Great to hear that a long long awaited feature is being implemented. Just wondering, since the title says movie and most of the discussions on this thread revolves around movies, are TV shows getting no love in this feature 
? I have 4K and 720p (to stream on thinner clients used by my family) versions of most of my shows and it would be a shame not to have this awesome feature for them too! @james
Unfortunately, TV shows aren’t going to be supported at this time.
If you have duplicates of all your series the best option may be to put them in separate folders, and create favorites for each. This would allow you to browse by favorite, or add one of the favorites to the library - depending on the device you are streaming on.
Sad to hear the implementation ignores multiple versions of TV show episodes. 
Was hoping it would be a universal in nature, a la my post earlier in this thread.
I understand, but if you look over the implementation details listed above this isn’t really conducive for multiple seasons and episodes. For TV shows, these would already be grouped together under a single item in the library, you would just see duplicate episodes when entering the series details page.
Of course, if you are using something like Plex, Emby, or Jellyfin the version selection feature is handled differently (Plex is currently working, and Jellyfin/Emby support is planned).
1 Like
Hang on, is support for multiple versions of movies in Jellyfin not included in this ‘in-progress’ feature??
It’s technically a different feature than what is being discussed here, but hopefully it will make it into the 7.5 release as well.
Edit: This is the topic to follow.
If someone has multiple versions of the same identified film (either different edits and/or different resolutions/bitrates) and they are all collapsed to one item in the library, and the user also has custom artwork saved locally with the file to distinguish these items … how will Infuse determine which artwork is used for the collapsed library item?
Will TMDB have (and will Infuse access) updated title / plot / cast / etc. details reflecting changes between different versions; or is this simply merging library items currently recognized as the same title?
Will each items’ user-customized fanart be displayed on the details page based on whichever is selected?
Will collapsing such “duplicates” in the library views be optional?
Weird to say, but I’ve grown happy enough with my workaround and don’t want to lose the work put into it. 
The main item would use artwork from the first item, but you would be able to override artwork for either using your own NFO and artwork files. Editing metadata for one item, would not affect the other(s).
Also, TMDB has hinted they may add support for multiple cuts at some point in the future and these would be available to Infuse if/when they are added.
Pretty sure the Cast and Crew from the 300 Extended Cut looks like the DCU Justice League ensemble
1 Like
Yep. Most is dummy data from an NFO file. 
2 Likes
Any thought into implementing this stacked as 1 movie with buttons or dropdown (like Emby) to select the version you wish to play? Here is a concept photo that is in another thread on here as an example. https://global.discourse-cdn.com/business7/uploads/firecore/optimized/3X/8/3/83cf823cae6c75ff324df22295ecf29a054ac575_2_690x388.png
4 Likes
Unfortunately I had to discontinue allowing Infuse to view my local .NFO files (which I used to edit movie titles to [1] differentiate between alternate versions and [2] allow films from franchises to be listed together in chronological release-date order when using “sort by title”) when Firecore’s addition of support for Cast & Crew override via .NFO broke Infuse’s internal Cast & Crew database and search feature.
Have you yet looked into fixing that issue?
Or, while I have your attention, checked to see why “Sort by Filename” is still neither sorting by filename nor parent-folder name?
Ah, so it’s essentially a collection of the same movie? Not the same as the implementation with Plex’s versions?
1 Like
That is correct.
The grouping feature here is not only aimed at grouping multiple resolutions together, but also things like multiple cuts (Director, Theatrical, etc…), duplicate items from multiple sources, and will open the door for us to enable support for videos spread over multiple discs.
What concerns me about your implementing it this way is that you will be essentially replacing the filters bar (I don’t know the official terminology for it) at the bottom of the film’s details pages, which already has a purpose and one that this proposal will be interfering with.
Consider this:
Currently, whether I begin browsing my library collection by either the blue “Movies” library favorite, the “Sci-Fi Movies” genre button, the “1970s Movies” filter button, or a search result for “Ridley Scott Movies” …. If I click on any title in that bunch … let’s say, “Alien” … and arrive at that title’s details page, the bottom bar of that details page is populated by movie posters for all other films in my library that match the given filter use to begin my browsing (be it a major category button, a specific genre, a specific decade filter, or a given search result).
Given I searched for Ridley Scott films, clicking on “Alien” will populate the bottom filters bar (or whatever it is officially called) with the posters for all the other Ridley Scott films in my collection. Correct?
Except now it won’t, because I have four different copies of Alien in my library — I’ve got both the theatrical and director’s cuts in both 4K HDR and 1080p SDR. So, instead, all I’ll see are my various covers for these 4 different copies of “Alien”. I won’t be able to scroll further to the right to access the details pages for “Alien: Covenant” and “Black Hawk Down” like I can today.
But let’s further suppose that if instead of clicking on “Alien” I click on “Black Rain” (which I only have one copy of), I would be able to click left back to “Black Hawk Down” or right ahead to “Blade Runner” (and beyond Blade Runner, I’d see my posters for “Body of Lies” and “Gladiator”).
Yet what happens when I click over to “Black Hawk Down”? I get stuck? Because I’ve got two copies of Black Hawk Down — one in the theatrical cut, one in the extended edition. These two items become the only ones shown on the filter bar. Presumably I need to back out of my search to see any other options.
Will I next get stuck again at Blade Runner (because I’ve got the 4K version of the Final Cut plus 1080p versions of the Theatrical and Director’s cuts plus the Workprint) and Gladiator (Theatrical and 4K EE)?
Today, I already have complete access to these multiple editions exactly as you propose. They all live there in the filters bar already, with my custom cover art (and custom titles, if I was free to use my .NFO files).
So if I’ve correctly highlighted what we might stand to lose — what do we stand to gain?
….
I had planned to post an image showing how I can already see all my alternate versions in the filters bar (same as I can in my library) but my copy of Infuse is currently acting exceptionally wonky — I can’t even view items in the filters bar via search right now — the selected item just keeps bouncing back up and freezing. Infuse Pro 7.4.10 (4.3.2.9). 
…
The better implementation, imo, will be to have Infuse not treat multiple copies as duplicates assigned to collections but as truly different versions of a singular root title, and offer them up (when applicable) through the same sort of button bar you successfully implemented for different seasons of tv series when introducing the newly flattened tv series interface that jumps directly to episode details pages.
This would require Infuse being able to distinguish one item from another but since you suggest (until TMDB ever steps up with their implementation) this will still require the users to do this themselves via local NFO and images, perhaps the solution lies in reading a user-inserted “version” tag in the XML.
Otherwise, I don’t see the point until TMDB starts providing Infuse (and everyone else) the data typical users (not wanting to write out their own .nfo files) will need.
Thanks for sharing the visuals for the implementation @james. In my humble opinion, if this is the direction this feature is headed towards, then it better not be implemented. This will inevitably end up colluding the UX, making the solution unnecessarily complex, as @FLskydiver has well pointed out.
It has to be along the lines of what was shared in the first post. Cheers
4 Likes
I personally prefer the implementation discussed by jsc1205, but what is shown here is a step in the right direction as I’m excited for this release - it will be what makes me upgrade to pro.
I think you run into a few issues that there are trying to fix.
When navigating the library you would see two posters of the same movie but not sure which one to chose (yes I know that some customize all their metadata, but this is for everyone else). So you pick one and then go back and pick the next one to see. In many cases libraries are shared with families or friends who do not know the intimate details of the library like we do, so it is easier to show just the one poster. And if they press play, in many cases, it probably doesn’t matter. For the rest of us it isn’t really cluttering things up (cleans up other areas) and is now quite straightforward to compare the files.
Next when you need to edit metadata on a file, you are able to easily and individually select each file and do an edit, delete, rate, add to playlist/collection, or whatever. On the Plex implementation shown in OP, you wouldn’t be able to do that unless you went to specific sections in the library.
There isn’t a straightforward way to determine the text in the plex popup implementation. You might have multiple resolutions of multiple cuts. A simple popup might not be sufficient. And honestly since I duplicate all of my movies into a downloaded mobile version, I would start getting pretty bothered by a popup that happens every single time I hit play.
As James mentioned, this allows for future implementation of gapless playback between multi part files, a much requested feature.
Perhaps this UI area in the future can be utilized for trailers and other locally added extras.
Remember, this has only just started testing and I think it will continue to be refined over the next month, but I do think there should probably be a solution that covers us experts as well as the casual user.
1 Like