Jump to content

Help: Thinking Of Getting Premium


Film Playlist

Recommended Posts

Film Playlist

Hi Guys,

 

I'm pretty disgusted with PLEX now. There are some major bugs that has continued for several years. They really move slow, and they don't seem to really care about their member's input (regardless if we paid lifetime or not). I need to know from members (NOT STAFF), are you satisfied with Emby? Is it worth paying for the lifetime? Or is Emby just as slow and deaf to member's issues?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi. You said you didn't want to hear from us but we would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thanks and welcome.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

kjhedges

I moved from Plex to Emby a few years ago.

Best move I made really.

I have many family members who remote in to watch media from varied devices, (premiere for some devices) and have had no complaints from any members with regards emby and how it works.

I do really prefer the layout of Emby, but obviously each owns preference.

As you can see in the forums, the staff are really helpful to the best that they can I suppose. and there is always plenty of input from members too.

 

Overall, emby seems a more professional looking media server.

Any bugs that I have seen arrive, soon enough they are rectified.

 

I use the Beta Server and Beta Apps personally, and most if not all the bugs are normally worked out before the public version get updated.

 

(I have Emby, Jellyfin and Plex installed on different servers and also a spare emby server just in case, but my main Emby server is all that is needed to use)

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I switched from Plex Pass to Emby Premiere a few years ago.  I couldn't be happier with that decision.  I currently have about 5.7T of [compressed] media that I access using Emby.

Sure, there are features/tweaks that I would like to have that haven't bubbled up to the top of the priority list.  But that's the case with any software. HOWEVER: The Emby team is one of the most responsive I've ever seen in forums, they are actively/continually improving the product, and the Emby community is hugely helpful. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a more constructive forum atmosphere.

Taking a look at the current Emby feature matrix (at the time of this post) I make frequent use of the following features not available in the free version:

  • Live TV (I use one of the Emby-supported tuners from SiliconDust)
  • Free Guide Data
  • DVR
  • Emby Theater (on Windows)
  • Offline Media

So for me, the additional cost of lifetime Emby Premiere was well-worth it.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
2 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi. You said you didn't want to hear from us but we would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thanks and welcome.

 

I really do apologize if my first message sounded rude. I'm just really frustrated with the growing lack of interest in these companies genuinely wanting to help customers. Times have certainly changed!  I don't perceive that "we'll do everything we can to service our customers" vibe anymore. Now, in a round about way, they're telling us what they're doin' is more of a hobby, and not an obligation. When you charge any monthly fee or a membership fee, it's no longer a hobby, and these people have an obligation to serve the people (now customers) who shell out their hard earned money! They don't even have a ticket system. Sh*t, TRAKT charges 1/6th what PLEX charge, and TRAKT offers not only outstanding response times, but solutions/or at least solid answers to a problem. TRAKT knows what they're doing. This new attitude makes me no longer want to pay for anything anymore; because either the staff isn't honest enough because they want your money, or the members no so little about technology itself, they can't tell if there any problems or not. I can just scream sometimes..

 

2 hours ago, kjhedges said:

I moved from Plex to Emby a few years ago.

Best move I made really.

I have many family members who remote in to watch media from varied devices, (premiere for some devices) and have had no complaints from any members with regards emby and how it works.

I do really prefer the layout of Emby, but obviously each owns preference.

As you can see in the forums, the staff are really helpful to the best that they can I suppose. and there is always plenty of input from members too.

 

Overall, emby seems a more professional looking media server.

Any bugs that I have seen arrive, soon enough they are rectified.

 

I use the Beta Server and Beta Apps personally, and most if not all the bugs are normally worked out before the public version get updated.

 

(I have Emby, Jellyfin and Plex installed on different servers and also a spare emby server just in case, but my main Emby server is all that is needed to use)

 

I agree, I think I like Emby's layout better too. Maybe if PLEX didn't spend so much time adding games and other things that in my opinion is irrelevant to PLEX's functionality, they could focus on real issues! They've hired several people over the years, and I'm pretty sure they're not managing their time well.

 

 

1 hour ago, Mike-G said:

I switched from Plex Pass to Emby Premiere a few years ago.  I couldn't be happier with that decision.  I currently have about 5.7T of [compressed] media that I access using Emby.

Sure, there are features/tweaks that I would like to have that haven't bubbled up to the top of the priority list.  But that's the case with any software. HOWEVER: The Emby team is one of the most responsive I've ever seen in forums, they are actively/continually improving the product, and the Emby community is hugely helpful. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a more constructive forum atmosphere.

Taking a look at the current Emby feature matrix (at the time of this post) I make frequent use of the following features not available in the free version:

  • Live TV (I use one of the Emby-supported tuners from SiliconDust)
  • Free Guide Data
  • DVR
  • Emby Theater (on Windows)
  • Offline Media

So for me, the additional cost of lifetime Emby Premiere was well-worth it.

 

 

 

Yes, I totally agree with you about the bugs. I gave PLEX the benefit of the doubt. However, there are certain things that are important to an apps functionality, OR at least there are somethings that should stay consistent with the apps we use to consume media. For instance, the one thing I've absolutely HAD IT with PLEX, is a constant off line problem on my Android mobile. It constantly looks for the PLEX server while offline, making my downloads useless! What's the point of giving the ability to download, if the software has to access the server first? That's retarded. I did a bunch of complaining, and they've finally started a beta test team that only focuses on downloads itself. Problem, anything other problems that may be connected to downloading, like my screen doesn't respond after a certain a certain amount of downloads. That they don't want to read about. I mean, it's a sh*t show. I deserve better. A company is supposed to be professionals! There are so many great things happening with technology, but the operators have absolutely NO PEOPLE SKILLS!! Neither do that want to deal with the public.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q-Droid

Satisfied?
- Yes, very.
Is Premiere worth it?
- Yes, but I'm not a fan of Lifetime. The rationale being that Lifetime Premium might feel like a shiny badge to have, I prefer to continue supporting the project for as long as I use it therefore choose yearly license option.
Is Emby (staff) slow and deaf?
- Some might seem to be hearing impaired. 😉 No, not at all. It was the first thing I noticed when going between Plex and Emby forums. You get the feeling that Plex is run and supported by ghosts and Emby has real people.
 

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

rbjtech

A very good way of judging support is to look at the user forums and note the response times from users and/or the Dev's when questions have been asked.

For user specific problems ranging from the very simply first time install issues all the way to Plugin development/API coding - they will always get responses of assistance and support from both the primary emby team and community users.

For me - as has been said above - this is THE key advantage emby has over it's competitors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
4 hours ago, rbjtech said:

A very good way of judging support is to look at the user forums and note the response times from users and/or the Dev's when questions have been asked.

For user specific problems ranging from the very simply first time install issues all the way to Plugin development/API coding - they will always get responses of assistance and support from both the primary emby team and community users.

For me - as has been said above - this is THE key advantage emby has over it's competitors.

 

Yes, and no.. Another trend that I see happening now is that, many companies are using members to do the work of supporting their customers. Many of these companies call these members "volunteers/helpers." A perfect example is a company like Spotify. Staff only drops in once every green moon to monitor the boards. I've encountered far too many people that don't have a strong command of the English language. In addition,  they are required to copy and past responses like they're robots. What these companies are doin' now is much worse than just seeking cheap labor.

 

PLEX offers no alternative to email support directly. This is why bugs linger for decades. I've read so much about how PLEX is the best thing since sliced bread. Well, apparently not.

😠

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist

@ebr I decided to temporarily sign up with a monthly plan. So far Emby works exponentially better than PLEX. It runs incredibly smooth. The interface/layout is straight forward, with no clutter (thank god). My only complaint is the sign in. It wasn't really self explanatory.  I got confused trying to emby.media site to login both my laptop and then my seedbox. Until I finally realized that I think I can only login using one server at a time with emby.media? However, on my Samsung Android, I was able to login using multiple servers. Am I correct on this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GrimReaper
4 hours ago, Film Playlist said:

@ebrI got confused trying to emby.media site to login both my laptop and then my seedbox. Until I finally realized that I think I can only login using one server at a time with emby.media? However, on my Samsung Android, I was able to login using multiple servers. Am I correct on this?

You can ever be connected only to a single server, regardless of connection method. 

All client apps (including online Web App) will present you with Select Server screen. Only exclusion is local Web App. 

If you login to Connect, you'll be presented with all servers linked to that account. 

 

On 10/14/2021 at 6:15 PM, ebr said:

Every time you log in to a server, each app saves that information. Then, when you go to the "switch server" screen, it shows you a combination of the saved servers and any it can automatically find on the local network.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Skyhigh69

I love using emby, so does the wife, and if there any issues I turn to the forum for support. Not only does the staff dive right in to help so do the other members. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Film Playlist said:

@ebr I decided to temporarily sign up with a monthly plan. So far Emby works exponentially better than PLEX. It runs incredibly smooth. The interface/layout is straight forward, with no clutter (thank god). My only complaint is the sign in. It wasn't really self explanatory.  I got confused trying to emby.media site to login both my laptop and then my seedbox. Until I finally realized that I think I can only login using one server at a time with emby.media? However, on my Samsung Android, I was able to login using multiple servers. Am I correct on this?

Hi.  Did Reaper's explanation answer your question?

The main difference to understand with us vs the other guys is that your server users are actually YOUR users.  You set them up in your own server dashboard and we (Emby as a company) don't have to know anything about them and they don't have to go through any of our servers to get to your server.  This is fundamentally different than what you are used to where the users are actually registered with an external company and then attached to your server.

We do offer Emby Connect which then gives your users an easy way to find your server without having to know the address but that is completely optional.

Make sense?

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/18/2021 at 2:29 AM, Film Playlist said:

@ebr I decided to temporarily sign up with a monthly plan. So far Emby works exponentially better than PLEX. It runs incredibly smooth. The interface/layout is straight forward, with no clutter (thank god). My only complaint is the sign in. It wasn't really self explanatory.  I got confused trying to emby.media site to login both my laptop and then my seedbox. Until I finally realized that I think I can only login using one server at a time with emby.media? However, on my Samsung Android, I was able to login using multiple servers. Am I correct on this?

I know you didn't want staff to comment so I waited to let other users comment on value first. I think you'll find a few big differences between Plex and Emby and I'll try to cover them.  I'll give you a honest review of where Plex is easier to use as well. Fair?

One: Plex "owns" your friends and family members as no login credentials are stored on your Plex Server. With Emby the accounts are setup on your server (exception is Emby Connect which I'll cover later). This is a fundamental difference of who owns the user. With Emby they are 100% your users!

Two: Plex pushes it's own content at your users front and center.  You can adjust this somewhat at the client level but have no control at the server level to admin this for most content.  It's certainly the first experience your customers get using the Plex interface. Emby is 180 degree opposite of this and we are passionate about keeping it that way. We do not push any content, never had, never will, period, end of story.  We're not looking to cut license deals for mediocre content and annoy your users so we can make a few cents on advertising. That's not Emby.  

Plex is actually multi-tiered as there is both the admin's Plex server as well as their backend both with their content made available to all users.  With Emby everything runs from your server including login credentials. All media is 100% yours and in your control. There is just a couple small exceptions.  We offer some content such as trailers for your shows or movies you can enable and use as well as a couple of plugins that have content from 3rd party sources but this is up to you to install and configure. This content is streamed to your users from your server and is integrated with your server.  Just wanted to point that out.  The other exception is Emby Connect, which leads to the 3rd point.

Three: Plex is easier to configure for remote access.  It's downright simple to do. Even if you don't open ports on your firewall properly Plex can still work as it creates it's own tunnel "home" for remote users to route through to get to your server. This does add flexibility especially for those who don't know much about networking.  The tunnel that's created however is pretty limited in bandwidth so each user only gets a couple of Mb to stream though which isn't good.  Decent tradeoff.

Emby "out of the box" uses common sense security measures by not putting your server on the internet for remote access.  You need to configure it for remote access otherwise is a local only server (what many people want).  Typically to get Emby setup for remote use is enabling "remote access" for the server and opening 1 or two ports on your home router/firewall. We have clear instructions in our Knowledge Base how to do this and links to the KB from the server itself.  Here is an example:https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44002137137-remote-setup 

Emby will not "band-air" your connection with a tunnel but will require proper setup.  For a server I don't think this is unreasonable. :)

Emby Server is essentially a dedicated standalone web/app server.  Setup can be slightly harder than Plex but because it's a real web server it has many advantages as well. You can  register your own domain name and get a free cert that you can setup directly in Emby for secure transactions just like your bank.  You can run Emby with local reverse proxy servers. With a domain name you can run your Emby server behind Cloudflare (free plan) for extra security and without anyone knowing your actual IP address.  You can even setup and use both Cloudflare and a local reverse proxy together.  This of course is only a one time setup but quite powerful. 

Emby does run one service that it controls called Emby Connect.  An Emby Connect username is essentially a forum account (each is unique) but can be used to login to your server if configured. It's 100% optional to use.  I for example use my own domain name and user accounts from my system.  None of my family members have Emby Connect usernames as it isn't needed for them.

When setting up or modifying a user there is an optional field you can input an Emby Connect username. Once you add this to your system (can be removed as well) it updates the Emby Connect database with your server's IP address and ties the EC account to one account on your system. This is useful for a couple of things:
If you don't have a domain name you would have to remember you IP address which might change at any time.  EC tracks this for you so once you login via EC (not direct to your server) it presents your server to login without you needing to know it's address.  It also shows you any other servers you have access to (admin setup an account and added your EC account).  This makes it very easy to login to multiple different servers using one set of credentials.

You could setup an account on your server called Carlo, cayars or EmbySupport but as soon as you add "cayars" as the EC account I have access and don't need to know the account name or password you setup for me on your server.  I could be setup locally on those servers as Carlo on one server, EmbySupport on another but my single "cayars" EC accounts allows me to use either without having to know IPs or domain names.  It's really nice for that type of thing but again 100% optional and fully in your control.

Four: Support and friendly forums.  I'll go out on a limb and say support for Emby is a lot better than Plex.  This starts with our super knowledgeable users who are really helpful and quite knowledgably and really willing to help others. It's not just a few users but a large amount of them that post daily helping others! Then there are the mods who often are experts on specific things related to Emby be it the OSes they run on, the hardware devices and apps used to playback Emby media, etc   Then there are the various staff members that do everything from development to customer care. Unlike Plexland where you won't see devs and staff participate often in the forums, it's the complete opposite here.  The heaviest posters are staff members and mods that live in the forums supporting users and answering questions.

We even turn this up a another notch by offering free remote desktop support (to all server owners, free or Premiere) when needed to either help users (ie getting remote access working) to OS migrations out of our control caused by vendors (ie recent Synology DSM/OS upgrade with completely different security and apps) to doing remote sessions  to gather real-time information for debug purposes to normal everyday general Emby support when an admin just needs help understanding something.

I certainly don't want you to think I'm saying we do everything better, because that would not be fair or true. 

I know this was a lot to read but I tried to point out some of the major differences as I see them (hopefully not too biased) between the two platforms and philosophical differences between the two companies in general. Feel free to pushback on anything I said or ask any questions you may have.

Carlo

Edited by cayars
  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
On 10/18/2021 at 9:35 AM, ebr said:

Hi.  Did Reaper's explanation answer your question?

The main difference to understand with us vs the other guys is that your server users are actually YOUR users.  You set them up in your own server dashboard and we (Emby as a company) don't have to know anything about them and they don't have to go through any of our servers to get to your server.  This is fundamentally different than what you are used to where the users are actually registered with an external company and then attached to your server.

We do offer Emby Connect which then gives your users an easy way to find your server without having to know the address but that is completely optional.

Make sense?

 

 

Yes, thank you. I realized it right away when I was playing with the Android mobile app. PLEX sort of interweaves everything together as a one stop access. Whereas Emby, I'd have to connect with one or the other (at a time). That's cool!

 

 

On 10/21/2021 at 2:03 AM, cayars said:

I know this was a lot to read but I tried to point out some of the major differences as I see them (hopefully not too biased) between the two platforms and philosophical differences between the two companies in general. Feel free to pushback on anything I said or ask any questions you may have.

Carlo

 

Thank you so much Carlo for your detail explanation. Yes, it's a lot to take in, only because both your GUI structures are night and day! I'm still playing around with it and getting to know more. So far,  here are the things I love and hate about Emby Premiere

What I love:

  • I like that Emby doesn't hang while offline, or continue to look for a server indefinitely.
  • I like that I can have my viewing scrobbles to TRAKT.

 

What I don't like so far:

  • Unfortunately, PLEX does a better job of handling music albums. There are lots, and lots of missing album covers.
Edited by Film Playlist
grammer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Film Playlist said:

There are lots, and lots of missing album covers

Hi.  Is your music properly tagged and do the tracks contain embedded album art?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, as @ebr pointed out, Emby is only as good for music as the tagging of the music itself.  Emby puts you firmly in control of this by reading the information from the tracks itself.

If you spend a bit of time making sure your music tags are correct they should work great in Emby or any other software for that matter.
So in your case if you are missing info or graphics that's almost 100% because this information is not present in the files/tracks themselves!
It makes diagnosing issues like this super easy!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
3 hours ago, cayars said:

Yes, as @ebr pointed out, Emby is only as good for music as the tagging of the music itself.  Emby puts you firmly in control of this by reading the information from the tracks itself.

If you spend a bit of time making sure your music tags are correct they should work great in Emby or any other software for that matter.
So in your case if you are missing info or graphics that's almost 100% because this information is not present in the files/tracks themselves!
It makes diagnosing issues like this super easy!

 

These are CD rips, and tags are automatically downloaded by CDbaby most likely. So, the tags are coming from the studio directly. PLEX ratio on missing covers is like 200:1. These are the same music I use with PLEX. There is a reasonable expectation that Emby would work nearly the same. Also, compilations are seen as separate albums.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They do work similar in nature for a lot of things but just like Ford vs Chevy go about things differently at times.

In the case of music we are pulling the data from the tracks directly.
This allows you to use many different music specific tagging programs to tag your music anyway you want with as much detail as possible and Emby will use this without pulling in info from 3rd party sites.  It takes the guess work out of how/where the data comes from.

If data or graphics are missing for example it allows you to know the exact reason (doesn't exist in the tagging).  So if you're music is tagged well, Emby will be great for you use.  If you haven't tagged your files properly then Emby isn't going to be great for your music.

All the power to have a great music library is in your full control this way.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
10 hours ago, cayars said:

They do work similar in nature for a lot of things but just like Ford vs Chevy go about things differently at times.

In the case of music we are pulling the data from the tracks directly.
This allows you to use many different music specific tagging programs to tag your music anyway you want with as much detail as possible and Emby will use this without pulling in info from 3rd party sites.  It takes the guess work out of how/where the data comes from.

If data or graphics are missing for example it allows you to know the exact reason (doesn't exist in the tagging).  So if you're music is tagged well, Emby will be great for you use.  If you haven't tagged your files properly then Emby isn't going to be great for your music.

All the power to have a great music library is in your full control this way.

However, it doesn't change the fact that PLEX is using the same tagging as Emby, yet the end result is devastatingly different. I noticed that a lot of music media programs have problems with album covers if the file happens to be FLAC. Is this the problem with Emby?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Film Playlist said:

However, it doesn't change the fact that PLEX is using the same tagging as Emby, yet the end result is devastatingly different. I noticed that a lot of music media programs have problems with album covers if the file happens to be FLAC. Is this the problem with Emby?

I think we're about the same as we use many of the same metadata sources, but we're happy to go over an example in detail and get to the root of what's going on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
4 minutes ago, Luke said:

I think we're about the same as we use many of the same metadata sources, but we're happy to go over an example in detail and get to the root of what's going on.

I'm going to reimport some music tomorrow and see if I can pick up any patterns. There is definitely something that Emby isn't looking at. It is possible that PLEX is picking up covers from not just one, but several resources (including fan art sources).

Edited by Film Playlist
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes Plex uses several services to augment music files.  There are pros and cons to this because any time you fill in information you can get it wrong. Anyone you has used Music BrainZ Picard to automatically tag music without checking things before saving knows how bad this can go.

I've got one test library that no matter what I do Plex just destroys it with wrong info where Emby gets every single thing correct because it's tagged correctly.

With Emby you are in full control of music by making sure the track tagging is correct.  Emby also supports have artwork in the music folders if using one of the "Perfect" modes setup for the library. So if you can't seem to get Emby to read the graphics from certain formats, you can put a graphic file in the album and/or artist folder too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cyberbob2021

Just to chip in, Do it m8, emby premier lifetime. I did after 4 ish months of running to get the feel. i had a nose at plex and jelly finn, and all i can say is they are not a patch on emby. im old school though media portal and media centre back in the day,  stopped years ago. was looking for solution, tried kodi too TBH kodi was good too. but i feel not a patch on emby. although kodi maybe better now too.  just my 2ps worth, anytime i post the staff here are very helpful, No regrets & happy inlaws connecting in to stream.    

  • Agree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Film Playlist
3 hours ago, cayars said:

Yes Plex uses several services to augment music files.  There are pros and cons to this because any time you fill in information you can get it wrong. Anyone you has used Music BrainZ Picard to automatically tag music without checking things before saving knows how bad this can go.

I've got one test library that no matter what I do Plex just destroys it with wrong info where Emby gets every single thing correct because it's tagged correctly.

With Emby you are in full control of music by making sure the track tagging is correct.  Emby also supports have artwork in the music folders if using one of the "Perfect" modes setup for the library. So if you can't seem to get Emby to read the graphics from certain formats, you can put a graphic file in the album and/or artist folder too.

I understand that. But, it doesn't change the fact the PLEX is almost flawless in that department. Every digital download I own PLEX was able to successfully discover tags and fill the appropriate covers (with the exception of really obscure music, but that's fine I expect that). I don't know who else I can compare it to, as companies such as Apple and Windows Media have their own database I'm sure they're using to match albums. I'm not even sure if you guys pay a license to use these music databases, but it is somewhat of a problem if I have to correct too many. My collection is too massive to be burdened with correcting tags, where the techniques today are almost flawless. A PLEX rep has told me that they don't override the ID3 tags, so that means they keep a copy of that information on their server. Perhaps I'll install iTunes again and see what I need to work with as far as tags go. This will be clearly the easiest and quickest route when it comes to editing.

 

2 hours ago, Cyberbob2021 said:

Just to chip in, Do it m8, emby premier lifetime. I did after 4 ish months of running to get the feel. i had a nose at plex and jelly finn, and all i can say is they are not a patch on emby. im old school though media portal and media centre back in the day,  stopped years ago. was looking for solution, tried kodi too TBH kodi was good too. but i feel not a patch on emby. although kodi maybe better now too.  just my 2ps worth, anytime i post the staff here are very helpful, No regrets & happy inlaws connecting in to stream.    

Yeah, Jellyfinn is pretty bare bone. I kept it around temporarily because some codecs work better on others. Thank goodness it was only rarely that I needed it. I did try Kodi... I'm not sure what word to use for them, I guess the word I'll use now is "cumbersome." I also felt like I had to go a bit out of my way to install something/make something work. Not that I'm lazy or anything, but...... I've grown accustomed to the "plug and play" world we're now living in, and to not have that ease is just now worth it. I just don't want to do more than I have to. Interesting how we've improved soooo much with technology in many areas, while still manage to be more labor intense in other areas.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Film Playlist said:

My collection is too massive to be burdened with correcting tags

Well that's a choice and many others originally said the same thing until they see how incomplete their track tagging actually is and how easy some of the tools like MP3Tag or Music Brainz Picard are to use for tagging and fixing things. The database behind Picard as an example is also used by Emby as well and we run our mirror servers.

The problem when tagging is incomplete is the guessing game any software needs to do.  If you have complete album tracks that helps a great deal but things like singles, mixed tracks, soundtracks & compilations albums can become a real sore spot.

Here's a rather simple example of how easy it can be to misidentify a track. Take the song by Rush called "Tom Sawyer" as an example.  If the song isn't tagged already to tell you what album it's from it's a guessing game. The obvious choice is Moving Pictures but is that correct?

Is it from Moving Pictures (it's debut album) or from the single release "Tom Sawyer"?
Perhaps it's from one of these other Rush albums:
Exit...Stage Left
Different Stages: Live
Snakes & Arrows Live
Moving Pictures: Live 2011
Time Machine: Live in Cleveland 2011
Clockwork Angels Tour
R40 Live
Time Stand Still

What if it didn't come from a Rush album at all but from a soundtrack from one of these movies:
Little Evil (2017)
The Infiltrator (2016)
I Love You, Man (2009)
Halloween (2007)
The Waterboy (1998)

It's also been featured on these TV shows as well:
City On A Hill ("The Night Flynn Sent The Cops On The Ice" - 2019)
Togetherness ("Insanity" - 2015)
Fringe ("The Man From The Other Side" - 2010)
The Sopranos ("Walk Like A Man" - 2007)
Family Guy ("Chick Cancer" - 2006)
Freaks And Geeks ("Smooching And Mooching" - 2000)

This is why Emby wants proper tagging so there is no guessing game involved on it's part. This way if/when something doesn't look proper in Emby you know it's not Emby who got it wrong but know to check the tagging of the tracks themselves to correct any errors.  Ultimately that makes it much easier to run a large music collection even if it seems like more upfront work.

The good news is If other software typically "guesses" correct for your tracks that aren't tagged fully that likely means you can pretty easily run your music through something like Picard and it too will guess correctly and be able to write the missing info.

So this doesn't need to be a huge chore to retag your music if it's organized well to begin with using a dedicated music tagging software.  If possible create a copy of your music and try this yourself. Once loaded into Emby you can probably find odd/off things pretty easily and be able to retag them correctly to fix any issues that crept through on the first pass.

Doing the above is likely going to get results as good as other software you've used that guesses, but when it guesses wrong you won't need to fight with the software to fix an issue as you can go back and fix it right at the track level.  The major benefit to this is that you can rescan in your music at a later time if needed to get the same perfect results without having to edit/make changes all over again. This can become important if you even need to move your music or build a new media server or just want to redo your library.  It should also make it that much easier for any other music software to identify exactly what you have as well so it's not just Emby that gains from this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...