Need Help Syncing Music Library in Kodi

[carpediem 12]

Hello all,

 

It's my first post so I want to start by thanking the developers for this great application. I have been using WMC and mymovies.dk for years now and the recent WMC removal from windows 10 forced me to consider other options. I can't be happier that I did. The Emby interface is clean and partnered with Kodi, my media center looks better than it's ever been.

 

I am having an incredibly difficult time getting my music to sync to my media center. I have perused the forum and tried a ton of ideas and I'm still not able to get things working.  I really need your help. Here's a detailed explanation of my setup:

 

I am running Emby server 3.0.5847.0 on a windows 8 machine. On that machine I have setup 3 content types:

1 for movies stored locally on the Emby Server (content type: movies)

1 for TV shows stored locally on the Emby server (content type: TV)

1 for music accessed remotely on a NAS via SMB: (content type: music)

 

For the remote music share, I have set up a saved password on the Emby server via Windows credential management so the path is accessible to the Emby server without any problems. I have set the same username and password for the Windows account on the Emby server that I have set on the NAS music share. I am able to play movies and music directly from any computer on the network if I access the Emby web server via http or https. On the Emby server, the only plugins I have installed are the Autoboxset and Sync Queue plugins. I have set up 2 accounts on the Emby server, one with full permissions and another with just viewing permissions that is not password protected.

 

On a separate machine, I am running Kodi 15.2 and I have installed Emby 1.1.62 from repository 1.02. I am running Emby with the basic account that only has viewing privileges and no password. I have included pictures of the settings I have configured  on the emby client. On the Playback config page, I have entered the same username and password for the Windows account on the Emby server. I'm assuming that this account is required since it has read SMB permissions to the movie and TV content on the Emby Server. As mentioned earlier, this username and password are the same on the NAS music share as well (I don't know if this matters at all).

 

Once I enter all this information on the config page, I am able to get Emby to start syncing my content. I am able to see all my movies and my TV shows. However, my music never syncs across as well. I have followed instructions about turning on Library mode in my Music section in Kodi. This option is greyed out when I try to access it using the Confluence skin. I am able to use the Re-Touched skin by JezzX to turn this on and when I switch back to Confluence, the Library mode is enabled. However, even when I initiate a manual Emby sync at that point, music is still not picked up. Is this the proper way to get music working with Emby using Kodi? I know I can map my NAS music share directly in Kodi and that would work but I would like it all to be managed using Emby. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

[Angelblue05 4130]

That doesn't sound right. Your settings looks correct. When you say it's accessed remotely, what is the difference?

 

We are releasing a new stable version tomorrow. Can you give it a try tomorrow and see if you experience the same issue? If you do, please run a manual sync (make sure the add-on log level is set to Debug), then post the Kodi log so we can see why your music is not being imported.

 

See here if you need help with your log: http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/17599-how-to-report-a-problem/

Edited February 15, 2016 by Angelblue05

[carpediem 12]

Angelblue05,

Thanks for your quick response. Your suggestion helped greatly! Yesterday, I spent some more time troubleshooting the issue. I added a single music file locally to the Emby server and added that path to the library. My goal was to isolate the issue to the NAS music share. I performed a manual sync on the Emby client and sure enough, the single music file became available and playable on the Emby client. The strange thing that happened along with that is a few albums that are on the NAS music share synced across to the client as well. I had not been able to get any music data from the NAS share to show up at all on the client before. The albums were empty though and no songs were visible.

Today, I went ahead and upgraded the Emby server to 3.0.5870 and performed a manual sync on the client. This time around, my entire music collection on the NAS share showed up, songs included. However, I was not able to play any songs. I checked the logs and noticed the following error:

01:32:26 T:4324   ERROR: DVDPlayerCodec::Init: Error opening file musicdb://recentlyaddedalbums/5141/91982.mp3?albumid=5141
01:32:26 T:4324   ERROR: CAudioDecoder: Unable to Init Codec while loading file musicdb://recentlyaddedalbums/5141/91982.mp3?albumid=5141
01:32:26 T:4324 WARNING: PAPlayer::QueueNextFileEx - Failed to create the decoder
01:32:26 T:4324   ERROR: Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 15, path [musicdb://recentlyaddedalbums/5141/91982.mp3?albumid=5141]
01:32:26 T:7896   ERROR: EXCEPTION: XBMC is not playing any file
01:32:26 T:4324   ERROR: XFILE::CWin32SMBDirectory::ConnectAndAuthenticate: Doesn't have permissions to access "\\netshare\music_all" without username and without password

This clarified to me that the Emby server was pushing the path of the NAS share to the client but the client itself did not have permission to access the NAS share. I added credentials for the NAS share to the Windows credential manager on the client and immediately, I was able to play songs from the NAS share via the Emby client. I thought that adding the username and password for the NAS share to the Playback config page on the client would permit this access. I guess I was wrong and this only permits playback of content stored locally on the Emby server itself? This raises another question though… This is a good enough solution for a Windows client since the NAS credentials are encrypted but how would I handle the password for the NAS share on a Linux machine? Is my only option to enter the password in cleartext in a readable passwords.xml file? Again thanks for your help in getting this working, I am quite relieved I can finally listen to music via the Emby client.