Expected Sync Behaviour

[ginjaninja 605]

Tested out the use of sync for the first time as was going on holiday away from network.

 

Syncronised Season 2 of a current show from emby android client.

marked sync job to delete watched.

 

I hit two 'issues' i think, unless its me being new to sync.

 

1) episode 2 was synced..i watched half in morning...when i went to resume...episode 2 was no longer synced...it looks like the sync was deleted prematurely.

 

2) there doesnt seem to be an offline mode for the client to see and play synced content when disconnected from server..is that right?

 

3) after manually syncing episode 2 again. The client although showing ep2 as synced, played from server in preference with no option to choose playback as online or offline

 

Im away from server to give versions but there the latest server dev and android beta as of this morning.

 

 

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Edited December 28, 2015 by ginjaninja

[Luke 42083]

Offline is in the works. Is it possible you crossed the watched threshold for episode 2? Does the server now think that you've watched it?

[ginjaninja 605]

Offline is in the works. Is it possible you crossed the watched threshold for episode 2? Does the server now think that you've watched it?

Thanks 4 feedback. I dont think i hit the watch threshold as i was only 40% through..i had now watched it completely so was too late to check.i will feedback if it happens again.

 

Continuing to test i noticed...

4) syncing an individual episode over remote connection was not robust. If data connection was interupted during sync..the sync would move onto next episode before finishing sync of first episode. Sync couldnt resume a failed sync.rather sync started from begining of file again.fine perhaps for reliable home wifi not so much for dodgy foreign hotel wifi.i think i had to prompt sync to retry after interuption.

 

5) in general sync for me didnt prioritise the next episode. Eg command "sync 4 unwatched episodes of season 2" synced ep7 before ep4

 

6) i missed the ability to start a sync and start watching that sync before sync had finished. Eg When bandwidth was enough to sync at half watch speed, start watching at 50% of progress. This is particularly relevant as most common type of home upload speed/mobile bandwidth in uk is 95% of acceptible watch quality on phone..so particularly useful for allowing quickest start and maintaining good watch quality remotely.

 

7) after realising an issue; then changing the quality of the sync was not a robust ui experience for me. The lack of ui feedback on what qualities were ready for transfer on server, currently transferred to client and currently in process of transferring made it hard to see what was going on. The sync proccess didnt seem to review itself for a configuration update once sync data transfer had started. For low bandwidth environments this maybe of benefit, given it may take 8 hrs to completeadata transfer only to discover a config change.

 

for phones with limited space the ability to sync the next x unwatched episodes is great.

 

Ultimately whilst remote on holiday, i couldnt just 'press go' and close my phone and be confident when i woke up the next morning the content would be there at the requested quality.

 

The ability to watched synced content is a great feature for commuting and holidays.

 

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[ginjaninja 605]

woke up this morning..sync has stopped and two of for episodes are not complete 48 of 400mb. Emby client shows them as 'ready for transfer'

Asking emby to sync doesnt force a restart.

Although cancelling and reenabling an episode from within the sync config did work (back from beggining of file).

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Edited December 29, 2015 by ginjaninja

[ginjaninja 605]

Medium quality for this tv series turned out to be original size...as was high and of course 'original size'..low was too low quality for me. For those with fast pcs, slow data connections and reasonably fast mobile devices (majority?) maybe there is an optimal encoding codec/bit rate between low and medium?

 

I would value watchable workable bitrate above being able to watch during sync in progress. As the majority of time i should be organised and sync before leaving house; so mobile disk space is the constraining factor (atleast until i can get emby to use my 2nd sdcard for sync storage)

 

And even then if offline playback of synced music collection became available..id still run out of disk space...so lower bitrate encoding for music would be useful

 

 

 

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[Luke 42083]

you can do the next x unwatched episodes by using the item limit as well as unwatched filter. you're right, the sync process doesn't retry in-process but that's usually not an issue because the sync process as a whole is scheduled with the device to run hourly.