Newbie Questions

[MarcusJ 18]

I am BRAND NEW to Emby, so I apologize in advance for the naïve questions...

 

Here's my setup...I have a pretty huge library of movies (4000+) stored on a Synology NAS - ALL of the movies have been ripped from DVD's with no compression or format changes, so that means they are pretty much all in standard DVD formats (VOB).  I have a small number of MP4 movies, also each in their own folder, but they are the tiny exceptions.  99% of the movies are DVD (VOB) formats.  Each movie has its own dedicated folder which is named the same as the movie.  I am running Emby Server on a Windows computer which is on the same local network as the NAS.  I currently use a Windows-based product called "MovieManager Pro" to organize my library.  MovieManager is outdated and is not compatible with Kodi which is what I use to watch movies, so I am in process of migrating my library to Emby Server.

 

I have a few questions that I hope there are simple answers available:

1. Because I ripped movies from DVD's, that means that there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of movies that have multiple discs (Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3, etc...), all of which comprise a single movie title.  The content on the discs is sequential - in other words, the "Disc 2" file in a 2-disc set is essentially the second half of the actual movie.  When I ripped them, I simply labeled them "MovieName - Disc 1"  and "MovieName - Disc 2", etc... each in their own folder. The current movie organizer software that I use (MovieManager Pro) accommodates this issue by allowing users to set up a "Parent" file which points to "Children" files.  There is no such mechanism that I have found in Emby.  Can anyone describe for me how to link these files together so only one title is shown in the library, but both "files" (discs) play without interruption (as if they had been combined on 1 disc)?  I think I have also heard others describe this as "stacking", but not sure???
2. I know I can change the name of the movies in the Metadata Manager after the movies have been scanned in, but will this name change stick?  For example, if I changed all of the Fast & Furious Movies to simply be Fast & Furious 1,2, 3, etc...will Emby simply change them back to their "proper" names like "Tokyo Drift" the next time it does a scan?  Can I make other changes like this in the metadata - like the plot overview, the genre, the art/posters, etc... and not have to worry about Emby changing them back to the original metadata that was scanned in during the initial scan?
3. Here's a simple one - Is there some way to tell Emby to do a library scan and to NOT update files that have existing metadata?  In other words, can I tell Emby to update the metadata ONLY for newly discovered movies or missing metadata?  Ideally, Emby would still identify and fill in MISSING metadata like trailers, etc... when it sees that it is missing from a movie.  This may be the very same question - or at least have the same answer as #2 above.
4. I maintain a folder of movie POSTERS, 95% of which are named the same as the movie (Dirty Harry.jpg, for example). They are all jpg format, and most of them have multiple words in their names, separated by spaces (not underscores).  Again, I have thousands of these poster images that I have collected, cleaned up over the years, and now have thousands of these images stored in one large folder called "Images" and I would like to use them if possible.  Is there a mechanism to tell Emby to use that folder to find movie posters instead of downloading other ones from the web?  Please understand, these are ONLY the movie POSTERS, not the logos, banners, fanart, etc...
5. Is there a way within Emby to export the movie library data out to a .csv file format or any format that I can use Microsoft Excel to manipulate?  The reason I would like to do this is to compare the full Emby movie library listing to my current movie library listing from MovieManager Pro.  I KNOW the current listing is complete, so I would like to compare my Emby library listing to the MovieManager Pro listing before I retire MovieManager Pro.
6. The file structure I use for the movies is \\NASName\video\Movies\GENRE\MovieName\.  For example, the file path for the movie "101 Dalmatians" would be \\MovieNAS\video\Movies\CHILDREN'S\101 Dalmatians\.  Notice, I have a parent folder named "Movies" containing all of my movies.  Under it, there are 12 separate folders, each named a different genre like ACTION-THRILLER, COMEDY, CHILDREN'S, HORROR, ETC... When I did my first full movie scan in Emby, I only identified the parent folder for the Library Scan (\\MovieNAS\video\Movies\).  The results were only about 60-70% complete.  Emby skipped several of the Genre folders completely, and saw a couple of them as movie folders themselves.  For example, it saw my HORROR genre folder which holds about 750 Horror movies, but did not scan the folder's movies.  Instead, it identified the HORROR folder as a movie folder itself named "HORROR".  I'm not 100% sure what I'm asking here, but does anyone have a suggestion why this may have happened or how to set up a scan that will include 100% of my movies?

I'm sure I will have lots of other questions once I dig in deeper, but these issues are really slowing down my progress right now.  Thank you for any helpful advice!

 

Mark

[Luke 37396]

Hi, welcome.

 

#1 - you would need to have a structure of movie folder\disc 1\video_ts. See our video naming wiki for examples: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Movie%20naming

 

#2 - The name will stick but if you use any refresh functions in the UI the change may be lost. To combat this, you can lock the name field for individual movies.

 

#3 - Emby does this by default

 

#4 - If you have local images then those always take precedence. See our video naming wiki for examples of supported image file names: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Movie%20naming

 

#5 - Yes there are reporting and data export features.

[MarcusJ 18]

Luke, thank you very much.  Extremely helpful!

 

Here's a little tougher one...Because of the way I ripped TV Show DVD's, I did not save them as individual episodes, but rather, by disc number.  For example, I have a folder named "Seinfeld - Season 1".  Inside that folder is 4 more folders named "Disc 1", "Disc 2", Disc 3", and "Disc 4".  Each of the "Disc X" folders holds multiple episodes from Season 1.

 

I don't mind going through all of my TV folders and renaming/re-organizing them, but I cannot pull out the episodes as separate files as they are buried in the Disc X folders.  Can you recommend a better naming/file organization to make these more logical in Emby?

 

I have already looked at the "TV Naming" pages on wiki, and specifically looked at the "Multi-Episode Files" section, but it makes no sense to me.  I don't have episode names.  I only know that all of Season 1 episodes are spread across 4 folders (Disc 1...4).  Thoughts?

[Pais 117]

How about the section on TV Naming for DVD and Blu-rays: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/TV%20naming#dvd-and-blu-ray-episodes

[Luke 37396]

We suggest that you name the folders based on the episodes they contain (as mentioned in the wiki). this will ensure you get at least some semblance of metadata. If you just want to do disc 1, 2, 3, etc, you can probably do that. i imagine disc 1 might be recognized as episode 1, and so on. it's not exactly ideal but i think it would work.

[MarcusJ 18]

2 more questions:

 

Is there anyway to do a bulk update of the "Date Added:" field in the metadata?  I'm not sure why, but the dates shown in my current metadata are very strange - years all over the place 2058, 2019, etc... I'd like to update all of them with the same date - the date I scanned them into the library.  Is this possible?

 

2nd question:  How do I set up trailer downloads?  I see there's a section for managing image downloads (Metadata =>Services=>Image Settings), but I see no such management area for trailers.  I installed the "Trailers" plugin, but only after doing so did I realize that it is limited to streaming trailers from the internet.  I want to download the trailers right into the movie folder.  What am I missing?

[Vidman 589]

1. There is a plugin called timelord that will do exactly this

2. The trailers plugin did once allow this but no longer allows trailers to be downloaded... But there is a 3rd party paid plugin that will download you tube trailers for you

Here: http://www.ballingtons.com/products/

Edited March 31, 2016 by Vidman

[MarcusJ 18]

Vidman, thank you!  The Timelord-Movies did exactly what I needed.

 

I did manage to purchase and download the YTrailers plugin.  The very simple instructions were to copy the downloaded dll into the emby plugin directory which I found was c:>Users>UserName>AppData>Roaming>Emby-Server>plugins>.  It then said to enter the license key (emailed to me) during the configuration of the plugin.

 

I copied the dll into the correct directory. Then I went into my Emby Server under Plugins>My Plugins.  There, I saw the plugin listed with the other plugins I have.  But when I tried to click on it, it gave me a pop up saying

 

"To configure this plugin please sign in to your local server directly." 

 

I thought that's what I was doing???  Can anyone help out a newbie here?

[Vidman 589]

You need to enter the local IP address as shown on the dashboard into your browser to be able to edit plugin settings

[MarcusJ 18]

Thank you!

[MarcusJ 18]

I have noticed that even though I have downloaded and placed local movie trailers inside many of my movie folders, named the exact same as the movie, but with "-trailer.mp4".  Interestingly, only a portion (maybe 30-40%) of the movies' metadata show that there are trailers in place.  The other 60+% of the movies still show the red icon next to the movie names indicating that the movie is missing a movie trailer.  I have checked the naming of the trailers and they are all 100% accurate.  So strange???

 

Can anyone explain this?  Known bug?  Am I missing something?

[Luke 37396]

Hi, I would double check the file names, and/or give us specific examples, including screenshots of the entire folder contents. thanks.

[MarcusJ 18]

I'm attaching 3 sets of screen shots (3 examples), but there are literally thousands to choose from...

 

I thought that it was probably my file naming conventions, since I use a lot of commas, dashes, and parentheses in my file names, but that wasn't the case.  Even straight-forward names like the ones attached are showing up as missing trailers.

 

Let me know what else I can provide to you to help give you more insight.

 

Thank you!

[ebr 14992]

Probably because they are folder rips.

 

Try putting them inside a "Trailers" folder.

[Luke 37396]

Yup exactly. it's probably a corner case that is missing with folder rips. I think Ebr is right.

[MarcusJ 18]

Wow... That feels like a bug to me.  With the limited amount of time I can devote to this, it would take me 6 weeks or more to add 5000+ trailer folders and move files.

 

Can this be easily fixed?

[Spaceboy 2513]

Bulk file renamer may be able to move them for you

[ebr 14992]

Try it just on a couple to see if they then show up.  I suggested that just to confirm my hypothesis.

[Vidman 589]

As Spaceboy mentions if ebrs fix works it is easily fixed with a bulk renaming tool

Edited April 4, 2016 by Vidman

[Luke 37396]

I think for folder rips it was just never implemented using -trailer. it's never really come up before.

[MarcusJ 18]

Interestingly, it worked perfectly for some of the movies - all of which are ripped.

[MarcusJ 18]

OK, I tried creating a new dedicated folder called "Trailer" under the movie folder.  In the "Trailer" folder, I placed the actual trailer video file.  I named it "moviename-trailer.mp4".  I then ran a full library scan.  The metadata still shows the icon for missing trailer.  Unless I did something wrong, the separate trailer folder approach did not fix the problem.

 

Ideas?

[Luke 37396]

it should be trailers, not trailer. i have updated the documentation on the wiki about this. Sorry for the confusion, based on the previous documentation I can see how you would have thought it would apply to folder rips.

[MarcusJ 18]

Does that mean there will be no fix coming?

[Luke 37396]

Even if we do that takes time so the documentation needs updating anyway.

 

I'm a little skeptical though about allowing this because I do recall some dvd software having trouble playing back folder rips when a video file existed in the root folder of the rip. It has been a long time since i used folder rips but as a developer I can see how the presence of a video file there would cause the playback software to get confused. To be honest i don't really think it's a good idea.