I’m an immigrant Plex Pass Lifetime Membership user, who’s begun testing Infuse 5 on my newest Apple TV 4k. I also have 4 other previous version Apple TV’s.
I run multiple networked servers (LAN Connected) including two Synology RAID servers and a MacMini (circa 2011), handling 2,161 movies and 430 TV series (multiple seasons and episodes), plus private home videos.
I’m generally have happy with Plex’s front end client interface on the Apple TV, but have become increasingly disappointed with their handling of playback, I assume because of the amount of conversion Plex has to do to play MKV, AVI and other type files on the Apple TV 4k. Many movies and TV shows seem to have sudden jerky kind of motion movements, as if the camera panned too quickly and lost some frames. My wife says she notices it even more on the new Apple TV 4k, but I’m not sure I can say if it’s any worse then it was on the older Apple TV’s. This anomaly isn’t so bad that you can’t watch a show, but it is noticeable and I began to wonder if it’s Plex, the Apple TV (or both), or even the quality of the copied source video.
Anyway, I began my free 30 day trial last night and started comparing the exact same TV show episode (MKV file type) from the same server, played by Plex and also Infuse 5. The jury is still out, but I think the video stream is more stable and not as jittery (described above) using Infuse 5, but I need to do a lot more comparison testing.
I do have a couple of questions…
How can I change the “jump forward” interval when I press the right or left side of the remote. On Plex it would jump about 10 seconds, but on Infuse it seems to jump several minutes which is too rough and I’m constantly fiddling to move the playback head in smaller increments to get to where I want.
To be honest, I don’t think Infuse’s front end interface is as good as Plex, but I’m willing to live with that if the tradeoff is better playback on my Apple TV. So, the BIG thing for me is how to I get the same display as Plex’s TV ON DECK feature? In other words, where can I just see a list of the TV Shows I’m watching and specifically what’s the next episode for that show that I should be viewing. I have on the go several TV Shows at one time, so do I really have to display ALL TV Shows and try to remember which ones have new episodes and locate what is the next episode of each one I haven’t watched? I can’fuse 5.t see to find anywhere how to configure that type of ON DECK screen in In
Hi Doug.
I was a Plex user long time ago and left it when they separated client and server, and just hated teh way it took control of my metadata (plus I had several versions of the same media and no way to differentiate them in Plex)
I like the way Infuse at the same time automates everything and gives you access to filenames and edition of metadata.
To get back to your question the answer is you should turn off “chapter controls” in Infuse’s settings.
This way you get 10 second increments when you press the trackpad’s right or left edge.
Plus, as you may know, you can scrub to any part of the movie when pausing, using the trackpad.
I am not familiar with Plex"s ON DECK screen.
Regarding Infuse, you should write your suggestions (I think there is a dedicated forum thread for that).
In order to identify new episodes easily, the easiest might be do connect to Trakt.tv. You could probably also connect your “old” Plex system to Trakt.
And you should definitely use Infuse’s library.
Plus:
in the “all TV shows” you get indicators for shows where you have not seen everything (that includes new content as long as you give time to Infuse to update its library),
you can see shows with new episodes in the “recently added” part of Infuse’s library.
OK, I’ve had a good look at Infusion 5 and I do like it’s playback capabilities … far superior to anything Plex offers for Apple TV …
However, I find the interface challenging and after 3 days, it still seems to be processing (importing) my movies and TV files…
Unless I’m doing something wrong, It’s also lacking in its organizational capabilities with TV Shows.
I have some shows with multiple seasons and episodes that it’s identified correctly, but then it dumps correctly and similarly named episodes from the same shows into the “Other” category, splitting everything up. I have no ideas how to reorganize the missing content (put in other) into their correct TV Shows structure.
ALL of my content is correctly structured for Plex and is organized and named using FileBot…
For example see attached pic …
So, I have no idea why it’s miss identifying TV Shows and recognizing some episodes and seasons while dumping others into OTHER category…
Finally, Infuse really needs an “Up Next” listing for all TV Shows on the go, much like Plex’s “On Deck” screen…
Anyway, very nice product and an excellent price for what it does, but I think I’m going to have to stick with Plex because of the amount of content I have am watching simultaneously between the wife and I.
Thanks to the developers for permitting the FREE 30 day trial… much appreciated…
For file naming, there is an help article here Metadata 101 – Firecore
Additionally, you can edit the metadata for the files in others, or misidentidied one.
But before that, you should let Infuse finish the first scan of the library (in which it identifies TV shows and movies).
For this Infuse must be open and not playing. You can go to Settings/Library to see Library scanning progress.
For your 3rd question, I have an indicator of unread episodes.
Plus only new episodes are listed in the recent adds section.
But of course all your episodes are recent since your library has not even finished scanning !
When I select EDIT, the only thing I see is the filename?
Just using that, how can I get that episode to move into the right TV Show that it wasn’t originally added to by Infuse, but instead dumped into OTHER category?
You should see the filename …plus suggestions for metadata.
You should select the right one and press the trackpad.
Wait until it is done (a few seconds) and your show (usually the whole show) is in the right place.
You can type, or speak a different name if there was no relevant suggestion
But do that when the library is done scanning.
I’ll have to open up the app on our Apple TV and let it run until it’s finished…
I assume that you can’t open it up on one Apple TV and then it’s common to all of them, but rather has to be run on each TV to build the database individually?
Yes.
I believe the library does not sync over iCloud I would love it to) so you have to do that.
I just go the the settings/library menu to see progress.
