But regarding filtering: if we could instead have basic logic operators such as AND, OR, NOT, and some parenthesis, we could accomplish so much without mucking up the interface.
I don't see that happening. But if they just added a DENY ALL FILTERs and DENY ALL TAGS to each section that has an ALLOW then we would have what's needed.
Liked. When I discovered plex I was very happy & excited on what it can do. It made my media organization easier. I visit the forum every single day checking for updates and reading threads. After months of doing this I noticed one thing. Plex is very slow with regards to fixing current bugs/issues and implementing new & requested features. I mean this is not a hobby anymore like how it started plex has paying customers who EXPECTS a working full featured software. It took more than 2 years to have parental controls & still half baked. Im in the point where I rarely visit the forum to check for updates coz I know I will be disappointed.
Liked. When I discovered plex I was very happy & excited on what it can do. It made my media organization easier. I visit the forum every single day checking for updates and reading threads. After months of doing this I noticed one thing. Plex is very slow with regards to fixing current bugs/issues and implementing new & requested features. I mean this is not a hobby anymore like how it started plex has paying customers who EXPECTS a working full featured software. It took more than 2 years to have parental controls & still half baked. Im in the point where I rarely visit the forum to check for updates coz I know I will be disappointed.
Ok, I'll finally chime in here too... been watching this thread for days... but ChakaBear hit my push-button... "this is not a hobby anymore" I now have a vested interest in Plex, but the fact that it took over 2 years to have the current implementation of Parental Controls... yeah, Ok, that's where I'm at.
I have been around long enough that I have many old programs sitting on my shelves... some on 5-1/4" floppies.
Many became obsolete, but most became abandoned... I do not want Plex to become one of them.
I will continue to check on the Forum, multiple times a day, because I like helping my fellow Plexians, at least at the level I am able to assist, but the underlying theme to my daily visit is often finding frustration and disappointment and it is being exhibited by way too many "paying customers" in my opinion.
Good show Carlo.
Well spoken.
I'll chime in with a different tune on the syncing issues mentioned. If any of you hang around the cloud sync forum you have probably seen my posts about the great success I've had with cloud sync recently. Come monday or tuesday my ENTIRE library should be done syncing. Currently I have 4734 items successfully synced. I started in mid-december, so we are talking 45-50 days to get this far and the end is in sight.
As far as the transcoding everything before uploading issue goes, this is pretty annoying, but easy to workaround. Start a small sync job and it will be finished transcoding and start uploading pretty quickly, once it starts uploading, start another small job, you will then be transcoding and uploading at the same time with just a little lead time wasted. Continue this process and you should always be transcoding and uploading at the same time, so you aren't wasting time.
The watched flag not syncing IS definitely an issue. If you check the logs, there will normally be an error syncing the watched status. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it used to always work, this needs to be fixed.
Cloud sync definitely could use a few improvements and bug fixes and I would like to see Plex address these. But I would rather Plex work on other features/bugs than spend time re-architecting cloud sync since if you are patient, have a decent CPU and a decent upload speed (I only have 5mbps), it works very well even for syncing your entire library (for me at least).
The problem with this approach is that it's very hands on and doesn't need to be. You should be able to select a library, tell it to sync and not touch/play with it EVER again. Anything new added to that library should automatically get synced.
If you setup a TV Show/Series to be synced then that should be the end of it. Never touch it again and plex will keep this updated/synced when new shows are added.
That's the way sync should work and how people expect it to work and HOW it could work. Not a "few at a time" which isn't manageable for a large library.
Bless you for having the patience to do small batches for a month!
Carlo
That may work for you or me but it doesn't work for a less motivated / interested spouse or child. I want something a whole family can use. It needs to 'just work' for people of all ages and skill levels to use something.
I'll chime in with a different tune on the syncing issues mentioned. If any of you hang around the cloud sync forum you have probably seen my posts about the great success I've had with cloud sync recently. Come monday or tuesday my ENTIRE library should be done syncing. Currently I have 4734 items successfully synced. I started in mid-december, so we are talking 45-50 days to get this far and the end is in sight.
As far as the transcoding everything before uploading issue goes, this is pretty annoying, but easy to workaround. Start a small sync job and it will be finished transcoding and start uploading pretty quickly, once it starts uploading, start another small job, you will then be transcoding and uploading at the same time with just a little lead time wasted. Continue this process and you should always be transcoding and uploading at the same time, so you aren't wasting time.
The watched flag not syncing IS definitely an issue. If you check the logs, there will normally be an error syncing the watched status. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it used to always work, this needs to be fixed.
Cloud sync definitely could use a few improvements and bug fixes and I would like to see Plex address these. But I would rather Plex work on other features/bugs than spend time re-architecting cloud sync since if you are patient, have a decent CPU and a decent upload speed (I only have 5mbps), it works very well even for syncing your entire library (for me at least).
Wow man you sume up my fellings very well =S
You deserve a cooki
Good post. I also find the idea of prioritizing adding new features ahead of fixing broken stuff less-than awesome. That being said, Plex is the media-system I use because I like it the most. We need core-features at 100% and feature parity across platforms.
Fantastic post OP. I really wish that the Plex team would focus on functionality and improving the plex experience more than getting plex on any new device that gets released. There are many of us that bought a lifetime plexpass to support the further devlopment of plex, but I have to say I am disappointed by the lack of progress in some very crucial areas. Sync is one of the most obvious one and is overly complicated and buggy. Server side controls on connecting clients another.
I have to totally agree with the overall comments on this post. My bugbear is when a bug in functionality is reported (as I have done several times) there is never an acknowledgement or thanks for going to the trouble of documenting any issues. The only time that I got any response was when I PMed a dev directly - this isn't the way things are meant to work with a service you are paying for.
Let's get this straight - I am a customer paying for a service.
If part of the service is broken and I report it, it is the norm in business for the company to acknowledge the problem and give me an expected timescale as to when they are going to fix the issue that is broken on the service that I continue to pay for. Ignoring me or others who raise issues is not an acceptable option! :angry:
Personally, I love Plex (been using since before it was called Plex), and have got so many people using it across all the devices, and will continue to do so. I know how to operate the app on every device I have it on, but each one is different, which is my only real annoyance (I get there will be bugs, I'm ok with that). I would like to see some consistency in UI/UX design. I don't believe the company has a UX designer, and that's the core problem.
The PC, and mobile markets are pretty well established now. We as both consumers, and designers, know for the most part what works, and what doesn't work in UI/UX. There's always going to be Apple vs Android type debates, which has a better experience etc, but at this point, the core of how the Plex Player looks, and works, should be the same on all devices. Touch, remote, mouse, voice, and even gamepads, all have their own interactions, but for the most part an Android phone, and an iPhone are essentially the same "type" of device; the experience should be near identical on each device.
As a designer, I've worked, and continue to work, on multiple platforms where the software needs to be cross-platform. Each platform will have little annoyances, but a user that started with PHT should be able to go to a touch device, and not feel lost. It's weird, designers (system, UI, UX, whatever) are probably the most important role to a successful product, but are quite often ignored, or brought it when something is broke, to figure out a way to design around. Everyone thinks they can design, but they can't, designing by committee is a horrible idea. I think the Plex team are great, there are so many cool things in Plex that nobody was doing, sync alone was worth the "donation" I made by purchasing Plex Pass. I just don't think they are good at UX/UI design. Maybe that's the problem of going from a hobby project to a commercial project, taking baby steps along the way, the bad design decisions get carried over. If you were funded, and were to start designing Plex right now, you'd hire a few good designers, and you'd be set.
I have to totally agree with the overall comments on this post. My bugbear is when a bug in functionality is reported (as I have done several times) there is never an acknowledgement or thanks for going to the trouble of documenting any issues. The only time that I got any response was when I PMed a dev directly - this isn't the way things are meant to work with a service you are paying for.
Let's get this straight - I am a customer paying for a service.
If part of the service is broken and I report it, it is the norm in business for the company to acknowledge the problem and give me an expected timescale as to when they are going to fix the issue that is broken on the service that I continue to pay for. Ignoring me or others who raise issues is not an acceptable option! :angry:
Haha, you obviously don't own any Apple products? :(
If you were funded, and were to start designing Plex right now, you'd hire a few good designers, and you'd be set.
So how long should this take to be "set"?
They just received $10M in funding.
I am expecting big things.
So how long should this take to be "set"?
They just received $10M in funding.
I am expecting big things.
I reckon with the right designers, and a good artist or two, you could fix the design issues, and have all your assets in less than a month (depending on back and forth approval process). Who knows? Maybe the funding allowed them to do that, and they're already working on a unified design. Programming is another matter..
So how long should this take to be "set"?
They just received $10M in funding.
I am expecting big things.
As far as i'm read up on that, most of that will be invested in some sort "itunes killing" functionality. Focussed on music aperrantly. <_<
I hope not. While the current music features in Plex is/are lacking compared to Movies and TV it's not $10M behind. :)
From where I'm sitting (with 12K albums) even spending 1/10th of that on "music" would be a terrible waste of finances as music isn't and shouldn't be the cornerstone of Plex (not from a licensing standpoint anyway). Music is fundamentally, much easier to work with than video for numerous reasons. For the most part they need to support a few more file types, clean up the interface, add a few features (well more than a few) and cleanup the tagging and crazy meta-data being used for music. Much of the needed work is on the server side and could/should be able to be tackled by 1 developer in a couple of months.
But of course all of this is speculation and no one except for Plex themselves know what's in store for the near future. So lets cut them a break on this for now until we know more...
Carlo
PS I totally agree on the user interface. It almost seems with each new client release they are trying something new/different to see if it works better and it's fragmenting the interfaces as there is almost no "universal" interface anymore. These are the kind of things that could/should be done via mock-ups for each client and could/should be tested on a user panel (number of people for feedback) before coding is started.
I hope not. While the current music features in Plex is/are lacking compared to Movies and TV it's not $10M behind. :)
Well said. I couldn't care less about music, or for any reason, using the money for "iTunes killing."
To coin a phrase from the '70's... "I want my PHT."
[OK, not really, but you know what I mean]
Haha, you obviously don't own any Apple products? :(
I don't think he/she was specifically comparing Plex to Apple? Two very different companies by all measures, and Apple doesn't pride themselves of being approachable and doesn't have history of interacting directly with their customers. So please don't make that comparison - it is meaningless... :)
I think it was a fair and spot-on rant. Companies in the Plex-league are much more supportive than Plex has become (they used to be much better), and it is hurting both their customers (comprising both the loyal users and any especially new users) and it will, of course, hurt them in the medium time frame - sadly...
PS Do any of you guys have any "Pet Peeves" I didn't cover with Plex that bother you (at a high level)?
Thanks for excellent topic. As others said I avoided looking at this thinking it was just another angry user but I am glad I opened it up to read.
My pet hates:
- I spend a lot of time to troubleshoot a problem and collect what i believe are good diagnostics - only to end up with my topic ignored - not even acknowledged or at least a thank you - we have registered internally and will look into it. I often have to reproduce the evidence when new versions appear. I have a number of topics to this date remain unanswered and not acknowledged.
- Plex Media Server design for scalability. It is not. It crashes when handling large requests on windows systems due to memory fragmentation or may be memory leaks. I have a server that i kept for past year hoping one day the Devs will be interested in finding out why it is crashing every day - and why the database ended up in the state it is at
- Despite widespread repeats of a problem eg Shared Users syncing whole library sections and breaking Plex Media Server - no acknowledgment yet from the Plex Team (apart from private message from elan) that something is going to be done.
- There must be a flaw in the bundles updates/install design / process that leads to repeated need for system and framework bundle resets - A lot of effort is spent firefighting rather than fixing problems root cause.
I couldn't agree more with this post. Cloud sync is a joke, I opened two really annoying issues just the other day and Plex in general seems very sluggish on my collections and things like refreshing just a single series is unreliable, it either doesn't work at all or you have to pound the refresh button multiple times. Plex has really been going downhill IMHO. Unfortunately Plex is the best that is out there for how I want to use it. I'm hoping it will make a turn around but I feel like they will just keep churning out half-baked features.
As for this:
I'll chime in with a different tune on the syncing issues mentioned. If any of you hang around the cloud sync forum you have probably seen my posts about the great success I've had with cloud sync recently. Come monday or tuesday my ENTIRE library should be done syncing. Currently I have 4734 items successfully synced. I started in mid-december, so we are talking 45-50 days to get this far and the end is in sight.
As far as the transcoding everything before uploading issue goes, this is pretty annoying, but easy to workaround. Start a small sync job and it will be finished transcoding and start uploading pretty quickly, once it starts uploading, start another small job, you will then be transcoding and uploading at the same time with just a little lead time wasted. Continue this process and you should always be transcoding and uploading at the same time, so you aren't wasting time.
The watched flag not syncing IS definitely an issue. If you check the logs, there will normally be an error syncing the watched status. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it used to always work, this needs to be fixed.
Cloud sync definitely could use a few improvements and bug fixes and I would like to see Plex address these. But I would rather Plex work on other features/bugs than spend time re-architecting cloud sync since if you are patient, have a decent CPU and a decent upload speed (I only have 5mbps), it works very well even for syncing your entire library (for me at least).
I have really bad news for you. You can lose all of that, in a second. I was on a similar mission but I lost 300GB and then 600GB of cloud data. It was a ■■■■■ to upload each series one by one (so that it would be available after upload, queuing doesn't work correctly) but I finally got a good deal of content synced from my server and lowered the load on the server. Then after a reboot of the computer or restart of plex it was all gone. I'm not going to go into the details, you can read my posts for that, but I no longer trust cloud syncing. I use it now to hold the first few episodes of different shows as a teaser and if my family wants more I can upload them then. It's not a great setup but I won't kill my upload pipe (preventing good streams to friends) to upload to the cloud where it might just disappear.
Do any of you guys have any "Pet Peeves" I didn't cover with Plex that bother you (at a high level)?
I think you've outlined many of my frustrations. One of my biggest annoyance that wasn't mentioned, is the lackluster audio and subtitle support.
Audio track support isn't much of a problem, but when you have a movie with a audio commentary you run into trouble. Generally the audio commentary track will be in the same language as the content itself. But there are only two categories of description when it comes to audio tracks, language and codec. If both tracks are in same codec, you'd have no idea which track is which. Even if you did have them in different codec, it isn't descriptive enough for anyone else other than the administrator. This is especially true when there are more than one commentary tracks. Naturally, with having only type of subtitle and the language as only categories, subtitles run into the same issues. We need descriptive track information, just like MKV containers do.
Another annoyance for me is the language settings. I live in a home where everyone needs different language support and I don't find the server-level language settings convenient. I either have to manually turn off unwanted subtitle every time, or someone else has to manually turn on subtitle every time. I don't see that as elegant solution. Now that we have Plex Home, I think it is time to make language settings to user level.
