Should I create a singular 'personal' library, or separate my content?

[podonnell 47]

Trying to think ahead here but I don't know which path is best.

I wanted to add a bunch of my personal videos to have easy access to them on Emby. Some of them are home videos,  some are music production videos, etc.. etc..
Do others usually have a singular 'Personal' library, or do you ever find a reason you would want the content in each of its own libraries?

My initial thought is that I would only ever want them in their own libraries if I planned to share them with other users. This is an automatic for me -- that content should be in its own library for that reason. Just trying to think beyond that, if there'd be another good reason to have content separated.

Just wanted to see what others in a similar situation would prefer to do before I lock in to one method.

Thanks!

Edited October 26, 2024 by podonnell

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

the only place i use "mixed" libraries is where Emby requires it, as in Live TV recording library. But I almost never use Emby to record anything. 
I keep all media types separate from each other as I never want or need to see or access them together. 
In your case I would create separate libraries for each type of video. I have noticed on these forums that mixed type libraries have many more problems than libraries created and maintained for one type of video. 

If you really need to group videos together for any reason outside of regular use you can use collections. They allow different types of videos to be accessed from one location.

BTW: If you want to use collections for this purpose be sure all involved libraries do not have "create automatic collections" enabled for those libraries. For me automatic collections create a bunch of crap without providing any real value. 

[Thidsa 44]

I have such personal videos you mentioned in a separate mixed type library assorted with folders after type and dates or names. And when i want to view something there i do that by folder view in emby. Find it perfectly ok.

Edited October 26, 2024 by Thidsa
typo

[Clackdor 109]

I just bumped a thread I had made earlier this year to get answers regarding what I would consider a pretty major issue. Tldr is that images and video thumbnails can be viewed without authentication.

Until that issue is fixed I personally wouldn't recommend using emby for home photos and videos if your server is exposed publicly. 

 

[Thidsa 44]

Wow, I just tried it and your right....ugh. Didnt know...

[Clackdor 109]

17 hours ago, Thidsa said:

Wow, I just tried it and your right....ugh. Didnt know...

I took the emby instance I used for family pictures and videos offline as soon as I was made aware of the problem.

It's frustrating as I actually have a second premiere license just for this use case. I still haven't settled on a suitable replacement to be able to share family photos and videos with extended family. I was hoping the emby team had done something to address this by now. When I tested and saw the issue was still there I was extremely disappointed.

It's nauseating to think that people aren't aware of this and are storing private memories on their publicly accessible server. Realistically a server doesn't even need to be accessible from the internet for this to be a concern.

[Thidsa 44]

Yes totally agree. I'll take some manuevering action. Thx

[Carlo 4561]

On the topic of mixed library, since it was mentioned. The mixed library type is intended for a combination of TV Shows & Movies, not for "catch all" library type. The default LiveTV uses this type for recordings, but it also supports having both a movies and TV series library, which it saved to, based on the content type in the EPG.

Another ideal use case for mixed content is a Documentary library.  This allows you to have all your documentary content in one place vs having content split between a Movie library and a TV library. As an example, Frontline or Panorama will be found using thetvdb even though each media file is nearly 1.5 hours long and not related to other. They are however part of the same production so are considered a series by meta providers.

On disk, I have two parent folders such as:
\Documentary\Movies
\Documentary\Series
These are both added as separate entries to the Documentary Library.

On disk, I use this layout:
\Documentary\Movies\Documentary Name (Year) [tmdbid=xxxx]\Documentary Name (Year).ext
\Documentary\Series\Documentary Series Name (Year) [tvdbid=xxxx]\Season #\Documentary Episode Name SxxExx.ext

Setup this way, identification will be very accurate.  it follows the suggested layout ideal for each content type. The folder view in clients can be used to view just series types or just movie types. This to me is easier for most people to use from a client/app vs doing a search on "Documentary" Genre. A "Documentary" Genre search could still be used returning results from all library types including books, music & audiobooks, etc.

Concerning unauthorized access to images
This could be an issue for some people if the content wouldn't otherwise be on the Internet. A work-around for now until this is patched could be done using a reverse proxy configured to block any URL (couple of exceptions) without an authorized session.

However, if using a CDN like Cloudflare you might still have this issue since it will cache your images. This would be difficult to circumvent without disabling image caching which is one of the main benefits of CDN use. This is a very common CDN issue.

[podonnell 47]

Thank you for bringing up the external access issue. I do have a reverse proxy and also limit access via specific IPs so I should be good there, but if I eventually open the server up I would absolutely want that contained.

On the main topic, pretty much the entirety of my videos would be personal or non-licensed material, so things that would never ever match with external sources. For that reason I figured I would probably need to learn what Home Videos & Photos is, compared to Mixed Content. I am not quite familiar with what Emby does depending on the type of media within.

Most likely though these are all videos that won't be linked to anything external, so I would presume home videos would make sense.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

27 minutes ago, podonnell said:

Thank you for bringing up the external access issue. I do have a reverse proxy and also limit access via specific IPs so I should be good there, but if I eventually open the server up I would absolutely want that contained.

On the main topic, pretty much the entirety of my videos would be personal or non-licensed material, so things that would never ever match with external sources. For that reason I figured I would probably need to learn what Home Videos & Photos is, compared to Mixed Content. I am not quite familiar with what Emby does depending on the type of media within.

Most likely though these are all videos that won't be linked to anything external, so I would presume home videos would make sense.

actually I have found that a movie library works quite well for home type videos. I do not use the home video type library because, for me, it just does not work well. When creating a movie library for home videos I turn on advanced settings and then turn off every metadata source. I find that works very well and I have no problems with using a movie library for home videos.

[rbjtech 5284]

17 hours ago, Carlo said:

Concerning unauthorized access to images
This could be an issue for some people if the content wouldn't otherwise be on the Internet. A work-around for now until this is patched could be done using a reverse proxy configured to block any URL (couple of exceptions) without an authorized session.
 

Do you have an example of how this is done using nginx @Carlo?  Tks.

[podonnell 47]

18 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

actually I have found that a movie library works quite well for home type videos. I do not use the home video type library because, for me, it just does not work well. When creating a movie library for home videos I turn on advanced settings and then turn off every metadata source. I find that works very well and I have no problems with using a movie library for home videos.

Any idea what the home videos library type is meant to do? I thought the library types were all about what type of metadata it would try to pull. So naturally a home video library would have those disabled I'd expect.

Gonna tinker with it later this week.

[Thidsa 44]

On 10/27/2024 at 8:47 PM, Carlo said:

Concerning unauthorized access to images
This could be an issue for some people if the content wouldn't otherwise be on the Internet. A work-around for now until this is patched could be done using a reverse proxy configured to block any URL (couple of exceptions) without an authorized session.

Seems I got this working

Edited October 28, 2024 by Thidsa

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

39 minutes ago, podonnell said:

Any idea what the home videos library type is meant to do? I thought the library types were all about what type of metadata it would try to pull. So naturally a home video library would have those disabled I'd expect.

Gonna tinker with it later this week.

i have absolutely no idea of the intended purpose except for the second part of the name. I said before that I do not use Home video libraries but, actually, I do. I use them for photos only and they work well for that. We often forget that the whole name for the library type is "Home videos & photos." When I think of that library type I usually just think of a "photo" library only. When I think of "Home video" libraries I just think of a "movie" library without any metadata links at all. That mode of thinking seems to make my Emby usage simpler and at this point I greatly crave simplicity in my live.   

[Thidsa 44]

Works well for gopro/fpv etc clips

[rbjtech 5284]

16 hours ago, Thidsa said:

Seems I got this working

Can you please share the reverse proxy config that does this ?

Edited October 29, 2024 by rbjtech

[Thidsa 44]

7 hours ago, rbjtech said:

Can you please share the reverse proxy config that does this ?

Hi man.

I think I spoke too soon. Got it working in house here and connected through vpn while at work, but later one of my kids told me their emby loaded without pictures...

Tried it then on 5g on my phone and she was right no pictures and nothing played. Noticed you asked @Carloabout nginx setup. I dont use nginx. He also mentioned authenticated sessions(dont know what he referred to, emby or proxy) and as long im authenticated on my reverse proxy it work from home for now it seems. Not remotely. I'll try more and let you know.

So for now you better hear what @Carlohas to say about his solution

[Clackdor 109]

1 hour ago, Thidsa said:

I think I spoke too soon. Got it working in house here and connected through vpn while at work, but later one of my kids told me their emby loaded without pictures.

I tried with similar results when I first found out about this. My setup consists of emby behind IIS as a reverse proxy. IIS is behind HAproxy for external access. I experimented with nginx as well, but no luck. 

Would be nice to know what specific url's or patterns are required to get it working with different configurations or setups. 

[rbjtech 5284]

1 minute ago, Clackdor said:

I tried with similar results when I first found out about this. My setup consists of emby behind IIS as a reverse proxy. IIS is behind HAproxy for external access. I experimented with nginx as well, but no luck. 

Would be nice to know what specific url's or patterns are required to get it working with different configurations or setups. 

I'm not sure it's technically possible, which is why I asked.   There are no unique 'keys' in the URL, which is why it's so easy to bypass auth.   If the embyid was unique and impossible to guess for each item, then we would not be having this discussion and while obfuscation should never replace authentication - it would be acceptable to do it this way this imo.

[Thidsa 44]

1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

I'm not sure it's technically possible, which is why I asked. There are no unique 'keys' in the URL, which is why it's so easy to bypass auth.   If the embyid was unique and impossible to guess for each item, then we would not be having this discussion and while obfuscation should never replace authentication - it would be acceptable to do it this way this imo.

Im for sure aint no guru, so hard to wrap head around. What i basically tried was simply set the first part of the url that @Clackdormentioned to require authentication in my proxy, but it only made it kinda block it for remote emby apps.

[Clackdor 109]

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

I'm not sure it's technically possible, which is why I asked.   There are no unique 'keys' in the URL, which is why it's so easy to bypass auth.   If the embyid was unique and impossible to guess for each item, then we would not be having this discussion and while obfuscation should never replace authentication - it would be acceptable to do it this way this imo.

That's pretty much been my assumption as well. Having the proxy do authentication is the only "solution" I've found, and obviously that breaks all of the clients. 

[pwhodges 2012]

I was thinking of checking whether the Emby clients had user agent strings which could be identified as reliably different from actual browsers in order to control whether identification is required.

Haven't got round to it yet, though...

Paul

Edited October 30, 2024 by pwhodges

[Clackdor 109]

11 hours ago, pwhodges said:

I was thinking of checking whether the Emby clients had user agent strings which could be identified as reliably different from actual browsers in order to control whether identification is required.

Haven't got round to it yet, though...

Paul

Would be interesting to know the results if you ever get around to it.

I do think it's a bit ridiculous that we're discussing how to hand write rules in an attempt to slap a bandaid on an issue that's been known about for so long. Even if a mitigation is found WAF's aren't bulletproof and there could very well be methods to bypass any rules we come up with. It also gives the team less incentive to actually fix the core problem when they can just point to a mitigation the userbase comes up.

[rbjtech 5284]

9 hours ago, Clackdor said:

It also gives the team less incentive to actually fix the core problem when they can just point to a mitigation the userbase comes up.

Have they even acknowledged its a problem ?   Not according to their latest 'Announcement' (I did chuckle at #1...)

Edited October 31, 2024 by rbjtech

[Clackdor 109]

3 hours ago, rbjtech said:

Have they even acknowledged its a problem ?   Not according to their latest 'Announcement' (I did chuckle at #1...)

If you take a look at the thread I created (I linked it further up in this one) in April of this year Luke was the first to reply saying that they plan to address the issue. There's also another thread linked in mine by someone who discovered the issue back in April of 2020. They've acknowledged it for over 4 years now.

As for the latest announcement, I do find point #1 a bit funny as well considering this issue. I also put in a feature request back in February to have more control over which users get populated in the list for a user with Playlist sharing enabled. Enabling it still makes all accounts visible including Admin accounts. Bare minimum there needs to be an option to not show admin accounts. Looking back at that thread you posted some thoughts on that as well.