How MytView thinks

Decisions such as when a video counts as watched, what shows in the feed, or when a file is transcoded are made by the server, once, so the web player and every app give the same answer. Six rules explain most of what follows.

• Your library is read-only. MytView never creates, renames, moves or deletes anything in it. Whatever tool produces the files owns that folder tree; MytView reads the videos and the metadata sidecars next to them and keeps its own state elsewhere.
• Two kinds of state, one folder. /data holds a disposable index (rebuilt from disk by every scan) and a durable database with accounts, sessions, watch state and settings. Back up /data; nothing else is yours to lose.
• Libraries are explicit. Nothing is indexed until the owner adds a library: a folder plus a format. A mount can hold several kinds of content, each in its own library.
• Everything is per person. Each account has its own watch history, resume points, subtitle preferences, hidden channels and browsing settings, and they follow the person to every device.
• The server decides, the clients render. Watched thresholds, feed ordering, what is hidden, whether a file needs transcoding, what plays next: one answer, computed on the server, so a phone, a TV and a browser never disagree.
• Direct play first. A device that can decode the file gets the file. Only a real failure to decode triggers a live transcode, and nothing is ever converted ahead of time or stored.