Can we get some basic client functionality, please?

General Discussions Plex Features
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I keep getting regular emails from Plex, announcing a bunch of exciting new features (most of which, I just go, meh). Yet, I keep running across basic holes in functionality. When I come to the forums to investigate (maybe I’m just missing something?), I find LONG threads of users requesting these basic features, that often go back MANY years.

A great example, is the ability to download videos local. Let’s say you’re heading out on a road trip and want to load up a few movies on the kiddo’s iPad. Well, you’d better plan ahead, because it might take hours to days to transcode those videos… when they could be simply downloaded in a matter of minutes.

Or, I just discovered that now that I’ve been dumping my photos onto the Plex server, I can’t (from a Plex client) pull a photo or photos locally to actually use them. Let’s say I create a slideshow and show it to relatives over the holidays, and Uncle Joe says, hey, can you send me the photos from that slideshow? Um, well no, Uncle Joe, at least not easily because my fancy Plex system doesn’t allow that basic kind of thing.

What I’m finding most confusing, though, is the attitude of Plex employees on these forums. It seems to be a mixture of ‘well get to that’ going on for years and years, or a ‘you don’t need to do that’ kind of hand-waving the issue away.

Could we please get some work on basic functionality, instead of the fancy stuff… at least until things get caught up a bit?

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Yeah, unfortunately that is the impression I’m getting. :frowning:
Yet, everywhere, rave review of Plex. Are these reviewers using the same Plex?

Is there just no alternative/competition… so they just don’t care? (I suppose that is the case, or I’d be trying it out.)

Sorry, I guess I’m just in a state of disbelief at this point. I’ve talked the family into the idea, repurposed a machine as a server, started assembling all our media onto the server… and now what?

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As a Movie Library, Music Library and DVR it has worked well. With multiple countries, languages, platforms and user experiences being supported, I am surprised it works as well as it does. I agree that downloading local copies is annoying due to transcoding of source content. Perhaps if you set to Direct Play for device it would not transcode on Sync. You will still be subject to WiFi download speed, which could result in long times.

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Currently, mobile sync always transcodes video (unfortunately).

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Thanks, I’ll check that out!

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Yeah, that’s the thing. This is simple to fix, yet they seem to simply refuse to do it. Air Video has done it for years, for example. It also appears plex users here have hacked it to kind of work (ie. always download).

Yet, apparently, I can find a song in some movie I’m watching automagically, if I should ever need such a feature. :crazy_face:

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While I honestly don’t know for certain one way or the other, as a former developer I always cringe when folks say “it’s a simple fix”. It may look simple from the outside looking in and it’s easy to point at other apps that are not nearly as full-featured as Plex, but the Plex environment is anything but simple :slight_smile:

Also funnily enough, in the new desktops apps, you can ONLY download in the original format and people are screaming for transcode options :wink:

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Yeah, I say that in context of having read a number of threads on the topic. By easy, I mean that if users are writing scripts that get the job done, I’m sure the Plex programmers can do it too. Also, they are trying to come up with a universal solution that works both ways, and ensures the player can play the downloaded video. Yeah, that’s complex.

What I’m looking for is the ability to pick either sync OR download, and then if downloaded, I’ll deal with the video being compatible with the player or not (or I’ll use another player, or I’ll just make sure the original is encoded so it will play on my devices… which is the case for everything on my server already! None of it needs to be transcoded aside from bandwidth savings… which I might want if traveling… so I need BOTH).

That’s funny about the desktop apps… I haven’t noticed that yet, but I’d think it would more typically be mobile devices where you’d need the direct download (ex. going on the trip and loading the device up quickly).

The thing is, it should allow/do both. That is a core feature much more important than anything I’ve seen in those new feature emails in a year or so. Same with photos. Having a photo library system where you can’t download the photos is useless.

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The following is no help to you at all I am afraid, but I am hoping that a grain of the following will somehow get back to the decision-makers at Plex. I have been saying this loudly to all that will listen this year. The apparent lack of focus on detail is not a Plex issue, it is a US-wide product development issue:
Investors and boards want growth - new targets and new revenue projections. Product managers find it tricky to make growth projections for a ‘tweak’ or enhancement to what you and I call basic functionality, so they don’t. Often today product maintenance and product development live in entirely different money piles with engineering teams. My cat could tell you that of course maintaining, cleaning and polishing things would grow any product’s sales, but the issue is that spreadsheets have problems demonstrating maintenance doing so in the boardroom when all the data they have is based on marketing stats and projections. This is a US sickness today and why, although it seems that everyone in the world is suddenly working in product development and knows how to get customer input on products, we are simply not as good at development as we were two decades ago. Our enhanced financial insight hobbled the decision-making process. We are in a situation where doing the right thing creates well, not exactly bad results but reliably average results. Plex are a great developer as far as I am concerned, certainly better than some larger organizations I could mention. Its not the player it’s the game in this case. The ongoing problem for those that recognize what I say is that changing things involves arguing with cold, hard money - and that is difficult for a tech team to do. Hearing that Plex?

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Well said, and I largely agree. I can’t say if that is what is happening at Plex, but I suppose ‘look at xyz wizbang new features’ sells better than ‘let’s make the product actually work’. Yes, that has been an almost epidemic lately at many companies.

And, the core problem? Greed. Why have average growth when you can have stellar growth? The problem is it eventually crumbles and you end up in negative growth. And, that’s bad… but the greedy have typically left by then with cash in hand.

It’s interesting as I was just talking about similar in regard to Netflix the other day and then run across an article this morning about their huge losses of subscribers. They forgot their core business. Hopefully Plex doesn’t do that too.

So, on to check Emby out, and hopefully Plex doesn’t lose me. I guess I’m just ONE customer at this point, but the masses don’t seem overly happy in the forums here, either. Some companies aren’t smart enough to get the obvious, I suppose, until they actually see it in the spreadsheets.

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Happy people don’t typically post to troubleshooting forums :slight_smile:

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Ha!

Well, I’m pretty happy; at least happy enough to try and help :smiley:

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I’m pretty happy with it. Of course there are things I’d like to see added/changed but every product has that.

I’ve got two servers setup on my network, both have Remote Access setup that works (even across updates). I think why it works for me is that I don’t treat it like the “one ring to rule them all”. I just have video in it. Not photos, music, audiobooks, or anything else. I tried Music and Photo but determined Plex’s implementation wasn’t for me. I even use ChannelsDVR instead of Plex DVR.

I tend to keep things simple and use the best tool for the task.

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True, I’m sure there is an element of that in any kind of support forums. That said, I’ve participated in support forums about as long as they have existed, and there is a certain feel here that isn’t at companies with good support and attitudes.

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This has nothing to do with greed. Keep in mind that it’s only within the last year or so that the mobile apps have been able to playback codecs beyond the native capability of the device. For you as a single user with knowledge of codecs and know that the files you have can be downloaded as-is and work is great but imagine all the other users that don’t. If there was an ability to just download files, then those files couldn’t be played back. This forum would be filled with a lot more noise of “Why would you let me download the file if it won’t play.” That’s the issue we had with the apps before when there was a force direct play option. “I want my files to only direct play, but when I enable that option, nothing works.”

Also remember that mobile Sync is an old feature. There are plans to update it so that it will better understand the capabilities of the device involved so more files can be synced without needing to be transcoded. This is not an easy or quick change, but it will happen.

In the meantime, if you want to download files as is, you can use the mobile web browser on your device and Plex Web has a “download” option. You can then use the “local files” option in the app to view them.

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OK, then I need some help. :slight_smile:
My family isn’t going to really adopt Plex until they can do a couple of things with it (so far, my list might grow as I try other areas):

  1. Have reasonably easy ability to watch movies and videos when not on our local network (ie. stream).
  2. Be able to easily browse the photo library and select photos to download locally to use in other ways (make a photo album, maybe drag to Apple Photos app, edit, etc.).

Those don’t seem like overly complex things to want to do, and I guess I’d expect any even semi-mature media collection/display system to do them.

Also, my initial attempts to use the music aspect seem overly complex… again in regard to building the local on-device collection and switching to it when not on the network. It works, but it isn’t easy or intuitive from a UI perspective. (But, thankfully, it actually works.)

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To be clear, I can (sometimes) help within the current capabilities of Plex. I’m not able to magically make it so photos will download for you as that’s not supported in the software.

This is doable but I’m not sure if it will meet your definition of “easy”. Similar to what @anon18523487 stated, the moving parts that all have to work together include: file compatibility (video and audio codecs) with the target device; and if transcoding is necessary, server hardware capable of doing it for the target device. And much of this is handled through server and client settings.

If you’re having a specific issue or just need to know where to get started, I recommend starting a thread with your specifics:

Server version number and OS it’s installed on
Player device, OS version, and Plex app version
Content info (video encode/resolution/container)

Because different devices have different capabilities, it’s recommended that you create one thread per device type (e.g. one for iOS, one for player-mace, etc).

P.S. are you really talking about the desktop apps at all (player-mace and player-windows)?

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Sync doesn’t support photos, but you should be able to download individual photos or share them with others. There isn’t a share album or share photo library yet.

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That’s good, but then I’m a bit scared what the alternative reason is…

Hmm, maybe I’ve just been lucky with my encoding then, but I haven’t had much trouble. Other apps seem to play about anything I throw at them.

But, this isn’t new. Back when I had a MythTV server, I had to make sure I encoded things in a format it could play back. If you’re doing encoding stuff, that’s a consideration you take into account.

So, your average users are encoding files to put on their Plex servers, but have no clue if they will be compatible with their devices? I’d imagine if they are capable of doing the one thing, they could understand a disclaimer that if they download, the result might not be compatible.

So, you’re ruining functionality for everyone because you don’t want to try and get the uneducated users to understand this? Isn’t there the sync option for those people? Heck, put a disclaimer right in the download dialog box. And/or you could easily have a TextExpander response to those types of posts.

That’s good to hear. Is that a month away? Year? Years? This seems to have been a problem since like what, 2013? Are we talking 2023? Or 2033?

Sorry for the snark, but my gosh, such a problem as this should be near the top of the pile, I’d think. Again, this is basic functionality for an app with a primary purpose (at least initially) of being a video library.

Thanks, but that won’t fly well with the family. I guess it could be a side solution I could perform for them in a pinch.

Also, didn’t I just install the Plex app on my Mac because the web access is being done away with? Or, did I misunderstand that?

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I think this is where part of the problem stems from… the assumption of streaming. If my son is riding in the car on a road-trip, there is no Internet connection. I’m eventually going to get the remote access going, but that isn’t an ideal solution.

Fair point, though they are advertising that addition as a photo library type functionality. It would be nice, since it is there, to make it useful. I hate to have one solution for video, another for photos, another for music. I was hoping Plex (or whatever I pick) can do them all reasonably well.