Music Interface Improvements

[bogdansrb 5]

39 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Can you please be specific?  Thanks.

Sure.

picture 1: each category (like genres, folders etc) should have a long press menu for play/shuffle

picture 2: the play/sort menu that's on the right when browsing the tracks inside a folder/genre is too small and too weirdly placed (picture 5 is plex, which is more neatly organized)

picture 3: the now playing screen should focus on the playing track. There's nothing really wrong in seeing the next tracks, but the play controls are kind of weirdly placed down there and ruin the entire look. For example, plex created a floating play menu that only appears when clicking on the "tap" button (pictures 6 and 7). Also the progress bar could be controlled, like in the youtube app where you can skip to a certain part

picture 4 is the now playing screen that appears when there's no activity on the remote control. It's just unfinished, there's no cover art, the placement of text seems random, and IMO it should be merged with the now playing screen (pictures 6 and 7). Also, colours! You can see that plex pulls the colours of the cover art and fills the background (similar to what spotify does)

That's all I can think of right now. 

[Luke 42078]

@bogdansrb

[ebr 16183]

2 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

picture 1: each category (like genres, folders etc) should have a long press menu for play/shuffle

Hi.  Try pressing the "play" button on your remote control with one of those in focus and you should get exactly that.  A long-press should also work so I'll check on that.

2 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

the play/sort menu that's on the right when browsing the tracks inside a folder/genre is too small and too weirdly placed (picture 5 is plex, which is more neatly organized)

First problem here is you need to go into the display menus on your TV or device and adjust the screen so it isn't bleeding off the edges like that.  That will help. We used to have the buttons at the top but not only did that eat up valuable vertical real estate but it also adds a click to getting to the tabs. 

2 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

the now playing screen should focus on the playing track. There's nothing really wrong in seeing the next tracks, but the play controls are kind of weirdly placed down there and ruin the entire look

This is no different than the other Emby apps though, correct?  We followed the design of several major music apps with the scrolling queue.  I think it is quite valuable to be able to see what is coming and what just finished but other options are always possible.

 

2 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

is the now playing screen that appears when there's no activity on the remote control. It's just unfinished, there's no cover art, the placement of text seems random

Hi.  That's a "screen saver" of sorts and it looks very off in your situation because your artists must have no backdrop art.  If they did, the entire screen would be filled with a nice image of the current artist.

Thank you very much for the specific feedback.

[rfporter 34]

Music play queue should not disappear when music has finished playing. This would allow you to start playing again from within the song list in the play queue or save the play queue as a playlist. It would even be nice if the music play queue would persist (per user) between sessions (browser/player close).

It would also be great if you could add visualizations like you could do in the winamp of old.

[bogdansrb 5]

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Hi.  Try pressing the "play" button on your remote control with one of those in focus and you should get exactly that.  A long-press should also work so I'll check on that.

I'm using a Mi Box S which has a remote control that looks like in the picture below, so it doesn't have a play button

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First problem here is you need to go into the display menus on your TV or device and adjust the screen so it isn't bleeding off the edges like that.  That will help. We used to have the buttons at the top but not only did that eat up valuable vertical real estate but it also adds a click to getting to the tabs. 

Yes for some reason the screen is off (haven't figured out why). Why not keep the positioning but make them bigger/better emphasized with a border and a different background?

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This is no different than the other Emby apps though, correct?

Actually yes, emby theater on windows looks really nice. Why not simply port that interface to the other apps as well? It would make for a uniform interface and there are some really good design decisions out there. For example, buttons are emphasized with a border and background, there's a really nice fading background, the play/shuffle menu is at the top and it's bigger, and the categories are well emphasized. Also the tracks list is smaller so you can fit more tracks without them being difficult to read. Can we please have that in the TV app too? 

Also another annoying thing is that you can't shuffle the queue, you have to shuffle a category/playlist entirely. For example, I'll simply start playing a genre category (without shuffling) and then I decide I want to shuffle the tracks. I have to go back to the category and clear all of the previous queue with a shuffled version of esentially the same tracks. 

[ebr 16183]

11 hours ago, rfporter said:

Music play queue should not disappear when music has finished playing. This would allow you to start playing again from within the song list in the play queue or save the play queue as a playlist.

Hi.  In the specific app being discussed here (Android TV) the play queue does not disappear after playback ends and you can also save it at any time as a playlist.

[ebr 16183]

5 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

Actually yes, emby theater on windows looks really nice

Hi.  You are looking at a desktop (point and click) interface and comparing it to a TV one.  If you put Theater into TV display mode, you will get nearly the identical interface you see in the Android TV app.

5 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

Yes for some reason the screen is off (haven't figured out why)

There is a setting on your TV to adjust that. 

5 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

Also another annoying thing is that you can't shuffle the queue

Sure you can - at least in the app you were specifically referencing (Android TV).  The button is shown on the screen shot you posted.  Also, you can save the current queue as a playlist from there.

 

5 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

there's a really nice fading background

If you choose the Blue Radiance theme in the TV app, you'll get the exact same background.  However, as I mentioned before, if you make sure all your songs are tagged properly and allow the system to retrieve full artwork for your artists, you'll get nice artist-specific backgrounds.

[bogdansrb 5]

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Hi.  You are looking at a desktop (point and click) interface and comparing it to a TV one.  If you put Theater into TV display mode, you will get nearly the identical interface you see in the Android TV app.

I think that the Android TV app could look as good as Theater without major changes (most are just aesthetic). 

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There is a setting on your TV to adjust that. 

Yep, found it, thanks!

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Sure you can - at least in the app you were specifically referencing (Android TV). 

Where??

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If you choose the Blue Radiance theme in the TV app, you'll get the exact same background.  However, as I mentioned before, if you make sure all your songs are tagged properly and allow the system to retrieve full artwork for your artists, you'll get nice artist-specific backgrounds.

What exactly is "artist artwork"? The only artwork that my tracks have is cover art embedded in them. That's what players use for this stuff.

I found some other stuff too:

- there should be a "now playing" shortcut somewhere on the screen when browsing. It took me a while to figure out how to get back to that screen. Somemthing like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- the controls in the "screensaver mode" are somewhat confusing. In the case of the Mi Box controller, right/left is previous/next (which is good), but the middle button does the action that was previously in the now playing screen (so if you left it on the pause button, it will pause, if it was on the skip button, it will skip etc). I think that it should show a pop-up menu so that you can choose the action. The up and down buttons take you back to the now playing screen. These could be used for other things.

[ebr 16183]

7 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

there should be a "now playing" shortcut somewhere on the screen when browsing

Hi.  There is.  It is the same icon  used in the web app to return to the playlist.  Looks like a music note with a list behind it and will be by the search icon.

 

7 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

Where??

The "shuffle" button that is on that screen will shuffle the current queue.  The one that looks like an old 3 1/2" floppy will save it.

7 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

What exactly is "artist artwork"?

If you enable artwork fetchers in your music library and have your music properly tagged you will get much richer images including large backdrops for your bands/artists.  Here is what the "screen saver" screen should look like:

 

[bogdansrb 5]

Quote

If you enable artwork fetchers in your music library and have your music properly tagged you will get much richer images including large backdrops for your bands/artists.  Here is what the "screen saver" screen should look like:

Ah I see. Could there be an option to show cover art instead of artist backdrop? Maybe there's a more obscure artist and the fetcher can't find an image.

[ebr 16183]

7 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

Could there be an option to show cover art instead of artist backdrop?

In your case, if all you have is embedded cover art, it will be very low resolution so may not look very good but, yes, we can look into doing something to dress up the display when there are no artist images.

[bogdansrb 5]

6 hours ago, ebr said:

In your case, if all you have is embedded cover art, it will be very low resolution so may not look very good but, yes, we can look into doing something to dress up the display when there are no artist images.

Or, a proven solution, have the cover art at a reasonable resolution and the background picks up the colours of the cover art (actually the cover art is somehow zoomed in and blurred)

[ebr 16183]

Hi.  We believe visibility of the music queue is a valuable feature and we actually modeled our TV presentation after several major other music apps (on a TV platform) such as an Apple TV.

All the TV format Emby apps should look pretty much just like the Android TV one in this regard.