Emby library names: Are some "special?"

[Marc_G 95]

Hi folks,

 

The short version of my question: Does Emby, or Emby Apps like Theater, treat libraries differently based on the NAME (not content type) of the library? And if so, what are those few special library names and what special provisions are there for them? I ask because I recently changed the names of some of my libraries, and now Emby Theater is displaying them in a way I don't like.

 

The reason for my question invokes the long version of my question. It goes something like this.  In what passes for the beginning, I was using Emby Theater on my HTPC which also hosts the Emby Server. My Emby server was aware of a bunch of libraries, with names like:

 

\Documentaries\ (type: TV)

\Movies\  (type: movies)

\TV Series\ (type: TV)

\System Tests\ (type: unset)

\Holding\ (type: unset)

 

These were all displayed in ET just the way I like them. As a couple rows of poster-like icons that I could click. Nothing else to confuse the issue. Here's an example:

 

To me this is the perfect view, and all my libraries displayed this way, notably Movies and TV Series.

 

Alas, I encountered some problems with ET on a box I want to use to drive a TV, and have been fussing around with Kodi. It was doing a weird thing of mixing much of my content together (so, views in Kodi would mix my libraries from "Movies" and "Holding" and "System Tests"). This was very confusing.

 

As part of my troubleshooting, I wound up renaming my Movies library to "Films" and my TV Series library to "Shows."  This is what I see in ET in my "Films" library (which used to be called Movies).

 

 

Instead of my nice orderly array of a couple rows of posters, it's polluting the view with "Favorites" and "All Movies" and "Continue Watching" and "Collections." And Suggestions "Because you watched..."

 

NO NO NO!!!

 

I just want it to show me the media in my library. An array of posters. That's it. No collections, no expanded view (as seen for Barney Thomson above), No "Continue Watching."

 

 

All I did was rename the folder. Did I trip over some special naming convention so now it wants to do special things based on the library name? I put this here, in General, rather than in the ET subforum, because I see something similar going on when I navigate in Kodi to add "video nodes" or whatever, that my Emby Libraries aren't just a folder with content, but seem to include subsections like Recent or Collections etc..

 

I believe in my ignorance I'm ignoring a fundamental truth buried in here. Can someone please help me understand?

 

Marc

 

Edited December 22, 2016 by Marc_G

[Luke 42085]

not really, other than ignoring sample

[Marc_G 95]

Hi @@Luke, please take another look... I accidentally posted before finishing typing to give you the information that was relevant. I then edited it to make clear what I'm talking about. Thank you as always!

[Marc_G 95]

I still haven't quite figured out why changing the name of the library from "Movies" to "Films" resulted in such drastic changes from a simple array of content posters to a whole "enhanced" display with all kinds of organization that I don't want. Is there some setting to turn this off?

[Luke 42085]

You may have changed the content type as well.

[Marc_G 95]

Thanks Luke, when I had it called "Movies" it was type: movies and now that I'm calling it "Films" it's still type: movies.

 

Thanks so much for your generous help this past month or so. I'm going through lots of transitions in my home theater, and the support from you and others in this community has been fantastic.

 

I wish there were a way I could contribute more tangibly than just being a premiere member (already done!). Sadly, my coding days are behind me so that isn't a possibility.

 

Happy Holidays!

[Luke 42085]

Right now in order to get the plain folder structure that you're looking for you would need to set the content type to mixed.

[Marc_G 95]

THAT'S IT!!   

 

Changing it to mixed fixed the problem!! <happy dance>  There's a proviso in here that some of the "old" (as in, probably dating from 2014 or so) libraries I had that were set to type "Movies" act (or, acted, as many are now gone as of this evening) in the way that currently requires type "unset / mixed" to get the plain view I desire. So, somewhere along the line, some change applies to newly created "typed" libraries that didn't get applied to the older ones. This COMPLETELY EXPLAINS why when I removed an OLD movies library and replaced it with a new movies library (chasing a Kodi rabbit down its hole), that I opened up a can of worms for ET by making it suddenly display my movie library content type differently.

 

Anyway, a recently created library of type movie:

 

displays in ET like this:

 

And to revert this to a plain display as I desire, thanks to Luke's advice, I recreated the library as type unset/mixed:

 

 

And it looks like:

 

 

I'd say it would be great to have a switch in the Settings to turn on/off the complex display for content of set type, allowing it to revert if desired to this plain view.

 

Anyway, I'm putting a big ol' red done stamp on this particular curiosity.

 

Thanks!

 

Marc

[Luke 42085]

Of course that can have metadata related consequences on the server, but since you're happy there's no problem. The other thing you could have done is left it as-is and activated the folders view under Library -> Display in the server dashboard.

[Marc_G 95]

Thanks Luke.

 

I'm not sure I quite get it. I've had the folders view checked, like this, for at least the last month or two (before that it gets foggy...). Here is a view of my settings:

 

 

And yet the recently created Libraries of types Movies or TV still show "fancy" rather than a plain folder view.

 

To grapple with this, I unchecked the folders box shown above, and saved that settings change. I then reopened Emby Theater (full desktop version), and looked for changes in what was shown. I didn't notice anything. I took some screen caps in the current (Folders unchecked) state, then rechecked the Folders box, saved, opened ET again. No difference that I could see.

 

Can you please describe what should be visibly different, in for example ET, based on toggling this setting? Sorry if I'm being dense, I just didn't notice any change in ET behavior based on checking/unchecking the box.

 

And, what metadata consequences are there based on the type? Are there specific fields only scraped if it is for example set to Movies vs. TV?

 

Marc

[Happy2Play 9783]

If you click and navigate Folders instead of Films, do you get the display you want?

[Marc_G 95]

If you click and navigate Folders instead of Films, do you get the display you want?

Ah. Now I see it. A new "Folders" item showed up in the ET line of Libraries. Going into that one displays the libraries; going into any of the libraries shown in there brings up clean display.

 

Thanks guys. Got it now!