RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 (edited) I’m in the process of updating my Windows server to UNRAID - and perhaps switching from My Movies/WMC to Emby. My first set of questions concerns music… I am a +60 year musician that has worked entirely in the professional recording, media archiving and broadcast industries I have a lot of music and all the screenshots on this site shows a bunch of random album covers; they are not sorted by name, artist, genre or anything that I can detect. Are there screenshots of how Music libraries get organized - or can be organized by a user? (Artist, Genre, Categories, User-defined) I found very little on the site. I’d also like to understand how Emby creates that organization - hopefully via metadata… or perhaps reading the WMP database which is also used by WMC. I have a large library of surround music generally stored as DTS extensions. (Some AC3) Will these show in my music library as well? (It was a bit of a trick this to work in WMC/WMP) Thanks for the feedback… Edited October 19, 2021 by RAP58 typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abobader 2942 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Hello RAP58, ** This is an auto reply ** Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you. It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread: Thank you. Emby Team Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Hi, yes you can sort your music a bunch of different ways as well as filter it. I would setup an Emby Server and add a sampling of your music content just to test out how things will work. That's probably the best thing you can do. Then ask any questions on configuration to tweak your setup. Carlo 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 (edited) Thanks Carlo - I'll address each question: 1) Thanks for the screen shot, but I was hoping to see some layouts - most of those menu items are of limited use when dealing with 800GB's of music. Do you have an example of Artist/Album layouts? 2) I need to know how Emby creates its internal database. Example: I hope that it has nothing to do with folder structures. (A non-starter: I am not changing 6000 folders to adhere to a required folder organization.) Can it read WMP database/metadata? ID3 tags? Other? 3) Music only surround sound formats (DTS, AC3, etc.), are important to me. Do you know how it works in Emby? Until I check-off some important boxes for music, photo and movie libraries, I'm not going to waste my time testing software. It ends up being a big waste of time. I am a little surprised at how little information there is on the main web site - and that usually means things are missing. I am moving to UNRAID - and just setting up EMBY Server is a bunch of work. Happy to test once I have some basic requirements met... Edited October 19, 2021 by RAP58 typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Hi. Yes we have Artist (and Album Artist) and Album layouts: 9 minutes ago, RAP58 said: Example: I hope that it has nothing to do with folder structures. You're in luck. Our music information is driven off of ID3 tags entirely. 10 minutes ago, RAP58 said: Music only surround sound formats (DTS, AC3, etc.), are important to me. Do you know how it works in Emby? This will be the trickiest part. It will depend heavily on exactly what you are trying to play back on (which app/device). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 11 minutes ago, RAP58 said: and just setting up EMBY Server is a bunch of work. For a small sample library, it really wouldn't be... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 On this item: 2) File structure/organization: I found this... Emby Music Naming : Emby However, my file structure does not match any of these. I have: /MUSIC /ArtistLastName, ArtistFirstName (YEAR) - Album Name 01 - TrackName.xxx 02 - TrackName.xxx etc... I suppose I would be using "Other" - but as there is quite a lot of discussion on folder structure - even though the first statement in that post is "Emby is completely tag based..." - I wonder how the folder structures affect the scan outcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 7 minutes ago, RAP58 said: even though the first statement in that post is "Emby is completely tag based..." - I wonder how the folder structures affect the scan outcome. For your purposes, they shouldn't. Our move to completely tag-based music was just completed with our last server release (4.6.4) so that is probably why you can still find a lot of discussion on folder structure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 2 minutes ago, ebr said: For a small sample library, it really wouldn't be... I'm new to UNRAID (just moved from Windows Server/My Movies/WMC). Installing an UNRAID plug-in is easy - but configuration (so far in my experience), is not always easy. Maybe Emby is different. But as I said, I need to check off some basic stuff first. @EBR: Regarding Surround: Players need to bitstream to my three AV Receivers I have. Ideally, it should have rules based scenario based on format as well - but this may not be critical. AV Receivers are connected to Windows 7 HTPC at the moment. I will upgrade and update them to Windows 10 one at a time; so both OS's should be workable in the ideal scenario. (Otherwise I have significant hardware costs up front.) The biggest issue with WMP/WMC is having those files show up in my library - but after that, the CODECs took care of everything (Shark007) Then I assigned a Surround category to them so I can just search on those files when I need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 The 3 choices of layout of folder structure really only matters for how Emby will use graphic files found in the folder structure. If you have everything tagged at the track level that setting won't much matter. The key to a good music experience is all in the tagging of your media as that is what Emby will use! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwhodges 1527 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, RAP58 said: 3) Music only surround sound formats (DTS, AC3, etc.), are important to me. Do you know how it works in Emby? My test surround folder has surround files in wav, flac, aac (in an mp4 container with with mp4 and m4a extensions), and dts (with either wav or dts extension) formats, and these all show and play as expected. There is also a pure ac3 file which is shown but does not play, which is surprising given that it's a common format within other containers where it plays fine. Last year I couldn't play a pure AAC file, which I reported - but I don't have one to hand to check whether that got fixed. I could test more if you like (but as Cayars says, you could just as easily). Paul Edited October 19, 2021 by pwhodges 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 @pwhodges: Thanks for that! I did assume playing these files was fine. (WMP did this 10 years ago.) I had to manually create the metadata in WMP and that worked fine - I just did a search for the equivalent mp3 album and since the DB is stored externally, its created the links. Now that I'm switching to something new, I need to makes sure some method will work. Are their similar problems scanning the files and adding files to the library? How does EMBY get tags from these DTS and AC3 formats? I'm willing to encapsulate into an another format - MKA or something similar that provides persistent metadata. I'm not into testing to see if something works. I'd like to at least get a reasonable feedback that it will work first. Sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 Just looking around on your website and wonder if for the premiere stuff, there is more than the 1 sentence/phrase description of the features shown here: Emby Premiere - Emby It seems there are links, but whenever I try thme nothing happens so I'm assumign its just the bit of animation on the icons? Pretty sparse site information. Is there a manual? Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Hi. We have a Knowledge Base at https://support.emby.media and then this forum with a wealth of live information. What will or won't work is sometimes tied to very specific attributes of your environment - especially in these edge cases of things like surround format music. That's just something that not very many of our users have or do. 2 hours ago, pwhodges said: My test surround folder has surround files in wav, flac, aac (in an mp4 container with with mp4 and m4a extensions), and dts (with either wav or dts extension) formats, and these all show and play as expected. Helpful to indicate exactly what app and what device(s). Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 Also of interest is whether Emby will work with My Movies directly; or via My Movies metadata file scraping off my media server. If yes, then it answers a host of questions... if no, then I have to drill down... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37060 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 What do you mean by with My Movies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Just now, Luke said: What do you mean by with My Movies? Gotta go way back into about 2005 or 6 for that one... "My Movies" was an old WMC-based system. 11 minutes ago, RAP58 said: Also of interest is whether Emby will work with My Movies directly Sorry, no and, I believe, all of their metadata was XML so we probably won't read it exactly correct either. We do have an XML plug-in but I'm not sure it is going to understand all the old MyMovies tags. My advice would be to not try and use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 19 minutes ago, ebr said: Hi. We have a Knowledge Base at https://support.emby.media and then this forum with a wealth of live information. What will or won't work is sometimes tied to very specific attributes of your environment - especially in these edge cases of things like surround format music. That's just something that not very many of our users have or do. Helpful to indicate exactly what app and what device(s). Thanks. OK Devices: Well presumably via an Emby player, bit streamed to an AV Receiver that supports various AV CODEC/formats. Currently I have 3 Windows 7 HPTC's MC's that would get converted to Emby; and go to these AV receivers. One of them is also connected to an Android Smart TV (Hisense) which is connected via ARC to a Sony AV receiver. It might be interesting to have Emby on the Android TV directly and forget about the HTPC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 (edited) 5 minutes ago, Luke said: What do you mean by with My Movies? My Movies Just noted EBR's comment. Well its still active and still being used by a number of media centers. Since I've been on-board from the start (Windows XP) I have a quite a lot of metadata for the 4000+ movies on my servers. Others can collect this metadata and use it - so unless you tell me that Emby will get all my data flawlessly, I'm not looking forward to the hours of recreating something similar in Emby. Edited October 19, 2021 by RAP58 Elaboration Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 5 minutes ago, RAP58 said: OK Devices: Well presumably via an Emby player, bit streamed to an AV Receiver that supports various AV CODEC/formats. Currently I have 3 Windows 7 HPTC's MC's that would get converted to Emby; and go to these AV receivers. One of them is also connected to an Android Smart TV (Hisense) which is connected via ARC to a Sony AV receiver. It might be interesting to have Emby on the Android TV directly and forget about the HTPC. That's good info (thanks) but my question of what app/device was directed to @pwhodges because he said he had content like you do. I believe Emby Theater (what would run on your PCs) will play these items I'm not sure the Android apps will be able to interpret and play them all as audio-only formats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37060 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 8 minutes ago, RAP58 said: My Movies I've heard of the software, I was just asking you to be more specific about your question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 2 minutes ago, ebr said: That's good info (thanks) but my question of what app/device was directed to @pwhodges because he said he had content like you do. I believe Emby Theater (what would run on your PCs) will play these items I'm not sure the Android apps will be able to interpret and play them all as audio-only formats. That's fine - not critical as I have HTPC's on all 3 surround sound systems at my place - all with AV receivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 (edited) @Luke: OK - I understand. As stated above, there is lots metadata collected over a decade - that I am not willing to toss it until I am comfortable with a new solution. Since there is very little on the site that presents any detail on function, usability, interoperability, etc. Example: the only info I have on Embry Theatre is a small 2" thumbnail and the tag: "The latest and greatest Emby app for your TV. " @ EBR: It's pretty easy to say: "...was an old WMC-based system." The reason I'm still with it, is that most systems still can't do much of what it did. Guys: I'm here because I want to move on. But "try it and see"; does not work for me. Done that and bought the T-shirt... and every time I do - where a vendor provides very little information upfront - I end up wasting a lot of time before I run into a road-block. So no My Movies; OK and no problem. How do you collect Movie metadata create your database and keep them updated? Better yet - Can someone send me a YouTube video of someone navigating through a large Emby media centre with 4000+ movies, 6000+ music folders, 40,000+ family photos and change views filter by categories, genres or just a search... so I can see how snappy it is? Edited October 19, 2021 by RAP58 Clarify Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14910 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 I was not aware that they were still active, my bad. If I recall correctly, they actually collected and maintained their own centralized metadata database. Is that right? They pre-dated the providers that we use now which are things like themoviedb.org, omdb and thetvdb.com (and musicbrainz for music). Does MyMovies have the option these days to save your local metadata to an NFO file? If so, can we see one of those? If it does and those files are designed to be Kodi-compatible, then it is very likely we will read them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAP58 1 Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 @EBR: OK - but how do you do it and that is your accuracy? 75%? 90%? 95%? 90% means I have to manually deal with 500 movies. What happens when there are multiple files - example, theatrical release, director cut, 3D version, 3D 60fps HDR. Etc. Speaking of 3D: I saw no data on the main site regarding stream 3D movies. More importantly, how do I get all my basic questions answered without asking them one at a time here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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