Music Library : content mismatch

[Clayzee 4]

Hello

I'm currently evaluating Emby in order to see if it's worth switching to a paid media center, and I'm facing a few head-scratching issues for which I could use some help

My configuration

The official Emby package for Synology is running on a brand new NAS running ( DSM 7 )

 

The music library

My library follows Emby recommandations :

Artist 
 - Album(s)
   - track 1
   - track 2
   - ....
   - folder.jpg

I have mostly FLAC & mp3 files, and they're all tagged using the following fields :

- album / artist / genre / title / track / year

 

Emby settings

emby system user has RO access to the files

- music folder structure set to "perfectly organized [..]" with the matching structure

• "Albums metadata downloaders" disabled
• "Artist metadata downloaders" enabled
• "Artist image fetchers" enabled
• "Song image Fetchers" enabled

 

The problem(s)

1. The artist name sometimes doesn't match the one of the parent folder or the embedded tag

eg : emby shows dire-straits instead of Dire Straits when displaying the artist name

 

2. Some albums appear as duplicate in the listing

eg : the Making Movies album is listed twice, with neither of the artist name matching the tag ( which correctly reads Dire Straits ) and even slightly different artwork (?)

 

3. The Album Artists section also exhibits a weird behaviour, with most of the artists having either :

• the correct name but no related picture
• an incorrect name and no related picture

 

What I did so far

• checking the file tags
• refreshing metada for the music library
• restarting the NAS

 

If someone could help me understand what causes all these weird issues despite my efforts, I would gladly appreciate it

Edited April 20, 2023 by Clayzee

[Luke 37082]

Quote

1. The artist name sometimes doesn't match the one of the parent folder or the embedded tag

eg : emby shows dire-straits instead of Dire Straits when displaying the artist name

Hi, the parent folder name is not used unless the audio files just don't have any tagging. I understand you don't think dire-straits should be showing, but if we look closely I'm pretty sure we'll find those values inside your audio file. Can we please see an example? Thanks.

[Luke 37082]

Quote

2. Some albums appear as duplicate in the listing

eg : the Making Movies album is listed twice, with neither of the artist name matching the tag ( which correctly reads Dire Straits ) and even slightly different artwork (?)

 

Probably the same as above, but the extra note that in order for tracks to be grouped into an album, they need to be tagged consistently with both their album and albumartist values.

[Clayzee 4]

Hello, and thanks for your feedback

6 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, the parent folder name is not used unless the audio files just don't have any tagging. I understand you don't think dire-straits should be showing, but if we look closely I'm pretty sure we'll find those values inside your audio file. Can we please see an example? Thanks.

Sure, here's an example with the album Money for Nothing  :

How it shows up in Emby ( client + metadata manager )

 

How it shows up in MP3Tag

 

I don't know how Emby picked up dire-straits instead of Dire Straits, but clearly there's a mismatch

 

[Luke 37082]

Did you check all id3 versions? You might have dire-straits embedded into the file in some other form.

I would check the box in mp3tag to write all versions (I think it has that option).

[Clayzee 4]

2 minutes ago, Luke said:

Did you check all id3 versions? You might have dire-straits embedded into the file in some other form.

I would check the box in mp3tag to write all versions (I think it has that option).

I did check : FLAC files only have a single type of tags ( unlike MP3 files , which do have ID3 v2 etc. )

I even tried to delete the entire music library and add it again with the same settings : the same issue(s) are still there

Is there a way I can troubleshoot this problem by SSHing into the NAS and having a look at Emby internal files or caching ?

[Luke 37082]

Can you provide a copy of the file for testing? Thanks.

[Clayzee 4]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Can you provide a copy of the file for testing? Thanks.

Sure, there it is : So Far Away.flac

[Luke 37082]

Do you have the server log from when you first imported that? I tested it and got Dire Straits.

[Clayzee 4]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Do you have the server log from when you first imported that? I tested it and got Dire Straits.

I just just searched in the earliest embyserver*.txt logfile, all I could find ( regarding that specific file ) was :

2023-04-20 16:46:41.654 Info MediaProbeManager: ProcessRun 'ffprobe' Process exited with code 0 - Succeeded
2023-04-20 16:46:41.667 Info MediaProbeManager: ProcessRun 'ffprobe' Execute: /var/packages/EmbyServer/target/bin/ffprobe -i file:"/volume1/music/dire-straits/brothers-in-arms/So Far Away.flac" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json -show_streams -show_format

I did an analysis of all the artists listed by Emby : it appears that 30~40% of the names have that bizarre "lowercase + dash" format ( see screenshot below ) whereas the rest is fine.

I did several spot checks for the file tags and I can confirm that they're correct, so, wherever Emby is picking that weird artist name from, I'm totally confident writing that it is not from the embedded tags

 

 

[Clayzee 4]

Reading the logs again, I'm starting to realize what's happened :

I used a utility script that was meant to adjust the structure of all the paths to be "Emby compliant" ( structure-wise ), and that apparently switched the folders which weren't compliant to the "Capitalize + space" format

e.g.

before : /volume1/music/dire-straits/brothers-in-arms/So Far Away.flac
now    : /volume1/music/Dire Straits/Brothers In Arms/So Far Away.flac

The root cause of the problem seems to be that Emby still remembers ( somehow ) and uses that information, despite deleting / re-creating / re-scanning / refreshing the library

[Luke 37082]

It’s surprising that it was even used at all if the album Artist is tagged in the file. Thanks for the update.

[Clayzee 4]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

It’s surprising that it was even used at all if the album Artist is tagged in the file. Thanks for the update.

Yes, I'm surprised too.

Do you know how to fix the problem ? ( ie : is there a cache that I need to clear to force Emby to pick up the correct data ? )

So far, I've tried :

• stopping/restarting the Emby server package
• restarting the NAS
• deleting the Music library
• re-scanning the Music library
• performing a complete metadata refresh on the Music library

... and still, the wrong artists / album artists info are shown

 

[Luke 37082]

Can you try removing all tracks from that Artist out of your library, then run a scan of all libraries to clean out the database, then add it back? Thanks.

[Clayzee 4]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Can you try removing all tracks from that Artist out of your library, then run a scan of all libraries to clean out the database, then add it back? Thanks.

Good news ! The artist name is now displayed correctly, along with the artist's picture ( something that wasn't the case before )

It's surprising that deleting/adding back the entire music library like I did before had no effect, while doing it this way works

Is it a known bug or shall a new ticket be created ?

[Luke 37082]

Removing and adding back the library will work just fine, assuming that artist doesn't appear in other libraries, and assuming you complete a full scan of all libraries before adding it back.

[Clayzee 4]

18 minutes ago, Luke said:

Removing and adding back the library will work just fine, assuming that artist doesn't appear in other libraries, and assuming you complete a full scan of all libraries before adding it back.

Ok, I understand now why it didn't work.

Thank you