Possible new user - questions

[RoySim 2]

Hi - my first post and apologies if it is in the wrong place. I should say that I am a senior, senior citizen and don't have deep techie skills so please keep any replies simple!

Background is that I have all my media files on a QNAP NAS and have become increasingly frustrated with the QNAP apps. So I am trying to find a single app. to cover video, photos and music on the NAS and on devices (Android-TV and Android phones and tablets). It seems Emby may fit but before I go any further I do have some specific questions which I hope the community can help answer (I would normally do this with a free trial but I gather this is not available). I have searched the website and community but without success.

Video

I have a collection of films and TV shows all recorded via PVR and stored on NAS. The main problem is that with QNAP Video station and Qmedia the videos do not play back fullscreen to TV (Sony's pre-installed media player does this OK but has other problems). So:

- I believe that transcoding will fix this and that Emby allows on-the-fly transcoding to TV using the Android-TV app. and that I need Emby Premier for this. Is that right?

- will a video be transcoded when it is played using the TV app. or only when driven from PC/NAS

- are thumbnails displayed on TV within their folder/subfolders or only by displaying all videos files?

Photos

I have 70 years of photos all digitised and tagged using Photoshop Elements. The tags are saved to EXIF/IPTC. There are about 70 tags and they are structured by keyword>category>sub-category - eg Places>Italy>Venice. Does Emby allow me to select from a display of these tags and if so will they be displayed as sub-tags within main tags or just as a list?? I assume there will also be timeline and folder options.

Music

Again, a large collection digitised from vinyl and tape as well as CD; collection is 90% classical. File structure on NAS is: Music>Final>Composer>work title>movement or song; each work folder also contains 2 album art jpgs for cover and back art. All files have been tagged using Foobar to give ID3V2 tags and I currently use Minimserver on the NAS to manage the files. Classical music typically needs more tags than is usual so I use (and depend on) the following:

Album

Artist

Album Artist

Genre

Year (ie Date)

Title

Composer

Conductor

Ensemble (optional, created in Foobar)

 

Are all these tags recognised by Emby on Android and Android-TV apps. and can they all be used to make selections (altho' Year and Conductor optional)?

 

My apologies for such a long first post but it is the details that are important to me.

 

Many thanks in advance - Roy

 

 

 

[Abobader 3464]

Hello RoySim,

** This is an auto reply **

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

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[RoySim 2]

Bump. Can anyone help??

Thank you - Roy

[GrimReaper 4742]

On 2/12/2024 at 5:06 PM, RoySim said:

Video

I have a collection of films and TV shows all recorded via PVR and stored on NAS. The main problem is that with QNAP Video station and Qmedia the videos do not play back fullscreen to TV (Sony's pre-installed media player does this OK but has other problems). So:

- I believe that transcoding will fix this and that Emby allows on-the-fly transcoding to TV using the Android-TV app. and that I need Emby Premier for this. Is that right?

Not quite, hardware accelerated transcoding requires valid Premiere subscription, else it'd be done in software only.

On 2/12/2024 at 5:06 PM, RoySim said:

- will a video be transcoded when it is played using the TV app. or only when driven from PC/NAS

That depends on the client device.

Direct Play vs Direct Streaming vs Transcoding

On 2/12/2024 at 5:06 PM, RoySim said:

- are thumbnails displayed on TV within their folder/subfolders or only by displaying all videos files?

They are displayed everywhere where it is feasible/makes sense.

 

As for Photos and Music, not using either, hopefully some fellow user will chime in.

[beckfield 173]

On 2/12/2024 at 8:06 AM, RoySim said:

I would normally do this with a free trial but I gather this is not available

There's no free trial because the app is free.  All of the questions you are asking should be testable at the free level.

The paid Premiere level provides extra features, as you can see here:
https://emby.media/support/articles/Premiere-Feature-Matrix.html

Music:

Emby recently added support for the Composer tag.  From your list, only Conductor and Ensemble are not supported, as far as I know.  As for the Android TV app, you can easily view your library by Title, Artist, Album Artist, and Genre.  Since "Composer" was recently added to the Web app, I presume it should be coming soon to Android TV.

Screenshot from Web app:

Photo:

I also have a large photo library, but I haven't been very careful about tagging them.  I know Emby presents an option to view according to tags, but I don't know if/how it will treat your EXIF/IPTC files.

 

Edited February 15, 2024 by beckfield
added screenshot

[RoySim 2]

Thanks for these replies - they have been very helpful.

GrimReaper - now I realise I don't necessarily need Premiere for transcoding, I have installed Emby on the NAS and Android-TV and begun playing around. Looks good for my Video library - and much better than QNAP's Qmedia.

Beckfield - it looks like the music option is not going to work for my classical music collection. As you say, Composer tag is now available on NAS but not yet on TV; however,  Emby appears not to interpret the underlying file structure as I want. Not unusual - most music players are not suitable for classical music.

Photos - the photo library does use the tags from EXIF, which is good. However there are limitations, which I need to do more work with.

 

Many thanks and best wishes - Roy