Multi-Version Movies

[Luke 42077]

23 hours ago, ElwoodBlues said:

Not at all.. 

When entering the detail screen 1 movie is already selected as the default..  ( as shown above in the O.P. )

 

It would be a lot more simple if you guys would just give your customers ( you know.. the people who pay you ) the ability to override Emby's selection and select their own default version of the movie in these circumstances.  You could use an unusual character instead of the "-".. something like ~ or | or even ¢ to denote the order.  Using the 'On the Waterfront' example above maybe the files would be named like this?

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) {tt0047296} ~1 1x33x1 Full Frame.mkv

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) {tt0047296} ~2 1x66x1.mkv

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) {tt0047296} ~3 1x85x1 Widescreen.mkv

 

I know this is really getting out there in the weeds..  But for the people who are really into movies.. or really into a particular franchise and collect multiple version of the same movie it is a really big deal.. Heck, I can think of 9 different official releases of Star Wars IV alone.   Isn't this what Emby is supposed to be about. the ability to keep, display and play our media the way we want to?

Until that day comes where a feature like this is added..  I ask again. please tell us how Emby decides ( with all things being equal ) which version of the movie is selected to be default so we might be able to at least figure out to maneuver Emby into choosing the default file we want?

 

Right like I mentioned we do plan to have an editions feature in future updates that should help with this.

[ElwoodBlues 1]

18 hours ago, Lessaj said:

From my observation it will pick the highest bitrate video it can direct play or that the device advertises support for. Without the mediainfo for each file, but assuming same size audio track, the 1x66 version is the largest file, so it must have the highest bitrate (albeit not by much more). I think the order ends up being the same as file sizes but I pretty much only have 2 versions max so I'm not sure without testing.

Hi Lessaj,   It seems seems reasonable to look at the 3 files and see if there was any difference in bitrate..  since they were all the same movie, same cut, same encoding.  the only difference being aspect ratio and slight file size differences.  

I played the movie out to the 20:00 mark and paused it to screen cap the 'Stats for Nerds' for each version. 

Here is Bx66x1

Here is Cx85x1

And lastly Ax33x1

 

Only the last video ( 3rd in the list ) seems to have any difference 27mbps vs 29 on the first 2.   Don't ask me what this means. But I'd love to hear any theories you guys have..  

Another strange thing I noticed while making this comparison..  I would switch to the next version.. But Emby would allow 'resume' play from where I paused the video on the different version..  That sounds like a bug to me..  Yes, these 3 versions are identical in story, audio. etc.  but there are other movies where different version contain or omit particular scenes.. With those changes Emby should not allow them to resume from the same point on the different versions.. they should be treated individual.  have individual resume markers for each version. 

Thanks again Lessaj for your input!

 

Edited December 11, 2025 by ElwoodBlues

[Lessaj 467]

The best way to view the bitrate would be with mediainfo, since it can be much more granular and not round up to a whole number. It makes sense to me that the 1x33 version is the smallest, it looks like from your screenshots that it's not as wide of a frame, so there's less video data, and thus a lower bitrate. Even though all the videos are 1920x1080 the frame can still be smaller, like 1440x1080, so the black space in each frame barely even counts towards the total size.

And yes the current multi-version implementation would have a resume point that is the same for all versions, until the previously mentioned editions feature is introduced.

Edited December 11, 2025 by Lessaj

[Luke 42077]

47 minutes ago, ElwoodBlues said:

Hi Lessaj,   It seems seems reasonable to look at the 3 files and see if there was any difference in bitrate..  since they were all the same movie, same cut, same encoding.  the only difference being aspect ratio and slight file size differences.  

I played the movie out to the 20:00 mark and paused it to screen cap the 'Stats for Nerds' for each version. 

Here is Bx66x1

Here is Cx85x1

And lastly Ax33x1

 

Only the last video ( 3rd in the list ) seems to have any difference 27mbps vs 29 on the first 2.   Don't ask me what this means. But I'd love to hear any theories you guys have..  

Another strange thing I noticed while making this comparison..  I would switch to the next version.. But Emby would allow 'resume' play from where I paused the video on the different version..  That sounds like a bug to me..  Yes, these 3 versions are identical in story, audio. etc.  but there are other movies where different version contain or omit particular scenes.. With those changes Emby should not allow them to resume from the same point on the different versions.. they should be treated individual.  have individual resume markers for each version. 

Thanks again Lessaj for your input!

 

The system is built on the basis of the versions being different encodings. That means when you click resume after previously watching, you might need a different version at that time because you could be on a different device, network connection could have changed, etc.

It sounds like you're after editions, and that's something that we plan to address.

[ElwoodBlues 1]

17 hours ago, Luke said:

The system is built on the basis of the versions being different encodings. That means when you click resume after previously watching, you might need a different version at that time because you could be on a different device, network connection could have changed, etc.

It sounds like you're after editions, and that's something that we plan to address.

I would love to get a peek at how that might be implemented.  I never considered resuming on a different device at a different encoding.

It seems splitting the selection might be a good way to handle it..  'encoding' and 'editions' handled separately,. You can still have Emby choose the most efficient encoding, (quietly and in the background) for whatever device the media is played on..  When no multiple editions exist no menu change needs to happen. When there are multiple editions that choice can be displayed as well. Naturally we would want some way to define a default edition to play.

[ElwoodBlues 1]

18 hours ago, Lessaj said:

The best way to view the bitrate would be with mediainfo, since it can be much more granular and not round up to a whole number. It makes sense to me that the 1x33 version is the smallest, it looks like from your screenshots that it's not as wide of a frame, so there's less video data, and thus a lower bitrate. Even though all the videos are 1920x1080 the frame can still be smaller, like 1440x1080, so the black space in each frame barely even counts towards the total size.

And yes the current multi-version implementation would have a resume point that is the same for all versions, until the previously mentioned editions feature is introduced.

Yes, that may be one of the best ways but that was not what we were looking for.  What we were looking for was to see at it as Emby looks at it. To see the information Emby has access to and uses to make its decision.  Emby doesn't use mediaonfo to make that decision so whatever information mediainfo yields is irrelevant to the discussion. 

[Lessaj 467]

Just now, ElwoodBlues said:

Yes, that may be one of the best ways but that was not what we were looking for.  What we were looking for was to see at it as Emby looks at it. To see the information Emby has access to and uses to make its decision.  Emby doesn't use mediaonfo to make that decision so whatever information mediainfo yields is irrelevant to the discussion. 

You can also view the info with ffprobe, it just might be easier to read with mediainfo. Emby still sees all of the information using ffprobe, it's just how it shows it to you in the UI is rounded. So if you wanted to know with 100% certainty the full number of the bitrate to know which one has the larger number you have to use another tool to show it to you. It is fully relevant to the discussion.

[ElwoodBlues 1]

2 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

You can also view the info with ffprobe, it just might be easier to read with mediainfo. Emby still sees all of the information using ffprobe, it's just how it shows it to you in the UI is rounded. So if you wanted to know with 100% certainty the full number of the bitrate to know which one has the larger number you have to use another tool to show it to you. It is fully relevant to the discussion.

Does Emby use ffprobe or mediainfo to make this determination? 

[Lessaj 467]

Just now, ElwoodBlues said:

Does Emby use ffprobe or mediainfo to make this determination? 

It uses ffprobe which is CLI only, but mediainfo is both a CLI and GUI utility, which is why I was suggesting it.

[ElwoodBlues 1]

Just now, Lessaj said:

It uses ffprobe which is CLI only, but mediainfo is both a CLI and GUI utility, which is why I was suggesting it.

And you know this how?   If it does uses ffprobe..  for what purpose does it use it?  to make the order determination..  to display stats for nerds,  for other reasons,  or for all of the above?  

[Lessaj 467]

1 minute ago, ElwoodBlues said:

And you know this how?   If it does uses ffprobe..  for what purpose does it use it?  to make the order determination..  to display stats for nerds,  for other reasons,  or for all of the above?  

It says it right in the log file when it probes media. ffprobe is used to provide all the information about the file and its contents.

[rbjtech 5284]

1 minute ago, ElwoodBlues said:

And you know this how?   If it does uses ffprobe..  for what purpose does it use it?  to make the order determination..  to display stats for nerds,  for other reasons,  or for all of the above?  

It's installed when you install Emby and a custom copy of the ff suite sits in the Emby folder ..

ffprobe is used when scannng in new files and then writes this info into the db - if you turn on debug logs, you'll see ffprobe listed and what it found.

[ElwoodBlues 1]

1 minute ago, rbjtech said:

It's installed when you install Emby and a custom copy of the ff suite sits in the Emby folder ..

ffprobe is used when scannng in new files and then writes this info into the db - if you turn on debug logs, you'll see ffprobe listed and what it found.

Well, that's conclusive.