"Last chance!" section in Home Screen

[rcutanda 4]

Here I come again... I insist that I am a newbie. If something like this exists I have not been able to find it either in the app, documentation or this forum.

I would like to have a "Last chance!" section in Home Screen. This is how I see it:

1. The admin, or users with permissions, marks a film, season, full series or recording to be deleted.

2. A window pops-up asking for the number of days when the delete will actually take place: 7, 15, 30 days or custom.

3. Then a mark is added to those items in the library and, besides, a section similar to "Latest Media" is added. Something like this:

4. A visual system could be added (colours, icons...) that would change as the deletion date approaches.

5. If the items marked to be deleted are in the favourite list of any user, then this user should be warned somehow and given the chance to request the admin more time. Maybe a pop-up window with the list of items (cover art is very visual) next time the user logs in:

"Dear xxx: the following items have been marked to be deleted in the next xxx days. This is your last chance! If you need it, please click here to notify the admin for how long you would like to preserve those items"

And then a selection window: 7 days more, 15, 30...

The admin then could get an email or similar pop-up window to the one the user saw:

"Dear admin: the user has requested to extend the items xxx for another xxx days."

And then some options to accept it or deny it.

Thank you for taking this suggestion into consideration.

Kind regards,

Edited August 22, 2023 by rcutanda

[ebr 14913]

Hi.  Interesting idea.  You could do this manually by creating a "Last Chance" library and just moving items into it when you want to and then deleting them when you want to.

Related:

 

[rcutanda 4]

Hello, ebr:

I already thought of moving items to a "Last Chance" library, but this has several problems:

1. Lack of automation. You need to be aware of when you moved what and when you should delete each of the items. 

2. Mixed content. When you set up a new library, you need to define the type of content. This means I would need to create a "Last Chance" library for every type of content. Not the end of the world... but not an ideal solution.

3. If users don't have the "Last Chance!" libraries high in their priorities, most will likely miss its content.

Thank you for the sugestion, though.

Regards,

[rbjtech 4266]

Agree it's a nice idea - and the ability to create a 'Last Chance' channel would be relatively easy BUT the fundamental thing we are missing is the actual 'End Date' to act on.

We only have 'Date Added' and 'Release Date' in the item metadata.

If you could 'calculate' the life of the item from the date added - then that would work.

ie Items are available for 1 year from date added.    Any item which is approaching lets say 30 days from it's final date, are just added to the channel - sorted by the least amount of days left.   No easy way to display the days left unfortunately.   Once reached, then the item is deleted.

If emby add a 'TTL' date field as a metadata item (blank if no TTL) then it would open up this functionality.

Edited August 23, 2023 by rbjtech

[ebr 14913]

Yeah, that is all possible but, honestly, these types of features scare me.  Someone fumble fingers a date or switch and their entire library is gone...

[rbjtech 4266]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

Yeah, that is all possible but, honestly, these types of features scare me.  Someone fumble fingers a date or switch and their entire library is gone...

Agreed - I guess all it takes is the wrong year and 

'Availability Status' per item would be a good thing to have - you could then have all sorts of Status to work with -

• marked for deletion after date
• ignore/hide (rather than a .ignore file)
• time to live + date
• marked for deletion after watched
• archive (don't remove if source file is not available..)
• .....

Actual file processing is then left to a monthly clean up task - so you're always left with 30 days to correct/back things out.

Edited August 23, 2023 by rbjtech

[crusher11 851]

What's the use case for any of this, outside of running a commercial server and/or pirating media? Recordings? 

[rbjtech 4266]

13 minutes ago, crusher11 said:

What's the use case for any of this, outside of running a commercial server and/or pirating media? Recordings? 

Recordings, small amount of storage space, rotation of media, spotlight on old media ... It has lots of valid uses....

[rcutanda 4]

40 minutes ago, crusher11 said:

What's the use case for any of this, outside of running a commercial server and/or pirating media? Recordings? 

In my personal case, for two reasons:

1. I either watch movies at the theatre or buy the originals in Blu-Ray because the quality of the streaming services is simply not enough for me. I really cannot stand the pixelation in underwater scenes, with smoke or fog or flat surfaces in dark scenes. Perhaps Apple TV+ is the only exception. I have to admint that I have rented a couple of movies at Apple TV+ and I was quite satisfied; although I would never make a digital purchase: if I own a movie I really need to have something physical. So, over the years, I have aquired an extensive collection of DVDs and Blu-rays which, obviously, I share with my family. I am, however, the only one in the family to be so picky with the quality so I always watch the movies in the only Blu-Ray player of the house in the main TV of the dinning room. For the rest of my family members watching the movies in their iPads or another smaller TV in the living room is way more comfortable and never take the trouble to move to the main room to watch anything, so they appreciate when I rip my movies and share them in Emby. Besides, those discs are very valuable for me and I would really get very nervous knowing that others (even being relatives) come to my collection to take out discs which I can lose track of and, I take it for granted, they will not be as careful as I am when manipulating them. I spend several hours a day using my computer, so ripping discs is not really a problem for me. It is done in the background while I am working on other things. I have a list in IMDB with all the movies and series I purchase, so my family always know what is available and sometimes ask me to add this or that to Emby.

Of course, ripping Blu-ray discs (specially my latests 4K 10 bit) eats tons of space of storage, so I really need to make some cleaning every now and then. Being members of my family, it is easy to ask them "Is it fine if I delete xxx content?". But sometimes I forget to tell everybody, or they tell me "Don't delete this" but weeks pass and they don't watch it and I need to recover the space. That's why I thought that having that feature implemented would be a great idea. I give them a "Last chance" to watch something. If they don't take it... sorry...

2. Something similar happens with TV recording. This feature was "curious" at first but, being so useful, its becoming more popular among my family members. And, as I have read in the forums, nobody ever deletes the recordings. I know there are some possible solutions for this particular problem, but I think that by having this "Last chance!" feature I could simply mark the recordings for deletion after a reasonable time. I really like the idea of "Availability Status" suggested by rbjtech.

All features of Emby can be used for illegal purposes, not only this feature. But I wanted to share my particular needs and justify the reason why I suggested this feature. In my particular case, is 100% home use.

Regards,

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by rcutanda

[rcutanda 4]

A quick update. I finally came with the idea of "The purgatory".

1. Whenever I add a new content, I move the oldest of that same category to what I have called "The purgatory" (new libraries). Contents in the purgatory are automatically deleted after xx days. In my case, 10 days por films and TV series, or 5 days por TV recordings (usually sports).

I use this command as a cron job:

find /mnt/mydrive/purgatory/TVSeries/ -mindepth 1 -type d -mtime +9 -exec rm -rf {} \;

Please mind that -mtime +9 actually searches folders 10 days old.

2. I created a Telegram group where I notifiy my familiy of every new content added, and what has been moved to the purgatory (the initial idea of "last chance" of this post).

I have been using this method for several weeks now, and I am pretty satisfied with how it works. As an administrator, this proceding allows me to keep my drive within an optimal balance of contents available/free space in an easy way and, for my family members, to be aware of what is new and what is going to go away.

I just wanted to share in case this is also useful for someone else.

Regards,

 

Edited March 26 by rcutanda