sross44 233 Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 A lot of you have asked questions about Emby and the Emby team, so we decided to put together a little Q&A session to get some of those questions answered! Over the next few days, please post whatever questions you may have about Emby. We will be taking the top 20 questions or so and putting them together for the Emby developers to answer. After they answer them, we will post all the answers for everyone to see. As an FYI, roadmap questions will not be answered as that is proprietary. Other than that, ask away and we will see what the most popular questions are to have answered by the team! Can't wait to see what you all come up with! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 943 Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 My first question, that might be out of bounds, is why is it taking so long to fix the simple thing of no alpha picker when browsing photos as photos while if the same library is displayed as folders I see an alpha picker. The second problem related to that is that when displaying as folders and I navigate to about picture 1000 or so and I click on the picture I get something to the effect of "no content found." But the exact same photo displays fine when I am displaying the library as photos. The photo display section in Chrome or any other web browser I have tested is very broken in the web browser(s). But everything works very well in all clients. I first reported this over a year ago, I think, and nothing has been done. (I think it was a year ago but it could be a month or two less than a year.) I guess the photo display is unimportant in a web browser so I doubt this post will make any difference. BTW: Plex tried to do something like this years ago, I guess they were expecting glowing reviews, but what they got was a LOT of feedback that makes my post look tame. I expect nothing to be fixed because of the exercise in futility but I am open to being surprised. This post is about something simple that has gone unaddressed for a long time. To be honest I think Emby just ignores many things because they want to work on the easier or more glamourous sections and photos is just not interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 85 Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 (edited) Who owns Emby (in general)? How many people work at Emby and what are their roles (in general)? How many people use Emby? What are the most popular Emby apps and platforms? What are the most popular plug-ins? Why does Emby give less attention to Music than it does to Movies/TV Series? Would Emby consider having an official YouTube channel for announcement updates and tutorials? Edited February 23 by user24 added "announcement" 3 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darkassassin07 423 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 I've always wondered how big the Emby dev team is. It would give some perspective to the time taken for development. Is it mostly just the faces we see here on the forums, or are there more members working behind the scenes? Dedicated teams for specific platforms/apps, or are they all maintained together by the same crew? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bakes82 90 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 What’s the point of the qa if you not going to discuss future updates lol. Thats all anyone cares about. As usual you guys seem out of touch with the user base. Why are many high ranked features still pending yet you implemented lower ranked ones like the image cache but disable 4k transcode ranked far higher.. if you can’t explain the priorities of the platform that’s the primary issue, the constant yes we can and coming soon doesn’t mean much. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1560 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 Why is the road map proprietary ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1560 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 As in post#2, why does stuff take so long (see pet peeve, no filter by decade for example), and how d'you decide whats next...shouldn't just be most popular, should be some combination of whats needed to fix stuff you get lots of grief about (yep, you guessed in next gen TV), whats popular, whats pretty easy to do, what been pushed back for ever... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user24 85 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 (edited) Having spent a couple of decades working in product development and product marketing, it makes a lot of sense to me that Emby doesn't (and won't) publicly discuss its future product roadmap (even just a little bit). I can't think of too many high-tech companies that do? Generally it comes down to: Company (Business priorities can and do change for many various reasons - financial hurdles, technical roadblocks...) Competitors (The golden rule - never ever let the other guys know what you are doing, but learn all you can about them!) Customers (Communicate well - but don't put the company in a compromising position by giving competitors any undue advantage.) Anyway, perhaps Emby could also answer these questions: What is Emby's history and product evolution? (newcomers may like to know) Who do you see as your main competitors and what are your product advantages over theirs? What do you see as future trends regarding (e.g.) industry consolidation, local media vs streaming, local storage vs cloud storage, emerging technical platforms and newer audio/video media formats... Edited February 23 by user24 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crusher11 851 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 Why does Emby insist on killing off good things and replacing them with inferior things? They killed off the IntroSkip plugin, implemented a barebones version of it, and have never brought it up to par with even where the plugin was when they ended it, never mind where the plugin was working towards. The ATV app is still the best TV app available, but that's becoming dicey now that it's solely getting life-support updates, but the Android app is still absolute ass on a TV. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbjtech 4265 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 (edited) 20 minutes ago, crusher11 said: Why does Emby insist on killing off good things and replacing them with inferior things? They killed off the IntroSkip plugin, implemented a barebones version of it, and have never brought it up to par with even where the plugin was when they ended it, never mind where the plugin was working towards. The ATV app is still the best TV app available, but that's becoming dicey now that it's solely getting life-support updates, but the Android app is still absolute ass on a TV. I don't disagree - but maybe make the question more rounded. Why do emby continue to replace core functionality before having the necessary updates in all available clients to receive it ? As one example - Auth - emby knew this was changing since the security incident - in May 2023. They have had (imo) plenty of time (~ 9 months) to get out a limited beta, test and then update all the clients prior to 4.8 being released. Instead, a lot of common clients seem to be left behind, making a lot of them simply unusable - if the idea is to win over more people - this is not the way to do it ... Edited February 23 by rbjtech 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sross44 233 Posted February 23 Author Share Posted February 23 To follow up on what @ebrsaid. All feedback is welcomed. We always want both the positive and negative that people have to share as that is how we grow and learn. The point of this post and the Q&A as a whole is to simply learn more about Emby as a whole or the team as a whole. There are various other forum posts in our forum that talk a lot about what people are asking for. Simply speaking this is just to get to know the team and product more than we may organically share. 39 minutes ago, hthgihwaymonk said: And I get that the point of this thread is "that" type of question. But for me, at least, I don't care about answers to that type of stuff. The questions I would have would BE about that proprietary roadmap and when/if features are coming. Unfortunately those questions will not be answered Out of curiosity @hthgihwaymonksince we are not an open source project like others, why do you feel like we are obligated to share that roadmap? Would you feel comfortable with a what general types of improvements/features the Emby team would like to see in the future? That type of thing? I'm not sure @Lukeor @ebrwould feel comfortable sharing those... but maybe that is what you and others may be looking for as opposed to a general and future planned roadmap etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hthgihwaymonk 21 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 (edited) 1 hour ago, sross44 said: Out of curiosity @hthgihwaymonksince we are not an open source project like others, why do you feel like we are obligated to share that roadmap? Well I'm curious as to how you leaped to writing that I somehow think emby is obligated to share anything. The type of Q&A I would be interested in (again not demanding, but interested in) would be more detailed responses to questions that come up in the forms all the time. But again, responses to those types of question would be (I assume) categorized as relating to your roadmap. But to get this back on track to the type of Q&A you are looking for - What are some of the favorite films that the emby team likes to watch ? What is more common among the emby team: soundbar, full array of speakers and A/V Receiver, or just a the TV speakers ? OLED or QLED, which is preferred among the emby staff. Nvidia Shield Pro or Apple 4K TV: which one is more popular among the team ? Edited February 23 by hthgihwaymonk 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwhodges 1531 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 Assuming (!) that the devs all use Emby for their media handling, it would be interesting to try to see how similar their watching/listening habits are to us users in general. What proportion of devs regularly use subtitles (whether for anime and other foreign language media, or to compensate for poor hearing, maybe of a family member)? What proportion of the devs use Emby as their main provider of music (whether albums or classical music that doesn't easily follow the album format)? How are the devs split between those who watch/listen primarily to the content itself and so are largely content with good enough reproduction, as opposed to those who pixel peek to find the slightest flaws (outside of their explicit development work)? To what extent do the devs actively compare their product with the main competitors? Paul 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iiiJoe 55 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 Enjoying reading this thread, fantastic idea! I'm interested in ironing out recording errors. Would Emby team consider forming a working group with a few avid users to address fixing recording and live stream playback errors? We could then coordinate providers, hardware, software etc so we could make apples to apples comparisons instead of waiting for users to post error codes that may or may not be related to Emby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denz 426 Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 Why does it take over 10 years and counting to get a working guide in Emby theatre ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37067 Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 2 minutes ago, Gilgamesh_48 said: Does Emby plan to actually answer anything in this thread? So far there have been "responses" but no "answers." If this is just another attempt at placating the people that complain then this thread really needs no more attention from anyone. I think this is rapidly becoming more of an exercise in frustration than anything else. Over the next few days, please post whatever questions you may have about Emby. We will be taking the top 20 questions or so and putting them together for the Emby developers to answer. After they answer them, we will post all the answers for everyone to see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordlover 103 Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 My question, which I don't know where else to ask: why does Luke continue to refuse to acknowledge problems with Music Library image handling, even after multiple users are posting multiple screenshots and detailed problem reports. I am so frustrated and exhausted from the lack of support let alone acknowledgement of what is a basic, fixable limitation in how Emby currently handles album images in music libraries. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seger 110 Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Will we still experience a wave of updates across all systems in 2024 so that we are visually and functionally at the same level on the different systems? Will sideloading on Android come to an end? Will the metadata manager be expanded and become a server helper, e.g. to tidy up metadata, move it and identify missing content? Will we see a visual reboot of the IOS app? Or will the apps be visually adapted again? Will there be a customisable newsletter so that you can recommend films to yourself and your family? Will the direct play functionality be expanded further? Will CoverArt be integrated into Core as standard? Will IntroSkip be further developed and better implemented? Will there be a better source for trailers so that we can save them offline as well as country-specific? An alternative would be to choose an online provider, but then you run the risk that they will no longer exist at some point. I left out all my opinions and just wrote down what I could think of. Best regards seger 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adminExitium 173 Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Are there any plans for allowing WASM-based plugins (using something like https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime-dotnet)? I am interested in creating quite a few plugins but have been blocked due to them requiring knowledge of C#, which I lack the time to learn at the moment. I would prefer to write the plugins in Golang, Python or even Rust, if it becomes possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adminExitium 173 Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 What (if any) kind of improvements are planned for the release process? Some issues that I have seen so far: * No clear release targets. I am fine with not having a roadmap for future releases but once the team starts on a beta cycle, there must be some criteria defined to know when the development is complete and a release is impending. * Build issues with missing artifacts. This happened numerous times over the last beta cycle so it may be helpful to have something like a table listing down all the expected build targets and corresponding download links for each so it's easy to see if there's anything missing, rather than doing a search in the Github assets. Probably also a status for each build if there are any known issues preventing the artifact from being built for that target? * Incomplete & Unclear release notes. The release notes sometimes seem to be missing tangential stuff that may have gotten fixed/added as part of another change and it would be helpful if those could be added too. The notes also need to be cleaned up and categorised like New Features/Improvements/Bug Fixes/Breaking Changes etc. so it's easier to grasp for users. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bakes82 90 Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 @ebr@LukeCan the dev store be upgraded for better payment models for sellers, IE montly subscriptions like your device licenses, I have plugins like user device limits, expiration dates etc that fit more of a subscription model not a 1x payment model. Also still need an endpoint for devops to auto deploy to after the entity is created for the store. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3335 Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 Some good questions have been asked, we'll give it a little more time, so... Just keep it going! Please note: All non-question posts have been moved here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/126692-talk-about-the-emby-qa-session From now on, off-topic posts will be moved Comments about questions from others will be deleted (ask your own) Nobody must be afraid of getting stupid comments to their question(s)! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richt 73 Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 @softworkz re-posting as these were actual questions. If you disagree, please PM reason Is the Emby dev team going to adopt an Agile framework for development? Will Emby consider moving to a quicker release cadence with a more limited set of development goals for each cycle? In working with software development practices, I have seen how a quarterly release cycle (point release, not major version) would be well received by the community as well as benefit the developers ability to focus on a specific set of enhancements and fixes. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbjtech 4265 Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 I would interested to know the actual split of time spent by the core dev's on forum duties vs actual development. On a small team, I get resources need to multi-task and I'm also grateful that the core Dev's do get involved on the forum and 'show their face' - but I do wonder if more of their precious time could be better used on product/feature delivery, rather than answering repeat and already answered questions in a forum. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3335 Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 @richt- happened accidentally, sorry! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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