Prevent generation of MP3 album covers in metadata?

[TobyTentakel 19]

Is there any way to disable the extraction of album covers as folder.jpg in the metadata folder?

I have my MP3 collections sorted in ARTIST\ALBUM folder, with each track of an album having the cover stored as coverart, and also an external folder.jpg file in each album folder that I manually created/extracted.

In the Emby settings for the MP3 libraries, I have disabled any info downloaders, extractor, fetchers or NFO savers. The only checkbox is for "Save artwork into media folders".

Still, in the metadata folder on the Embyserver (not in the folders of the actual media), I have millions of extracted album cover files (all called folder.jpg), and always when I add a new album the new one gets added there as well. Are these really needed?

[Junglejim 354]

Hi mate, I think you problem arises from "Save artwork into media folders" setting.

Emby's music library is totally tag driven as I understand it and you seem to have that sorted per track as you stated (saved with tag info). You Probably have the folder.jpg in the album folder so it looks pretty on windows yeah? Again, totally not needed but that's up to you. I'm on Linux so I don't really care about that stuff.

So "Save artwork into media folders" is a total wast of time.. The image is already stored in the tag, it's not worth backing up each track's image up in the meta folder in Emby's DB because you seem to have your music mp3 library fully sorted as it is.

I'm not sure if you uncheck that setting that those "millions" of jpg will go away. Personally I would Kill the whole library and start again..

Would be nice if there was a clean option but I don't think there is.

[TobyTentakel 19]

Ah, so "Save artwork into media folders" is actually the option I want to disable then? I always thought this meant that Emby will create missing folder.jpg in the folder of the media files, no in the metadata folder. Now that is a good hint, I will try to disable this.

And I am also pretty sure this won't clean up the existing metadata. Yes, I am literally talking about millions of files. Recreating the library is an option, but it usually takes almost a full week on my Synology NAS, so nothing I want to do at the moment.

Edited April 19, 2022 by TobyTentakel

[Junglejim 354]

Yeah I fully understand about recreating your library, it is time consuming. You said you already had a folder.jpg in each of the album folder's so no need to back that up.

Good luck mate, I'm sure if your install drive is big enough you could live with it for a while.

[TobyTentakel 19]

Hmm, so I disabled that flag, but when I now add a new album, I don't have any cover art in Emby for it?

[Junglejim 354]

18 minutes ago, TobyTentakel said:

Hmm, so I disabled that flag, but when I now add a new album, I don't have any cover art in Emby for it?

I've never had that option enabled "Save artwork into media folders"! All my mp3's are tag driven, no jpg's in folders, no anything but the mp3's and there tag info!

I would check your Tag info, what do you use to tag albums? Mp3tag/Kid3..?

Did you rescan your music lib after making the changes?

Edited April 19, 2022 by Junglejim

[TobyTentakel 19]

Cover art inside the files is just fine (manually added using Tag&Rename like I did for millions of other tracks).

[Junglejim 354]

mmm, could be a library meta problem.. This app (emby) is totally so behind the rest of the world it's becoming a joke!

What if you enable it again "Save artwork into media folders" and refresh your music lib? Maybe you music lib needs that setting in it's current state..?

Not sure! Time for bed for me.. Have fun!

 

 

[Luke 37151]

Behind how? We support embedded artwork.

[wordlover 103]

Isn't it the case that a cover is not displayed if there is no cover.jpg or folder.jpg file in the album directory?

[TobyTentakel 19]

My music library setting does now have nothing checked except for "Enable realtime monitoring". So none of the downloaders, extractors, image fetchers, etc., just like before. Also "Save artwork into media folders" as well as "Download images in advance" is not active.

When I activate debug logging and add a new album, I still see that a poster image for it gets generated:

2022-04-20 11:18:12.782 Debug SqliteItemRepository: Public GetItemLinks
2022-04-20 11:18:12.783 Debug App: Running MusicAlbumImageProvider for The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
2022-04-20 11:18:12.858 Debug ProviderManager: Saving image to /volume1/Emby/metadata/musicalbums/The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here-musicbrainzalbum-8eda8059-301b-4183-beb1-0dd35d01835c/auto_poster.jpg

How can I disable this? I don't want to have an additional jpg in the metadata folder. I don't have any additional extract plugins active (like musicbrainz). Is there any way to disable this, it is slowing down my server, up to a nearly complete halt when there is lots of data to process. I have restarted the server multiple times in the past days. I am running the latest Emby beta on Synology, if that makes any difference.

[Luke 37151]

6 hours ago, TobyTentakel said:

My music library setting does now have nothing checked except for "Enable realtime monitoring". So none of the downloaders, extractors, image fetchers, etc., just like before. Also "Save artwork into media folders" as well as "Download images in advance" is not active.

When I activate debug logging and add a new album, I still see that a poster image for it gets generated:

2022-04-20 11:18:12.782 Debug SqliteItemRepository: Public GetItemLinks
2022-04-20 11:18:12.783 Debug App: Running MusicAlbumImageProvider for The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
2022-04-20 11:18:12.858 Debug ProviderManager: Saving image to /volume1/Emby/metadata/musicalbums/The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here-musicbrainzalbum-8eda8059-301b-4183-beb1-0dd35d01835c/auto_poster.jpg

How can I disable this? I don't want to have an additional jpg in the metadata folder. I don't have any additional extract plugins active (like musicbrainz). Is there any way to disable this, it is slowing down my server, up to a nearly complete halt when there is lots of data to process. I have restarted the server multiple times in the past days. I am running the latest Emby beta on Synology, if that makes any difference.

Did you configure the music folder structure option in your music library settings?

[TobyTentakel 19]

29 minutes ago, Luke said:

Did you configure the music folder structure option in your music library settings?

Music folder structure is set to "Other or unstructured", should I change this to something else? If I remember correctly, at the time the new music tag architecture was introduced in Emby, I had to set it to this else some specific feature was not working. Folder structure on disk for my files however is ARTIST\ALBUM.

[Luke 37151]

53 minutes ago, TobyTentakel said:

Music folder structure is set to "Other or unstructured", should I change this to something else? If I remember correctly, at the time the new music tag architecture was introduced in Emby, I had to set it to this else some specific feature was not working. Folder structure on disk for my files however is ARTIST\ALBUM.

In order to use your album artwork files, yes, you have to choose one of the two specific options. But make sure your folder structure matches what you pick or you'll run into issues.

[TobyTentakel 19]

24 minutes ago, Luke said:

In order to use your album artwork files, yes, you have to choose one of the two specific options. But make sure your folder structure matches what you pick or you'll run into issues.

Ok, will try that. What about samplers with various artists, is it ok to have them in the folder various/[ALBUMNAME] for generic samplers and [ARTISTNAME]/[ALBUMNAME] for albums by mostly one artist except for a few tracks?

For sampler/compilation albums, in the MP3 tags I have the artist field set to each individual artist and the album artist field set to "Various Artists" and each track has the compilation flag set as well.

Edited April 20, 2022 by TobyTentakel

[Luke 37151]

If every track is contained in the album folder that it belongs to, then select the folder structure option for album\track, and it won't matter what you have above the album folder. That will only matter if you select the artist\album\track option.

[TobyTentakel 19]

36 minutes ago, Luke said:

If every track is contained in the album folder that it belongs to, then select the folder structure option for album\track, and it won't matter what you have above the album folder. That will only matter if you select the artist\album\track option.

Since I have libraries with more than 50.000 albums, I'd prefer to keep the current artist\album\track structure in the file system at least. Will this structure also work when selecting the album\track option in Emby for the library? I guess not as on the top-level of the library will be the individual artists folders and not the albums. I checked the Emby Music Naming entry help page, but it is still not clear to me.
So if I have this:
\Music
  \Artist Name
     \Album Name
         1 - Song.mp3
         2 - Song.mp3
Can I still use the "album\track" option?

[Luke 37151]

Quote

select the folder structure option for album\track, and it won't matter what you have above the album folder

Yes it will be fine.

[TobyTentakel 19]

I tested it now with a small music library, and the scan took almost 3 days, but the result seems to be ok (album covers all there, no extra files in the metadata folder).

I will now re-index my whole library, even though that will again take more than 2 weeks where the system will be under heavy load and I can't use Emby or the actual server properly.

[TobyTentakel 19]

Ok, good news, everyone, the approach seems to have worked, I have now all covers available, but no extra files saved in the metdata folder, great!

The only thing that now apparently no longer works is the display of a collection of random covers on the home screen for a music library. Is there something I have to activate for this to work or is something that just won't work with the current approach I use?

[Luke 37151]

2 hours ago, TobyTentakel said:

Ok, good news, everyone, the approach seems to have worked, I have now all covers available, but no extra files saved in the metdata folder, great!

The only thing that now apparently no longer works is the display of a collection of random covers on the home screen for a music library. Is there something I have to activate for this to work or is something that just won't work with the current approach I use?

Hi, try just running a normal scan of all libraries.

[TobyTentakel 19]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, try just running a normal scan of all libraries.

That's what I did several times. All non-music libraries have the collection covers, all music libraries just have a standard icon.

[Luke 37151]

Can you show a screenshot of what you have?

[TobyTentakel 19]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Can you show a screenshot of what you have?

See screenshot

[Luke 37151]

That's strange. Do your albums have images assigned?