Looking to switch from WMC/WMP

[GrimReaper 3274]

7 minutes ago, ebr said:

Correct.  We noted that would be a problem but it seems to be the only one.

 

 

 

Yeah, that was I referring to, I imagined it will be "Unknown"; Seeing they get read, if OP ain't using it for access control purposes, they might as well be used as-is, I reckon it's clear enough. 

Edited October 25, 2021 by GrimReaper

[ebr 14905]

Correct - if you don't need to use Parental controls, then the rating issue shouldn't have an impact.

[Carlo 4330]

A quick note.  A tool such as NotePad+ can search across files and do a search/replace.
So you could have it search a parent folder and everything underneath in *.nfo files to do a search and replace.

If you make a copy of your NFO files you could then test this searching for "Rated " and replacing it with nothing basically removing it from your NFO files.

[ebr 14905]

9 minutes ago, cayars said:

searching for "Rated "

I would change that search to "<mpaa>Rated " -> "<mpaa>" to avoid replacing it in other places (e.g. summary).

[Luke 37029]

Hi, yes remotes and keyboards are supported.

[RAP58 1]

@cayars/ebr:  Great idea!  Easy to do.  (I don't really have to copy the NFO.  I can export this at will from My Movies.)

@Luke:  awesome!

[Luke 37029]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[RAP58 1]

Well - installed Emby Server ...and set up movie, music and photo libraries.

30 minutes later not much has happened.  Scan media library is at 87% but all Movies have generic film icon.

Music looks similar.

Even Kodi - with all its problems - did much better.  Does it not read the metadata automatically?

[RAP58 1]

Just came back an hour later to look... just not being patient I guess.  Looks like most of the Movie metadata data is there.  Some are missing ...so now I'll have to drill down. 

Not much is going on yet with Music - but I'll be patient.

Back soon...

[Luke 37029]

Hi, yes I would just allow the library scan to finish. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[RAP58 1]

Music is starting to populate... I have some questions:

- Is there a way - when entering an Artist collection - to get rid of "Songs" - if you are a jazz collector, that the most useless organization approach possible.  Consider Miles Davis and his full discography.  Plus jazz guys do the same song over and over and standards are done by just about every jazz artist.  If I want to find a song, I'll search for it.  Comments?

In a similar fashion, I don't want to see "More like this" when I've gone to an Artist.   I mean, why is Bill Evans like Al Dimeola?  

Is all this layout stuff fixed?

[Luke 37029]

The Songs and More Like This sections can't be removed, but these questions have come up before and it's possible for the future. thanks.

[RAP58 1]

Too bad when you went to HTML you didn't create templates with tokens and or a skinning engine.

[Carlo 4330]

You have access to the full APIs so you can "skin" a client of your very own any way you like.

Kidding aside you can apply CSS to web clients to change a lot of things but that's only for web.
 

[RAP58 1]

All kidding aside: I wasn't kidding.  I helped build 3 skinning engines in my past.  Where is the API so I can look at it?

CSS would handle how things look; but dependent on how its implemented.  Usually, not the content returned.  Are you suing Tokens?

However, regarding the desktop clients for Windows and Android (my two primary device types for playback); are they exempt from GUI changes?

I  installed Emby Theatre on one of my PC's.  The GUI looks nothing like what is shown on the Emby website.

At the risk of insulting any development team, the GUI lacks.  The fact that all the interfacing for movies images (i.e.: disc covers) are either square or a landscape aspect ratio, when both DVD and Blu-rays are portrait aspect ratios; is an ample example.  No resizing is another major one: 8-10 movies per screen does not make sense from any metric.  It seems like it is generically designed to cover a GUI on a smart-phone; not a 70" display.

Organization structures are pretty spartan too: alphabetically and genres.. is that it?  What about by year - or decades?  Its like its meant for small movie collections.  "Suggestions" is a waste of a menu space.  Filters would be nice - *IF* I can save different profiles; but I can't - therefore, extremely limited usefulness.  (My wife or kids are going to create adhoc filters.)  

(BTW:  These is a "Favorites" checkbox under filters - that as test, I selected all years between 2010-2020 and saved it; it returns "No items matching your search criteria were found."  Yet when I remove the filter, it's clear that I have a ton of movies in that decade.  When I go to the Favorites menu, there is also nothing there. 

Next I played a movie for a minute, then set the filter to "Continue Playing" and the filter returned that specific movie:  perfect.  Then I set that filter to "Favorites" and Favorites shows nothing!  Are these not related?

There is also some bug where clearing filters does NOTHING.  I had to exit movies and reenter before it worked.)

I have three home theater-style rooms in my home:  Living Room, my Home Theatre and recording studio/office.  The access interface in that environment is important and with a large media store, I don't want to battle the GUI to look for something to play.  I can manage it but the rest of the family will not bother.

Another basic example of my criticism: Who would ever "Play All" or "Shuffle Play" of a movie collection over 10 movies - much less hundreds or thousands?  This is another basic example of poorly considered GUI decisions.  Don't stick a button on something just 'cause you can.  What is the use-case?

At some point during my investigations, I got into a function that said Unlock Feature.  Clicked the back arrow did not thing.  Clicking "Play one minute" did nothing.  I could not return to the main menu.  (I was not going to buy Premier with my current assessment and obviously I did not pay - the only other two options in that windows.)  Is this normal behavior?   I had to force "Close the Window) from the task bar.

 

[ebr 14905]

20 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

I  installed Emby Theatre on one of my PC's.  The GUI looks nothing like what is shown on the Emby website.

Hi.  Try selecting "Horizontal" for the home screen if you want that old X-box style interface.

21 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

The fact that all the interfacing for movies images (i.e.: disc covers) are either square or a landscape aspect ratio, when both DVD and Blu-rays are portrait aspect ratios

This is not the case.  We show posters in their appropriate portrait aspect.  We'd need to look at an example to see why you are seeing something else.

22 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

Who would ever "Play All" or "Shuffle Play" of a movie collection over 10 movies - much less hundreds or thousands?

Lot's of our users will use that function to play a random item or set of items from their collection.  We see no reason not to offer them that option.

 

23 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

are they exempt from GUI changes?

Correct.  Only the web app can be visually modified to a degree via CSS.  

[RAP58 1]

Items above in their order:

1. The home screen has two buttons (Home & Favorites) and no menu or settings.  Where does one "select horizontal"?
    
2. It is the case:
   1. PRIMARY View:
      
       
   2. BANNER View:
      
       
   3. DISC View:
      
       
   4. THUMB View:
      
       
   5. LOGO View:
      
      
      Summary:  PRIMARY is stretched to fill the square button.  The BANNER button is clearly landscape. DISC shows the correct image in a square button.  THUMB is clearly a landscape button.  Same with LOGO. 
      
      The only thing matter is the button.  That's what defines the layout in all of the view modes.
      
      So how are these buttons in a portrait mode that would match the disc covers for DVD or Blu-ray?
       
3. I note that you use the word "collections".  That might be fine for music tracks or photos, but I was clearly talking about movies.  Are you telling me that your users cue up and play 10's or 100's of movies at time?  Really?  For what purpose?
   
   If the answer is "music and photos"; then exactly what I stated: a generic interface for completely disparate media sources.
    
4. Gotcha.  That might be show-stopper.

 

Thanks for the feedback though - appreciate it.

 

 

Edited November 8, 2021 by RAP58

[ebr 14905]

It looks like you have not setup your movie library as a movie library but I cannot see the context of those images so hard to tell for sure.  Our default presentation for the primary image of a movie or TV library would be a portrait poster.

 

10 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

I was clearly talking about movies.  Are you telling me that your users cue up and play 10's or 100's of movies at time?  Really?  For what purpose?

As I mentioned - it is a way to play a random sampling of those items.  The system won't actually queue them all up but it will sort them randomly and then queue the first X number of them up which then allows someone to, say, put on a stream of random TV sitcoms or movies.  You can also filter these lists and then just shuffle play those.

[ebr 14905]

12 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

That might be show-stopper.

There was no way to modify these things in WMC...

[pwhodges 1523]

1 hour ago, RAP58 said:

The fact that all the interfacing for movies images (i.e.: disc covers) are either square or a landscape aspect ratio, when both DVD and Blu-rays are portrait aspect ratios; is an ample example.  No resizing is another major one: 8-10 movies per screen does not make sense from any metric.

Um, on my desktop screen (2560x1920), using Theatre maximised, I can see 40 movies with portrait (poster) images.  Using a smaller window, as in the image below, I still see 25 movies; the image also shows how you can select the view using the popup from the three-dot menu button (primary = posters in this case).

Paul

[RAP58 1]

16 minutes ago, ebr said:

There was no way to modify these things in WMC...

To begin with, their interface worked pretty well - but what you state is not accurate:  My Movies created additional menu items that let you use personal categories (ex: Live Music Concerts) and searching filtering based on actors, directors, genre etc. - all not available in standard WMC.  The layouts were also controlled via MY Movies with lots of different options; example:  number of rows (and therefore sizing.) 

So there was a way to customize and My Movies was free for the basic version.

 

[RAP58 1]

21 minutes ago, ebr said:

It looks like you have not setup your movie library as a movie library but I cannot see the context of those images so hard to tell for sure.  Our default presentation for the primary image of a movie or TV library would be a portrait poster.

As I mentioned - it is a way to play a random sampling of those items.  The system won't actually queue them all up but it will sort them randomly and then queue the first X number of them up which then allows someone to, say, put on a stream of random TV sitcoms or movies.  You can also filter these lists and then just shuffle play those.

Your first paragraph: not true.  From the Emby Server machine:

For your second paragraph:  So:  the use case is a way to automatically stream random TV or Movies?  This was a prioritized feature request? 

Just trying to assess how things are developed here because I'm really struggling to understand how received priority over use cases that are FAR more common.

[RAP58 1]

13 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

Um, on my desktop screen (2560x1920), using Theatre maximised, I can see 40 movies with portrait (poster) images.  Using a smaller window, as in the image below, I still see 25 movies; the image also shows how you can select the view using the popup from the three-dot menu button (primary = posters in this case).

Paul

Everyone keeps showing me how their screen looks - so I guess I better show mine!

[RAP58 1]

Another shot with menu - display is set to default PRIMARY:

[GrimReaper 3274]

2 minutes ago, RAP58 said:

Everyone keeps showing me how their screen looks - so I guess I better show mine!

Yes, because everyone is assuming your images are standard-ratio ones, you haven't given an example of your folder structure nor images within. 

Are your posters 2:3?