VirtualTV plugin

[pünktchen 1409]

2 hours ago, harikiran said:

Hello, Is it possible to add (Random Movie Chapters) from a Movies library in Virtual TV plugin. So that that users can watch random movies clips which could give an idea what to watch next instead of playing whole movies playlist.

So you want it to play only random chapters of random movies? Don't you think it would be better to play only trailers of random movies?

[pünktchen 1409]

10 minutes ago, Lyfesaver said:

4.9.1.25

Works fine for me. Did you forget to select a user under Common Conditions, right above Channel Content Source?

[Lyfesaver 133]

30 minutes ago, pünktchen said:

Works fine for me. Did you forget to select a user under Common Conditions, right above Channel Content Source?

Yes, using my own account.

I have it all filled out and I have a collection called "Sports Movies"

I put that in here

And then the Save and Preview shows movies that are not in that collection.
Also, is that (Search for Collections) text supposed to do anything? It's greyed out for me

[pünktchen 1409]

1 hour ago, Lyfesaver said:

I have it all filled out and I have a collection called "Sports Movies"

Are the movies and that collection real video files or just strm links?

1 hour ago, Lyfesaver said:

And then the Save and Preview shows movies that are not in that collection.

That's of course a bug, because without any collection selected, it shouldn't show anything.

1 hour ago, Lyfesaver said:

Also, is that (Search for Collections) text supposed to do anything? It's greyed out for me

It's just a text filter for the list of collections. So one does not have to scroll a possibly very long list to select the right collection.

[Lyfesaver 133]

14 minutes ago, pünktchen said:

Are the movies and that collection real video files or just strm links?

That's of course a bug, because without any collection selected, it shouldn't show anything.

It's just a text filter for the list of collections. So one does not have to scroll a possibly very long list to select the right collection.

movie files

Okay well my search does not work then. There is nothing I can do with that whole section other than type in the box

Edited September 5, 2025 by Lyfesaver
typo

[pünktchen 1409]

2 minutes ago, Lyfesaver said:

There is nothing I can do with that whole section other than type in the box

Then please enable debug logging in the plugin and for the server, create a new channel with the collection setting as source and send me the log file.

[Lyfesaver 133]

 

19 hours ago, pünktchen said:

Then please enable debug logging in the plugin and for the server, create a new channel with the collection setting as source and send me the log file.

Am sending you logs now

[Lyfesaver 133]

Making progress over here

So, channels built by collections are still not working (sent you logs on that already)... but that was not my first choice anyway. Would much rather use rules. And that's where we have some good news.

This does not pertain to the plugin as it does to the actual movies in my library. I could not use rules as the genres of "Sport", Biography", "Musical", etc were not being used by Emby's current metadata providers so here is what I did:

1. Add ACDb plugin's official and community driven collections (Sports Movies, Film Noir, etc) to my Emby
2. Use Bulky to select all movies in a collection and then bulk add the appropriate Genre (Sport, Film Noir, etc)
3. Use the rules in VirtualTV to create the "SportsFlix" channel

It's not perfect. I am sure I have plenty of, sports movies as an example, that are not in the ACDb collection but this setup gets all the low hanging fruit and that is a damn fine start.

Thank you, pünktchen, for the plugin and the help.

Also, I don't mind continuing to debug the collections if you want

[ttgapers 98]

@pünktchen- awesome plugin. kudos!

I am not sure if previously reported/known/asked. I did search and didn't see any.

Scenario:

Running latest beta: 4.9.1.26 (keep regularly up to date)

Have 2 channels enabled:

Channel 1 for all users (no issue)

Channel 2 for one user (issue affects only this user)

When browsing the TV guide the user see this repeated for every user on the server (Virtual not userx etc.)

It is quite visible in the Web based player/view:

When you look at the channel:

 

If I remove them they reappear on the next refresh. 

Any idea how to not show this? the user(s) who i decide to publish the channel will see the other usernames on the server. I think it's mostly cosmetic, but would be cool if we can hide hide tags on the TV guide as well @Luke.

Lastly, when creating a new channel it would be nice to have a publish for all users option. I have a decently long list of users, so it takes a little extra tile. Select All and Select None perhaps?

Thanks again team Emby and @pünktchen

Edited September 7, 2025 by ttgapers

[pünktchen 1409]

1 hour ago, ttgapers said:

When browsing the TV guide the user see this repeated for every user on the server (Virtual not userx etc.)

Yes, that has come up before. The problem is that Tags are misused to build up channel groups, which is a really big design flaw of the Emby devs. Right now i don't know any solution to the problem without changes to Emby core. At least you could argue that Emby should not show empty channel groups, but in reality the channel groups are not empty. They are full of channels that are just hidden for the user. @Luke

[ttgapers 98]

35 minutes ago, pünktchen said:

Yes, that has come up before. The problem is that Tags are misused to build up channel groups, which is a really big design flaw of the Emby devs. Right now i don't know any solution to the problem without changes to Emby core. At least you could argue that Emby should not show empty channel groups, but in reality the channel groups are not empty. They are full of channels that are just hidden for the user. @Luke

Fair enough. I have now worked around the plethora of tags by assigning a dummy XXX rating to the channel in question. Problem now is going through each user individually to set a maximum parental rating since you cannot do it for multiple users at a time via the GUI @Luke. 
 

Thanks for the quick response @pünktchen

[Lyfesaver 133]

It would be nice to have a way to disable the channel when we dont want it shared to anyone. This way, we could make it where no users are checked it is shared to everyone. Soon as a user has a checkmark it restricts to only those checked. This will save us from place check marks in each user for each new channel and will default to any new users to Emby getting them shared as well so it save us from having to go back in each channel and at them and save.

 

Unless of course there is already an easy way to do all this and I am missing it

[Treter 6]

Ist es möglich, in Virtual TV einen Knopf zu integrieren, mit dem man den Sender einfach ein- und ausschalten kann?

Zusätlich sollte ein weiterer Knopf eingebaut werden, wenn nur ein bestimmter Sender einen Force Refresh unterzieht.

[ZeroArrows 0]

Hey-yo, 

No rush or pressure, but I’m running into a few issues with the VirtualTV plugin and I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I'm pretty new.

• Content Selection

  I have a mix of TV shows, movies, and longer “TV block” recordings that I’d like to include.

  VirtualTV only seems to pull TV shows and movies, even though I’ve selected all folders and haven’t set any maximum runtime.

  Any idea why any of my blocks aren’t being scheduled? I set my type to Mixedcontent

• Playback Methods

  The only method I can get working is Native (Archive).

  Is there a detailed explanation of the other options (Playlist Live/Archive, Continuous Playback, etc.) and why they might fail on my setup?

• Incorrect Runtimes in Guide

  The shows and movies that do appear in the guide have wildly incorrect times.

  For example, Scooby-Doo episodes show as 7+ hours long, and movies display with similar inflated runtimes.

  When I check the items in the library directly, the metadata runtimes are correct, but in Live TV they’re not.

• Guide Data Source Dropdown

  In the channel editor, the “Guide Data Source” dropdown always looks blank until I click it.

  It shows VirtualTV as selected, but it doesn’t display properly and often reports as “Not mapped to guide data.”
   

If there are other common troubleshooting steps or things I’ve overlooked, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any help!

Edited September 27, 2025 by ZeroArrows

[pünktchen 1409]

16 hours ago, ZeroArrows said:

Any idea why any of my blocks aren’t being scheduled? I set my type to Mixedcontent

What rules have you set?

 

16 hours ago, ZeroArrows said:

The only method I can get working is Native (Archive).

Is there a detailed explanation of the other options (Playlist Live/Archive, Continuous Playback, etc.) and why they might fail on my setup?

The start post of this thread has some explanations of the playback options. What clients do you use?

 

16 hours ago, ZeroArrows said:

When I check the items in the library directly, the metadata runtimes are correct, but in Live TV they’re not.

What about your media info runtimes? In 5 years there was never any report about wrong program lenghts that i remember.

 

16 hours ago, ZeroArrows said:

In the channel editor, the “Guide Data Source” dropdown always looks blank until I click it.

This is with all live tv plugins that provide their own guide data. It's a bug in Emby since ever. But you do not need to map anything in the channel editor. It's all done internally by the plugin.

[hstamas 179]

@pünktcheni never thought to ask this. When does the plugin recognize that new media has been added and integrate it into the existing guide data? Same if you edit a rule that would result in a different list of programs? 

is it as simple as hitting the “refresh guide” button?

on that subject, right now if you hit the “force guide refresh” it will reset the guide to start shows that have an order of “ordered episodes” to all start from the first season/first episode. Any way to have it randomize where it starts for each series? ErsatzTV does it this way and it helps when tinkering to not always start from the absolute beginning every time you need to reset the guide.

Edited October 13, 2025 by hstamas

[pünktchen 1409]

41 minutes ago, hstamas said:

is it as simple as hitting the “refresh guide” button?

Yes.

41 minutes ago, hstamas said:

Any way to have it randomize where it starts for each series?

Should be doable. You don't like "Random Series, Ordered Episode Playback"?

[hstamas 179]

33 minutes ago, pünktchen said:

Yes.

Should be doable. You don't like "Random Series, Ordered Episode Playback"?

No problem with it at all. Does exactly what it should do!

Since I’m always tweaking (at least in the early stages of a set up) and trend to refresh the guide often I have found that the play in order channels always revert back to starting with S01e01. So once I get back into actually watching programming I’m always rewatching the same early episodes over and over until I stop tweaking and leave things alone!

when I was using ErsatzTV, when you made edits and then told it to refresh its guide it would start the series at a random starting point which was beneficial to the constant tweaker!

Edited October 14, 2025 by hstamas

[ZeroArrows 0]

On 9/27/2025 at 12:36 PM, pünktchen said:

What rules have you set?

I don't have many rules set. I have both watched states set to watched and unwatched and I am using tags with the name "Halloween" and I went through and used an editor to set the tags for a lot of movies, TV shows, and TV broadcast blocks. As I said before I can get the TV shows and Movies to show up but not the broadcasting blocks. Is there a setting or something I am missing? Should I be labeling the broadcast blocks as TV shows?
 
 

 

On 9/27/2025 at 12:36 PM, pünktchen said:

The start post of this thread has some explanations of the playback options. What clients do you use?

I use the web interface and emby mobile client. Is that what you mean?

 

Edited October 14, 2025 by ZeroArrows

[pünktchen 1409]

1 hour ago, ZeroArrows said:

As I said before I can get the TV shows and Movies to show up but not the broadcasting blocks.

Ah, now i get it. You mean bumpers?! They will not be shown in the guide, but should be played between programs.

[pünktchen 1409]

1 hour ago, ZeroArrows said:

I use the web interface and emby mobile client. Is that what you mean?

Yes. Is this inside your LAN? Please check if "Play on" (top right corner on the home screen) works for you.

[ZeroArrows 0]

20 hours ago, pünktchen said:

Ah, now i get it. You mean bumpers?! They will not be shown in the guide, but should be played between programs.

Hi! Just to clarify, by “broadcasting blocks,” I do mean bumpers, but in my case, they’re exactly the kind of full-length TV recordings you’d find on VHS tapes from collectors. These aren’t short interstitials, they’re full blocks of content that include TV shows, commercials, intros/outros, network branding, etc., just like they originally aired.

Some of these files are 30–90 minutes long, and others can be even longer — several hours in some cases — though I plan to break those longer ones into smaller chunks later for better playback performance.

They’re in various formats like MP4 and MKV, and what I’d like is to have them play alongside my regular Movies and TV Shows as part of the VirtualTV channel experience.

I’ve tried adding them to the Bumper section, but it seems like the ability to manually specify file paths there is blocked or restricted, I can’t select these files even though they’re local.

So I’m wondering:

• Is there a way to include these full broadcast blocks in the channel playback, even if they don’t show up in the guide?

• Should I tag or categorize them differently (e.g. mark them as TV Shows or Specials) to help the plugin pick them up?

• Would adjusting the “MixedContent” rules or sort settings help with this?
  
  The unchecked boxes in the "Include items from selected Folder(s):" are the ones I'm trying to add to the bumper section.

 

[husmir 0]

Hi, I’ve installed virtual tv and setup a few channels with my shows, but i can’t for the of me get the Tv Source Setup to recognise virtual tv.

Any help would be appreciated. 

 

[pünktchen 1409]

3 hours ago, husmir said:

Hi, I’ve installed virtual tv and setup a few channels with my shows, but i can’t for the of me get the Tv Source Setup to recognise virtual tv.

Any help would be appreciated. 

 

Are you saying there is no "Virtual TV" tuner under "TV Sources" of the Live TV section? Do you have Emby Premiere?

[strichmo 21]

This looks great! Unfortunately I cannot find it on my Plugin Catalog page on the server - Am I missing something? I'm on 4.9.1.32 beta.

Edited November 11, 2025 by strichmo