Emby's Genealogy Archive Potential

[CasaAtardecer 9]

Genealogy and DNA Ancestry were hot topics years ago, but with the recent corporate failures of 23andMe and ever-looming database cyber security threats/breaches, they are hot topics again, but not in a good way.

As a database programmer and genealogy history enthusiast, it has occurred to me over the years that a privately stored, picture centric, relational database tool that can be easily shared, but does not upload to the cloud private information about one's children, finances, relationships, etc. might have massive utility.

While there are lots of powerful softwares for genealogy building, each one appears to suffer from significant drawbacks of different sorts; for example, cost, cyber security, share-ability, limited UIs, OS platform issues, steep learning curves, and on and on.

In examining the Emby database tables, it occurred to me that defining just a few new relational database fields in either the IMPORTEDCOLLECTIONS or the ITEMPEOPLE2 tables, users could immediately begin to build their genealogy libraries.

If there were a MOTHER, FATHER, and multiple OFFSPRING fields that one could populate with text used previously as TAGS, it could immediately establish parental relationships. 

The next step would be to define in either the IMPORTEDCOLLECTIONS or the ITEMPEOPLE2 tables an OVERVIEW text field that one could populate with DOB, DOD, Marriage(s), or anything the user wanted to memorialize.

Finally, if the COLLECTIONS or PEOPLE forms that read from the tables were redrawn and edited to include these newly defined table fields, and the MOTHER, FATHER, and OFFSPRING fields were clickable/linkable, users would have an instant way to build a picture centric, highly interactive genealogy library that can be shared with family. A person in your family would have a COLLECTIONS record, identified by name and picture, and contain all their genealogy-related fields. Of course, all the user's media would come along for the ride in whatever way they have it organized and connected.

Since Emby has already built the cross-library, cross-media type TAGS search capability, users could publish single families by LIBRARY or group them into highly interactive COLLECTIONS. If the initial development idea takes flight (and why wouldn't it?), later enhancements might include more granularity of genealogy data, or tools for printing out family tree lists.

Wouldn't that be fun? Cheers, and thank you for giving a forum to voice ideas like these.

[Clackdor 84]

While this is a novel idea, it's something that I personally wouldn't want to see dev time spent on to implement/support.

There are already numerous feature requests that focus on adding new features or improving existing ones which are more focused on emby's core function as a media server for movies, tv, music, photos, etc.

In a lot of cases these are things people have been begging for for years but still have yet to be implemented or given any indication that they are planned to be implemented any time soon.

[CasaAtardecer 9]

18 hours ago, Clackdor said:

things people have been begging for

Hi. What things, for example, have you been begging for?

[visproduction 250]

There are so many layers of options in Family Tree software. I think it would be best to stick to a Proper family Tree software package.  I have actually created an add-on / plug-in type of video player inside Family Historian website creator.  This has been up and running for over 5 years and works for all browsers.  You can see a demo in the forum for this software.  If nothing else, the features listed will give you an idea of what kind of options would be useful.  

I would be happy to help anyone set this up.  It is not an auto install type of plugin.  Once it is set up, it is quite dependable.

https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum-1/viewtopic.php?t=17014

 

Edited February 16 by visproduction

[Clackdor 84]

3 hours ago, CasaAtardecer said:

Hi. What things, for example, have you been begging for?

 

If you browse through this sub-forum you'll see a lot of things people have been asking for for years.

As for the main things I personally want to see prioritized:

1.

Images on the emby server are viewable by itemid via an unauthenticated session. This means that anyone can discern content on a server that is publicly exposed without having to sign in. This is less of an issue for things like movie/tv show posters, but is extremely troubling if you're storing things like private/family photos and videos.

I immediately stopped using emby for family photos and videos after becoming aware of this. It's something that the emby team has acknowledged as an issue and there has been discussion regarding fixing this at minimum for home photo/video libraries, although with no timeline for such a fix. I have an existing thread in the general forum that I should probably bump again just to gain visibility.

2.

With the release of 4.8 playlists were changed to be tied to individual user rather than server-wide. An option to enable playlist sharing was added on each user page so that users can share playlists with each other. This was on overall improvement over the old playlist system.

The glaring issue with enabling playlist sharing is that it provides a full list of all users on the server including admin accounts. This has pretty bad privacy/security implications. I put in a feature request around a year ago when 4.8 was released to add more controls to limit which other users a user can share playlists with or at minimum hide admin accounts or select users from being visible to others with the feature enabled.

Nothing has changed since then. Until this is resolved I refuse to enable playlist sharing at all on my server as it's just a bad practice to enumerate the entire user list to everyone, especially admin accounts. It's quite frustrating as playlist sharing is a very desirable feature.

3.

Unlike the first 2 this has nothing to do with privacy/security. There should be native support for automatically grouping different versions of a movie stored within a separate folder within the same library. This is something that is already handled natively with TV libraries.

Currently if you have 2 versions of a movie in different folders in the same library you will see 2 separate library entries rather than a single entry with a drop-down menu even if you follow the appropriate naming convention.

This is problematic if for example you want to have separate folders for 4k movies and lower resolution movies so that you can disable access to the 4k version for remote users as to avoid unnecessary transcoding. 

There are 3rd party plugins that enable this functionality, but they can be problematic and wreak havoc on the emby database. IMO it's something that should to be handled natively within emby itself just the same as TV libraries already are. 

[GrimReaper 3971]

6 minutes ago, Clackdor said:

Currently if you have 2 versions of a movie in different folders in the same library you will see 2 separate library entries rather than a single entry with a drop-down menu even if you follow the appropriate naming convention.

This is problematic if for example you want to have separate folders for 4k movies and lower resolution movies so that you can disable access to the 4k version for remote users as to avoid unnecessary transcoding. 

There are 3rd party plugins that enable this functionality, but they can be problematic and wreak havoc on the emby database. IMO it's something that should to be handled natively within emby itself just the same as TV libraries already are. 

You can also manually merge those items: Multi-select>"Group versions" from three-dot menu top-right.

[Clackdor 84]

Just now, GrimReaper said:

You can also manually merge those items: Multi-select>"Group versions" from three-dot menu top-right.

This is what I've been doing. It's tedious with large libraries though since it's a manual process. It's also annoying to have to switch over to an admin account just to do this when I'm browsing through the library and discover something that I haven't yet grouped together.

I often find myself forgetting to go back to do it when I do discover something since I just want to watch a movie at that time and not have to admin the server.

[visproduction 250]

CD,

I think all your requests are under discussion in other posts separately.  It may be helpful if you found those and added your comments that match each one.  When a new feature is being planned, it is not very helpful to have comments in multiple posts.

[laie_techie 15]

On 2/14/2025 at 12:55 PM, CasaAtardecer said:

Genealogy and DNA Ancestry were hot topics years ago, but with the recent corporate failures of 23andMe and ever-looming database cyber security threats/breaches, they are hot topics again, but not in a good way.

As a database programmer and genealogy history enthusiast, it has occurred to me over the years that a privately stored, picture centric, relational database tool that can be easily shared, but does not upload to the cloud private information about one's children, finances, relationships, etc. might have massive utility.

While there are lots of powerful softwares for genealogy building, each one appears to suffer from significant drawbacks of different sorts; for example, cost, cyber security, share-ability, limited UIs, OS platform issues, steep learning curves, and on and on.

In examining the Emby database tables, it occurred to me that defining just a few new relational database fields in either the IMPORTEDCOLLECTIONS or the ITEMPEOPLE2 tables, users could immediately begin to build their genealogy libraries.

If there were a MOTHER, FATHER, and multiple OFFSPRING fields that one could populate with text used previously as TAGS, it could immediately establish parental relationships. 

The next step would be to define in either the IMPORTEDCOLLECTIONS or the ITEMPEOPLE2 tables an OVERVIEW text field that one could populate with DOB, DOD, Marriage(s), or anything the user wanted to memorialize.

Finally, if the COLLECTIONS or PEOPLE forms that read from the tables were redrawn and edited to include these newly defined table fields, and the MOTHER, FATHER, and OFFSPRING fields were clickable/linkable, users would have an instant way to build a picture centric, highly interactive genealogy library that can be shared with family. A person in your family would have a COLLECTIONS record, identified by name and picture, and contain all their genealogy-related fields. Of course, all the user's media would come along for the ride in whatever way they have it organized and connected.

Since Emby has already built the cross-library, cross-media type TAGS search capability, users could publish single families by LIBRARY or group them into highly interactive COLLECTIONS. If the initial development idea takes flight (and why wouldn't it?), later enhancements might include more granularity of genealogy data, or tools for printing out family tree lists.

Wouldn't that be fun? Cheers, and thank you for giving a forum to voice ideas like these.

Emby doesn't really have a relational database.  You may want to check out webtrees or other genealogy specific software.  Webtrees grew out of phpGedView which I helped with. It would feel like a hack to force emby to handle a family tree.