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The ability to control the experience on the Roku will only work on the local LAN. Meaning those users at the same location already. Which sort of makes this hard to do on the Roku for that reason. The Roku External Control Protocol (ECP) will only work locally on the LAN. The Roku app used to be able to use a web socket with an external listener. But that did not include the ability to "launch" into the application. The application had to already be running. Roku has changed certification requirements. Roku is forcing developers to implement deep-linking and ECP into their applications if they are public applications that serve video streams. https://developer.roku.com/docs/developer-program/discovery/implementing-deep-linking.md Because of this change think of the Roku more on terms with second screen type applications. Where the second screen can contain the Emby remote control interface, such as the web app, or other such things. https://developer.roku.com/docs/developer-program/debugging/external-control-api.md With Roku the context requested to play must come from within the network. Roku has blocked any attempt to access their API from an external location. Threads such as the above used to be able to work on almost every Roku around the world that wasn't firewalled. Every single model until Roku introduced Roku OS 8. Ever since it has been LAN only. Just giving this as a reason not to give up on this entirely. But to not count on Roku being able to participate. It isn't us. It is them. Apologies.

This sort of thing is definitely a @Cheesegeezer speciality !

If we use the PlaybackProgress event, we should be able to watch for custom intros. If the current stream is custom intro length, let it play. But once the stream switches to the actual item with a long runtime, we'll send the pause command. @BillOatman I think we did this sort of thing in some of the Home Automation plugins a couple years ago. We only acted once the stream was long enough to be the actual movie. Interestingly enough, you could have a custom intro that mentions the Party: "Welcome to the Watch Party, please wait for the party to start" custom intro. But, that's waaaay in the future.

Geez I am away for a little bit and you guys get it all sorted out! The watch party library is a clever idea! One thing to caveat, there are clients (Roku I believe, not sure if any others) that do not support remote control pause/unpause. Nothing to do really until those commands become available except document it. For things like custom intros that pop up. Keep it simple at first, tell users/servers to turn it off. Then work on a solution for post day 1.

There are a few clunky ways to do it such as using the Playlist's but an idea which I played with for a bit - and may have some merit - is if you want to join the 'party' then you literally go into a 'WatchTogether' library which acts as the 'lobby' and in there is the film(s) that are being played. These are actually just STRM files to the other real files in other libraries. Maybe have a 'start time' incorporated into the film title so you know when it's gonna start. To 'join' you actually click to play the film - the plugin is polling for new 'sessions' and if associated with the above film id - then it knows that user wants to join the party. It then sends a session to restart the playback and then pauses. It can send a message to the user telling them they have joined. If you wanna leave, then just abandon the playback of that item. When the admin is ready - then the sessions are released and playback begins on all the sessions that have joined. You can control permissions on joining etc using the library permissions model.

I just wanted to say that last week @cayarsremotely logged into my setup and upgraded my Synology NAS operating system and upgraded me to the latest Emby Server and his support was fantastic. He also tweaked my existing setup so it run much more smoothly and suggested improvements I could make on my own. He is a credit to the Emby team. Warmest regards to you all and thank you to Cayars himself

Totally agree. @cayars is, without doubt, the most helpful support guy I've ever come across. He helped me out with a remote session last week, to help me with a SSL problem I couldn't resolve...... above and beyond, as always, Carlo!!! Thank you

New version available 7.7.0: delta changelog: add additional database index for music (faster music database queries) add artwork cache disc space verification add support for chapter images with text overlay for artwork cache fix (regular) boxset refresh option add support for realtime boxset updates catch invalid databases issue -> trigger database master reset -> this should never appear -> edge case add detection for corrupted setting file fix next up episodes (now exactly identical view like on Emby server's "next up") and improve node performance Comment: Database reset is mandatory, due to boxset fixes

That actually would give the party-goers confirmation all is well. Someday Sure does, with all kinds of pretty animations!

Agree 100% - lets get this 'functional' on the absolute basics - then if that works and is usable/acceptable - then start looking at the edge cases.

Honestly at first I'd keep it simple and say turn those intros off. Then once it's released tackle stuff like that. Yeah for the lighting plugins we checked for the length and if it was shorter than something like 5 min we assumed it was a preroll and didn't touch the lights. But even that had issues, users that played "shorts" like some animations, the lights never changed. I think we asked for a preroll flag indicator we could use, but I can imagine it was like number 5,128,673 on the priority list There is chatter in the Roku areas about that being supportable in future. Rather than try and work around it now, let those guys work their magic. Maybe a plugin like this would give them even more incentive

yes. We can see everything from when user log's on (session starting), and also in most cases see what they are currently viewing. We can also get the event when they attempted playback of an item. I suppose we act on playback if the item is in our 'Watch Party' library? This seems to create the "Watch Party" library: LibraryManager.AddVirtualFolder("Watch Party", new LibraryOptions() { AutomaticRefreshIntervalDays = 0, //<== ints default to 0. probabaly dont; need this. This library should never be refresh, unless an item is added to it... CollapseSingleItemFolders = true, //Not sure what this does. ContentType = "Movies", //Hmmm... will this be a problem if watch parties wanted to watch tv shows? Someones gonna request eventually. DownloadImagesInAdvance = false, EnableAdultMetadata = false, EnableArchiveMediaFiles = false, Name = "Watch Party", EnableMarkerDetection = false, //No do not detect intros EnableRealtimeMonitor = false, //No do not monitor this library }, false);

I agree, that is a clever solution. Could work pretty nicely actually...

You can also do 'trickery' such as having the film backdrop as a 'picture of a 'lobby' for example - maybe even manipulate the 'cast and crew' as people that have already joined... lol But lets get the concept working first haha - as Eric has said, there is no easy way to use the interface for 'other user input' - outside of playlists and favourite, so trying to do this without Core Dev input is gonna be a set of compromises.

Shouldn't that be at the top...? Why have to scroll all the way down to clear them?

Latest version (1.1.0.0 in the cat now) has a new Series summary tab that lets you view all you Intro info for all your series/seasons.

If they're your crazy ideas, I'm in Sam!

Sorry, I DO have this setting enabled. I thought there might be a separate client setting. Regardless, thanks for cleaning it up. The only time I see thumbnails is when I hit up on the directional wheel. This gives me thumbnails of each of the chapter markers in the file, which I can select and jump to. If no markers exist the jumps are placed 5 minutes apart. Its a great feature that I hope gets added to the android app. I did some more testing. All of my prior tests were with a single button press for forward/backwards skip. But I get a different behavior if I hold the forward/backward buttons down. If I pause, then hold forward/backward for several skips, I DO see the thumbnails and it WILL unpause with a single button press. This works the same forward or backward and with either set of buttons (wheel vs labeled). However, I have a library with thumbnails disabled, just for testing library file scans. If I try pausing and then long-press forward/backward, on media without thumbnails, it still takes TWO unpause button presses. I hope this is useful information. thanks.

Okay, a single server solution should be easy enough. Once the controlling session initiates playback, and the devices are sync'd, we'll connect all playback events from each device to the group. If someone pauses their device, do we pause them all? If someone stops playback (that isn't the controlling session), we'll just remove them from the group. Shouldn't be too complicated really... @Cheesegeezer @rbjtech, @BillOatman you think we should write this thing? Probabaly wouldn't take more then a couple days of writing and testing. Let me know

I'd like the ability to filter on a NOT condition, e.g., movies without a particular tag.

So the Steam Deck is pretty hyped now. They showed it as a streaming device in some videos today. It's powerful enough to play pretty much anything directly, heck it could even be a server quite easily with it's specs. A lot of people got to talking and now people are saying Plex is going to release a version to Steam so that it'd just run through that and play onto SteamOS without the user having to muck about outside of Valves ecosystem. There are plenty of free tools / video players in Steams Software section, so it'd be a pretty neat little thing I imagine.

I love music visualizations. I was thinking that a unique way to integrate visualizations in Emby would be to encode the audio with the video output of a visualizer like Milkdrop or ProjectM. The mux can then be streamed to clients as video (if the client has enabled music visualizations). Wouldn't that be cool? Sure, you sacrifice a little quality in the transcode but it would still be acceptable and by offloading the visualization to the server, even underpowered clients could potentially support visualizations that would be impossible given their hardware.

Looks like the crews all here. News Cast Assemble! I imagine this is going to be pretty good.

Just saw this and this is actually one of the ideas I had in mind. Great minds think alike

Yes.

Cool. If its easy to put the srt file(s) (if they exist) in the party library then maybe we do that day one, if not easy day 2. I'm sensitive to this as I have several deaf friends

Ups, I thought you meant Emby's server artwork folder not Kodi's. Yes this should work, I tested with an NFS share. Edit: It checks the free space on the mounted thumbnail folder location.

Ähm quickmic I'm linking my thumb folder to my NAS that ist what path substitution did. I Just want to ask If your disk space check will check my nas storage if i do so and NOT the local storage from for example my fire device.

Nice new Features, will try and test. Have a question, will this "add artwork cache disc space verification" work with path substitution? Asking because I push my hole thumbnail folder on my NAS not using local storage of my fire device.

Good shout. Thanks. It sorta makes sense to 'stop' the play session - as you probably don't want something paused on your screen - not sure. As long as you can keep pinging the user with messages (eg .. Waiting for others to join .. ) every 30 seconds or something - then that is probably ok for starters. edit - infact from memory I think you can also set the message to need acknowledgement ? Yea - just don't include any timeouts ..

yes absolutely - I had not even thought about this for TV - films is the priority for sure imo.

Cool. That seems pretty straightforward. I think we can just use the plugin config to save dictionaries of item (keys), and session (values). You press the item in the library and we save your session to the key (item id) Iterate the dictionary when it comes time to play, by sending a PlayRequest of the key (item.Id) to all values (sessions).

Yea, as you say, we can use the fact they are in the Watch Party library/channel and have started playback of the item as the trigger they want to join the party and watch that film. At this point, we have their session username and session id - so can control their session. I don't *think* we can see the user in the lobby viewing that item until they press play (I did look, but couldn't see a way) - but we can just pause them asap or even stop the play (with a message they have joined the party) until we are ready - as at this point we have the session info we need. Probably need a little bit of experimentation on the session control - I assume the plugin can list all the users that have joined the party so they know when to 'start' it. Could also be time based.. film will start in 5 minutes etc.

Just as an FYI, on the Shield this is consistent whether the OSD itself is used, the circle and OK buttons, or the discrete FF, REW and Play buttons on a Harmony Smart/Hub remote. It doesn't matter if the OSD is on screen or not. And if it is then as long as the right OSD icon is highlighted if/when using OK button.

Small steps @chef - can we get the 'control/sesion' mechanism working - as without that there is little point moving forward with the other stuff. We know the API can control the sessions, but can we poll them and get the info we need to control the 'party' ?

In 7 or 8 years of using IPTV services and probably going through a dozen or more providers, I've never seen any that issue separate M3U links for each connection.

Oh. That is a very cleaver solution. Wow.

For sure Chef!! Always up for a collaboration

The decision logic for which version, audio and subtitle track should be selected is on the server and, therefore, the same for all apps. The only caveat there may be with the Roku as its player sometimes doesn't allow the selection of a different audio track if one of them is marked as default - but I think that is only very old devices now...

@luke @pir8radio Both Cert are TLS 1.3 ... but for some reason when I generate the cert using exactly this command: certbot certonly --standalone -d mydomain.com It works with me Many thanks for your help

yeah - what you want (what we all want) is the as yet unimplemented functionality that was developed by emby as part of the live tv beta. however i think its been almost 2 years now and only small amounts of that are being implemented very slowly. this allowed native pooling of all tuner types within emby in the meantime you might want to look at something like nextpvr. not sure but it might allow you to pool the m3u's as you are trying to do. otherwise you want a better/different iptv provider that will give you the X users you want on one subscription. they do exist

Just finished watching "Keep Breathing". The entire series is on Netflix. Six 30 minute episodes. Excellent series. I can't not recommend watching it enough. You'll be hooked on the first episode and binge the entire thing. Brilliant writting and directing.

Well, I can see that DC has released Harley Quinn's third season... After watching the first episode, I'm going to have to lock down the server again. There is noooo way the kids can ever see that smut. Funny, but ... really pushing the limits there... jeez.

hey look at this. We can create Parties. private async void SessionManager_PlaybackStart(object sender, PlaybackProgressEventArgs e) { var config = Plugin.Instance.Configuration; if (!config.Parties.Any()) return; //We have Watch Parties! //Check if playback that just started belongs to a controller in a watch party. var party = config.Parties.FirstOrDefault(p => p.ControllingDeviceId == e.DeviceId); if (party is null) return; //It was a party controller starting playback so we'll act on it. foreach (var member in party.Members) { var currentMemberSession = SessionManager.Sessions.FirstOrDefault(session => session.UserId == member.Id.ToString()); if(currentMemberSession is null) continue; //<== Maybe they logged off - move on! await SessionManager.SendPlayCommand(null, currentMemberSession.Id, new PlayRequest() { ItemIds = new[] { e.Item.InternalId, } }, CancellationToken.None); // Start the playback on the users device. //Need to sync the playback here with the other devices... somehow - pause, and unpause?? Maybe... //In ProgressEvents on each session, wait for the last session to catch up to the //first session which has been briefly paused } } Right off the bat I'm starting to see some issues though. Only server managers will have the ability to create Watch Parties. They are the only ones with access to the dashboard... Hmm... this must stay simple.

Yeah not sure what the heck apollo is doing these days... but this seems to clear it up (I made assumptions that things would be valid they are not so this double checks things. I get 12.550 (if i remember right) streams with this CreateStreams-1.0.zip

Will be added in next version. Special thanks to @TeamB for the templates!

Will do!

I'm up for a proof of concept for sure. I think the key thing to agree before starting even a proof of concept is all agree the scope of what it's trying to achieve - and not get sidelined into adding 'bells and whistles' until after that PoC has been achieved Ping us on teams @chef or PM us for the details if you don't have them already.

Moved. But, personally, I think the actual thumbs look a whole lot better...

I have a custom dialog that pops up in EmbyCon for SkipIntro, you could use that, it is very simple. https://github.com/faush01/plugin.video.embycon/blob/develop/resources/skins/default/720p/SkipIntroDialog.xml and the code https://github.com/faush01/plugin.video.embycon/blob/d1f144d481ac930e91479a024493aebddec429b9/resources/lib/skip_intro_dialog.py#L15 it just uses a thread that is created when an episode starts playback and there are skip intro start end chapters, it monitors the playback and pops up the dialog when needed.