New emby user

[gone2ray 4]

After using emby for over a year I would like to give a few thoughts on the issues I've had.

I previously used Kodi on my HP microserver Gen8, Linux Mint, mySQL and SMB which worked great for my home users but not for 1 external user over VPN.

Using NFS helped but remote access was still temperamental. 

After much reading I tried emby and it was great for home and remote users.

On setting up emby I had 4 issues, probably due to inexperience.

(1) I had my current TV shows all in 1 folder set within their own folder. Once the season finished I would move that season to the main TV folder. So I only had to update 1 folder for all my users.

Emby didn't like this and wouldn't see all the episodes.

The solution was to simply put the current season in the appropriate series folder with the previous seasons.

(2) I had previously used Kodi rules to filter my content based on quality.

It would only show SD TV shows if there wasn't an HD version.

Emby combined both the SD and HD TV shows and make the user select which they wanted to play for each episode.

Easy for most users, but not my mother in law (no jokes please) ;o)

Solution was again simple, have SD and HD in separate folders with emby displaying them separately. 

(3) Specials weren't displayed in chronological order, yes I checked each episode was named correctly with theTVDB.

The special was displayed in the correct seasons folder if you went into it, just listed out of order within the Specials folder.

For US shows which might only ever have 1 or 2 Specials not really an issue. But alot of UK shows like Call the Midwife and Doctor Who can have 2 a year.

The solution was to edit the nfo file once the special had scraped and add it directly to the season it would be shown in.

This also fixed an issue with Specials not playing at all when using the Play Next feature.

(4) The only issue I couldn't find a solution to was Collections. 

With Kodi I simply edited the nfo and I had separate listings for SD, HD & 4K movie Collections.

With emby not using that method it for example was putting all 24 in total SD ,HD & 4K Harry Potter movies in the same Collection folder.

As a work around I just used the sort option to list Collection movies 1 after another within the movie folder.

Over all I'm glad I made the switch.

If anyone has any advice on better solutions please comment below.
 

[Luke 42078]

@cayars

[Carlo 4561]

@gone2ray Welcome to the wonderful world of Emby!

You have a lot of info in that post.

A few general things I'd recommend is to read these two KB articles on file naming:
https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159102-movie-naming
https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159110-tv-naming
This article should help with your specials naming as well.

The key to much of naming issues is to make sure you have proper file/folder naming as well as proper season/episode numbers including specials.  You will want to go out to the meta-data sites you have setup in Emby and check the episode number and key off of that. 

If your files & folders are named this way it will help a lot.  You're on the right track with 4K as the drop down selection isn't for everyone.  Many people keep two movie and 2 show libraries just to make it easier on the "non techie" crowd.

You actually only see the drop down for these on the detail screen.  If you just play the media from the first screen without going to the detail screen, Emby will choose the best version on it's own. This could be based on device/tv abilities as well as any bitrate limits you have setup on the server or bitrate limits on each client.

What specific issue is your bride's mother  having with SD vs 4K?
Does she not have a 4K TV but chooses it anyway and then causes transcoding or something like that?