How to control user access for shows per episode

[ifThenERROR 0]

Dear all,

I have an emby server set up with multiple users. The users are supposed to each have their own selection of available movies and shows.

This is currently done with a tag for each user and the parental control set to only allow content with this tag. And it works quite well for movies and whole shows.

Now here's what I'm struggling with. If I want to allow a user to access only certain episodes of a show, it fails. If the show has the corresponding tag, the user can access all of it. If a show doesn't have the tag, but a single episode does, the user can't see it at all. Also I can't (or didn't find the right menu to) mix permissions to "only allow" a certain tag (per show) but disallow (per episode) with another.

What is the recommended approach for this without creating different folders?

[Abobader 3464]

Hello ifThenERROR,

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Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

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Emby Team

[ifThenERROR 0]

I did a littleb bit of further research and it turns out, for a user with parental controls set to deny a certain tag, it is possible to blacklist a season or even a single episodes from the shown library. Unfortunately it doesn't work the same for whitelisting. If you set parental controls to only allow certain tags, these seem to only work on tv show level but are ignored for seasons and episodes.

Is this intended behaviour or a bug?

[Luke 42081]

Hi, the problem is that if you whitelist only an episode, then they can access the episode but not the series. That means they could still find the episode in search, but they wouldn't be able to go through the normal series -> season -> episode navigation.

Right now I would say that's intended behavior, although I understand what you're saying.

[ifThenERROR 0]

Thanks, I suspected that. Is there a recommended way to whitelist series to a user?

Blacklisting works fine but totally depends on the admin (=me) to always immediately tag every new content. I'd prefer not having something like the Walking Dead pop up on my 6yo's tablet only because I forgot to tag...

Alternatively having a default tag blacklisting everything new would work, but AFAIK Emby can't set default tags.

[GrimReaper 4744]

2 minutes ago, ifThenERROR said:

I'd prefer not having something like the Walking Dead pop up on my 6yo's tablet only because I forgot to tag...

Why don't you use Parental Rating control for that? 

[ifThenERROR 0]

Well, the official ratings are far from perfect. What one considers appropriate, the next might not.

Also in this case I was asking about setting access on an episode basis. Right now my solution is rather tedious and error prone.

[GrimReaper 4744]

4 minutes ago, ifThenERROR said:

Well, the official ratings are far from perfect. What one considers appropriate, the next might not.

Hence the Custom Rating field, which acts as an override to official Parental Rating. In your case, you'd get some control (before you add Custom Rating) as opposed to none if you forget to tag (though I like tags, almost everything on my system is controlled/guided by them). 

[ifThenERROR 0]

True, the parental rating can add a layer of security.

But the custom rating again depends on me editing it first, even adding more for me to manually adjust. Also it doesn't solve the question about assigning single episodes. I'll keep it in mind anyhow.

Tags seem to be ideal for what I'd like to achieve, only they don't really work in a whitelist kind of way. Only for blacklisting. Now I'm surprised, is what I'm trying to do really so unconventional? There must've been someone already trying to whitelist what the kids may watch...

[Luke 42081]

Well for example in music when you allow only one song to a user, you are able to see the artist and album they belong to. So that works the way you are describing. I think this is an improvement that would make sense for TV, but in terms of what you can do right now, you'd have to do it with blacklisting.

[ifThenERROR 0]

Okay, I take there is at least a slim chance this might get changed eventually.

In the meantime it would help if there was a way to set a default tag to every newly added content. I found this old thread 62997-adding-default-tag-when-adding-media-to-server which sounds like it would generally possible. Unfortunately the solution was never posted. Is there some known way to do so?

[jiggity 35]

5 hours ago, ifThenERROR said:

Okay, I take there is at least a slim chance this might get changed eventually.

In the meantime it would help if there was a way to set a default tag to every newly added content. I found this old thread 62997-adding-default-tag-when-adding-media-to-server which sounds like it would generally possible. Unfortunately the solution was never posted. Is there some known way to do so?

 

[ifThenERROR 0]

Am already using this great plugin for bulk editing. A massive time saver!

How does it automatically set default tags to new content?