While I am truly excited with the Apps and think it's an amazing component. I find myself drawn to what the future ideas and implementations of Plex have in store.
Most important to me is the library and it's current, lackluster form. I have seen numerous times where developers have mentioned streamlining/enhancing the library portion of Plex.
I am intrigued on what the plan is and what the future holds.
Can a developer discuss these potential changes with us?
All I can say at this point is that we’re aware of the severe limitations imposed by the current library system, and we’re working on a solution to move past these limitations
Ho brah, wat doing fo' one library? How gun make da kine mo bettah? Right now it all lolo and geevum dirty lickins!
Heh.
If I log onto the beta test forums that we've been using (sorry for my absense, things got crazy hectic) can you be a bit more specific there as I do have some ideas I could throw against the wall ... like cooked spaghetti ... only less tasty.
Y'know I roll the library problem around in my brain a lot, and while it's true it does have severe limitations (the database format is hideous, for a start) I keep coming back to one thing -- I can't see how it could operate fundamentally differently.. any way I cut it in my brain it comes back to scraping data from a list of (potentially unreliable) sites and stuffing that database into a (hopefully better formed) database..
Still, I think Elan has a much better imagination than I :)
We haven’t thrown the spaghetti against the way yet but we will start soon. I think the main reason we’re going to do a lot of this internally is I don’t want to get feature bloat. Give us a couple months, we’ll come up with something that works and in our eyes fills all the gaps that the original library was lacking. We’re using a lot of ideas that we’ve heard from the forums, and if you have more please post them!
:lol: No worries, we'll be giving early access to all the beta testers to bang on things and comment. Additionally, we'd love to hear any suggestions/ideas here or in the beta forum.
A couple of suggestions for the new implementation of the library:
1. I'd love to see automatic scanning for new content. One of the things that confused me when I initially started with Plex/XBMC is the scraping process and adding items to the database... I think a more iTunes like experience would be what I'm after. Even a context menu in the finder "Add media to plex" or dragging the file over the Plex application would be pretty cool. I think it might also be a good idea to stop using the terminology "scraping". As a noob it's a confusing term, I think it would be better to make reference to "Retrieving media information from the Internet" or some other terminology.
2. An external media manager would be pretty cool in order to manage the content from a networked computer. Scrapers are often incomplete, have dodgy fanart or supply US centric information. For example, our Classification system is different in Australia, we don't have NC-17 or PG-13 etc. A way to easily edit this info would be good.
3. Media tagging would be great. Reading this information from the media itself would be ideal, but even an easy way to input this information.
That's all I can think of for the moment, but I'm sure I have more suggestions. :P
I'd def be interested in beta testing when the time comes.
Just thought I’d jot down a couple of ideas (some of these are good, some not so hot, but they’re not in any order of merit):
A client/server library system - scrape once - enjoy across your network (and potentially have Plex ‘server’ stream content to Plex ‘client’ for simple 2-3 machine setups).
→ Once this is implemented, a Plex style URL system should be simple enough so that you can link to content effortlessly and Plex ‘clients’ will understand it, ie, email someone on your own network a link that looks like “plex://servername/StreamingContent/Movies/Kent’s home made movie, no, not that sort of movie sicko”… I’m yet to come up with a good use for this, but, it is something that I suspect could come in very useful down the road
Functionality for portable machines to take part of your library away with you (tag and copy from within Plex) including syncing watched status back up to the ‘main’ instance when you get home.
Extended fields for ratings, content resolution etc
Parental controls
Custom tagging
Autoscanning triggered by watching an mdfind type process on volumes that support that sort of thing
‘Move to library’ type functionality for files in non-content sources, with user definable target naming structure (including episode name pulled from scraper where appropriate) with optional sym/hardlinking back to the original source for the torrenters (ie, the.office.us.s01e07.blahdeblah.720p.mkv to be copied to /Volumes/TV/Series/The Office (US)/Season 1/The Office (US) 1x07 - Some episode name.mkv)
Automatic ‘move to library functionality’ as above, based on watching a directory for new content
RSS feeds of newly scanned material - other alerting mechanisms for letting the user know new content is available (email, growl, call a script - I can see myself getting SMS summaries daily )
Web based library interface… and, to get really groovy, on the fly flv conversion for watching Plex based library content on portable devices/remote machines (had this set up for mythtv a couple of years ago - it was groovy then, but it’d be groovier now in the age of ubiquitous 3G networks in some places and iPhone type devices… should this be implemented I reserve the right to call it the Plex Moistmaker).
Somehow having hulu/iplayer integration with the library… ie, check for another episode of this show on hulu that you don’t have locally stored.
There’s been some talk in the forums of physical media management (although, while I don’t dispute the usefulness of this, ultimately media storage like this is going to go the way of the Dodo in the medium to long term so it is a heap of effort for what is likely to only be a short-medium term useful piece of functionality).
More of a scraper thing - but automagic subtitle downloading.
Storing snapshots of your library for the last month or so, that way, when something goes screwy, you can revert to last week’s library and rescan the most recent stuff rather than the lot.
‘Guessing’ where something slots into the library and putting a simple placeholder in when the scrapers fail
‘Unscanned content’ list (and RSS)
I’ve got a trick to help come up with ideas for Plex that I use sometimes that may help others.
I imagine I have a hotel with a bunch of rooms, all with Mac Minis and TV’s for the guests… obviously I can’t be running around doing system support 24x7, nor should there ever be a need in normal circumstances to enter guests rooms for IT type work (nor go in over VNC)… that being the case… what would I hope to/need to see. What would someone who has never seen Plex/didn’t even realize they were looking at a computer expect to see/need to know.
Ooh… also, tying in with scrapers again, 2 different update library modes - attended and unattended scans.
Unattended is what we have now, attended asks questions based on some sort of ‘just how dicey do we think this scraping guess is’ type heuristic. This would help dramatically with things like BSG scraping in the original series without needing to know too much about what you are doing etc etc.
I've been thinking about this for a while and think it would be great to have a way for plugins to add references to things to the library, rather than being separate. I think it's kind of tough to get right and would definitely have to be something which the user has to authorise upon installing a plugin. So plugins should also be able to work in a standalone way. There is also the issue of perhaps only wanting some thing stuff from a certain service in the library etc.
It could also be something that the sites wont be too happy as it would include pretty much continuously crawling the site, which could add up to quite a lot and perhaps bring some unwanted attention to plex.
All in all a great idea but it needs to be very well thought out for it to work for everyone.
Some side items of the library and library functionality I feel are missing:
Library “Metadata”: All changes, updates and data entry should function like metadata and update a text file within the movie directory. That way changes are committed to the file for life, unless you delete the attached metadata. We should also have the ability to edit all metadata within Plex proper, which would allow us to stay out of the text files.
Movie Series Groupings: Allow some sort of grouping that allows movie content to be aggregated by series. (Jaws, James Bond, Matrix, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc, etc.) Preferably this would function by having one listing for JAMES BOND and when you click it a new submenu would open up with the associated movies sorted by year.
End Point Recognition For Graphic Layout: The repitition of covers and/or the terminating point need to be optional or removed. Nothing is less satisfying than opening up a music artist with one album and being confused by the layout. Maybe this is a function of any particular skin and skin artists ignore it?
Music Album Type Groups: Allow a tag to be set on albums for whether it is a COMPILATION album by various artists (and it will group in a COMP listingor a VARIOUS listing), COMPILATION by one artist (and it will sort to the top or bottom of albums), SINGLE/EP by artist (and it will sort to the top or bottom of albums).
and/or
Sort Field in Metadata: Allow for a sort field that defaults with album tag, unique tag, year - album, etc.
Most of the issues / problems people seam to have with the library is based on CRAPPY INPUT. If the file names are not good the scrapper can only “guess” this much. I started to name my content similar to what my favorite internet database (e.g. IMDB) uses. Since I started doing this … I get a 99% hit rate(only foreign language content does throw me off a little).
It might help Looking at a new database system in two separate ways:
BACKSIDE:
as a ROBUST system to contain all the information we want (e.g. including rating for other countries)
a system which is very “tolerant” (e.g. can be cut off in the middle of a transaction without getting corrupted … power outage / kids switch out the system etc.)
FRONTSIDE:
skin able interface, where you can add more functionality just by using the base information from within the library.
This would allow to present / use the information within the library in may different ways without introducing any
new bugs into an already robust system … just because someone wanted to have a specific addition to the library.
One Idea might be to create a FRAMEWORK similar to what is used for the plug-ins, so many more people can help make the system even better.
All in all I am happy with what we got … there is always room for improvement (e.g. a search engine similar to itunes … to help you find content while you type …)
Definately!! However I personally would like a different implementation: Basically just an option to lump them all together based on the series name but still have all the thumbnails show. So rather than digging through a submenu, it just changes the sort order. You could then have the option to "stack" the movies together if you wished. So you could group all the Star Wars movies together in a "Star Wars Saga" group, and use the context menu to stack them together if you wished. They would appear in your list of movies with sorting based on the "Star Wars Saga" name rather than the individual names. Within the group you could also assign a running order, but by default maybe sorted by year.
I dunno if that makes sense to anyone, but it did to me :)
This make sense. My main time drain over the past month since I discovered Plex is going back and manually renaming all my downloaded Movies and TV to fix my libraries.
To me its seems the best way to improve the libraries are:
1. Make them easier
2. Make them automatic
For the first point I mean make it easier to add stuff to the library. I often chat about Plex on other Mac forums and people often complain its "too hard." When you add a source you should be able to pick a folder as if you were going through finder. Then once you select the folder you get a drop down box with two options: TV Shows or Movies. TV Shows is TVDB scraping, Movies is IMDB. All edge cases and other options should only be in an advanced settings menu.
Maybe the best way to do this is to have a wizard that runs when Plex first runs. It asks the user to select their different media folders and tell Plex what they are (music, movies or TV). In the super long run it would be nice if Plex just knew if something was a movie or a TV show based on the file and in one folder you could have both and it would separate the two in its libraries (maybe over a certain playing time= movie?). Many people have their media in just one folder.
On the second point (and the parents point) in the long run it would be neat if Plex could have a smarter scraper. Everything that is the brain of that tool that is here on the forum to rename shows just needs to be a part of Plex- if Plex scans "family.guy.201.hdtv.releasegroup.avi" it should be smart enough to tell itself "That is the first episode in the second season of Family Guy" and then put it in the library that way without having to move or rename the file.
On the second point I know that this is one of the big goals of Boxee and they are having mixed success. I do know that the renaming tool does a good enough job if its smarts was in Plex scraping would be twice as easy as it is for downloaded content.
(Note: I am not complaining. I love Plex how it is, it is worth the time for me to rename things. I just know from being at friends houses that many torrenters just have one folder everything is downloaded to and TV Shows, Music and Movies just exist as a jumbled mess in this folder with horrible "scene" names. Few have things as organized as Plex likes.....)
Seriously if your organization skills consist of dumping all the Legos in one box you deserve to be searching for that one piece for hours! (Hope my reference isn't too obscure in foreign countries)
I can see that, especially for TV shows and movies. Normally, you watch them once and delete them when you finish. It doesn't make much sense to put a lot of work into file names and folder structure. Music, photos, porn, and home videos are the type of stuff that you might want to keep. iTunes and iPhoto take care of organizing the first two. It would be nice if Plex could make the latter easy too.
Personally, I followed Mako's suggestion and use TVnzb.com and SABnzb so my TV shows should get automatically organized now.
