Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 AnyTime = offline so there will be no connectivity to the server if you sign in that way. If you are already signed in and you view your AnyTime library, then of course that is different. Like everything else, there's an initial release and things improve over time. The folders/genres don't matter because no matter what you sync, it's all broken down into media and based on that, so I don't really see that as an issue. Client-side it is all data driven. It is not our intention right now to worry about client-side folder structures matching server-side. Maybe one day, but also maybe not. but for now, the most common use case we're targeting is offline playback of media. Most people are going to be perfectly fine with signing in offline and just seeing the content that is available to be played. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonmcroy 315 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 With version .233 I can play back the file that wouldn't play earlier so that's good. However, on the screen where the anytime playback occurs I have no mouse cursor. It shows everywhere else in the app, just not on that screen. When it passes over something to select though, it does work, I just can't see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Also, the "connected sync" feature is a big one that's really important for repeated audio listening, and we've nailed that pretty nicely. So if you're connected to the server and you play something that has been synced, it will play the local version. That's a big battery saving feature. I think there's an opportunity in a subsequent release to make the sync processing a little more immediate under certain situations, but as presently designed I think this is a good starting point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentAssassin 96 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Just synced a file, I didn't close out of the app while it synced, checked the status of the sync job, still without closing the app and it said it had synced. So I closed the app, went offline and opened the app, it opened in anytime mode however the file that said it had synced was not available. When I come to use this feature this is probably the routine I will use and would expect the content to be available. I went back online, opened the app, checked the sync status, still there saying synced, closed the app, went offline and now the content is available. Is this a timing issue, if so why is it not available straight after the sync, or do you need to close and open the app still online before being able to go offline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 That could just be the status being initially erroneously displayed as Synced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentAssassin 96 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 UI bugs when in snapped mode. On the homepage the search box ends up on top of the logo, in both 50/50 snap and 75/25. Also the play button is missing at the series and season level, and the three dot button is missing at all levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vicpa 559 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Hi Luke good to hear that local content is data driven. Don't care about client side folder structure. Its like iTunes the music library in on my pc. When it is on the phone/ipad I could care less and don't even know how it is stored. The scenario with Anytime is when you are signed in online. before you turn road warrior, just about timing of things. When you get a chance could you look at the music thing. no rush. Thanks, Vicpa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentAssassin 96 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 From the sync jobs screen, you click one of the synced items, this brings up another screen with details of the synced item. From this screen you then have an option to delete, but you also have a three dot button (is there a proper name for this?) with an option to remove. Is there any difference between these? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Well that sync job has only one item so the answer is no, and perhaps we can improve that in the future by limiting the options that are displayed there. But for multi-item sync jobs it's valuable because you can cancel individual items that you change your mind on, you can mark individual items to be removed from the device. Or if the sync conversion fails for whatever reason you can see that on an item basis and queue them for retry, things of that nature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 You mean the client broadcasting the media via Dlna and/or Chromecast? No I mean the two Windows 8.1 computers I installed the win 8.1 app on appear to be servers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 AnyTime = offline so there will be no connectivity to the server if you sign in that way. If you are already signed in and you view your AnyTime library, then of course that is different. Like everything else, there's an initial release and things improve over time. The folders/genres don't matter because no matter what you sync, it's all broken down into media and based on that, so I don't really see that as an issue. Client-side it is all data driven. It is not our intention right now to worry about client-side folder structures matching server-side. Maybe one day, but also maybe not. but for now, the most common use case we're targeting is offline playback of media. Most people are going to be perfectly fine with signing in offline and just seeing the content that is available to be played. I think you may be giving some people the benefit on this. I think this is going to be confusing for people in the way it works based on what I've seen with people using Plex's sync. A couple of reasons is that's it's not intuitive to have to logout of a system to get it to do something (immediately). It's not intuitive to login in an offline mode. The "AnyTime" is cool sounding to us because we get the concept but I think most people are just going to want to login and it shouldn't matter to them if they are online or offline. The app should be able to figure out if it can talk to the server or not. It could then just show the normal libraries or the offline libraries depending on their state of connectivity. While I don't think Plex got Sync working that great I do think they got the login part correct and it's just one login for everything. Now with that said. Sure people will get it eventually, but I think it's going to be quite confusing for everyone when they first start to use. I myself got tripped up on this and sat there waiting for it to sync. Speaking of syncing. On my surface I've only got to play with 3 syncs today while working but each time it showed 50% then done with nothing in between. That could be a bit confusing. Now when testing I first did a sync under my own name and it was successful. I then logged in as another user and did a sync. Then tried to delete that sync. When back to my first account under my name and nothing was there. It appears when I deleted the sync jobs under the second name it deleted them all. I'll try and reproduce this with more files tonight to see if the was a fluke or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Attached is a picture of the login screen. The top server is my only server. The middle one is the surface notebook itself The bottom is a windows notebook Only the top one is running MB Server while the other two only run the win 8.1 app. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7illusions 1249 Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Just synced a file, I didn't close out of the app while it synced, checked the status of the sync job, still without closing the app and it said it had synced. So I closed the app, went offline and opened the app, it opened in anytime mode however the file that said it had synced was not available. When I come to use this feature this is probably the routine I will use and would expect the content to be available. I went back online, opened the app, checked the sync status, still there saying synced, closed the app, went offline and now the content is available. Is this a timing issue, if so why is it not available straight after the sync, or do you need to close and open the app still online before being able to go offline. Found the issue, it's a AccessRights thing. The user doens't get access-rights at the right time. It wil be fixed.soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Well I don't know how many times I need to repeat that you can just wait for it to automatically sync instead of logging out. We will improve it to be more instant when possible and a manual invoke button can be considered. I too am questioning the anytime moniker for usability reasons so that's something were going to review. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 And yes I think the login can be improved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbnwa 49 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 The server tells the client what to remove or add during the sync process. So the next time the app syncs, then the content will be removed. Ok sweet deal I will re-test that and verify Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbnwa 49 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Small request - For Live TV anyway to put the guide in? While it's nice to have the Channel selection, The guide is at least for me a better viewing option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7illusions 1249 Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 New build is up, .236 Synced items now show up in offline mode at once, no need to restart app or logout, just select the Offline view in the MainMenu once Syncing is completed Rebranded "AnyTime" to Offline Bugfixes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 the problem with the combined login is the decision making of where to go. For instance, if the device itself is fully offline, then that's easy, and we could take you to offline content. But if the device is online but servers offline, that's much more difficult to decide on. In that situation we normally bring you to server selection to give you a chance to either enter a new server, or bring a server online and try again. I don't think that's something I want to change because that is what most people are going to want to do. Now on the other hand, we could be like Plex and require a Connect login, then if the servers are offline so be it, you can still sign in and we can detect that they're unavailable and only show the offline content. then we can have the combined login but we'll get just as many complaints about requiring Connect. So then that basically brings us back to where we are now. Device is online, servers are offline, so we bring you to server selection along with an Offline Sign In button. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 No don't do that. Leave it as it is. The name change to "Offline" makes the intention a lot clearer. Yea, try not to ever force the person to use a Connect login if possible as that can causes other troubles. This is shaping up quite nice! Do you guys want any testing done on Windows 10 Preview or do you not care about that right now? Carlo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37094 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Yea this is the classic conundrum about comparing us to Plex. In general we try position ourselves as being a little more flexible. Well sometimes that extra flexibility or extra feature ends up making it not as easy. So it basically just comes down to what users want, or rather, what's more important to them. You want a simple, single universal sign on, ok great, we can force mandatory usage of Connect on everybody. Or you want to be able to sign in different ways, ok great, now you're going to have to tell us how you want to sign in, which means two buttons instead of one. You can understand why Plex does these things because then they're able to create an easy streamlined sign in when there's only one way to do it. In general having one single way of doing things is what I prefer as well, but for these major mass market features like Sync I think that's one area where it's in our best interests to be more flexible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbnwa 49 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 (edited) +1 for NOT requiring mandatory usage of Connect Edited February 19, 2015 by mbnwa 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techywarrior 688 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 if the device itself is fully offline, then that's easy, and we could take you to offline content. I'd recommend at least putting that check in though. A lot of the time offline will simply be used when the device is completely offline. In that instance it would be annoying to wait for a timeout, going to a server selection screen, and then signing in again. When the computer is online then I think leaving it as Luke described is best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7illusions 1249 Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 That check is already in place. If you set the device in airplane mode it will go directly to offline view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techywarrior 688 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 That check is already in place. If you set the device in airplane mode it will go directly to offline view. Cool, Looking forward to the release... then after some testing I'll see if you've fixed the other issues I have in the app. I didn't want to post a list since you were knee deep in getting Sync sorted out (and you may have already fixed some of the issues) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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