Initiate playback of videos not in a library

[pünktchen 1409]

Maybe i was dreaming, but i could swear i read in the comments of some interface about playback of videos that are not part of Emby's libraries. So is this possible? If yes, how can i achieve this?

[Luke 42077]

Hi, this is not really possible, sorry.

[pünktchen 1409]

Mmh, "not really" isn't a clear "no".

Edited July 11, 2024 by pünktchen

[Luke 42077]

Just now, pünktchen said:

Mmh, "not really" isn't a clear "no".

I think the closest example would be custom intros, but even those get scanned into the library before playing. So it's not possible.

[pünktchen 1409]

But those "intros" do not show up anywhere and that's all i need. I don't care if the videos are in the database. Do you have a starting point i can look at?

[Luke 42077]

5 minutes ago, pünktchen said:

But those "intros" do not show up anywhere and that's all i need. I don't care if the videos are in the database. Do you have a starting point i can look at?

I don't and I would not advise trying to do this. I understand you want to achieve your objective but the core server doesn't have a great way of accommodating this. Even with the intros I think there are some issues there in terms keeping up to date with folder/file changes, cleaning out deleted entries, etc. 

The problem is that they are treated like a library in some respects in order to automatically inherit a number of features, but then they are given special exceptions in other ways to prevent them from showing up. But it's these differences that can result in a number of quirks and I think these need to be looked at first.

[pünktchen 1409]

Any other idea how to create some kind of library or video repository that is not visible to any user, but where the videos still can be played by session commands?

[Luke 42077]

My suggestion is to do a channel plugin and (for now), just live with the fact that it shows up and is searchable. There was someone in the api forum asking about this same thing very recently, so maybe now with two of you we'll set aside some time to get the required changes done to hide it.