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Ability to view by Actor or Studio


the-dumb1

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the-dumb1
15 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Ideally I think they could be tabs on the Home Screen  They are both somewhat global options.

Home Favorites Actors Studios

That's where they were before.  If y'all are concerned about bloat, make it user configurable.

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Happy2Play
3 minutes ago, the-dumb1 said:

That's where they were before.  If y'all are concerned about bloat, make it user configurable.

They were on the Movie header if I remember correctly.  But even if configurable you still have to have the room to place them across every device/app.  And then there are mobile devices without the room for what is already there.

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the-dumb1
20 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

They were on the Movie header if I remember correctly.  But even if configurable you still have to have the room to place them across every device/app.  And then there are mobile devices without the room for what is already there.

  If the maximum number of things that can be displayed on one platform is 5, then make that the limit across all platforms and then let the user decide what is displayed instead of making that decision for them.  The user should have the choice of what is displayed and in what order.

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Happy2Play
2 hours ago, the-dumb1 said:

  If the maximum number of things that can be displayed on one platform is 5, then make that the limit across all platforms and then let the user decide what is displayed instead of making that decision for them.  The user should have the choice of what is displayed and in what order.

But how can you say that for a 80" TV compared to a 5" phone.

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34 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

But how can you say that for a 80" TV compared to a 5" phone.

Interesting debate.

"Maximum number of things on screen"

That depends entirely on size of said things and the age of the eyes that must view those things. To everyone size is relative to your distance and quality of your eye balls/eye wear. On a phone your eye balls sit closer. On a TV your eye balls are not as close. But.. everybody cannot see shapes and sizes the same. Having the ability to "scale" images larger or pick sizes is a good idea and some clients allow you to do this. There will come a time when your eyes get old too and larger items are a blessing. There are far too many things on Emby not able to change size. I agree. :)

 

To cripple one platform because of the limits of another is selfish. I do not believe Emby would ever be so selfish as to name one device as king and constrain the rest to be forced to behave exactly the same. Each platform has unique niches(mainly scroll methods) that need to be kept. It is also very hard if not impossible to make them the same. Believe me I've tried. ^_~

Edited by speechles
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Happy2Play

True but you will never please everyone not matter what you change or add.

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You can try. Make the effort. It is clear the guys who are trying versus those who do not. We try. We want everyone happy. Some might say that it is an impossible goal. We can make that possible eventually it just isn't possible right now. Time changes perception. We might get there. It is highly possible we can please everyone. It is inevitable. It must be possible to please everyone or we are fighting a losing battle. Rather than accept defeat I say you are wrong. We can in fact please everybody. It will just take time. Sugar and less vinegar. I prefer to be optimistic.

Edited by speechles
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22 hours ago, Deathsquirrel said:

but a scrollable list of all the actors in all the content on my server would be of zero use to my users that want to watch a movie.  They'd rather use search.

This is really the issue here.  A comprehensive list is just so large that it creates performance problems and in reality has little use - you end up needing to search in that list anyway - which you can already do.

Having said that, it isn't out of the question that this will come back at some point.

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Happy2Play
13 minutes ago, ebr said:

This is really the issue here.  A comprehensive list is just so large that it creates performance problems and in reality has little use - you end up needing to search in that list anyway - which you can already do.

Having said that, it isn't out of the question that this will come back at some point.

That same argument can be used for Episodes and Songs.

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7 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

That same argument can be used for Episodes and Songs.

To an extent - but the universe of actors is really quite large and, as pointed out earlier, networks these days have fairly limited value as well.

But, that is the reason those tabs are sacrificed (don't exist) in some of the apps with tab limitations...

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the-dumb1

I'm sure you can come up with all kinds of arguments why it will never be a feature you'll implement.  From where to put it to sheer size to performance.  If it's really a performance issue then the API shouldn't exist.  I can use Kodi with the Emby plugin to do what I want.  I don't want to do that!

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3 hours ago, ebr said:

Having said that, it isn't out of the question that this will come back at some point.

Tab limitations? Two words: Scrolling Tabs. Limitation is gone.

But I fully agree. You know I agree. I love me some networks and studios. Implementating it provides users a new navigation route. Less button presses are a good thing. Keep this in mind. It is harder to find new/interesting content when you always navigate the same way you find the same content. New roads lead to new opportunities to discover.

Actors/People are performance issues for sure, but it should be possible to get there eventually. Given that performance improvements are made every day in both the CPU/GPU world of hardwares and the Emby world of softwares. One day the synergy of those two will allow actors and people to get similar love.

 

Edited by speechles
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16 minutes ago, speechles said:

Tab limitations? Two words: Scrolling Tabs. Limitation is gone

Not entirely.  One, there are platforms that do not allow them to scroll and two there are several examples of people not even knowing tabs that were scrolled off screen existed.

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45 minutes ago, ebr said:

Not entirely.  One, there are platforms that do not allow them to scroll and two there are several examples of people not even knowing tabs that were scrolled off screen existed.

A timer to start an animation that will bounce those scroll indicators around to animate and jiggle them for a bit every so often. So users understand. A sort of "Hey there! Over here!". So users understand more stuff is this way. Same way on "The Legend of Zelda" the Link character users start as is trained as the "fairy" guides you through the game. That fairy constantly shouts "Hey!" and wants you to look at her so she can tell you about things. We need to guide users this same way. Users then understand what is expected.

We can even pop up initial text panels when the scroll indicators first appear to say something along the lines of: "Scroll indicators appear when there are too many view tabs to show on the screen at once. We use these to help you know when more tabs are available than you can see on the screen.". Have a little Emby mascot character appear along side these messages. Those messages can be self dismissing like toast is on Android. Just a little pop up with a little fun Emby mascot character. We need an Emby mascot for these duties. It is more fun to announce with a mascot. Any time we feel users may not understand something we can train them with messages and that mascot.

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There she is. The M bee. Something like that. Then you listen to her.

 

Those platforms that do not have scrollable view tabs need compressable/expandable tabs in that case. Where the text shrinks and becomes "someth..." and shrinks then when focused on expands and becomes "something else". So that you can take advantage of focus where it is important to show entire context. Then things which are not focused do not need the entire context as isn't as important. I know you understand what I mean. It is possible to do this with some forethought.

Edited by speechles
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Deathsquirrel
6 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

That same argument can be used for Episodes and Songs.

The songs list at the top level of music is equally useless, yes.

For me the question is 'what are you wanting to accomplish when you do this thing?'  If I'm browsing content I want to find or play that content.  The way I choose to browse through it is the way I feel is most likely to get me something I want quickly.  No quick browsing option starts with 'Give me an insanely long list and let me scroll!'

I've got 26K songs.  I can't think of a reason I'd scroll through them.

I once tried to use the studio cleaner.  There were so many freaking studios at the time that I couldn't get through the list and my movie collection is about 50% bigger now.

I don't even know how many actors would be in my list but with just shy of 2000 movies and 180 TV series, I'm guessing that's equally useless as a browsing option.

So for folks who want to access to a list of all Actors, for example, what are you trying to accomplish?  Answering that might get you a better solution than you're currently requesting.  What you're currently requesting will be very hard to use effectively.

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21 minutes ago, Deathsquirrel said:

The songs list at the top level of music is equally useless, yes.

For me the question is 'what are you wanting to accomplish when you do this thing?'  If I'm browsing content I want to find or play that content.  The way I choose to browse through it is the way I feel is most likely to get me something I want quickly.  No quick browsing option starts with 'Give me an insanely long list and let me scroll!'

I've got 26K songs.  I can't think of a reason I'd scroll through them.

You can sort them. By played date, by play count, by rating, by runtime. That is why the top level songs exist under music. You can sort how you like. Filter how you like. Then shuffle of play all from that data set. Your media, your way.

Choice is exactly why that exists. Nothing is useless unless you are being selfish. Everything(..and for that matter, everyone) has purpose. They exist for a reason. That reason may just need to be explained because it isn't overly obvious or intuitive enough to tell. We just need to know where those pain points are to understand how they can be made more clear and obvious. It is choice that has brought us here. Humans deserve choice or we are all reduced to the same shape, size, and color. Black lives matter! Rainbow pride! Enough said, right? We all deserve to be happy and have our thoughts heard. We all should be able to browse how we want. Eventually time will get us there. It is inevitable. :)

Edited by speechles
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Deathsquirrel
12 minutes ago, speechles said:

You can sort them. By played date, by play count, by rating, by runtime. That is why the top level songs exist under music. You can sort how you like. Filter how you like. Then shuffle of play all from that data set. Your media, your way.

I get that but the current implementation is utterly useless to me.  If equivalent filters were available in an actors list it would likewise be useless.

Add multi-select to the filter lists and we could have something pretty cool.  I'm NEVER going to think to myself 'I want to hear a country song from 1958 that's 3 stars or above.  I mean sure, if I DID want that the current filters can build that list.  What I would actually think though is 'let's listen to some old country, nothing crappy.'  I can't achieve that list because the filter only lets me select one value in each filter option so, for example, I can choose a year but not a range of ten years.

Further, to this topic, NONE of this functionality require a top level song list.  You could replace the whole tab with an instant mix tool that had genre and year tickboxes.  Then, in a few seconds, I could have a playlist of everything hard rock, punk, or grunge released from 1990-2010 in my collection without emby ever bothering to render a list of my songs.  You could let me save filter sets either there or as playlists.  I could be allowed to expand any of the filters to uncheck boxes and the whole list could auto update.  You could do tons of useful things without me ever seeing a list of every song currently included/excluded by the selected filters.

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  • 5 months later...

Took me a minute to find this post, I just finished requesting this exact feature. Being able to view all actors and all studios without searching them one by one is a must for a media application. Emby is a good program, but these elements needed to be added. If Emby feels they have too many tabs taking up space consider using ICONS instead or adding features to a sidebar instead of having them as part of a navigational menu. But regardless of they are added, please add them.

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all4dom

I could live without the actors tab because that would be hugh but it would be nice to sort by studios.

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An actors tab would be no bigger than some peoples movie collection, or massive collection of television episodes, there are people out there with massive collections and im sure Emby could add a function that allows the user to decide if they want it to display the tab or or not.

Don't think about oneself, Emby is an application made for the masses, not the individual. This is obviously a feature many have asked for.

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Happy2Play

Technically it is a feature that existed in the beginning.  But with virtual scrolling now I see no reason they shouldn't be readded.  But the issue is where to put them now.

 

Personally I would assume People should go on the Home Screen as they would apply to most libraries.  But Studios will be hard as there are already so many tabs in Movies.

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the-dumb1

I'm highly doubtful that it's a performance issue like stated earlier.  And just because you can't envision a use case doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  I'm not clear on why the users can't be given a choice as to what is displayed on the screen.   Let the user decide.

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4 hours ago, the-dumb1 said:

I'm highly doubtful that it's a performance issue like stated earlier. 

It used to be. It's not anymore. Now it's more a question of where do we put it, is there enough space, what will have to be reworked to make enough space, etc.

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