I downloaded Infuse to get better playback of video from my Synology box. I’ve got it running on macOS, AppleTV and iPad. Playback is great, but the UI is really confusing me. I’ll go through the macOS experience, but the same issues apply to iPad…
I fire up Infuse, it starts me in Home, invites me to click on Add Files. I do so, and find my UPnP media server. I navigate to a folder, tap the star, accept the suggested name. Then I close the Add Files window.
But, the Home page is still blank. So I click on Library, and that’s still empty as well. Plus, it says something about playlists. I don’t want playlists, I want to set up a library of movies and TV shows.
I eventually find my files — they’re under Files in the left navigator. OK, so if adding files doesn’t put them in the library, what does?
I right-click on a file and choose Playlists, and add the file to the Watching playlist. Then I go back to the library — and it’s still blank.
So I try again, and this time create my own playlist “To Watch”. That finally works — the playlist shows up in the library, and if I choose it I see the files in the library.
Do I really have to add everything to a playlist to make it show up in the library? This isn’t like any other media player I’ve ever encountered. Usually Library is all your media, and Playlists (if they exist) are a separate area. That’s what I’m used to from Apple TV, Apple Music, Synology Video, and so on.
This split between files, playlists and library also means it’s a lot of messing around to add something to my library. I have to navigate to the folder, tap the star to set it as a favorite, then go to the files area and open the favorite, then select each file one by one and add it to a playlist, because there’s no way to add multiple items to a playlist at once that I can find.
Surely this can’t be how it’s supposed to work?
Anyway, once I’ve added my files to a playlist one at a time and they’re showing up in the library, if I go back to Home, it shows me two randomly chosen videos from one of the playlists — I guess the “Watching” list, which for some reason doesn’t show up with the other Playlists in the Library — and under those videos, it says “Home Screen is empty”. I mean, what? It clearly isn’t empty, there are videos right there above the message saying it’s empty.
And when I open the preferences and click on library, it still says my library is empty, even though it clearly isn’t.
This is so confusing. Once I find my way through the maze, the playback is great, but the user experience could use a lot of streamlining and a more logical approach.
