Include playlists and collections in "Next Up"

[Dreakon13 143]

Not to state the obvious, but lets say a MCU playlist, can't you go to the playlist and see what's been watched and what's next?  As opposed to watching them all in one sitting?  (EDIT: I see this has been refuted already, I guess I pictured a MCU playlist being moreso just the 20-30 films and easier to manage.)

I'm guessing the complexity in developing it comes from having to find a way to effectively treat playlists and collections of movies or mixed media as their own "TV series" as far as Continue Watching/Next Up is concerned... for lack of a better way of describing it.  Where the next item is the next episode.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Dreakon13

[Romek123 42]

Why not just make a "Check whats Next?" Option at the end of a movie.

When click yes than show the movie that comes after this one ("sort by name") from each list/collection that movie is in?

Could be even pinned to the whats next start window widget . Just the wallpaper from the movie and "check next" text.

 

So for example i watch rambo 2 and click at the end on "whats next?"

it shows me:

Collection: Rambo - Rambo part 3

Playlist: 80s Action - Predator

Playlist: One Man Army - Commando

... and so on

 

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Romek123

[te5s3rakt 4]

I’ve been wanting this in Plex forever. Just moved over to Emby, and equally this is a must have.

Fundamentally it wouldn’t be that hard to implement. We have 3 considerations:

• Playlists in the database would have to have an ID associated with them? (I haven’t checked Emby’s database, but following standard DB design, it would have to be yes)
• And then we have a list of items attached to that playlist?
• And that list would have to have an index? (unless you’re presenting the order in the UI by date sort?)

If yes to these 3 conditions, then the solution is simple:

1. When a user goes to a playlist and hits play, simply add the playlist ID to the Continue Watching deck.
2. As playback advances through the playlist, the current/next item would be surfaced.

You would not be surfacing all the playlists associated with a media item to the deck on playback of an item as it’s been confusedly asked above.

Regarding item 2. Determining the current/next item of the playlist to present in the deck would require keeping track of the play state of the item within the playlist, not the item in the media database.

Watched status is likely stored at an item level attached to each movie/episode itself. Here we would need to store in the watched status of the playlist item itself. So in the table storing which items are associated with a particular playlist ID, would possibly need a new field to store the watch state. Watch state of a playlist item should be independent of the movie/episode watch state.

Get’s a little more complicated if a user is shuffling the playlist prior to playback (using Shuffle as opposed to Play). This is because then we’d have to shuffle the list, and store an index for the new temporary order while the playlist in its shuffled “state” sitting on the Continue Watching deck. This would likely require a new table to manage this functionality (or for only a single shuffle state, an additional index field in the original table). In this scenario, when a user “removes” the playlist from the deck, the “cached” index of the playlists shuffled state would be purged.

I would probably make it that users can only have a single entity of playlist on the deck at a time as the simplest solution.

Allowing multiple entities of a playlist on the deck would require “caching” the entire index playlist separately just to get each entity on the deck. It’s doable, but obviously needs another table to manage this data.

Complexity wise:

1. Allowing a playlist in its unaltered order on the deck would be relatively simple to implement. Less new fields required in the database.
2. Allowing a playlist original state + a single shuffled state would be slightly more complex. No massively so, as you could just have two index fields (original and last shuffle)
3. Allowing a playlist in multiple states (multiple progressions of original, multiple shuffles) on the deck would be the most complex. This would likely require a whole table to manage all this data.

Apologies for the long post 

I work in systems design and analytics, and had a lot of time to think this through on Plex (but they clearly stopped caring about customer feedback years ago, so never bothered detailing it there), so really wanted to articulate this request further.

Personally I use playlist very similarly to indicated above. I both use playlists of favourite “white noise” shows, i like to shuffle. I also maintain “canon timeline view order” lists of selected property’s (Star Wars, MCU, etc.) I frequently like to return to, and being about to simply came back to one of these and pick up where I left off would be fantastic. Lord of the rings, this is easy, just scroll down and hit play on where you left off. Doing this for the MCU is literally impossible.

Edited July 17, 2022 by te5s3rakt
I grammar is dumb lol

[te5s3rakt 4]

Actually I’d like to add. I’m not saying I know anything about how the insides of Emby works. I’m merely making a few assumptions based on my own experiences working on systems I’ve developed at work. I should be clear, these are nothing like what Emby have developed here, and pale in complexity.

The devs at Emby have worked absolute magic, and I mean no disrespect when I say things like “simply”. Feel free to say “yeah, nothing in here works like that peasant” lol.

Just your regular wannabe cave dev here, taking a stab at making fire 

[Schmoopies 0]

To offer more specific circumstances, as the devs keep asking:

1) My wife and I have a "bedtime" playlist that contains many comfort TV shows (570 total episodes), which we prefer to play in order while we sleep. If we just play one show and it gets to the finale, we'll wake up when it gets too quiet. But it has multiple shows so it doesn't get too repetitive. As we make it further and further in the list, it takes longer every night to get to where we last left off.

2) I've seen lots of mentions of MCU and Star Wars (which are both extremely valid) but I will add a few of the same kind of issues:
 - Buffy/Angel
 - Arrowverse
 - DCEU
 - Mickey Mouse Shorts/Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse/specials (chronology doesn't strictly matter here, but I would still prefer them in order)

Even if the option didn't show up on "next up" just an option to go to the playlist and hit "continue" would be extremely helpful.

[player8472 2]

Since there is a reference from here

and it seems like feature requests only get done if enough support from the userbase is generated:

I want to reiterate, that this is a feature missing from ALL major Platforms.
 

Making Playlists truly resumable and not having to leave off in the middle of an Episode to know where you left off would be superior to the workarounds (Basically Smart Playlists, natively on PMS, via Plugin in Emby) we've been using on different Platforms.

[Kama-Jeremy 1]

Just to throw in more interest for this feature as well. Same as what other people have said before. If I want to binge watch for example, MCU/Star wars movies/tv shows, and have them auto play, I can hit the play all button and they will play one after another. But when I stop, if I want the movies to auto play again, I would have to hit the play all, then skip to the movie/show I left off on, and try to fast foreword to where I left off on. Having a resume feature would be great. 

I wouldn't mind as well if the coding of this was too difficult if this feature means Items in collections would not show up in the continue playing or up next bars on the main screen if that made it easier. Maybe a setting in order to turn this feature(resume in collections) on and off, where if you turned this feature on, items played in a collection would not appear in the up next or continue watching bars on the main screen. 

[HawkXP71 112]

+1 for this .

 

It also needs to be remembered when you exit.  Currently if I'm watching via a collection, even if random.  The Continue Watching, just lists the last Episode/Movie i was watching.

It should have a "Continue Watching Collection/Playlist" this way I can restart where I left off.

But having the ability when the end credits start to skip them and start the next movie in the collection would be amazing

[Tandhruil 26]

Same need for a Tex Avery collection (65 "movies" of about 6 mn)

 

[Fender1978 9]

I too would like the ability to have movie collection sequels appear in the continue watching section for great flow.

 

Cheers!

[TheShortBus 1]

Came here with the same question. I'm working my way through the Harry Potter collection.  Would be nice to go to the next movie from the Home Page like we do with TV series.

Would love to find out if this feature request has any change in status.

[kuteguy 1]

+1 for this

It's such a basic and easy thing to implement, with such profound positive benefits. At least handle the basic scenarios (i can imagine there can be some complex scenarios that are hard to handle.. don't worry about them, for now)

 

I have been asking for this feature on Plex (i am a lifetime subscriber) also for so long, i would literally switch to any platform that offered this, immediately. Many others would follow

[LeidenSpain 33]

Hello

 

I just made the same request, but I have already been notified that this one existed.

The truth (from my point of view) is that you cannot continue a list from where you left off, it is a conceptual error from the very birth of that list.

 

It's like creating the option to pause a video, but then not being able to continue the video from the paused point.

The list should have the option to continue from where it left off.

 

Regards

[markle88 15]

I'd love to see this feature as well. I just created a playlist with every Arrowverse episode in order spanning 7-8 different series. Everytime I come back to it I have to scroll through the list to find the last played episode. It'd be great if the was an option to resume the playlist at the last point.

[emby-noob 8]

Same, going through a rewatch of Buffy/Angel in chronological order, and we've already watched the shows so they don't appear in up next.

So far we've just settled for alternating seasons, but there are specific events happening in one show referenced in the other throughout, so it would be nice to resume from the list as we go.

[Elenthil 4]

+1

i also have Playlists like Arrowverse or ChicagoVerse, more den 600 episodes in each.

Missing a feature to continue from the last unseen episode, scrolling through hundreds of watched items in the list is not funny. 

[LeidenSpain 33]

Please remember to react on the first post, so that it counts for the statistics.

Edited September 4, 2024 by LeidenSpain

[Kieross 1]

I would suggest to make it not visible on main screen. But rather on top after of each playlist. So when opening a playlist to make it continue as per list. So you won't need to scroll the entire list. Don't know if possible but it would be good to keep a tracker of the last viewed in a playlist and store that per playlist.

I am watching a tv show with over 300 episodes. and its getting pretty annoying to resume. 

A button on top of the list to continue with last viewed would be good enough. It is VERY much required!

Rather sooner than later perhaps experimental?

[mrmixed 77]

Just to add a slightly different perspective--

I use playlists to curate a selection of tv shows for my kids.  This way when they want to watch a series, it is easy to skip over boring or potentially scary episodes without me actually having to remove those particular episodes from my library.  Echoing several of the comments above, I find Emby currently has limitations with this approach:

• When entering the playlist, the playlist display always starts at the top of the playlist, resulting in a need to scroll through lots of previously-watched titles to find the next unwatched one.  (And ideally, the playlist ought to auto-scroll down to the first unwatched title after the latest watched title, in the event we decide to further skip over episodes in the playlist itself.) 
• After picking and watching an episode from the playlist, "Up Next" will display the next episode from the series, not from the playlist, which means that by using the "Up Next" suggestion the viewer is now outside the curated playlist.  Implementing the "Playlist Up Next" option as suggested above would be a good way to fix this issue.

I understand that people who use playlists differently may not want the playlist to auto-scroll past all the watched titles.  Assuming that the devs don't think this  request warrants a per-playlist configuration setting (and it probably doesn't), I think implementing a global playlist auto-scroll toggle would be a good starting point, possibly also in tandem with a "return to top" button (which is slightly more useful than a "jump to next" button).

I get that in order to implement the second bullet, Emby would need to track some additional context to know "how" a particular title was played; it would nevertheless be a very helpful change from a user perspective.

[mrmixed 77]

Correction:  I referred to "Up Next" in my previous post, when I meant to call it "Continue Watching".

[BillybobBilly 18]

Here's to hopefully seeing this functionality added.

[hdaniel1196 1]

This is something I would also love to see implemented. I use playlists for anime, and it’s incredibly useful for skipping fillers without completely deleting them. I also use it to create a watchlist for Arrowverse, Marvel, and Star Wars movies and/or TV shows. Currently, I have to reset the watched tag on all the episodes or movies if I want to track my progress in a playlist.

 

It’’s not a feature that needs to be on the main page, but it would be great if you could open a playlist and see where you are in it quickly, allowing you to pick up right where you left off.

[nojaha 4]

Just wanted to add my support for this feature request as well! My main use case would also be for watching movies in chronological order, like LoTR, the MCU, or Star Wars, as already mentioned.

I think the fundamental logic would be if playback starts from within a playlist, it should track progress within that playlist. However, if a movie is played individually (outside the playlist), it of course shouldn't affect the progress of every playlist containing that movie.

I can definitely appreciate how this may introduce a bunch of complexity regarding how to track progress of individual movies, versus when they are watched from within a playlist. 

Perhaps we could take inspiration from music players, where progress is often tracked relative to the context. If you play a song from a playlist, it tracks there. If you search for the song and play it directly, it starts fresh. Of course the difference here being that for movies you want to be able to go back to where you were in your playlist. Which makes drawing complete inspiration from music players less than ideal

A good compromise for movies could be:

• Playback Position: Tracked only within the specific playlist context.

• Watched Status: If you finish it in a playlist, it marks the movie as watched everywhere, but not the other way around.

I don't know. Perhaps the simplest approach would be to just have a clear distinction between the contexts, with no overlap whatsoever

The whole "Continue Watching" part is more of a nice-to-have and isn't as important for me  If we were to have it, though, I imagine that it would have to be styled slightly different to emphasize the fact that it is related to a playlist. Or at least have some text signifying the difference. Like there is between shows and movies. And perhaps the ability to mark a playlist as "Watched" as well, so we can clear the queue. Kind of like treating the playlist as an entity in itself. I imagine like we do for seasons of a show, where each episode would "simply" be a movie instead.

Again, I can definitely appreciate that this isn't as simple as it might appear at first glance