Folder view gone?

[Concept211 13]

Sorry if this has been discussed before already but I couldn't find anything specific to my issue.

 

So for years, I've been using MB/Emby to navigate through my movies in the "Folders" view without any issues. I organize files by genre folders that I designate which look like this:

 

It has always worked great and used it on multiple clients on WMC, Android, Web, etc. Recently, however (maybe 2 or 3 server versions ago), that view has disappeared. I still see the "Folders" menu item in all 3 clients, but when you go into it, it simply displays the movies in the same view as if you had clicked on "Movies" instead of "Folders". For example:

 

 

 

 

Why is this gone all of a sudden when it was working perfectly for so long?

 

thanks!

[AdrianW 1052]

See if this helps:

 

• Click your user icon at the top right of the WebUI
• Click "Home screen settings"
• Under "My Views" uncheck everything then click Save (at the bottom)

[Concept211 13]

Thanks for the quick reply! It ended up being the "View Styles" setting that made a difference rather than "My Views":

 

However, the bad part is that I used to use both views without any issues so I guess now I'm forced to use one or the other which sucks. This kind of defeats the purpose of having "Folders" in the navigation since the view is forced by these new settings. I used to be able to click "Folders" in the navigation and view everything in a physical directory view as it should. And then I could alternately click "Movies" in the navigation to view the media in the enhanced view showing me the usual Resume, Latest, Suggested, etc.

 

 

This seems like a step backwards in my opinion...it would be great if it could be brought back - or is this considered a bug (hoping!).

[tmb4016 86]

I agree the choice would be nice and it seems like a backward step but there have been several attempts to force us down the view route and despite folder view coming back in at odd times there is obviously a desire to take us down the views route. I've just done a complte reinstall and am setting up library again so am going to give it a go to see if it just a case of getting used to it.

[Concept211 13]

@@tmb4016 I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with this feeling. Although I love the dynamic views that Emby provides, I also like the way that I choose to organize my media instead of relying on the genre metadata. The problem I have with indexing/filtering by metadata genres is that you end up seeing the same movies in multiple locations since a movie will contain more than one designation such as "Comedy, Crime, Drama". I guess it's hard to please everyone, but it sucks when features are taken away after having them for so long and using them often.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

@@tmb4016 I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with this feeling. Although I love the dynamic views that Emby provides, I also like the way that I choose to organize my media instead of relying on the genre metadata. The problem I have with indexing/filtering by metadata genres is that you end up seeing the same movies in multiple locations since a movie will contain more than one designation such as "Comedy, Crime, Drama". I guess it's hard to please everyone, but it sucks when features are taken away after having them for so long and using them often.

 

If you haven't already done so, check out the Genre Cleaner plugin.  It can help you clean up the genre metadata significantly.

[Luke 37008]

we can bring it back but the idea is you disable the enhanced views and you get the same thing. truthfully my ultimate goal is to get to a place where there is no option and they are both in the UI together. 

[Concept211 13]

we can bring it back but the idea is you disable the enhanced views and you get the same thing. truthfully my ultimate goal is to get to a place where there is no option and they are both in the UI together. 

 

Hey @@Luke - that sounds great...I would love to see it come back! Yeah, for now I just turned off the enhanced view for Movies so that the wife can figure out how to navigate the UI again since I got her so used to going into: Folders > Movies  

 

Thanks again for all of your hard work!

[Luke 37008]

Why does it need to come back though? what does the current setting not offer?

[Concept211 13]

If you haven't already done so, check out the Genre Cleaner plugin.  It can help you clean up the genre metadata significantly.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I've seen it a million times in the Plugins page, but never bothered looking into it since I never had a real need for it. May have to give it another look but for now I'll just turn of the enhanced view for the Movies library.

[Concept211 13]

Why does it need to come back though? what does the current setting not offer?

 

You mean, what doesn't the enhanced view currently offer? Just like I mentioned in my first post that I organize my movies into genre folders so that a movie only exists within one genre. So that when you're browsing the different genres (aka folders), you only see a single movie once. Right now, if I index by genre based on the metatags and I only want to see "Animated" movies, I'll navigate to "Family" and see that same movie there...then I browse "Comedy" and I see that movie again there.

 

But then if I turn off the enhanced view, while I do get to browse in my own "folder view" like I want, but then I lose all of the cool grouping features like Resume, Latest, Suggested, etc.

 

Does that make sense?

[Happy2Play 8242]

There are probably a dozen topics on this, <DisplayFoldersView>true</DisplayFoldersView> is still a per user option but has to be manually set.

 

 

Emby-Server\config\users\select userid\config.xml  set <DisplayFoldersView> to true.  (you can see your userid if you select your user icon in web client.)

Edited February 22, 2016 by Happy2Play

[Concept211 13]

There are probably a dozen topics on this, <DisplayFoldersView>true</DisplayFoldersView> is still a per user option but has to be manually set.

 

 

Emby-Server\config\users\select userid\config.xml  set <DisplayFoldersView> to true.  (you can see your userid if you select your user icon in web client.)

 

Thanks for the suggestion but I think that must have been an old setting because <DisplayFoldersView> didn't even exist in my config file. In fact, the user folder wasn't even an userid but the actual username instead. In any case, I tried adding <DisplayFoldersView>true</DisplayFoldersView> manually but it had no effect at all in the UI.

 

I did see that if I turned off the enhanced view for a particular folder that it would create a new node with the following folder id (so it looks like things were changed around a good deal since then):

  <PlainFolderViews>
    <string>b2d39373953ce05f67f433ea7c153dd3</string>
  </PlainFolderViews>

[Happy2Play 8242]

I have a old user that is still listed by name instead of userid and the config.xml still list <DisplayFoldersView>, even creating a new use lists it.  After changing it you need to log off then back on, sometimes even a browser refresh.

 

 

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<UserConfiguration xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <AudioLanguagePreference />
  <PlayDefaultAudioTrack>true</PlayDefaultAudioTrack>
  <SubtitleLanguagePreference />
  <DisplayMissingEpisodes>false</DisplayMissingEpisodes>
  <DisplayUnairedEpisodes>false</DisplayUnairedEpisodes>
  <GroupMoviesIntoBoxSets>true</GroupMoviesIntoBoxSets>
  <GroupedFolders />
  <SubtitleMode>None</SubtitleMode>
  <DisplayCollectionsView>false</DisplayCollectionsView>
  <DisplayFoldersView>false</DisplayFoldersView>
  <EnableLocalPassword>true</EnableLocalPassword>
  <OrderedViews>
    <string>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/string>
    <string>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</string>
    <string>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</string>
  </OrderedViews>
  <IncludeTrailersInSuggestions>false</IncludeTrailersInSuggestions>
  <EnableCinemaMode>false</EnableCinemaMode>
  <LatestItemsExcludes />
  <PlainFolderViews />
  <HidePlayedInLatest>true</HidePlayedInLatest>
  <DisplayChannelsInline>false</DisplayChannelsInline>
</UserConfiguration>

 

 

Just enabled on an alternate user account.

 

[Concept211 13]

Thanks for the screenshots and help!

 

Ok, so I created a new user and I now see the long userid directory rather than the username. I also see the <DisplayFoldersView> node in the new user's config file. However, I don't see any difference between setting that property to true or false. Does it simply display the "Folders" item under "My Media" like in your screenshot? If that's what you mean, then that's not my issue as you can see in my very first screenshot that I can see the "Folders" menu item just fine.