Separate cast from crew

[CRiXiD 25]

8 minutes ago, Smitty018210 said:

This would only be an honest guess, but I would think you are in the minority on that. (I'm sure now people come through and tell me I am wrong. lol)

I am not even saying they are not important, it's not something I care about, but I understand others do find that info very important. 

I do think emby should create a section for crew under the actors for those who want that info displayed.  

My issue as always though is that emby has very little in the way a customizing UI items(sections) like this.

I have to use the WEB player/Browser so that I can remove unwanted items from the UI with custom CSS and can't use new windows app because of it. 

If this is added and we are not give option to remove it. I would have to have yet more CSS code to get rid of it.

Haha, I'm sure you're right to be honest. My SO and I like to think of ourselves as cinephiles, so make of that what you will  TBH I'd just be happy if we could prioritise the order of cast in the same row as a setting (which it sounds like @Lukeis implying we can now do). Keeping the UI simple is also an important balance.

[Killface69 103]

I also think that this change is necessary. 

The data sources on the internet become more and more cluttered, let's take Avengers: Endgame as an example: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/299534-avengers-endgame/cast
My main issue with how the data is provided and perceived by Emby. There are 105 actors listed for the film, meaning scrolling 105 entries to get to the crew information. (I had another film with 90+ "(uncredited)" entries. The order and amount of entries can vary between providers, depending on which person took the time to add/edit the movie/series. There's no "main cast" diversification, even minor off-screen roles like "Gamora Reader" are listed in the cast nowadays (I do get the point of completition and the actor's interest in visibility, but it's just too much information).

While the main cast can be very messy, the crew itself is somehow underwhelming. I've been working on cast and crew updates in Python (code way too slow and unreliable to publish). I've found that there could be more information scraped, at least from Tmdb. See my code example below:

        crew_buckets = {"Director": [], "Writer": [], "Producer": [], "Composer": [], "Conductor": [], "Lyricist": []}

        job_to_type_role = {
            # Director
            # "tmdb_entry":("EmbyType", "EmbyRole")
            "director": ("Director", None),

            # Writers
            "writer": ("Writer", "Autor"),
            "screenplay": ("Writer", None),
            "screenwriter": ("Writer", None),
            "teleplay": ("Writer", None),
            "author": ("Writer", "Autor"),
            "novel": ("Writer", "Romanvorlage"),
            "adaptation": ("Writer", "Adaption"),
            "story": ("Writer", "Story"),
            "comic book": ("Writer", "Comicvorlage"),
            "original story": ("Writer", "Story"),
            "theatre play": ("Writer", "Theaterstück"),

            # Music
            "composer": ("Composer", None),
            "original music composer": ("Composer", "Filmmusik"),
            "lyricist": ("Lyricist", None),
            "songs": ("Lyricist", "Songs"),
            "theme song performance": ("Lyricist", "Theme Song"),

            # Other crew types
            "producer": ("Producer", None),
            "conductor": ("Conductor", None),
        }

There are some Tmdb departments like Sound and Writing which are not processed by Emby. As you can see in my job_to_type_role, it also needs more diversification; I've used the role fiield that's not available in web editor for that purpose. The producer is also kinda messy, as there's a huge difference between ex. prod. and just producer in TV and film.

[Smitty018210 162]

37 minutes ago, CRiXiD said:

 TBH I'd just be happy if we could prioritise the order of cast in the same row as a setting (which it sounds like @Lukeis implying we can now do). Keeping the UI simple is also an important balance.

I would have guess that Luke is talking about how you can manually reorder the cast list by dragging and dropping them within the metadata editor. Which would take forever if you wanted to have directors listed before the actors on all your media.

As for as I know (I don't have my server updated to latest version) you can't just click an option somewhere and reorder the list automatically. <-----------(But I could be wrong) 

Edited October 3, 2025 by Smitty018210

[Bigmack3000 111]

5 hours ago, CRiXiD said:

Haha, I'm sure you're right to be honest. My SO and I like to think of ourselves as cinephiles, so make of that what you will  TBH I'd just be happy if we could prioritise the order of cast in the same row as a setting (which it sounds like @Lukeis implying we can now do). Keeping the UI simple is also an important balance.

But in fairness to you and everyone who wants this change, this is an app for a personal media server.  It is for people who take extra time and effort to watch the media.   At least certain aspects should be geared towards cinephiles.

[chuwz 17]

Hello @Luke, being able to quickly and easily view a movie’s crew is a very basic need.

 

Please add this feature.

 

How can this be implemented? As shown in the image, I think adding an option that allows us to separate the cast and crew would be a great solution.

 

We really need this feature! Thank you!

 

Just like Plex does

Edited 14 hours ago by chuwz

[chuwz 17]

Hello @Luke, being able to quickly and easily view a movie’s crew is a very basic need.

 

Please add this feature.

 

How can this be implemented? As shown in the image, I think adding an option that allows us to separate the cast and crew would be a great solution.

 

We really need this feature! Thank you!

Just like Plex does

Edited 14 hours ago by chuwz

[Luke 42687]

Well those are tabs, so you can’t see both at once.

[howllor 39]

54 minutes ago, Luke said:

Well those are tabs, so you can’t see both at once.

I don't think the actual specifics of how they're separated is that important, just that they are

[Bigmack3000 111]

12 minutes ago, howllor said:

I don't think the actual specifics of how they're separated is that important, just that they are

Yea, people are just asking for the information to be accessible.

[chuwz 17]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

Well those are tabs, so you can’t see both at once.

Hi @Luke, regarding the Plex image—I was just using it as an example; there’s no need to be so rigid about it.

 

As shown in the image below, you can see both the Cast and Crew lists at the same time. This also perfectly solves the problem of not being able to easily view the director on Android TV—all it takes is a single down arrow on the remote.

It also resolves the debate over whether Crew or Cast should come first, since both can now be displayed at the very top—arranged in two rows.

 

Of course, to accommodate users who prefer the current layout, this feature could be implemented as a toggle option. That way, users who prefer the current setup can choose not to enable this feature.

 

One thing is for sure: it’s currently very inconvenient to view Crews in Emby! Even if you can barely view them on a phone, Crews often appear way down the list in the Emby Universal app for Android TV.

 

This has been discussed for years, and we really need this feature. I don’t understand—it’s clearly very simple to implement, so why haven’t you done it? 

 

We really need it!

Edited 1 hour ago by chuwz

[CRiXiD 25]

22 minutes ago, chuwz said:

Hi @Luke, regarding the Plex image—I was just using it as an example; there’s no need to be so rigid about it.

 

As shown in the image below, you can see both the Cast and Crew lists at the same time. This also perfectly solves the problem of not being able to easily view the director on Android TV—all it takes is a single down arrow on the remote.

It also resolves the debate over whether Crew or Cast should come first, since both can now be displayed at the very top—arranged in two rows.

 

Of course, to accommodate users who prefer the current layout, this feature could be implemented as a toggle option. That way, users who prefer the current setup can choose not to enable this feature.

 

One thing is for sure: it’s currently very inconvenient to view Crews in Emby! Even if you can barely view them on a phone, Crews often appear way down the list in the Emby Universal app for Android TV.

 

This has been discussed for years, and we really need this feature. I don’t understand—it’s clearly very simple to implement, so why haven’t you done it? 

 

We really need it!

I like this suggestion. Anything is better than the #$%&house solution in place right now, which is to denigrate the director and crew to the position of least important and hardest to find people on the page. It's embarrassing that this still hasn't been fixed.