Music & Video Media Type Separation in Madsonic........

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jsgates
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Music & Video Media Type Separation in Madsonic........

Unread post by jsgates »

Madsonic has gotten to a point where it is pretty good with video streaming. However, the user experience in the Madsonic web gui still leaves some to be desired on the Video side of things. Seeing as how Madsonic is a fork of Subsonic, video media type integration is kind of an afterthought.

With the exception of Smart Playlists, Madsonic is VERY solid on the audio side of things. (and there are other features like AutoDJ & Radio) Last.FM scraping is very useful as well for the Artist Thumbnails and Bios.

I would like propose the following improvements for other Media Source types:

1.) Currently, if I add additional media folder into Madsonic (ie. Movies, TV Shows, Concerts, Comedy, etc.) these are added just fine and play. In Madsonic 6.0 we can even group them by type. However, this is where the limitation begins. The Madsonic Home screen currently only accounts for Audio media sources (Random Albums, Recently Added Albums, etc.) With Madsonic now having Video media support, it makes sense for the Madsonic Home screen options to become dependent on the Media Type you are browsing. So if I am browsing "All Music", I would expect to see items on the Madsonic Home screen only from Music. However, as it is currently I see my Random/Recently Added Albums, but with Movies, TV Shows, etc. mixed in.

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Breaking the Madsonic Home options apart based on media source/grouping would also address the issue with Music album art dimensions vs Movie/TV Poster dimensions, and allow for viewing Random Movie/TV Show items when browsing your Movie, Series, or Video media folders. When viewing "All Folders", the Madsonic Home screen could display a separate page showing a section of Recently Added Movies, a section of recently added albums, etc.


2.) On the Media Folders page, it would also be nice to have a few other common Group selections for videos, such as Concerts,Stand-Up Comedy, Documentaries.

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3.) Metadata/Media Information for Video Sources displayed based on Grouping. So say I browse my "Movies" media folder in Madsonic, and then I have a folder for each movie. Whenever I click on the movie currently, I can see it in the List view or the video thumbnail view, but that is it. It would be nice to look for information to display about the movie within that folder, and display it similar to how Madsonic currently displays the Artist Bio from Last.FM. However, this should be much simpler than having to scrape from the Web, as most people using Video media folders in Madsonic are most likely using something like XBMC/KODI at home and already have the information in files in their movie/tv show folders. In addition there are great tools out there that scrape this information for you and create the necessary information files. Therefore, Madsonic would just need to parse the XML .nfo file in the movie or TV Shows folder to grab the Plot or Release year information to display.

MediaElch is a great tool for users to get all of this information, and then Madsonic would just need to display some very basic information from the .nfo file, like the Plot, release year, etc.

MediaElch is here: http://www.kvibes.de/en/mediaelch/

Long-term solution, best method would be to check for local .nfo file first (like XBMC/KODI does) and if it doesn't exist then scrape the web for the info (ie. TheMovieDB.org, TheTVDB.com). All Madsonic would really need to display is the Plot, Release Year, & the movie poster art. This would make browsing your videos in Madsonic much more eye-pleasing.

These features would make Madsonic the Ultimate Media streaming solution. XBMC/KODI, Plex and others are great for home use but Madsonic is perfect for on the go! Thanks for reading and I hope these features are considered for implementation.
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Re: Music & Video Media Type Separation in Madsonic........

Unread post by jsgates »

FYI -

Was browsing through the forum and it looks like Scott has already done some of the work in his branch that could be re-used and integrated into Madsonic.

http://forum.madsonic.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=729
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Re: Music & Video Media Type Separation in Madsonic........

Unread post by WaaX »

Same issue for me that music and videos are mixed in. I'll try to setup another madsonic just for videos so don't they mix.
jsgates
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Re: Music & Video Media Type Separation in Madsonic........

Unread post by jsgates »

Just wanted to check back in on this thread to see if there are any plans to separate the media types in the future. I am assuming it is a fairly complex task or this probably would have been done already. :)
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