App feedback

[vertigo220 1]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm hesitant to take the time to elaborate, considering it's been, I believe, around three plus years and something as relatively simple as list view hasn't been added yet, so I have little hope that any of this feedback will be used, which kills me because there are a lot of things I really like about Emby and it has a lot of potential.

1. No list view (already mentioned, but may as well make it part of the list). Not only do I prefer it over thumbnails/posters, but it would solve some of the other issues mentioned. As for where I want this that it's not there: everywhere. When I'm browsing the library in the app (I'm using Emby on Android (Shield TV), not sure about the version, but it's recent), regardless of the view, it's always a grid of thumbnails, whereas I want a list. See the previously linked thread for more.
   
2. I often like to sort by folder, but doing so shows the drives as large icons that are nothing but images of folders, with no labels.
   
3. There should be an option when using the normal view to still keep files in subfolders separated, kept in their individual subfolders. That is, if I have multiple movie drives, and they have the movies in the root directory and other videos in subdirectories, if I use the normal view instead of folder view in order to see the movies on all the drives in one place, I don't also want all the videos in the subdirectories cluttering it up, but instead want those directories listed at the top so I can go into them if I want to see those videos.
   
4. I prefer file names to be used rather than the identified movie or TV show name, for two reasons. One, I sometimes add extra details about the video in the name, and with Emby, I can't see that info. Second, Emby, like every other media app, isn't always very good at identifying videos. This results in lots of misnamed folders and videos, e.g. a folder named "Watched" is shown in Emby as "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," different "Alice in Wonderland" movies are all named "Alice in Wonderland" with the same image, "Battlestar Galactica (2004)" is "Battlestar Galactica (2020)," "Andromeda" being "Battle Force: Andromeda," folders/videos being out of order because one is named by Emby and one isn't, causing them to be sorted incorrectly, etc.
   
5. Moving through the letters on the left is slow. It also always selects "G" when entering it while in the #'s and "N" when entering it when in any other position. The "N" makes some sense, as I assume it's that way since that's the halfway point, to make it quicker to get to either end of the alphabet, but the "G" selection doesn't make sense. It also often takes multiple presses of the left or right (then left) button to get to it when in the main movie list.
   
6. Folders are mixed in with videos, with no option to sort them normally, i.e. folders first, then files.
   
7. Some folders are just the folder icon while others use an image from a video inside them as the thumbnail, which makes them look like a video file instead of a folder. It would be better if they were an image of a folder with the thumbnail in it, or the thumbnail with a folder icon in the corner, in order to make it clearer when an item is a folder vs a video.
   
8. The TV series screen seems to me to be overly complex, though admittedly I may get used to it in time if I used Emby more, and might even find it preferable, but I still suspect it could be made simpler and better. I'm used to Kodi, in which I just go to a folder for a show and select the first unplayed video.
   
9. On the TV series screen, marking the entire show as played (which I accidentally did when first trying out Emby thinking I was just marking the first episode played, showing how the screen can be a bit confusing, though it also wouldn't take long for users to get used to it, so not that big a deal) doesn't change the "Next Up," which should be empty. It does go away when going into an episode (its screen, not playing it) and going back or a minute or so after refreshing, but it should happen automatically and instantly, or at least much faster than it does. Similarly, it takes a long time for the section to reappear after marking the show unwatched, and again only after manually refreshing.
   
10. No idea what the checkmark in the crossed-out circle does. I assume it hides watched movies/episodes/seasons/shows, but there's no indication, no tooltip, no message when clicked, nothing.
    
11. As mentioned in #8, I'm used to just going into the folder of a TV show in Kodi and having all the episodes there, all in one place, which I prefer. I don't like how in Emby I have to go into each season's folder separately, or go all the way over to the right (a frustrating experience for shows with several seasons) to select the "All Episodes" option. And then that has its own issues, as discussed in #3, where ALL files in ALL subdirectories are listed. So I either have to choose to view each season individually, or view _everything_ under the TV show directory, which can create a lot of clutter. There's just no ideal way to simply see the contents the way I would in a file manager. Which is partly the cause of the mess it creates with one show in particular, the other cause being the issue mentioned in #4 as well as some rather significant issues with how Emby apparently decides episode order and other things.
    
12. That show is Battlestar Galactica (BSG). Despite numbering the episodes and specials to be in chronological order, Emby places them in a crazy order and completely skips some of them. For example, "The Last Frakkin Special" is first in line (it should be obvious by its name that it belongs toward the _end_ of the show, not at the very beginning), followed by "The Face of the Enemy," then a bunch of extras and other stuff in subdirectories, then _finally_ the show, without the first episode (33) being named (despite my having named it in the file name), without the various extras, e.g. deleted scenes, that I named specifically to cause them to be sorted after the episodes they belong to (at least one is there, though I suspect that's due to the next failure, and most simply are not there at all), and several episodes and specials aren't there at all. It looks like the ones that aren't there use the naming convention "2x10(A) - Episode Name" instead of "2x10 - Episode Name" (e.g. extended or normal cut is named (A) and the other (), which apparently causes Emby to simply decided to completely ignore them. The one case where the deleted scenes file is actually there is because Emby seems to think it's the episode in that place ("2x10.5 - Deleted Scenes" seems to be "2x10" as far as Emby is concerned since the real 2x10 episodes are ignored). And I have Caprica in the same folder, named to place it after all the BSG episodes, movies, and specials, yet it's intermixed with the BSG episodes, e.g. the first season of BSG only has 13 episodes, so after BSG 1x13, it has Caprica 1x14-1x18 (and 1x01-13 are nowhere to be found). In other words, it's a giant mess. In Kodi and in a file manager, everything shows up, in its right place, without any issues. With Emby, the show is literally unwatchable. There's just no way to do it, not to mention it causes me to have no faith in the program to not make me miss stuff or watch stuff out of order. I can only imagine the mess from intermixing Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis episodes.
    
13. For movies, it should have the ability for the user to designate an extras directory, so when a movie is selected, in addition to the info and main buttons and the cast/crew, chapters, and more like this sections, it could have a section for the extras for that movie. For example, I keep extras in a folder called "Extras" so if I could tell Emby that, if I selected "Movie Name" from the list of movies, on the movie's page there would be an extra section called "Extras" (it should probably be called whatever the folder is named) which would list all the files from that folder that start with "Movie Name." And ideally it would act like a TV episodes list with a play all and next up feature, and should show the lengths of each video (as it should for TV shows as well).
    
14. Chapters on the movie page aren't very helpful since they don't have thumbnails. This applies to the lack of chapter thumbnails during playback as well.
    
15. When going into a season screen, if you go down to the first or second episode then press back, it takes you to the previous screen (the show's page), but if you go to the third or later episode and press back, it takes you to the play all button, requiring you to hit back again to get to the previous screen. This causes an inconsistency that results in confusion, making the user (or at least me) second guess where I am, particularly due to how much "clutter" is on each screen (quoted because it's generally useful stuff, but it clutters the screen regardless).
    
16. In addition to the other info presented about the movies/shows (rating, year, length, etc), I also like to see the file size.
    
17. There's no playback speed option, which is something I'd really like in a media player, and in fact I've started using VLC primarily because it has it. Frame advance would also be a very welcome feature.
    
18. There's no variable seek amount option, to seek farther the more times the right/left button is pressed (e.g. 5 sec first press, 10 sec the next (for a total of 15), then 30, then 60, then 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc).
    
19. Audio and subtitles boxes on movie/show main screen are much smaller than space allows and therefore can cut off the names of the tracks. They also don't indicate if there are additional tracks. Actually, scratch that, I see now that they're "highlighted" if there's more than one track. However, files with multiple video tracks don't provide the option to select the others (though, back to the many problems described in #12, BSG 1x02 has three video streams listed: "BSG 1x02...," "Caprica 102...," and "Caprica 1x02..."). And the audio and subtitle tracks, both here and in the playback OSD audio and subtitle menus, don't display their names.
    
20. I added a couple movies to the queue to test that feature out, and when I went to the home screen to play the queue, not only were they backwards from the order I entered them, but "Play All" didn't do anything and clicking "Current Queue" just removed the first item (the second movie added). Then clicking the remaining item (the first one added) and selecting open brought me to the page for the other movie (the second one added). Then I went back, and the queue was back to normal (though still backwards from the order I added them), but "Play All" and "Current Queue" still don't work.
    
21. I prefer my place to be kept when going back, i.e. if I navigate to a movie then go back to the home screen then back to movies, I want to be in the exact same place I was before. Unfortunately, pressing back to go home (or to access the options at the top) jumps to the top of the list. I'd rather something like press back to go back to home, while keeping your place and long-press back to go to the top toolbar, at which point pressing down would go back to where you were in the list and pressing left would go to the alphabet jump bar or long-pressing back again would go to the top of the list.
    
22. This might be a problem with the metadata sources and not Emby, but there are some inaccuracies in some of the info. For example, despite having properly identified the show "Eleventh Hour" and displaying the correct plot, episodes, etc, it says "Professor Ian Hood (Patrick Stewart) and his bodyguard Rachel Young (Ashley Jensen)..." when, in fact, it stars Rufus Sewell and Marley Shelton. Also, neither one of them are listed in the cast section below to be able to find other movies/shows they're in; instead, that section is titled "Guest Stars."
    
23. When long-pressing the select button to show media info, pressing back should close it, not stop playback.
    
24. Scrolling pop-ups (settings during playback, display mode, etc) should loop around, i.e. when pressing up/down while on the first/last item it should jump to the last/first item.
    
25. I'm not a fan of the button mapping during playback. I prefer up/down to instantly jump chapters and select to open the OSD, and pressing it again to play/pause. I also prefer for it to stay open until closed by pressing back, to make it easier to actually see the info I want (though the name in the top-left and poster in the bottom-left should still auto-hide, to minimize how much of the video is blocked while the OSD is open. I also prefer to have quick and easy access to subtitles, as I'm frequently turning them on briefly to catch something that was said and then turning them off again, whereas pretty much everything else in the OSD is rarely used. At the very least, I'd like to be able to rearrange the icons at the bottom of the OSD so I can put subtitles first, or specify which one to default to when pressing down after opening the OSD. What I'd really like is the ability to set long-press of up and down to cycle through to the previous and next subtitle track, respectively. Additionally, it would be nice to be able to change long-press of select to open the subtitle selection pop-up instead of the stats box.
    
26. I like to be able to keep watching the video while I look at information about it. For example, if I want to see who someone is, I don't want to have to exit playback to go to the main screen and look at cast info. There should be a button at the bottom of the OSD to display this info in the OSD area. It seems a great way to do this would be to click the info icon, which currently shows the plot, and on that screen either show cast thumbnails (which, when clicked, would show the info about that actor the same as it would on the movie/show main screen, only still in the OSD area) or have a "Cast" button that, when clicked, would show the thumbnails, and possibly have other buttons for other info as well.
    
27. There's no option to remove an item from the "Continue Watching" section. Such an option should also probably ask whether to reset the playback progress.
    
28. Some sorting doesn't make sense. For example, I would expect "The A-Team" to be toward the beginning of the A's, before Aa... (hyphen before numbers, letters, etc), but it's sorted by just ignoring the hyphen altogether, as if it were "The ATeam."
    
29. Multi-edition MKVs aren't handled properly. Instead of being able to select which edition to play, e.g. Theatrical vs Director vs Extended cut, it simply plays the first edition in the file then, at the end, plays the different chapters that are used for the second edition. While I actually prefer this sometimes, and so it would be nice to have the option for it, it _should_ handle them properly and, if I had to choose one way or another, I'd prefer it treat them individually like it's supposed to.
    
30. I don't see any real audio options, only Playback Settings > Audio Output with options of auto and downmix to stereo, so I have no idea if it supports passthrough/bitstreaming or not and, even if it does, there doesn't appear to be a way to toggle it.
    
31. Finally, when I recently installed it and set it up to try it out, it already had a password set (possibly from a previous test run) and I have no idea what it is and can't change it.
    

[Spaceboy 2507]

So many incorrect assumptions in this list

[ebr 14962]

Hi.  Can we start with what version of the app you are running because several of the things you mention I believe are incorrect in the current app.

 

As for list view - that simply is not a highly requested option in a big-screen interface so we just haven't gotten there yet.  Most people on their TVs want graphical presentations as opposed to a "file-browsing" type experience.

[jusjoken 2]

Hi.  Can we start with what version of the app you are running because several of the things you mention I believe are incorrect in the current app.

 

As for list view - that simply is not a highly requested option in a big-screen interface so we just haven't gotten there yet.  Most people on their TVs want graphical presentations as opposed to a "file-browsing" type experience.

As requested before...put me on the "list" of those preferring a clean list view.  As most of the other emby apps offer this I am not sure why this has not been implemented as it cannot be that complex.

 

Thanks for considering it as once available we can move permanently to all emby without kodi.

 

K