you can't possibly have views and no rank - but either way, your video will get to Public Distribution once it has gotten a certain amount of ranks (and isn't flagged as problematic in any way).

Are ranks the same as ratings?
For example I've been posting a link to a video of mine that is under review, if people rate it one to 5 stars does this help it to be realeased? or must it be ranked in metacafe pro?

currently there are 10 videos on the most recent page with less than 3.00 rank and less than 1,000 views.
my video has had above 3.00 for a month and a half (currently 3.34), and over 2,000 views for a month.

After reading this thread, I reason that this video should be on the most recent page.
Please see if it is being missed by the system somehow.

Thanks,
Adrik

Did it drop below 3.0 at anytime? If so you would have gone to the end of the line (as I understand it.)
We just had a video released to Today's page that I uploaded 3 months ago... so I know it can take a while.

pretty sure it never fell, but no worries cause it just hit the page = )