please can you help? I'm desperate, frustrated and disappointed by jellyfin

[KodiUser1138]

I understand your points and appreciate every volunteer here!
please also try to understand mine. JF is communicated not as a construction site for enthusiasts, but as a complete and usable solution for a mass audience. that is absolutely not my experience. I do volunteering myself, in very different areas, and if the gap between expectation and reality were anywhere near as wide, there'd be a lot of dead kittens in my one volunteering area, and, believe me, even more frustration than here, in my other.
I have asked direct and specific questions here, yet only received general chastising for my tone, or non-working solution.
- setting to use the catalogue offline? all my files are on a hard drive. there is just no NEED for the internet just to show me what is already here.
- how can I search by colour/BW, director, length, resolution, country or OTHER perfectly banal features?
- why, if I have an srt file in the folder, does the FILM show up twice in the gallery?
- from 539 items, only 514 are found? (it's NOT the 3 srt files). how can that be?
- set WHAT to display on main gallery: film names and posters in original language; director; colour/BW. also, can I see actual posters and not just film stills?
- how can I search for at least: film names; director; black and white; country - and get shown ALL matches?
- confirm via Enter, and not EVERYTHING TWICE?
- stop jumping to the top of the list EVERY TIME rather than staying where I was?
- see all film names and posters in their original or MY SET language? I see a POLISH poster (with polish writing) for a french film in french, jellyfin is set to english!
- see POSTERS rather than film stills? should I really have to edit EVERY FILM INDIVIDUALLY?
- set which languages not to subtitle?

given that I am NOT a software enthusiast, I feel bitter about that: IF this were your attitude here, then PLEASE, PLEASE why not communicate it from the getgo?! so that non-experts need not even start here. I enjoy libre/OS software a lot, starting with the spirit. the difference is that other OSs just "work": I've never had to resort to an online forum to get, idk, LibreOffice etc. to just work. ofc it would be different for ultra-deep functions. I also admit that I was already properly annoyed when I came here after days on days of failures. sorry if someone felt personally offended.

I am no expert by any means and have had my bumps along the way using JF (and currently experiencing one) but I think there may be a disconnect between what your expectation is and what those with better expertise than I may be relaying to you. JF is fantastic and can be your all-in-one media manager. But that doesn't come without some work on your end, and the better organization you have the easier it will all fit together. If you just dump a bunch of files into a directory and tell JF there it is an expect magic... you will not be appeased. I'll see if I can better directly respond to your points below...

- setting to use the catalogue offline? all my files are on a hard drive. there is just no NEED for the internet just to show me what is already here.

Once JF is setup by using online sources to scrape metadata for your media, fi you haven't already curated and provide that data for JF to find locally yourself, you do not NEED to have an active internet connection to use your self hosted JF sever on your LAN. Since all files are local as long as the direction your browser or app looks for is also local then the internet is not required.

-  how can I search by colour/BW, director, length, resolution, country or OTHER perfectly banal features?

This is done AFTER JF scrapes your media for metadata and creates the JF database. There is a search icon that you can use and depending what data JF is able to import into it's database you can search for any of these things. However some of those things will NOT be automatically scraped into JF without your manual input in some capacity. Essentially the more work you put into curating your collection, the more options you have in utilizing your collection.

- why, if I have an srt file in the folder, does the FILM show up twice in the gallery?

This is a question for the better experts than I but I believe someone mentioned you may have a duplicate entry of the same title someplace in your files. This can happen to all of us, you just miss it's there already. I just spent the time to create a entry for a movie I thought I didn't have and when I went to copy it to it's home directory Windows asked me if I wanted to replace all the existing files. And I even search JF for the title but made my own error when doing so. Look to see if you have a duplicate and if not then see what information others request to try and help you resolve this issue.

- from 539 items, only 514 are found? (it's NOT the 3 srt files). how can that be?

What are the items that are not found? How are they named? Have you followed suggested naming conventions? Are they the correct formats? These are all the basic questions you will be asked. And I'd start by asking what naming convention and method of organization you are using. Trust me from my experience THE MOST IMPORTANT THIG in self hosting your own media is a well thought our method of organization that works not just for JF but in a general library sense. Took me some time to work out the kinks to my method but the result is well worth it.

- set WHAT to display on main gallery: film names and posters in original language; director; colour/BW. also, can I see actual posters and not just film stills?

Film posters is dependent on the artwork and metadata that Jellyfin is able to scrape, either form local files or from providers such as IMDb and The Movie Database. This goes with the previous note about figuring out how to manage your media even before you give it to JF to make obtaining that info easier. For myself, I do almost everything manually, for almost 7000 movies and 500 TV shows now, and let a scraper handle the metadata which I then further curate. All is then stored locally with the media files in properly named conventions in individual folders. Then going forward I don't have to redo every movie, every show, every anything again (mostly).

- how can I search for at least: film names; director; black and white; country - and get shown ALL matches?

If your database has scraped movie information properly then searching for one director should only return results that contain those search items you entered. Things like B&W will need additional work on your side to provide JF that information to store and be searchable (unless one of the scrapers also provides that automatically). 

- confirm via Enter, and not EVERYTHING TWICE?

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

- stop jumping to the top of the list EVERY TIME rather than staying where I was?

Again not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean when selecting a movie from the movie list that's down the list a ways and then moving back to the main list the screen reverts back to the top of the list? That is just one of the quirks of using JF clients. Not always handy and can be frustrating, I agree. But it just kinda is.

- see all film names and posters in their original or MY SET language? I see a POLISH poster (with polish writing) for a french film in french, jellyfin is set to english!

That sounds like a metadata scraping issue. Without more specific information about which titles I can only speculate. If your native language is English and you want movies to display the English title (if one exists) that would be set in your metadata scrapers. If you like the original language title that is more hands on curating from yourself. As for languages on posters that again would be from the scraping and you can further curated that yourself manually.

- see POSTERS rather than film stills? should I really have to edit EVERY FILM INDIVIDUALLY?

Again what are your methods of naming/organizing your media? What are you using to scrape your artwork and metadata? In short, yes, you do need to manually edit everything. That is if you want everything to look exactly the way you want it to be. JF is a great program to manage your media with, but it can't read your mind and it doesn't do things simply by magic. If you want someone else to do all the work then you need took at streaming services like Netflix where people are paid to take care of all of that for you.


[quote] - set which languages not to subtitle?

I'm not sure what this means either. Is it for media that is from English language sources and you want other language subtitles? Or the other way around? And in both cases, where di you obtain the media and does it include the languages you want. I think it would help if you said what is your proffered first language to have played and to have your database setup in. 

I hope these points can be helpful and my last bit of advice is to look for some good Youtube tutorials on self curating your media library. All I can say about my own is that I have but many, many, many hours into the back end to make sure when I get to the viewing side it's all there looking exactly as I want it and is super simple for other users of my server. It really is a more you put in during the setup the more you get out in the end type of system. If you just want to dump a bunch of files into a folder and tell JF to make it like Netflix, that isn't really what it's going to do. Nor is it presented to anyone that it will either.

[Efficient_Good_5784]

- how can I search by colour/BW, director, length, resolution, country or OTHER perfectly banal features?

This entirely depends on the metadata sources providing this information. If any of the sources you have enabled do not provide this, it's impossible to search for these.
In those cases, all you have to do is manually edit either the genre or tags to include something like "BW" so you can search for them.
Currently, Jellyfin lets you search for genres or tags ever since v10.9.

- from 539 items, only 514 are found? (it's NOT the 3 srt files). how can that be?

1. Some videos probably merged
   
2. Some videos were probably taken as extras which don't count for total items
   

- set WHAT to display on main gallery: film names and posters in original language; director; colour/BW. also, can I see actual posters and not just film stills?
- how can I search for at least: film names; director; black and white; country - and get shown ALL matches?

Once again, this depends on the metadata sources providing that info. You can filter on a library to show specific tags/genres only, but if it's not there automatically, it's up to you to add the genre/tags to each item.

- see POSTERS rather than film stills? should I really have to edit EVERY FILM INDIVIDUALLY?

I get the feeling that you used the mixed library type.
You need to use the movie library type for movies. Same for shows, use the shows library type for them.

- set which languages not to subtitle?

You need to explain further how you expect this to work.

• Are you talking about playing subtitles by default?
  
• Are you talking about obtaining subtitles and saving them in Jellyfin?
  

If your files have embedded subs in them, you already have those subtitle languages and Jellyfin can't do anything about them.
You'll need to manually remove them with a tool like MKVToolNix.

[dafaq]

thank you.

[quote="dafaq" pid='35324' dateline='1725439918']
- how can I search by colour/BW, director, length, resolution, country or OTHER perfectly banal features?

This entirely depends on the metadata sources providing this information. If any of the sources you have enabled do not provide this, it's impossible to search for these.
the info IS THERE. OF COURSE metadata contains director, country etc., and the file itself contains resolution data. how do I FIND it?

- set WHAT to display on main gallery: film names and posters in original language; director; colour/BW. also, can I see actual posters and not just film stills?
- how can I search for at least: film names; director; black and white; country - and get shown ALL matches?

Once again, this depends on the metadata sources providing that info. You can filter on a library to show specific tags/genres only, but if it's not there automatically, it's up to you to add the genre/tags to each item.
there ARE film posters out there. what I must do to make it clear to JF to get THOSE (and in the language of the FILM) rather than STILLS or polish posters?
and again, everything else is already there! I have about a dozen Godard films, but when I search for "Godard" in JF, it shows 2!

- see POSTERS rather than film stills? should I really have to edit EVERY FILM INDIVIDUALLY?

I get the feeling that you used the mixed library type.
I DO use the movie library.

- set which languages not to subtitle?

You need to explain further how you expect this to work.
If I have a film in one of these pre-set languages, they will NOT be subtitled (yes, unless hardcoded.) - JF will neither look for subtitles nor display existing subtitle files. however, if a film is in any other language, JF WILL subtitle.

[Mel_Gibson_Real]

I honestly dont know what you want dude. People have provided you with answers to pretty much every question youve asked. You havent really tried any suggestions and pretty much just say "nuh huh" when people try to tell you stuff. We cant remote into your pc ao your gonna have to atleast do the minimum and try any of the things suggested.

[Efficient_Good_5784]

the info IS THERE. OF COURSE metadata contains director, country etc., and the file itself contains resolution data. how do I FIND it?

Using the search feature in the web UI?

However, Jellyfin does not search based off resolution data. As an example, if you need to have all your 360p videos be searchable, you'll need to give them a custom tag of "360p" or add "360p" to their title.

And you're asking for the impossible with searching for what videos have color or not. Jellyfin needs a metadata source (or you) to give it tags that state if a video is in color or in black & white for you to be able to search for these.
Jellyfin has no way of finding out if a video is in color or not otherwise.

there ARE film posters out there. what I must do to make it clear to JF to get THOSE (and in the language of the FILM) rather than STILLS or polish posters?
and again, everything else is already there! I have about a dozen Godard films, but when I search for "Godard" in JF, it shows 2!

I'm confused as I'm not familiar with what "Stills" are. Can you provide an example of what these are?

As for the posters being having Polish text, that's an issue with how the language is set for the metadata/library.
Make sure to set the library to pull metadata in English if you need them all to be in English.

As Jellyfin is right now, there is no way to have different videos in a library to receive different language metadata automatically.
Jellyfin will not know what language a video is supposed to be in and pull metadata for it like that. Jellyfin will go off of what you set for the whole library in the library settings.
You can however set each show/movie to pull metadata for a specific language by setting this option in their respective metadata (scroll down on the metadata GUI to enable this for them).

[paulc]

I'm confused as I'm not familiar with what "Stills" are. Can you provide an example of what these are?

I would venture to say it is Screen Grabber created images. Stills can be considered images created of the video itself, but who knows in the context of this post.

[Efficient_Good_5784]

I would venture to say it is Screen Grabber created images. Stills can be considered images created of the video itself, but who knows in the context of this post.

Even if they're referring to the screen grabber images, that only applies to the images for episodes. Screen Grabber is not used for show or season cover art.
The only place you see episode images are in the episode sections of shows, or the home page recommendations for "up next" and what not.