My anime metadata is so convoluted and broken. Need advice

[dragonbytes 1]

Hi, so i've been trying to import my anime into a sensical library with proper metadata but it has been a nightmare. It groups show episodes into different "versions" instead of episodes part of 1 seasons. I've tried anidb and tvdb and none of them seem to get good results. I created a library under category of "shows" so that emby understands things are to be grouped into shows, seasons, episodes, etc. (I tried Mixed mode before and it wouldn't coorelate a show structure properly). Now I can't delete the bad metadata from shows to try other ones. The corrupt ones stay no matter what. It baffles me why there isn't some kind of advanced "Clear metadata for this show" feature. Is there anything I can do to delete what's assigned these shows to start over?

The second part of this is, well you see, i'm one of "those people" that always organized my media via filenames and folders with subfolders, etc. I always hated the idea of spamming those actual video directories with a million .nfo, .jpg files etc and burying my video files. It seems though that when it comes to managing/exporting/importing metadata, it's the only recommended way to have that level of control over it and i'm ready to consider nuking my existing user folder-based and going with nfo files in media directories. Is there any way to migrate what I have to that? I assume I have to delete it all and start from scratch, re-editing all the things that need adjusting etc? Do I have to enable that function manually to save to media folder? Is it complicated to setup? I need some advice because I only want to redo my metadata ONCE more properly so that I never have to fight with it so much again. Thanks

[pwhodges 1539]

This happens simply because you are not following Emby's naming requirements sufficiently closely. 

Structure your folders and name your files in accordance with Emby's naming guide, use TVDB as the main source, and the problems will go away.

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159110-tv-naming

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159102-movie-naming

2 hours ago, dragonbytes said:

i'm one of "those people" that always organized my media via filenames and folders with subfolders, etc.

If your chosen layout conflicts with what Emby can deal with, then you will continue to have trouble.  Things really do work best if you provide Emby with what it's programmed to handle.

Note that if you choose to use a library of mixed type, i.e. with both series and movies, the guidelines must be followed even more strictly, as the precise folder structure is required to enable Emby to distinguish them.

In my experience, trying to use the sources enabled by the Anime plugin is liable to make things worse.  They can supply extra data, but I would not try to integrate them until you are getting good results without them.  I have a lot of anime and don't use the plugin.

Finally, there are a few instances (in non-anime stuff as well) where names are truly ambiguous, and TVDB may give the wrong answer.  You add the tvdb ID to the show or movie name in the format [tvdbid=xxxxxx] to force Emby to use that entry. (You can also use tmdbid or imdbid if appropriate.)

Paul

[Luke 37252]

Hi there, can you please provide an example? How are your files named and organized?

[dragonbytes 1]

Thanks for getting back to me. Basically I have two folders for Anime. One called "Anime TV Shows" and the other "Anime Movies". Then in the TV one, each show has its own directory including new seasons (i.e. new seasons aren't put in the main "series" folder since they usually have unique names instead of more traditional Season 2, or Season 3, etc). My understanding though, is that shows, movies, episodes are not identified based on filename/directory name and instead are matched against a hash. Is that assumption wrong? Also, I have tried looking up the show in various databased and assigned the correct tvdb or anidb etc to the metadata manually, but after refresh, nothing changes except the artwork sometimes. It refuses to overwrite the old stuff regardless of explicitly specifying an ID for a show. If metadata identifying depends solely on correct filenames/directories, then thats going to be ALOT of work for me to go through my collection and rename everything

[GrimReaper 3330]

2 minutes ago, dragonbytes said:

My understanding though, is that shows, movies, episodes are not identified based on filename/directory name and instead are matched against a hash. Is that assumption wrong?

Unfortunately yes. Take a look at the links @pwhodges posted above.

3 minutes ago, dragonbytes said:

If metadata identifying depends solely on correct filenames/directories, then thats going to be ALOT of work for me to go through my collection and rename everything

Some external tools might assist somewhat in that endeavour (FileBot, TMM...). 

[pwhodges 1539]

1 hour ago, dragonbytes said:

If metadata identifying depends solely on correct filenames/directories, then that's going to be A LOT of work for me to go through my collection and rename everything

Yup. BTDT.

You will find that the requirements for other media servers are similar or identical, so if you wish to continue setting up a service like Emby (highly recommended!), you'll just need to bite the bullet.  And once it's done, it's done.

Personally, I haven't used any of the media renaming programs, but I understand that they can do a good job - though presumably they expect an initial naming scheme that they can work with...  This may be far more flexible than Emby, though.  For my part, I renamed everything manually - but with the help of Bulk Rename Utility, which enables renaming of whole directories at a time, even including renumbering if you need or decide to change season breakdowns, for instance.

Paul

[RanmaCanada 360]

It's not a lot of work to rename everything properly.  You can use Filebot, Rename My TV Series or any other tools.

[dragonbytes 1]

Ok so I have begun "The Great Renaming" project  Using the naming convention mentioned previously, is it ok to append the unique name that anime has for some seasons after "Season 2"? For example something like this inside the main "Shugo Chara (2007)" folder: "Season 2 (Shugo Chara!! Doki)" ? Also with the episode names, I know S02E01 is recommended, but will it generally work if the filenames have same name with sequential numbers at the end? For example: "Shugo_Chara!!_Doki_01_H264.mkv" ? 

[pwhodges 1539]

I would suggest keeping it close to the recommendations, simply to save trouble if you get caught out.  

For Season (and any other) names, you can edit the metadata of the season after it's been imported to make Emby display the name you want.

In your last example, yes, in theory you can use just episode numbers so long as they are in a recognised season folder, but again, using SnnEnn avoids difficulties.  Sadly, from time to time as the devs make changes to try to handle less standard formats, sometimes a name that used to work correctly no longer does - I would, for instance, not be confident that your last example might not be parsed as s1e264.  Emby shows the codec details on the information page for each episode, so that information is readily available without having it in the name.

Paul

[Mnejing 21]

Anime has always been weird for me too. I know Emby does it's best, and generally succeeds with standard movies or TV shows, but anime is a struggle.

The suggested from @pwhodges about picking a site and matching their structure is probably the easiest way. I know that's how I managed to tame my anime library. I opted to use TVDB as my provider, and I go to the series page and match my layout to theirs. Scan metadata and everything is fine. It's a bit of effort, but it's not much, and the result is satisfying.

I stick to two specific formats for episode naming. I personally use "Show Name - SxEE - Episode Name" (the default format that FileBot uses, which conveniently also pulls it's series data from TVDB, so it kind of avoids a lot of problems). I know FileBot is paid, and maybe there are better free alternatives, but I opted to give it a try and found the purchase worth it. Obviously it's not necessary, it's just a major time save over renaming files manually.

The second format is the standard SxxExx.

Just making sure the files are laid out so that each season is rooted in the same folder, like the attached picture, and the files named correctly will pretty much eliminate all metadata issues with anime.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Mnejing