Multi-version movies question about default selection

[harrv 88]

When you have multiple editions of a movie, how does Emby decide which version will be selected in the pop-down menu by default? And is there any way to change that?

 

Following the guide here: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Movie-naming#multi-version-movies

 

I have:

/Movies
  /I Am Legend (2007)
    /I Am Legend (2007) - alternate ending.mp4
    /I Am Legend (2007) - theatrical.mkv

When I look in the player (I've tried the web client, and the iOS app and they both behave the same in this regard) I do indeed see the pop-down menu where I could change the version ("alternate ending" or "theatrical"). By default, the alternate ending version is selected.

 

Because my users are mostly non-technical family members, I doubt that they will even notice the pop-down menu and will just end up playing whatever the default selection is, so I'd like to control what is selected by default. In this case, I'd like to have the theatrical version be the default selection. I made the assumption that the default might be the first one when listing them alphabetically, so I tried this:

/Movies
  /I Am Legend (2007)
    /I Am Legend (2007) - 1 theatrical.mkv
    /I Am Legend (2007) - 2 alternate ending.mp4

That does indeed change the options in the pop-down menu to include a number, however, the "2 alternate ending" version is STILL the default selection.

 

So my two questions are:

1. How does Emby decide which version to select by default, and

2. Is there a way to change which version is selected by default?

 

Thanks!

[ebr 14929]

1 - The app chooses the one that will play the best on the current device and connection.

2 - Not at this time.

 

The feature was really designed for different qualities of the same item.  It can be used for different versions like you are but currently has these limitations.

[harrv 88]

OK, makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I also found there’s no way to select the version/edition when using the Emby for Kodi plugin and using Kodi (with the Embuary skin) as the player, so I’ll probably just have Emby list different versions of the same movie as separate movie listings (editing the name to clarify the difference) until there are some refinements to that feature for this specific purpose.

 

I’ll mark your reply as the answer.

Edited July 1, 2018 by harrv

[Luke 37112]

Yea I imagine in the future we'll try and do better to allow it to better cater to both scenarios. For now, it started out as a way to accommodate multiple resolutions of the same video, and has been expanded a little bit to accommodate multiple versions.