VirtualTV plugin

[Eigeplackter 90]

nvm, another refresh and they appear under live tv

[pünktchen 1409]

@feerlessleadr 
Please try this version:  
In the plugin playback settings, make sure to activate "Compatibility Mode (Emby For Kodi Next Gen)"!

Edited July 29, 2023 by pünktchen
removed attachement

[feerlessleadr 173]

3 hours ago, pünktchen said:

@feerlessleadr 
Please try this version: VirtualTV.1.1.3.2_Test.zip 
In the plugin playback settings, make sure to activate "Compatibility Mode (Emby For Kodi Next Gen)"!

Thanks - this looks like it solved my playback issue. 

I believe I discovered another issue, not sure if it is related or not though. I have an MCU channel where I would like the movies to play in sort name order ascending. I happened to forget to change the channel program sort order from the default 'Random' setting, and the channel plays fine (and the guide is populated). However, once I changed the sort order to 'Sort Name Ascending', then refresh the guide, the channel is now blank (and the guide shows no movies). When I click on the channel to play it, it just plays the first movie in my library, rather than the movies I have included in the channel. As soon as I change the sort order back to random, then refresh the guide data, the movies show back up, the guide is populated, and the movies play as they should (just in the wrong order). 

I also tested this w/ mixed content, and the same thing happens. Here is a log of the MCU playlist where I set the content from random to sort name, then back to random. 

embyserver.txt

[pünktchen 1409]

Only random will start prior the prime time setting, so depending on the time that you've refreshed the guide you will see the data some hours later.

[feerlessleadr 173]

7 hours ago, pünktchen said:

Only random will start prior the prime time setting, so depending on the time that you've refreshed the guide you will see the data some hours later.

Thanks, that solved it. Last question (hopefully!) - I'm trying to do a 24 hours Stargate channel that plays the movies/tv episodes in order of premier date. To do that, I created a channel and in the "Always include these named movies or tv shows:" section, I typed in "Stargate*", then refresh the channel guide. When I then go to the guide, I see that Stargate programs are there, and as I was scrolling through the guide to check if it was playing in order, I saw that there are random movies added to the channel, like 12 Angry Men, Willy Wonka, Jaws, etc..

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

embyserver.txt

[GrimReaper 4739]

6 minutes ago, feerlessleadr said:

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

You're not limiting that Channel with "Always include...", what you should do is tag desired movies/TV shows and use Tag channel rule, as that'll restrict Channel to only those items.

Edited January 15, 2023 by GrimReaper
Rephrase

[feerlessleadr 173]

Ah ok - so that isn't an 'Only include', it's just saying the channel should ALSO always include. 

Makes sense. I'll use tags then. Thank you!

[feerlessleadr 173]

I think perhaps I'm not understanding how the 'Sort Program by' order works. I have all of the TV series & Movies tagged, and they are showing up in the guide, but in the wrong order. I have the mixed content sorted by Premiere date, and I confirmed that the dates for the episodes and movies are correct in the metadata. I would expect that the Movies / Shows would play in the following order on a loop, sorted by earliest premiere / release date:

Premiere Time: 3pm

1. Stargate (Movie)
2. Stargate Sg1 S01 - S07 (E01, E02, etc.)
3. Then alternate between SG1 S08, S09, S10 & Atlantis S01, S02, S03 as they aired back to back every Friday
4. Stargate Atlantis S04
5. Stargate Ark of Truth (Movie) 
6. Stargate Atlantis S05
7. Stargate Continuum (Movie)
8. Stargate Universe S01 - S03

However, when I look at the guide, it goes like this:

1. Stargate (Movie)
2. Stargate Sg1 S01 E01
3. Stargate Sg1 S01 E02
4. Stargate Sg1 S01 E03
5. Stargate Sg1 S01 E04
6. Stargate Ark of Truth (Movie)
7. Stargate Sg1 S01 E05
8. Stargate Sg1 S01 E06
9. Stargate Sg1 S01 E07
10. Stargate Continuum (Movie)
11. Stargate Sg1 S01 E08
12. Stargate Sg1 S01 E09
13. Stargate Sg1 S01 E10
14. Stargate (Movie)

From there, it just repeats where after every 3rd episode the Stargate movies will play again. Am I missing something obvious?

[AaronClarke 3]

Hi,

I have been using your plugin for quite some time now and I love it. 

I have created some genre specific movie channels for use with the account we use for the living room.

One of these though is a horror channel. Unfortunately, my wife does not like the idea that the kids could potentially put the TV on and see this channel during the day. 

Is there anyway that this channel could be configured to only start showing programs after a certain time once the kids are in bed?

 

Cheers

[pünktchen 1409]

57 minutes ago, AaronClarke said:

Is there anyway that this channel could be configured to only start showing programs after a certain time once the kids are in bed?

Not in the plugin, but with default Emby functionality you can achieve something similar. You could tag the tv channels and restrict the kids with the access control options of the profile.

[AaronClarke 3]

The kids profiles are already restricted in this way for when they connected using their own devices. I have a specific account that is used by everyone for watching TV in the Living room so Ideally would need to be able to to set a channel to only broadcast say between 9pm and 5am

[nweishar 14]

Big thanks for creating this! Have been looking for this feature for a while and just stumbled across this thread. Kudos!

[sirmiketr 5]

Hiya,

 

I was wondering if you could help me with the Genre filtering, i'm trying to filter out any animation/family for a specific channel.

I've been trying this way but I still get the genres:
!Animation || !Comedy

 

What would be the most optimal way to filter out multiple genres?

 

[pünktchen 1409]

On 2/26/2023 at 6:59 PM, sirmiketr said:

I've been trying this way but I still get the genres:
!Animation || !Comedy

That's the correct syntax. Make sure you have "*All channel rules have to be TRUE" enabled.

[JeremyG 30]

Duuuude!  Just found this plugin.  This is the best, thanks so much!    

Do you have a "Donate" link?

[JeremyG 30]

I was all excited for this but unfortunately it doesnt work on Roku Emby app.   Viritual channel plays fine on PC, and but if I try on Roku the whole Emby app crashes out to Roku menu. 

[roaku 842]

15 minutes ago, JeremyG said:

I was all excited for this but unfortunately it doesnt work on Roku Emby app.   Viritual channel plays fine on PC, and but if I try on Roku the whole Emby app crashes out to Roku menu. 

It does work on Roku, but Rokus are pretty finicky about track orders, codecs, subtitles, embedded images, etc.

These media issues generally cause the Roku Emby app to crash when in the playlist playback mode.

The primary Roku Emby app developer was going to take a look at potential improvements on this awhile back. I'm not sure if any progress has been made.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, JeremyG said:

I was all excited for this but unfortunately it doesnt work on Roku Emby app.   Viritual channel plays fine on PC, and but if I try on Roku the whole Emby app crashes out to Roku menu. 

Hey @JeremyG. I use Roku exclusively for Emby and I had the same issue at first. I am not able to get Continuous playback to work with Roku, but I settled on Playlist (Archive) and I've had no issues. FWIW most of my library is HEVC/AAC (though I do have some H264 here and there) and I'm using Emby server on Windows with hardware accelerated transcoding.

[Tremas 197]

I have also been using Roku successfully with this plug for a few years. I use playlist (live) as it's my preferred method. It has worked on channels with 4k movies at the high end and tiny music videos on the low end without issue. As mentioned previously, the more you have to process the stream (subtitles, transcoding, etc.) the more finicky Roku can be, but if it plays well through the Roku without the plugin in should work well.

First, make sure you are running the latest Roku ap. I know there was an issue in the past with it crashing on this plugin because I reported it at the time. This was fixed several releases back. If you're still having problems in on the latest Roku release, please report the problem in the Roku topic forum and the team will be happy to assist you.

[matt_ttam123 6]

Thanks so much for making this plugin I only found out about this today!

I seem to be having issues with Continous (Live) where it wont actually start the stream even though I can transcode videos fine, if it matters at all I'm running Emby in an Unraid docker container. I tested on two devices my PC and an AppleTV same outcome for both the video doesnt play.

I then tried changing it to Playlist (Live) which works fine on my PC streaming through the web browser but I still am unable to stream via the AppleTV  appreciate any help on this

[pünktchen 1409]

38 minutes ago, matt_ttam123 said:

I seem to be having issues with Continous (Live) where it wont actually start the stream even though I can transcode videos fine, if it matters at all I'm running Emby in an Unraid docker container.

Do you have some special portmapping for your container where the host port to access the Emby webinterface is not the same as the Emby server port inside your docker container?

[PuffyToesToo 346]

On 3/4/2023 at 5:10 PM, JeremyG said:

I was all excited for this but unfortunately it doesnt work on Roku Emby app.   Viritual channel plays fine on PC, and but if I try on Roku the whole Emby app crashes out to Roku menu. 

Can you post a screenshot of the channel settings etc? Maybe someone can help. Lots of us are using it with Roku. 

[egadgetkids 1]

OP is outdated and screenshots do not match the latest version.  Some of the newer fields and options are not shown/explained, etc.

It would also help to clarify the process of setting up the EPG.  I figured it out eventually, but it doesn't mention the need to set it up in the original post.

[egadgetkids 1]

6 minutes ago, egadgetkids said:

OP is outdated and screenshots do not match the latest version.  Some of the newer fields and options are not shown/explained, etc.

It would also help to clarify the process of setting up the EPG.  I figured it out eventually, but it doesn't mention the need to set it up in the original post.

 

Q: I just need to know what the different playback methods do...

[GrimReaper 4739]

29 minutes ago, egadgetkids said:

It would also help to clarify the process of setting up the EPG.  I figured it out eventually, but it doesn't mention the need to set it up in the original post.

Are you referring to exporting channels? 

22 minutes ago, egadgetkids said:

Q: I just need to know what the different playback methods do...

Thought that was covered in the OP:

On 12/27/2019 at 7:33 PM, pünktchen said:

The plugin has two general playback modes: "continous" and "playlist" playback.

 

On 12/27/2019 at 7:33 PM, pünktchen said:

you can also choose between "live", which bahaves like real live tv or "archive", which plays the videos from the start.

 

On 12/27/2019 at 7:33 PM, pünktchen said:

In "continous" mode multiple videos are queued and concatenated to one big file with the help of ffmpeg. To make this happen every video in the queue has to have some common features (video and audio codec). That's why it often happens that the video also has to be transcoded by ffmpeg.

For transcoding the plugin relies on Emby's internal transcoding engine. If there's a problem, not uncommon with hardware acceleration enabled, the plugin also has a problem. Nothing i can do about it.

The availability of subtitle tracks is mostly dependant of the Emby user playback settings. In continous playback mode only one (the default) subtitle track can be used and this one has to be burnded into the video (transcoding takes place).

 

On 12/27/2019 at 7:33 PM, pünktchen said:

In "playlist" playback mode the videos are pushed as a playlist to the Emby clients. It's like you would play your videos directly from your libraries. This way you get all the features you are used to. Audio and subtitle selection, pause, skipping around and similar things.