Will Emby work for this? - Horse Sale

[Shendrickson 1]

Good day.  I'm looking for a replacement to our in-house video solution.  Here is what we need and I'm hoping Emby is the tool to use.  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

This will be a self-contained system on a LAN.  We will have a server that will host the .mp4 videos of horses and their trainers.  We need to be able to stream those videos to Kiosks (Windows 10 machines) in a few locations at the sale and I would possibly like to open it up for people use their own mobile devices.  This is a one day event with possibly 400+ people attending.

• Can we create a gallery of videos to display on a Windows 10 machine (browser or app?) Only 3 Kiosk terminals - Needs to be read-only so people can't change settings.
• The videos will be stored on the server and would need to be transcoded.  Can that be done on the fly?  Only about 100 of them.
• Could mobile devices browse to a webpage or do they need to have a mobile App? (There is not real Internet connectivity at the sale so people won't have the ability to download if needed)

How would I need to license this to be able to have 3 workstations display those personal videos?

How would I need to license this if I wanted to open this up to mobile users at the sale?

[Abobader 3464]

Hello Shendrickson,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[Carlo 4561]

You didn't really give enough information to know if this is doable or not.

The 3 kiosks would be easy as you control that network and could rig your own wiring or your own WIFI.  A typical PC with a recent Intel or Nvidia GPU could handle transcoding for 3 kios quite easily.

Where it will get complicated is how would you connect peoples phone/tablet to your network? If there is not Internet available then you would have no choice but to supply a WIFI network and have instructions available for how they connect to it. Then how to reach your server.  

You of course would need to supply enough WIFI bandwidth to handle the streaming you expect as well.

Can it be done using Emby? Yes it can but the HARD PART is the portable network you'll need to create.

[ebr 16182]

30 minutes ago, Shendrickson said:

The videos will be stored on the server and would need to be transcoded.

Hi.  Why not create versions of them that won't need to be transcoded?  Our convert feature could help you do that.  That would make allowing people to view on their phones a much more likely possibility.

[Carlo 4561]

And if using the Mobile Profile probably smaller as well which will help with WIFI bandwidth!

[rbjtech 5284]

Agree with @cayars - emby is the easy part - the work and $ will be in the network / wifi.

Something like a Ubiquiti Unifi Access Point already has the ability to create a Guest 'Policy' which re-directs you to a URL - I see no reason why this could not be used to direct to the emby server.  An anonymous login will then take you into the videos screen for example.  All access will be via a standard browser on the mobiles - on the Kiosks - it would be better to use the App but not essential.

If decent 4G/5G is available - then you could host emby in a cloud provider and just provide the internet URL's to the users.  The kiosks could get the internet via 4G dongles.

Edited May 20, 2021 by rbjtech

[Shendrickson 1]

Thanks everyone.  Sorry I did not give a ton of detail.  We can build whatever Wireless network we'll need.  It will be an internal use only network that would only connect to the devices for the sale like the Emby server.  @ebr I will try to transcode things before but we usually have last minute people who want us to put their videos up and if the system can take that off my plate, GREAT!  @cayars I plan on doing just that, building the wifi network that will handle the load, Kiosks are wired.  Do I need to have a good GPU or could I use a server class machine for the server? 

[Carlo 4561]

A good GPU can make a world of difference in what you can transcode.

As an example I'd run a 10 year old i7 with a modern day nVidia GPU all day over a dual XEON server that has no GPU ability for serving up media like this because it has the hardware where it's needed most. That's kind of an extreme example but is shows what a GPU can do for you.

[Shendrickson 1]

Alright I got it installed and basic configuration built.  I like it so far.  Is there a way to do a little more branding?  For example, change the colors or add a logo?  Maybe remove the items that aren't going to be used so it doesn't cause confusion.  For example, playing on another device.  If I license premier, will the "get premier" button go away and that space will be empty?  Just trying to present a clean professional appearance for the first time.  Any suggestion on any additional apps?  Is there something that would monitor most viewed videos?  Maybe a rating of the videos?   Thanks for being here to bounce questions off of.

[Luke 42078]

Hi, yes the button will go away with emby premiere.

Regarding additional apps, have you checked our out apps on all of the various platforms?

[Shendrickson 1]

I have not yet @Luke I certainly will though.  Was hoping that maybe some of the members already had some favorites and would help cut through things.

[rbjtech 5284]

"Is there something that would monitor most viewed videos?  Maybe a rating of the videos? "

The 'Playback Reporting' plugin will give you all the stats you would likely need - it will certainly keep a playback count on which videos are being played.    You could maybe setup different accounts on the Kiosks vs mobile - and then gets stats from each type ?

On the rating - Emby doesn't currently have a rating or feedback system.

 

 

[Carlo 4561]

With Premiere you have multiple color themes to choose from. This picture is taken using the Blue Radiance theme which is my favorite.

With the use of CSS you can do this like change some elements. This pictures shows the watched status changed from the green checkmark to a left hand ribbon check.
ra

You can change your home screen graphics for different libraries to get looks similar to these two pics:

There are a lot of canned things already done with CSS if you look here:
https://emby.media/community/index.php?/forum/144-web-app-css/

[Shendrickson 1]

Thank you all.  I appreciate all the guidance.  We're giving this a shot this year.  Got the server built, videos uploaded.  Licensing tomorrow.  Then I'll work on making it pretty.  :)

Sorry for the noob question but when I try to find the plugins, I must be in the wrong spot.  I only see one for Windows Desktop.  Where should I be looking for the one you suggested @rbjtech

[Shendrickson 1]

I found this but I don't seem to have the Plugins in the server dashboard

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159720-plugins

 

[Shendrickson 1]

I found it.  Under the Server Dashboard / Advanced.

[Shendrickson 1]

Last questions (Really going to try at least)

1. Do I modify the CSS from the Server/Settings /Custom CSS area?  I just create what I need there?
2. Is there a way to have the Home screen not show the compressed videos first but rather have them expanded like when you click the title underneath?
3. I know you said there are canned examples @cayars but I'm having a hard time finding the right search term.  Would it by My Media to key off of?

Compressed

Would like to have the Home screen open to this instead or something similar.

[Carlo 4561]

When we talk about modifying CSS we are talking about changes to system->css box (what you said) and these are usually smaller things that are typically cosmetic. You're not likely going to be able to "reskin" or drastically change things.  For that you would have to modify the pages themselves and this isn't likely something you want to tackle.

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/forum/144-web-app-css/ would be the section of the forum to find CSS example or to post asking for help for all things CSS related.

You can't replace or bypass the home screen normally, but maybe you could take advantage of the Libraries that show up.  By this I mean instead of having just 1 Video library do you have a use for 2 or 3 video libraries?  As an example you could have one library each for Foal, Yearling, Colt, Filly, Mare, Stallion, Gelding.  Something like this  could make it easier to find certain type of horses for your customers.  You also then wouldn't want to bypass the home screen as it would serve a great purpose.

 

[ebr 16182]

10 hours ago, cayars said:

As an example you could have one library each for Foal, Yearling, Colt, Filly, Mare, Stallion, Gelding.  Something like this

This would also be my first suggestion to provide some nice organization to allow people to find what they are looking for. Those may not be the right classifications but, if you can break it up into some sort of categories, that would be best.

Alternatively, you said you were able to control the network "landing" page so you might be able to redirect to the internal page via an url.  This would probably require you to setup an API key as if it were a third party app or something in order to get by the user validation.  I haven't actually tried that but it might work...

[Shendrickson 1]

Thanks @cayarsand @ebr.  If we were going to have this as a full time site, I would certainly add more categories/options for people to find horses.  As it is, it's an auction and each horse has a hip number.  People have their short lists already typically when they come and will just want to look at the horses they are interested in and search for the hip number.  Our videos are labeled Hip#-Horse Name to make that intuitive.  I was really just trying to have the first page seen after people login to display the list of videos.  For us, the need to click on the libary name to see the videos is one step that's not needed since we only need the one.   Since it seems like I can't just redirect people to catalog of videos, will CSS allow me to rename the text under the MY MEDIA?  Maybe I can change that to "Click Here To See Videos" or something.  This probably isn't going to be an issue as most people will figure it out but as many little things that I can solve upfront the better for me and my guys at the sale.  . Thanks for helping me think things through.

[Carlo 4561]

12 hours ago, Shendrickson said:

When you say you want to change the text under My Media are you talking about wanting to change the wording of "My Media" to something like "Horse Videos" or "Auction Videos" or similar?

 

[Shendrickson 1]

The wording under the compressed images of My Media.  In this case the 2021 Diamond McNabb....  But when looking up at my previous post and seeing what happens when you actually go into the library, the 2021 Diamond McNabb.... is shown as the title which makes sense to me.  Maybe I'll just suck it up and live with it.  . Still works great.

[Carlo 4561]

2012 Diamond McNabb... is the name you gave the library which you can change.

To change go to Library menu, hover over this library, click the 3 dot menu and choose the rename option.

[Happy2Play 9780]

12 minutes ago, Shendrickson said:

The wording under the compressed images of My Media.  In this case the 2021 Diamond McNabb....  But when looking up at my previous post and seeing what happens when you actually go into the library, the 2021 Diamond McNabb.... is shown as the title which makes sense to me.  Maybe I'll just suck it up and live with it.  . Still works great.

That is the Display Name you used when you created the library.  You can go to Dashboard-Library and select Rename on the library.

Edited May 29, 2021 by Happy2Play

[Shendrickson 1]

Thanks @Happy2Playand @cayars In my mind I wanted to have two different labels.  One for the title when in the library and a different one under the My Media thumbnails to be more descriptive so people know to take action.  Don't think it would look good to have the action description shown in the library.  Thanks again for the input.