Why does the infuse team seem to low key refuse every suggestion for new features?

I still think a road map is a better option than sticking things in a thread which get lost then people ending up duplicating the request, then the threads need to get merged. This is clumsy in my opinion and to be honest, I rarely read any of this because it’s just clutter but this caught my eye.

I’ve said it before but if you’re going to manage expectations in a professional way, you need to adopt a proper roadmap app. The online bank Monzo for example, utilise Trello (other apps are available). It shows what’s gone live recently, what’s being worked on, what’s in the future pipeline and customer suggestions on the filter bed but not yet prioritised or started. There’s no timeline (but there could be if needs be), just shows what is being given attention. It’s clear at a glance what’s going on and it’s professional.

It’s no wonder agitation arises when having to trawl through comments just to get to what you want to know. I’m sure you do a great job at moderating but there really is a better way for this.

That would still happen, even if you use some thing like Trello. The problem is there’re so many requests that you have to take time to search for the one that matches your requests. They are categorized using tags which is sufficient

It’s an education to direct everyone to an interface specifically designed at managing a filter bed of change and if directed enough times, I’m sure people would be happier at something that’s easier to navigate and see if their requests are 1) recognised and 2) whether they are in pipeline or not.

That’s your opinion which you are entitled to (even if my suggestion wasn’t directed to you). I could say the same about sticking post it notes all over a wall. It may be sufficient for some but is it efficient for the masses? That’s not a question I need you to answer by the way. I already know what’s a more efficient means of communication without the need to brown nose.

I agree. If we were starting from new there are probably better options out there for managing the roadmap and gathering feedback. However, at this point the suggestions area has 2500+ threads, with lots of discussion and votes attached to each. IMHO, the process of migrating all of this to another platform would be quite large - and IMHO, probably not all that different for the typical Infuse user.

We also have a separate internal tools we use to for planning, discussing, and tracking progress of features/bugs - but this can get pretty far into the weeds, and isn’t something we plan to make public.

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Fair enough but I think you have to start change somewhere otherwise it’s just a perpetual list of dead posts which have been merged with other threads and the momentum just gets lost.

I do think too much detail is overkill so I would agree with you on that score but I’d still prefer something like this…

It’s sufficient to see whether a suggestion has passed a feasibility stage and allows users to upvote and comment accordingly. It doesn’t have timescales as it’s obviously better to under promise and over deliver. Anyway, its just my opinion.

I’ve given up trawling myself via the forum directly but now and again, I’ll see what’s new using the DiscourseHub. I just find it difficult to navigate personally for the areas I’m interested in.

At least it’s better than the single suggestion thread we had where people posted on it for every new feature :laughing:

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Hey James :wink:

But maybe you could clean up the Tags, because at “pending” and “researching” are a lot of old threads, which are surely already fixed or not up to date anymore :wink::+1:

That would make everything a little clearer :blush:

With a few exceptions, most of the suggested ideas are feasible. It just comes down to whether it’s worth investing the time/cost for that one specific thing, or if there are better things to work on. Some of the suggestions are also personal preference type things (EG UI changes), which may or may not be desirable for everyone.

The search feature in the forum is pretty powerful, so if you’re looking for a specific suggestion then that is probably the best way to find it. Or if you’re just curious about what’s coming next this thread is updated regularly and shows what is currently in progress (or what is queued/planned for upcoming versions). You can also view this page for info on what has been added in past releases.

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I’m not but thanks.

Like my begging for the option not to dump the 80+ titles in my collection that begin with the word "A " together at the front of the As when sorting by title (just as the many hundreds of titles beginning with the word "The " are thankfully not dumped in the Ts) … which inexplicably (to me) everyone else here seems universally opposed to? :laughing: Such is the tyranny of democracy. :sob::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Having been a user since day one, Infuse’s first beta immediately blew away Plex’s sorry excuse for an TV app. Over the years Infuse has become very robust. IMO, pretty impressive for @james and small crew.

As things grow problems do begin to surface for small enterprises who’s product continues to rapidly progress. The suggestion handling is one of these. In the beginning it was fine to collect user input on the site but as time moved forward with limited resources the amount of suggestions continue to grow. At some point the ability to effectively manage this somewhat fundamental collection approach is going to become extremely manual intensive. The longer it’s ignored the more difficult it will become to make a change in that process. Yup resources are tight and there are many initiatives tugging at those same resources, including customer input. Decisions like these are not easy. Prioritizing company wide initiatives comes down to picking ‘what’s next’ to work on. No question a robust Roadmap App would be quite helpful. Just don’t wait too long, the issue’s momentum can become an impediment to growth, from both inside and outside the company.

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Indeed. So should he be spending his time fixing things that are broken in Infuse or building out this very robust roadmap that tells us all the things he’d be working on if only he wasn’t spending all his time on the map?

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I don’t think it has to be an overnight thing. It’s about turning off the tap on one approach and turning it on for another. It just needs to be an organic change.

I won’t go into specifics but there’s a lot of suggestions that have been raised and seamingly haven’t been looked at in years. Have the tags just not been updated or are they still being looked at… no idea.

I’m not trying to have a go as I appreciate the team is small but agitation arises from posts like this one (as I’m not the author of the original post) because in my opinion, visibility is not clear.

The one specific I will mention is custom metadata, that’s been bantered around for years and was a hugely popular request as I recall. With myself included. As far as I’m aware that’s been on the list for years yet if everything is feasible, where are we with it. If it’s marked as ‘researching’ or whatever it is these days (I haven’t looked), how do we know if it is still happening or it’s just a tag not updated.

Infuse has partial support for custom metadata. Most everything seen in the UI can be overwritten through use of .nfo files, and all of the artwork stored with your files will override that downloaded via TMDB. The most recent addition added support for overriding cast and crew data (but the implementation was not without glitches that, at least for me, have forced me to abandon my previously preferred use of local .nfo for customizing titles to distinguish between various versions of the same movie, and work around the not yet supported alternate episode order for specific TV series such as “Firefly”).

Unfortunately Infuse still requires the modified title to be filename matched to an existing title at TMDB (and will still import all that title’s details, including cast and crew, into it’s internal database), meaning you can’t yet easily create metadata for your own movies or TV series that aren’t eligible (or desired) for inclusion on TMDB. You can effectively add your personal content to the library by overwriting all the metadata of a random TMDB title, but it’s tedious.

.nfo tags unfortunately not yet supported include my most wished for <sorttitle> (since Infuse refuses to alphabetize TV shows and TMDB collections by users’ actual filenames regardless the choice made in settings) and the oft-requested <set> tag so users can add films and television series to the TMDB created sets (as TMDB strictly limits which sorts of movies can be added to sets and doesn’t allow TV series to be included at all). Instead Infuse released the ability for users to create custom sets manually in the apps, which is fine, but until Firecore allows us to customize the horrid auto-generated posters I won’t be utilizing them :slightly_frowning_face:.

The complete list of supported tags can be found in the sample .nfo provided here.

Movie genres can be customized but frustratingly TV genres can not, and thus Infuse’s splitting TMDB’s combined Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, and War & Politics genres so that they appear twice under different names, though containing the exact some titles, wasting valuable screen real estate when you pin the genres bar to your homescreen, drives me absolutely batty. All the more because James has stated he does it to support Plex & Emby users (who apparently can create their own genres) not caring that it breaks the software for users of pure vanilla Infuse. :confounded:

Indeed. And I do edit and change a lot of movies and I find tinyMediaManager a very useful tool for such editing. As for TV series, episodes are merged upon release (I.e. parts 1 and 2 are combined for release but separate episodes for broadcast). This means I have these episodes sat in ‘other’ because Infuse cannot match these episodes. This plays with my head for a sense of order! :joy:

I don’t want to really get into the details of this here as this is not the nature of this thread but my point is, it’s something that has been raised a long time ago and a lot of people were wanting a means to look at their own metadata for things like training videos, family videos, unmatched videos that they wanted to be grouped in episodic format. Yet, years later, we’re still seamingly at the same place even though everything is feasible! It would just be nice to see easily at a glance what’s been given priority in relation to consumer upvotes. Again, just my opinion.

As for Plex and Emby, I think it’s great that Infuse supports these platforms but ultimately, it should in my opinion, be looking to negate them with its own functionality. I suspect that is the case.

You can. Use the tags to see what is in Progress, Planned, Wishlist, Postponed. In progress and Planned are the ones that have been given infuse priority. Within Wishlist you can sort by likes to see user priority.

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OMG… this guy! :roll_eyes:

This is a “User Supported Board” so let’s keep it civil when users offer a solution they feel addresses a problem.

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Thanks everyone for sharing feedback in this thread.

I think I’ve responded to most of the relevant points of conversation, and have a feeling this thread is now headed in the wrong direction so it will be closed.

If you have specific suggestions regarding features, I would encourage you to visit the suggestions area and share them there. This is the best place to discuss specific things you would like to see added in future updates. Thanks! :slight_smile:

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