Tried Emby for one month

[DomiStyle 11]

Hello,
 
I tried Emby in parallel to Plex for about a month now so I wrote down a few things. Before creating new topics for all of them I thought I would create a single thread for all of them in case any of them are already known or can be resolved easily.
 

If any more info is necessary (log files, screenshots, etc.) just tell me.

 

So here it goes:

 

edit: Moved to GitHub: https://github.com/DomiStyle/emby-issues

Edited October 29, 2017 by DomiStyle

[Luke 42077]

hi @@DomiStyle, i will address all of these. can you please provide a server log from a slow library scan? you can learn how to do that here:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/739-how-to-report-a-problem/

 

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

 

 

There's no real debug info available - I can't see where it hangs.

 

So you had the impression that it hung? I'll need to reserve judgement until I see the server log but this is very rare. In all likelihood it was just taking a long time. Does this sound right?

[Abobader 3464]

Good day,

 

I really like this feedback, well done.

 

My best

[dee1 3]

I'd say that my performance of scans is slow, no crashes, running on a dedicated Nuc i3 with SSD and 16 mem nuc i3 4010u. That nuc is a quad.  In as much as I try to avoid trans-coding the system is performing really well and I'm doing my testing and "NOT" disturbing the house, spouse kids as everything is good with Kodi, if anything I should have had NFO files with my media long ago.

 

My only true gripe is the search.

You guys fix the search I'll spring for the lifetime $.

I'd actually like to run trusted apps only on Fire.

 

pros: have done the setup and no running around the house and the spouse and kids saw nothing but a performance increase.

cons: not happy with the search.

 

If the scans are slow I don't care.. they run at night.  I seem to hang at 78% and though I think I'm set correctly "for scan for new and updated" still seems long as if it has to check each file, I do not have download from internet enabled.

 

My only two wants are ability to manage user settings at the client which use to be a feature, and better search.

I'm in my second week but so far..not bad.. not great... better than Plex because my libraries were already clean and I didn't want to fool with them, again not disturb what is working

I'd like to limit the size of cached images at the server by limiting the ability of the user to change settings at the client.

[bfir3 117]

Hello,

 

I tried Emby in parallel to Plex for about a month now so I wrote down a few things. Before creating new topics for all of them I thought I would create a single thread for all of them in case any of them are already known or can be resolved easily.

 

If any more info is necessary (log files, screenshots, etc.) just tell me.

 

So here it goes:

 

edit: Link to properly formatted markdown: https://markdownshare.com/view/d2580280-f216-44e7-a23a-9367cbef6ac9

 

# Server

 

* Scans are really slow (both, TV shows and movies)

    * Even when nothing was added or changed - a full library scan takes about 20-40 minutes. (1000 movies, 200 shows, 2000 albums)

    * There's no real debug info available - I can't see where it hangs.

 

* Untagged files get added to the Latest section before a poster is downloaded

    * This might be more of an issue because my scans are so slow

    * For example, adding a new episode of a TV show will lead to a new entry in Latest Shows that sits there untagged without poster or information until the scan is finished 20-30 minutes later

    * This also affects notifications - the file name will be shown instead of a proper name

 

* The search really needs an update

    * Direct matches and single words should be on top

        * Example: Searching for "It" should place Stephen King's It on top - not all other movies that have "it" in the title somewhere

    * Word order should not matter

        * Example: "South Park" and "Park South"

    * Missing words shouldn't matter

        * Example: "I Saw the Devil" and "I Saw Devil"

    * Typos should still lead to usable results

        * Example: "13 Reasons Why" and "12 Reasons Why"

    * Punctuation should not matter

        * "Brooklyn Nine Nine" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"

        * Other example: "Ocean's Eleven", "Oceans Eleven", "Ocean s Eleven"

    * Roman numerals should match

        * Example: "Saw II" and "Saw 2"

* There's no option to specify a language when manually identifying a show/movie

 

+1 big time on these for me. The scans and untagged files are exactly as you describe. I will see the episode in the Latest Media with the filename as the "title", and only once the scan is complete the item displays the correct title.

 

And the search needs a massive overhaul I agree. Try the search of one of the major competing apps, you'll see how good it could be. If we could have that....oh boy.

 

edit: By the way your feedback is organized and structured exceptionally. Well done!

Edited October 13, 2017 by bfir3

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

Emby is not perfect. In fact far from it.

Plex is not perfect and as far from it as Emby, just in a different direction.

Kodi is not perfect. (See Plex)

 

There is no absolutely NO prefect media system.

 

What has to be decided by each user is which system is closest to what that person sees as perfection and which seems most likely to make the correct moves and which seems most responsive and friendly to user's desires.

 

I started with Plex, I briefly tried MediaBrowser in its infancy but never really gave it much of a chance, and for several years Plex seemed to be close to the ideal for me.

Then, something over a year ago, Plex flat stopped with any real interaction with their users and they had "Round Tables" that some of us were invited to where promises and other statements were made but those turned out to be flat lies.

 

Those moves by Plex, more the lies than anything else, caused me to give Emby a solid try so I installed it on my computer that had preciously held my backup Plex server and I forced myself to use Emby to the exclusion of Plex for a period of time. (I intended that trial to be about a month long but that changed) After about two weeks I had determined that Emby would do everything I needed a media system to do. During that time I asked a few questions on these boards and was answered quickly, accurately, politely and thoroughly by the developers and some other users. That is something that almost never happens on the Plex boards.

 

What I am trying to say is that there are parts of any media system that are as important, maybe even more so, than the actual software and Emby shines in that department.

 

As I have said in other posts elsewhere, "Emby is not better software than Plex but they (Emby) are the better company. I will not allow myself to be lied to by any company I have a choice about using." So, for now and the foreseeable future, I will be using Emby for my media consumption even though there are parts of it that I "think" are done wrong. At least Emby listens and, when they disagree with me, they are polite about it.

 

My dog is even happier. He does not hear me yelling and cursing at the software and such as much so he does not mistakenly think that it is his fault. Emby has brought harmony back into my media life.

 

Thank you Emby, now just don't screw it up.

[DomiStyle 11]

So you had the impression that it hung? I'll need to reserve judgement until I see the server log but this is very rare. In all likelihood it was just taking a long time. Does this sound right?

 

I was tailing the log file during a scan. The scan progress goes up to ~70% after which there is mostly radio silence when it comes to scan progress. At this point it slowly creeps towards 100% in about half an hour.

Which seems strange considering Plex does the same in about a minute on the same hardware, drives, etc..

 

If something was added it will add them to the library untagged (as mentioned) and stay like this until the scan gets all the way to 100%.

 

Good day,

 

I really like this feedback, well done.

 

My best

 

Thanks.

 

I'd say that my performance of scans is slow, no crashes, running on a dedicated Nuc i3 with SSD and 16 mem nuc i3 4010u. That nuc is a quad. In as much as I try to avoid trans-coding the system is performing really well and I'm doing my testing and "NOT" disturbing the house, spouse kids as everything is good with Kodi, if anything I should have had NFO files with my media long ago.

 

If the scans are slow I don't care.. they run at night. I seem to hang at 78% and though I think I'm set correctly "for scan for new and updated" still seems long as if it has to check each file, I do not have download from internet enabled.

 

Performance should be way better than what it is currently. Plex and Emby are both running on a dual Xeon machine with 24GB RAM and SSD. Something is off when Plex does the job in one minute while Emby needs 30-40 minutes for the same library.

 

Probably depends on how you use the library scans. I usually expect shows/movies to be in Emby/Plex right after they are added. It's not much of an issue if the scans are only running once per day, that's right.

 

edit: By the way your feedback is organized and structured exceptionally. Well done!

Cheers.

 

hi @@DomiStyle, i will address all of these. can you please provide a server log from a slow library scan? you can learn how to do that here:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/739-how-to-report-a-problem/

 

Thanks.

 

Greatly appreciated. I attached the server log with debug logs enabled and with a fresh start & scan to this post. Replaced my domain with example.org, everything else is unchanged. Ignore the constant HttpServer entries, forgot to turn the health check off before starting the scan.

 

Library scan took 36 minutes, there is mostly silence during this time.

 

Emby is not perfect. In fact far from it.

Plex is not perfect and as far from it as Emby, just in a different direction.

Kodi is not perfect. (See Plex)

 

There is no absolutely NO prefect media system.

 

What has to be decided by each user is which system is closest to what that person sees as perfection and which seems most likely to make the correct moves and which seems most responsive and friendly to user's desires.

 

I started with Plex, I briefly tried MediaBrowser in its infancy but never really gave it much of a chance, and for several years Plex seemed to be close to the ideal for me.

Then, something over a year ago, Plex flat stopped with any real interaction with their users and they had "Round Tables" that some of us were invited to where promises and other statements were made but those turned out to be flat lies.

 

Those moves by Plex, more the lies than anything else, caused me to give Emby a solid try so I installed it on my computer that had preciously held my backup Plex server and I forced myself to use Emby to the exclusion of Plex for a period of time. (I intended that trial to be about a month long but that changed) After about two weeks I had determined that Emby would do everything I needed a media system to do. During that time I asked a few questions on these boards and was answered quickly, accurately, politely and thoroughly by the developers and some other users. That is something that almost never happens on the Plex boards.

 

What I am trying to say is that there are parts of any media system that are as important, maybe even more so, than the actual software and Emby shines in that department.

 

As I have said in other posts elsewhere, "Emby is not better software than Plex but they (Emby) are the better company. I will not allow myself to be lied to by any company I have a choice about using." So, for now and the foreseeable future, I will be using Emby for my media consumption even though there are parts of it that I "think" are done wrong. At least Emby listens and, when they disagree with me, they are polite about it.

 

My dog is even happier. He does not hear me yelling and cursing at the software and such as much so he does not mistakenly think that it is his fault. Emby has brought harmony back into my media life.

 

Thank you Emby, now just don't screw it up.

That was never really the point of this topic. I'm quite happy with how Emby has progressed. The last time I used it about a year ago it wasn't even able to scan my music library at all.

Emby has a lot of great features, some just lack the polish. Unfortunately there's only so much you can do with a perfectly working media server when your clients are not working properly. Most of the issues I'm experiencing are on the client side.

 

The end user experience currently is sub-par compared to Plex. It's the #1 reason I read on /r/plex for people not wanting to move to Emby. Which is a shame because Emby is otherwise superior to Plex.

 

Plex has become more and more a letdown over the recent year. First they stopped listening to their users on the forums, then they started focusing their development on features nobody asked for instead of fixing the current stuff that's broken. Now with the privacy policy changes it was finally time to move over. While Emby is not quite ready yet for me, I'm sure it will be once these issues are resolved. There's nothing keeping me with Plex - they don't have any killer features Emby doesn't have. Except the new awesome news section nobody wanted of course, Emby doesn't have that.

server-63643535280.txt

server-63643536000.txt

Edited October 14, 2017 by DomiStyle

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

My setup is simple BUT I do use several clients, Shield, Fire TV and Roku and I have to say that I have less problems with the Emby clients on those devices than I ever had with Plex.

 

I do NOT use any audio features with Emby or Plex on any client as neither provides even the limited support for audiobooks that is worth a damn, although I understand there is an add on for Emby I would try if it were simple to install or even a good step by step how to that I could find. 

 

I use a small computer dedicated to running MediaMonkey for that and I have its output piped throughout my house so I can listen to books as I do other things. I dot see any TV based audio device replacing my system except it would reduce my devices by one.

 

For me Emby and Plex are pretty much even in performance for my usage which is TV and Movies supplied when wanted to three TV locations. 

 

90%, maybe more, of the time I use my Shield TV or one of my Rokus and those give me absolutely no problems using Emby except for the times I bog down my server because I forget that it is not really as powerful as I would like.

 

I also do not find anything in Plex's clients superior at all. They are just different but, performance wise, pretty much dead even except Plex made some changes to their Fire TV and matched it to their Shield interface and thereby ruined the Fire. So, right now, Emby is vastly superior in this user's experience to Plex on at least two clients.

[DomiStyle 11]

My setup is simple BUT I do use several clients, Shield, Fire TV and Roku and I have to say that I have less problems with the Emby clients on those devices than I ever had with Plex.

 

I do NOT use any audio features with Emby or Plex on any client as neither provides even the limited support for audiobooks that is worth a damn, although I understand there is an add on for Emby I would try if it were simple to install or even a good step by step how to that I could find. 

 

I use a small computer dedicated to running MediaMonkey for that and I have its output piped throughout my house so I can listen to books as I do other things. I dot see any TV based audio device replacing my system except it would reduce my devices by one.

 

For me Emby and Plex are pretty much even in performance for my usage which is TV and Movies supplied when wanted to three TV locations. 

 

90%, maybe more, of the time I use my Shield TV or one of my Rokus and those give me absolutely no problems using Emby except for the times I bog down my server because I forget that it is not really as powerful as I would like.

 

I also do not find anything in Plex's clients superior at all. They are just different but, performance wise, pretty much dead even except Plex made some changes to their Fire TV and matched it to their Shield interface and thereby ruined the Fire. So, right now, Emby is vastly superior in this user's experience to Plex on at least two clients.

 

As I already said, that wasn't the purpose of this thread. I'm only here to report the issues I had with the apps I used, which gives me an inferior experience to Plex right now. If everything works for you that's great, hopefully it will for me too soon.

 

Since we use vastly different clients, our experience can't really be compared though. Looking at screenshots, it seems like FireTV and Roku both received their own native client, Android didn't. It uses a web app that's okish but it needs a lot of work. It's nowhere near the state where the current Plex Android app is, which isn't perfect either.

 

I can only compare platforms I actually used before. That means Plex for Android & Emby for Android, OpenPHT & Emby for Kodi, Plex Media Player & Emby Theater, Plex Media Server & Emby Server.

 

Who knows, maybe I'm just in the niche of people who watch shows and listen to their music on their phone and require a Linux client that can be controlled from their phone to be happy.

Edited October 14, 2017 by DomiStyle

[RanmaCanada 494]

Plex also has an entire staff of programmers whom they employ.  Let's not forget about that.  They have exponentially more resources than Emby does.  It would be like comparing a motorcycle to a moped.  Everyone always seems to forget this fact.  Plex has millions of dollars in financing, and as of July 2016, Plex has 65 employees.  Quite a bit more than the handful of people working on Emby.

[dcook 299]

Very well written report, I wish you could try all the different apps and provide your reviews!!!

 

I am sure it would help @@Luke identify all the issues.

 

 

Hello,
 
I tried Emby in parallel to Plex for about a month now so I wrote down a few things. Before creating new topics for all of them I thought I would create a single thread for all of them in case any of them are already known or can be resolved easily.
 

If any more info is necessary (log files, screenshots, etc.) just tell me.

 

So here it goes:

 

edit: Link to properly formatted markdown: https://markdownshare.com/view/d2580280-f216-44e7-a23a-9367cbef6ac9

 

# Server

* Scans are really slow (both, TV shows and movies)
    * Even when nothing was added or changed - a full library scan takes about 20-40 minutes. (1000 movies, 200 shows, 2000 albums)
    * There's no real debug info available - I can't see where it hangs.

* Untagged files get added to the Latest section before a poster is downloaded
    * This might be more of an issue because my scans are so slow
    * For example, adding a new episode of a TV show will lead to a new entry in Latest Shows that sits there untagged without poster or information until the scan is finished 20-30 minutes later
    * This also affects notifications - the file name will be shown instead of a proper name

* Duplicate artists
    * For example, Daft Punk and Daft Punk (Main) get added to the library - even when all MP3s are tagged with only "Daft Punk". "Prefer embedded titles over filenames" is enabled.

* The search really needs an update
    * Direct matches and single words should be on top
        * Example: Searching for "It" should place Stephen King's It on top - not all other movies that have "it" in the title somewhere
    * Word order should not matter
        * Example: "South Park" and "Park South"
    * Missing words shouldn't matter
        * Example: "I Saw the Devil" and "I Saw Devil"
    * Typos should still lead to usable results
        * Example: "13 Reasons Why" and "12 Reasons Why"
    * Punctuation should not matter
        * "Brooklyn Nine Nine" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"
        * Other example: "Ocean's Eleven", "Oceans Eleven", "Ocean s Eleven"
    * Roman numerals should match
        * Example: "Saw II" and "Saw 2"
* There's no option to specify a language when manually identifying a show/movie

# General

* There's no way to choose an audio and/or subtitle track before a video begins, which leads to unnecessary transcoding
* There's no proper way to look at available audio tracks and subtitle tracks on the detail page without looking at the raw output on the bottom
* There's no easy way to see untagged files, the metadata editor is somewhat helpful but it is still necessary to look over all the entries and check for missing posters
* There are very few filter options (Untagged, Duplicates from Plex come to mind)
* The context menus are way too overloaded - especially bad on Android
    * There's no need for options like "Edit images" or "Edit subtitles" to appear when right clicking on a "Next up" item
* It's not possible to set a separate date/time format
    * For example, it's not possible to use English (United States) with German date/time format
* There's no identifier to determine from which library an item comes in the search
    * For example, Life of Pi is displayed 3 times (HD, 3D and UHD) with no further info about it
* There's no easy way to see what item is being scanned currently
    * A spinner animation on the cover of the show/season/episode that is currently being scanned would be really useful
* There are no free players available for desktop PCs/HTPCs
    * I believe Emby would really benefit from providing a solution like Plex did previously with their Plex Home Theater
    * A Kodi installer with Emby addon, a proper skin and configuration would help new users
    * For Raspberry Pis there could be a LibreELEC image with the same configuration as the regular Kodi installer

# Android (7.1.1)

* The Android app crashes frequently
    * Reproducible example:
        1. Start a video that needs transcoding and has multiple languages and subtitles
        1. As soon as the video player starts, switch the language and subtitles (before the server gets to properly start transcoding)
        1. App will crash soon after
* Android media buttons do not work (Play/Pause sometimes works, Skip never works)
* The lock screen widget is recreated after every song which is really annoying when skipping songs
* The lock screen widgets doesn't really fit the new Android style (see screenshot, Sonos vs Emby)
* There's no "shuffle all" or "play all" button for music on Android
* It's not possible to stop playback from the lock screen
* The timer on the top of the widget is useless, it counts when paused and resets to 0 when playing
* There are some really small but clickable texts in the app
    * For example, the player bar on the bottom of the app has a clickable artist that is either impossible to click or gets clicked by accident
* Some texts do not look like they can be clicked
    * For example, "Show name - Season X" on the episode details looks exactly like the episode name below - one can be clicked, one can't
* The remote control is missing the seek buttons
* The homepage can only be refreshed by choosing "Home" in the sidebar
    * Drag to refresh would be great
* The homepage doesn't refresh after watching a video
    * Which means old "Next up" is still being displayed
* Playing the next video through the skip button is really unreliable
    * Sometimes the player will skip to the end of the current video
    * Sometimes the home page will be displayed
    * Sometimes the app crashes
    * Sometimes it skips successfully
* The player controls are too small and too close to each other (see screenshots)
* The player controls sometimes get activated even without the control bar visible
    * Usually happens when pressing around at the bottom of the screen
* The controls are not hidden when clicking into the video
    * Waiting for the timeout is especially annoying when you can't read the subtitles under it

# Web app

* The web app will sometimes start a video over the web page (see screenshot)
* The video title will sometimes be displayed above the Emby logo in the top left corner, even after the video already stopped (see screenshot, also works on Android)
* The player will sometimes be visible in the background, even after stopping
    * Usually quickly starting different videos results in any of those two
* Long playlists are a pain
    * After 200 played songs you have to scroll down all the way to view the current song
    * If the whole playlist could scroll with the active item it would be great
* Shuffle function is really hidden. Should be at the top of the music page together with other play options like Play all
* Search under the music tab is not able to find artists
    * Suggestions are also empty
* Clicking on the poster on the detail page of an movie should play the video and not open the edit picture dialog
* Clicking on the poster of an episode should open the info page instead of doing nothing
* Horizonal scrolling of posters should signal when the end was reached
    * Right arrow is still there even after reaching the end

Edited October 16, 2017 by dcook

[adrianwi 279]

I'll be a month in at the end of this week, and would agree that the library scanning is much slower/longer on emby than it was on Plex.  I'm running both on top of FreeNAS/BSD which doesn't recognise changes to files, so I depend on the scans to update my libraries.  On Plex, I had this configured to run hourly and it generally completed within 5-10 minutes.  On emby, a full scan can take over an hour, so I've configured it to run every 24 hours with manual scans on specific libraries as required.  To be fair, manual scans on my TV and Movies libraries (which update most frequently) don't seem to take that long, so the ability to schedule specific library scans would go a long way to fixing the speed difference.

 

The search is definitely another weak area, as it seems to only scan names and not any other metadata?  Hopefully, changes to implement Smart Playlists will improve the search functionality as this will need to search across all metadata to work effectively.

[Happy2Play 9780]

I'll be a month in at the end of this week, and would agree that the library scanning is much slower/longer on emby than it was on Plex.  I'm running both on top of FreeNAS/BSD which doesn't recognise changes to files, so I depend on the scans to update my libraries.  On Plex, I had this configured to run hourly and it generally completed within 5-10 minutes.  On emby, a full scan can take over an hour, so I've configured it to run every 24 hours with manual scans on specific libraries as required.  To be fair, manual scans on my TV and Movies libraries (which update most frequently) don't seem to take that long, so the ability to schedule specific library scans would go a long way to fixing the speed difference.

 

The search is definitely another weak area, as it seems to only scan names and not any other metadata?  Hopefully, changes to implement Smart Playlists will improve the search functionality as this will need to search across all metadata to work effectively.

 

So the question is how can I have those scan times but your system doesn't?

[DomiStyle 11]

I'll be a month in at the end of this week, and would agree that the library scanning is much slower/longer on emby than it was on Plex.  I'm running both on top of FreeNAS/BSD which doesn't recognise changes to files, so I depend on the scans to update my libraries.  On Plex, I had this configured to run hourly and it generally completed within 5-10 minutes.  On emby, a full scan can take over an hour, so I've configured it to run every 24 hours with manual scans on specific libraries as required.  To be fair, manual scans on my TV and Movies libraries (which update most frequently) don't seem to take that long, so the ability to schedule specific library scans would go a long way to fixing the speed difference.

 

Maybe you could also provide log files so @@Luke can check them out?

My TV and movie libraries are actually the ones that take long for me, everything else works fine.

[Luke 42077]

The next release of Emby Server will bring some small improvements to library scan times, although I am beginning to plan out some additional changes for more substantial improvement. Additionally, some superfluous internet metadata providers are being disabled by default for new installations. This will also create additional improvements but will only apply to new installs.

 

Additionally the entire server will improve performance as we move all of our deployments over to the new .NET Core runtime. Currently we're only shipping the .NET Core runtime with a couple NAS deployments, but many of the mainstream installations are soon to get it as well.

[Luke 42077]

@@DomiStyle, additionally, the kodi sync plugin will impact library scan performance. Try removing that plugin.

[DomiStyle 11]

@@DomiStyle, additionally, the kodi sync plugin will impact library scan performance. Try removing that plugin.

 

Nope, still gets stuck.

[Luke 42077]

It may not be your worst offender but the plugin will impact library scan performance.

[DomiStyle 11]

It may not be your worst offender but the plugin will impact library scan performance.

 

Probably, seems like a necessary evil to run Emby with Kodi though.

 

Which are the superfluous providers? Maybe it helps if I remove them?

[Luke 42077]

For starters omdb for series. I'd have to look up the rest that I changed. Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

@@DomiStyle

 

 

 

Untagged files get added to the Latest section before a poster is downloaded

 

Do you really feel that this is a problem? Are you saying you think we should hide content until it's first metadata download has fully completed?

[Luke 42077]

@@DomiStyle

 

 

* Duplicate artists
    * For example, Daft Punk and Daft Punk (Main) get added to the library - even when all MP3s are tagged with only "Daft Punk". "Prefer embedded titles over filenames" is enabled.

We use ffprobe to extract audio tags, and I am willing to bet that ffprobe thinks one of your audio files is tagged with Daft Punk (Main). Do you have a sample file? I can verify this for you. Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

 

 

Clicking on the poster of an episode should open the info page instead of doing nothing

 

This is intended to play, so we'll start playback by clicking anywhere in the poster and not just the play button.

[Luke 42077]

 

 

Shuffle function is really hidden. Should be at the top of the music page together with other play options like Play all

 

yes agreed, this is something that we need.