Yes, I know we have the option to set Resume Playback to “ask”, “on”, or “off”, but I would like to see something a little more refined from the interface. I’ll illustrate my frustrations with each option, then explain some possible QoL improvements to eliminate these frustrations and make the infuse client a little more refined.
- Off - Anytime I, or other viewers are watching something, get distracted, and have to leave the movie, we’d have to remember where we left off and navigate to wherever that place is. Obviously, this is cumbersome which is why a resume feature exists on almost every player. Off is almost never what a viewer wants.
- On - Great, now the client can remember where we left off and resume. However, there is no easy way to return to the beginning once a movie has been watched. So, if I want to watch a favorite move with a friend, I’ve probably stopped it near the credits in a prior viewing, so I have to rewind all the way to the beginning while the other viewers look at me like an idiot for not just using Netflix like everyone else.
- Ask - This sounds like a great idea but, as implemented, is almost never what I want. If a I’m three seconds into a movie, it’ll ask me if it should resume playing or start from the beginning. There is no universe where that does anything but waste time. There is no way to set the viewed timer to zero, so it’s impossible not to be asked when replaying a movie. This is especially annoying when I watch reruns of my favorite TV shows to help me sleep. One of the nice things about having my own server is that it costs me nothing to keep a show streaming all night as I sleep, to help me fall back to sleep more easily if I wake during the night. So, I shouldn’t ever have the annoying, “are you still watching?” prompts that plague commercial streaming services. Invariably, however, infuse will auto-start an episode and sit forever waiting for me to tell it to restart from the beginning, playing nothing for hours.
Of course, I can keep going into settings and scroll all the way down to the 37th option in the list, over and over again, flipping it on or off based on whatever my current use case is, but that’s hardly convenient, and my criteria are pretty knowable from an interface standpoint. I believe there are refinements that would match the needs of most users.
Proposed Refinements
Minimum Threshold before Asking - If you’re near the beginning, don’t ask; just start from the beginning. One could quibble about what “near the beginning” means, so it could be a user defined threshold. From my perspective, five minutes would be a perfectly acceptable hardcoded value for simplicity’s sake. It’s plenty of time to ensure the file location was found, the audio/subtitles are as expected, and that the file plays reasonably, while causing only a small amount of seeking if you actually did intend to resume.
Maximum Threshold before Asking - Likewise if you’re three minutes, or so, from the end, you probably stopped during the credits and are intending to rewatch from the beginning. Once again, it could be a user defined threshold, but I think three minutes would suit most people.
Play Button Appearance - If the thresholds are being used, the “play” button should be shown rather than the “resume” variant, if the video is before the minimum threshold or after the maximum threshold. This makes it clear what will happen when the button is pressed.
Timer When Asking - If a video is set to play, the interface should assume the user’s intent is for something to start playing. Don’t sit forever, waiting for a user to decide whether they want to resume or start from the beginning. After 60 seconds, just start playing (preferably, the dialog box would show an indicator to let us see the time ticking away.) The default for whether it plays from the beginning or resumes could be a user setting, but a hardcoded default of resume, except when auto-played, would probably satisfy most people. Not playing anything should never be the answer (looking at you: Automatic Select Next Season When a Season is Completed everywhere In Infuse).
Long-Press Menu Options - When long-pressing the Play/Resume Button, the “Play” option should be changed to “Play from beginning”. Clicking the button already plays/resumes the video, it’s redundant to have the same option again. However, if user confusion from a long-press is a concern, having a “Play from beginning” option after the “Play” or “Resume” option would work equally well.
In my opinion, this should just be the standard behavior when “ask” is selected in the settings. The values could be hardcoded at five minutes from the beginning and three minutes from the end (or other reasonable values) which would likely meet most users’ needs. The “on” and “off” options already exist for anyone who has a drive filled with videos under eight-minutes long who wants resume to work with them.
If anyone is wondering how I decided on five minutes and three minutes, it’s because scrubbing the timeline is easier at the beginning of a video, while the pain of just rewatching it is pretty low, but at the end the pain of both is greater, and there are valid reasons why one might pause near the end of a movie, so another viewer, refilling their drink in the kitchen, for example, can see the final wrap up.