notla49285 46 Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 I've been away from here for a bit and have just installed server update 4.1.0.26. I had a quick look at the changelog at the time but can't seem to find it again, I remember there was a lot of stuff on there! Anyway, main thing at the moment is I'm wondering what's happened to the BIF files that are created for the Roku upon importing media? Before the update this was a laborious process that ate both my CPUs for breakfast and would take it's sweet time doing it. Now, I can see that ffmpeg is doing something but the processing is nowhere near as CPU intensive and I end up with no BIF file in the output directory (and it's only a minute on average). Are these either held somewhere else, held in a different format or just not created at all now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott D 62 Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 After reading this, I just checked and I too have a change to the BIF creation. I'm not getting anything either. I looked in the Plugin catalog and there is nothing. I looked in the Scheduled Tasks and there is nothing. No new BIF files have not been created in the last few days as far as I can tell. Is this function moving to a Plugin that just has not happened yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8282 Posted April 25, 2019 Share Posted April 25, 2019 After reading this, I just checked and I too have a change to the BIF creation. I'm not getting anything either. I looked in the Plugin catalog and there is nothing. I looked in the Scheduled Tasks and there is nothing. No new BIF files have not been created in the last few days as far as I can tell. Is this function moving to a Plugin that just has not happened yet? Release notes 4.1.0.26 Merge chapters and Roku images into one common thumbnail feature As discussed in dozens of other topic the Roku thumbnail plugin functionality has been added as a core server function. The plugin is obsolete. You need to verify the setting in each library. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8282 Posted April 25, 2019 Share Posted April 25, 2019 (edited) I've been away from here for a bit and have just installed server update 4.1.0.26. I had a quick look at the changelog at the time but can't seem to find it again, I remember there was a lot of stuff on there! Anyway, main thing at the moment is I'm wondering what's happened to the BIF files that are created for the Roku upon importing media? Before the update this was a laborious process that ate both my CPUs for breakfast and would take it's sweet time doing it. Now, I can see that ffmpeg is doing something but the processing is nowhere near as CPU intensive and I end up with no BIF file in the output directory (and it's only a minute on average). Are these either held somewhere else, held in a different format or just not created at all now? I know all newly added items to my servers are getting bif files generated. You need to verify your setting and then post a server log if there are still issues. Edited April 25, 2019 by Happy2Play Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37064 Posted April 25, 2019 Share Posted April 25, 2019 Stay tuned for the announcement on the blog. We're just running a little behind on that. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThePaladinTech 22 Posted April 25, 2019 Share Posted April 25, 2019 @@Luke I'm getting bif files for all libraries but none for recorded TV since the new version. Settings in Recorded TV library are same as my other libraries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThePaladinTech 22 Posted April 28, 2019 Share Posted April 28, 2019 Ah thanks happy2play ... I got it working. New recordings now have bif files. Old recordings have bif. I did a library scan replacing metadata data to get the in between bif files generated. Could I have just done a “missing meta data” scan? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37064 Posted April 28, 2019 Share Posted April 28, 2019 Glad you sorted it out ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notla49285 46 Posted April 28, 2019 Author Share Posted April 28, 2019 Can you please stop changing settings with updates?? I've had to change 15 libraries' settings back because of this. At the very least if an update is pushed out at least say something about settings that need to be changed back?? Rather than having to come onto the forums wondering what is wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37064 Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 Can you please stop changing settings with updates?? I've had to change 15 libraries' settings back because of this. At the very least if an update is pushed out at least say something about settings that need to be changed back?? Rather than having to come onto the forums wondering what is wrong? The announcement is on the way up. I apologize for the disruption but what settings did you have to change? If you were only using chapters before, then you did not have to change any settings. The only way you would have to change settings when upgrading from stable is if you were previously using the roku thumbnail plugin. You would have to change your thumbnail settings on the server to extract at 10 second intervals instead of chapter markers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 943 Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 The announcement is on the way up. I apologize for the disruption but what settings did you have to change? If you were only using chapters before, then you did not have to change any settings. The only way you would have to change settings when upgrading from stable is if you were previously using the roku thumbnail plugin. You would have to change your thumbnail settings on the server to extract at 10 second intervals instead of chapter markers. Yep, that is all I had to change to make the thumbnails work after the change. However everyone should be aware that it is possible that the old Roku plugin generated thumbnails will not be used after the change and new thumbnails will need to be generated. That happened to me. We do not know why but it only took a little time, much less than the Roku plugin took, and thumbnails are working fine now. After being convinced to make the change I strongly recommend that the bif file be set to store in the same directory as the video files. It just makes maintenance much easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CBers 6771 Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 The announcement is on the way up. It's been 12 days!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notla49285 46 Posted April 30, 2019 Author Share Posted April 30, 2019 None of my libraries were creating .bif files after the update, I was using the thumbnails plugin and it's only after this thread that I've found out this is now no longer used and the Emby server application itself is performing the work. I also didn't realise that the old .bif files would not be used any more. Whilst I appreciate that the performance is a lot better (and it is genuinely impressive), I still now have to go remove all .bif files from my libraries and replace them. Again, I didn't know this until AFTER the update had been installed. I feel like this should have been announced before pushing the update out so I could better plan the upgrade process. I agree with @@Gilgamesh_48 on keeping these files in the video directory, but for different reasons. My C drive is quite a small-capacity SSD and I really need to keep a lid on what is saved on there until I can upgrade it, which will be a while. If the update had reverted settings to save on the server application's host drive, this would have ended up crashing my server. I'm sure I don't need to tell Emby devs that changing settings like this can be a problem, but it's definitely a problem if nobody is told about them. In future can you please issue the release notes before the update? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 943 Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 I also didn't realise that the old .bif files would not be used any more. Whilst I appreciate that the performance is a lot better (and it is genuinely impressive), I still now have to go remove all .bif files from my libraries and replace them. Again, I didn't know this until AFTER the update had been installed. I feel like this should have been announced before pushing the update out so I could better plan the upgrade process. Actually, apparently, Emby did not know that old bif files from the Roku plugin would not work after the upgrade. Form what I have been told they were supposed to work and I believe they did for some people and not for others. You and I are two of the ones that the "import" or "reuse" did not work for. I found that, if old bif files were detected then, for me, new ones would not be generated and the old ones would not be used. Before this update I was not storing the bif files with the video files and I had no use of bif files after the upgrade until I told Emby to store the bif files with the videos and then Emby regenerated the bifs and they became usable. I suspect that the upgrade bug was missed during the testing phase of the process. It is no big deal now but it took me a while to figure what was wrong and to finally be convinced that storing the bifs alongside the videos was best practice. After that it just tiik a little time to get back to full functionality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37064 Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Bif files from before will work just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 943 Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Bif files from before will work just fine. Except when they don't. Mine did not and I had no bif file usage until I regenerated them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angus Black 4 Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 Except when they don't. Mine did not and I had no bif file usage until I regenerated them. Mine didn't work either, that's how I found this thread. My original .bif files were stored with the server. I have them with the media now. Must be our imagination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilgamesh_48 943 Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 Mine didn't work either, that's how I found this thread. My original .bif files were stored with the server. I have them with the media now. Must be our imagination. I believe that the Emby folks try to test every possibility but they cannot possibly test every setup and configuration. Also, like most advanced (and some not so advanced) designers they have a HUGE ego and it is hard for them to accept that there can be configurations and use cases that they have not accounted for. This is not really a bad thing it is just what happens in the world of programming. After all Programming is at least 50% an art and artists are notoriously quite supercilious. But they make up for that arrogance with a quite unusual willingness to try an adapt to and help their users. I had some difficulty with the bif files but ultimately that difficulty was more from my desire to not have the bif files in the same directory as my videos than it was from anything that actually impeded the operation of the bif creator. I also decided that I really had no need for bif files for my TV shows as I almost never seek to a particular scene in TV. I should qualify that by saying that I cannot and do not use TV recording at all because I have no reception where I live. After all is said and done I much prefer the way it is now to the way it was before but the process of getting from there to here was painful due to my resistance to change. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CBers 6771 Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 I believe that the Emby folks try to test every possibility but they cannot possibly test every setup and configuration. That's what being part of the beta testing team tries to do, but it can't cover every scenario. I don't think many testers had BIF files that had been created by the Roku plugin (I didn't), so this was mostly new. Therefore, pre-existing BIFs probably weren't tested thoroughly enough. Anyone can install a beta Emby server and test, providing they supply feedback on any issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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