Emby still going rogue on Music Library imports

[Luke 37094]

And here is the other:

Are these the same or different from mp3tag? if they are different then you'll want to make sure that mp3tag is writing to all id3 versions.

[wordlover 103]

@LukeI posted the results right above here. Here they are again:

1 hour ago, wordlover said:

Finally figured out how to run from CMD - here are results.

album_artist = Éthiopiques  in FFProbe but not in Emby. Why?

Input #0, flac, from '01mela.flac':
  Metadata:
    TITLE           : Erè mèla mèla
    ARTIST          : Mahmoud Ahmed
    album_artist    : Éthiopiques
    ALBUM           : Ethiopiques 07: Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela
    disc            : 01
    DATE            : 2000
    track           : 01
    TRACKTOTAL      : 15
    GENRE           : World, African
  Duration: 00:04:39.15, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 572 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16
  Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 500x499 [SAR 1:1 DAR 500:499], 90k tbr, 90k tbn (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)
    "streams": [
        {
            "index": 0,
            "codec_name": "flac",
            "codec_long_name": "FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "codec_tag_string": "[0][0][0][0]",
            "codec_tag": "0x0000",
            "sample_fmt": "s16",
            "sample_rate": "44100",
            "channels": 2,
            "channel_layout": "stereo",
            "bits_per_sample": 0,
            "r_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/44100",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 12310368,
            "duration": "279.146667",
            "bits_per_raw_sample": "16",
            "extradata_size": 34,
            "disposition": {
                "default": 0,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 0,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0
            }
        },
        {
            "index": 1,
            "codec_name": "mjpeg",
            "codec_long_name": "Motion JPEG",
            "profile": "Baseline",
            "codec_type": "video",
            "codec_tag_string": "[0][0][0][0]",
            "codec_tag": "0x0000",
            "width": 500,
            "height": 499,
            "coded_width": 500,
            "coded_height": 499,
            "closed_captions": 0,
            "film_grain": 0,
            "has_b_frames": 0,
            "sample_aspect_ratio": "1:1",
            "display_aspect_ratio": "500:499",
            "pix_fmt": "yuvj420p",
            "level": -99,
            "color_range": "pc",
            "color_space": "bt470bg",
            "chroma_location": "center",
            "refs": 1,
            "r_frame_rate": "90000/1",
            "avg_frame_rate": "0/0",
            "time_base": "1/90000",
            "start_pts": 0,
            "start_time": "0.000000",
            "duration_ts": 25123200,
            "duration": "279.146667",
            "bits_per_raw_sample": "8",
            "disposition": {
                "default": 0,
                "dub": 0,
                "original": 0,
                "comment": 0,
                "lyrics": 0,
                "karaoke": 0,
                "forced": 0,
                "hearing_impaired": 0,
                "visual_impaired": 0,
                "clean_effects": 0,
                "attached_pic": 1,
                "timed_thumbnails": 0,
                "captions": 0,
                "descriptions": 0,
                "metadata": 0,
                "dependent": 0,
                "still_image": 0
            },
            "tags": {
                "comment": "Cover (front)"
            }
        }
    ],
    "format": {
        "filename": "01mela.flac",
        "nb_streams": 2,
        "nb_programs": 0,
        "format_name": "flac",
        "format_long_name": "raw FLAC",
        "start_time": "0.000000",
        "duration": "279.146667",
        "size": "19963068",
        "bit_rate": "572116",
        "probe_score": 100,
        "tags": {
            "TITLE": "Er├¿ m├¿la m├¿la",
            "ARTIST": "Mahmoud Ahmed",
            "album_artist": "├ëthiopiques",
            "ALBUM": "Ethiopiques 07: Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela",
            "disc": "01",
            "DATE": "2000",
            "track": "01",
            "TRACKTOTAL": "15",
            "GENRE": "World, African"
        }
    }
}

 

[wordlover 103]

I have listed all the key information repeatedly. Yes, ffprobe reports "album_artist    : Éthiopiques" but that's not what Emby is showing! See screen shots immediately above.

[Luke 37094]

I tested importing these into Emby and as far as i can tell everything matches ffprobe.

[Luke 37094]

Quote

 

Metadata providers enabled, but no IDs connected to this album - see current screenshots below. Again, metadata in every other app shows Album Artist with diacritic above intial E, only Emby does not. 

What probably happened is you have a file or files that have the artist listed without the diacritic. This got imported first, and then all the other songs got added to it.

That's why in order to get to the bottom of this, you have to look at every file, not just one or two.

[wordlover 103]

Which part of FFPrrobe results counts?

Metadata:
    TITLE           : Erè mèla mèla
    ARTIST          : Mahmoud Ahmed
    album_artist    : Éthiopiques
    ALBUM           : Ethiopiques 07: Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela

or

"tags": {
            "TITLE": "Er├¿ m├¿la m├¿la",
            "ARTIST": "Mahmoud Ahmed",
            "album_artist": "├ëthiopiques",
            "ALBUM": "Ethiopiques 07: Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela",

Why would they be different in two different parts of the same file?

[Luke 37094]

1 minute ago, wordlover said:

Which part of FFPrrobe results counts?

Metadata:
    TITLE           : Erè mèla mèla
    ARTIST          : Mahmoud Ahmed
    album_artist    : Éthiopiques
    ALBUM           : Ethiopiques 07: Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela

or

"tags": {
            "TITLE": "Er├¿ m├¿la m├¿la",
            "ARTIST": "Mahmoud Ahmed",
            "album_artist": "├ëthiopiques",
            "ALBUM": "Ethiopiques 07: Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela",

Why would they be different in two different parts of the same file?

The json blob is what Emby sees. Those differences are probably nothing to worry about. What you see up top I think is just the values from the bottom formatted for display.

The other possibility is that the artist without the diacritic was just left in your database after the initial removal. You said you removed all albums and scanned the music library, but did you run a scan of all libraries? Sounds like you didn't.

[wordlover 103]

Yes, I scanned the entire Music Library, repeatedly, after removing all the files, after editing them, after adding them to the Music library location once more, as detailed in careful detail earlier in this thread. After I reimported them and did a full Music library scan, Emby is incorrectly presenting ALBUMARTIST name. Why?! See all settings below, and evidence that every single one of these tracks has ALBUMARTIST as "Éthiopiques" with diacritical mark. (Why would I scan my TV library, which is on a different hard drive and doesn't include anything named remotely similar to "Éthiopiques"?) Is Emby caching something, even after whole directories are removed from Music Library and it is rescanned? 

 

[Luke 37094]

Quote

Yes, I scanned the entire Music Library, repeatedly

That's not what I asked. I asked if you ran a scan of all libraries by clicking scan all libraries. The time to do this would be after removing the music to get the artist records cleared out of the database.

[wordlover 103]

On home screen under My Media I clicked the three dots on the Music tab and then Scan Library Files. Is that not correct? (Why would I scan TV or Movie libraries, which are on different drives and don't have any files that overlap with Music Library?)

[Luke 37094]

Just now, wordlover said:

On home screen under My Media I clicked the three dots on the Music tab and then Scan Library Files. Is that not correct? (Why would I scan TV or Movie libraries, which are on different drives and don't have any files that overlap with Music Library?)

Scanning all libraries has some additional cleanup tasks at the end that you don't get run scanning a single library.

So what might have happened is the artist was left in your database and then it got matched with the diacritic version as being the same thing.

[Happy2Play 8296]

Not your flac file but here is a what I get from a mp3.  

 

ffprobe -i "C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos\Music - emby metadata\Mahmoud Ahmed\Ethiopiques 7 - Erè Mèla Mèla\01_Erè Mèla Mèla.mp3"
ffprobe version 5.1-emby_2023_06_25 Copyright (c) 2007-2022 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
  built with gcc 12.2.0 (Rev10, Built by MSYS2 project)
[mp3 @ 000002d7abaf24c0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, mp3, from 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos\Music - emby metadata\Mahmoud Ahmed\Ethiopiques 7 - Erè Mèla Mèla\01_Erè Mèla Mèla.mp3':
  Metadata:
    album           : Ethiopiques 7 - Erè Mèla Mèla
    artist          : Mahmoud Ahmed
    album_artist    : Éthiopiques
    comment         :  00001263 00000000 000082C6 000004D0 00024ED0 00023653 00007F84 00007F88 0001ECC1 0001ECC1
    iTunes_CDDB_IDs : 15+9C3A1F8F55A8FB803E30C9C0AD5F2CDE+667917
    composer        : Mahmoud Ahmed
    disc            : 1/1
    genre           : Ethiopia
    publisher       : Buda Musique
    title           : Erè Mèla Mèla
    track           : 1
    date            : 1999
    id3v2_priv.WM/MediaClassPrimaryID: \xbc}`\xd1#\xe3\xe2K\x86\xa1H\xa4*(D\x1e
    id3v2_priv.WM/MediaClassSecondaryID: \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00
    id3v2_priv.WM/WMContentID: \xfd"\x7fG\x9b*'I\xbfr\x9e\x94\xb0m\x8f\x0b
    id3v2_priv.WM/UniqueFileIdentifier: A\x00M\x00G\x00a\x00_\x00i\x00d\x00=\x00R\x00 \x00 \x00 \x004\x003\x000\x006\x005\x003\x00;\x00A\x00M\x00G\x00p\x00_\x00i\x00d\x00=\x00P\x00 \x00 \x00 \x00 \x00 \x003\x001\x008\x008\x00;\x00A\x00M\x00G\x00t\x00_\x00i\x00d\x00=\x00T\x00 \x00 \x003\x002\x00
    id3v2_priv.WM/WMCollectionID: \xf0\xe2\x96\x0bi\x8e\x89L\x90:V\x80s\xbb\xc6\x9d
    id3v2_priv.WM/WMCollectionGroupID: \xf0\xe2\x96\x0bi\x8e\x89L\x90:V\x80s\xbb\xc6\x9d
    id3v2_priv.WM/Provider: A\x00M\x00G\x00\x00\x00
  Duration: 00:04:39.23, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 160 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s
  Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 250x250 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

 

Quote

As I understand it, FLAC does not support ID3 in any way. It is part of an MP3 file only. FLAC tags are supported, which are, as you can see there, identical to Vorbis Tags, but they technically are not ID3 tags at all. You can naturally coalesce the data between the different comment mechanisms though.

https://www.google.com/search?q=flac+support+id3&oq=flac+support+id3&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDk1MzVqMGoxqAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#:~:text=ID3 tags in FLAC files. - LinuxQuestions.org

It is almost impossible to say without one's entire library as every track across every album would have to be analyzed to compare tags.

Most of the time I have to nuke all tags and rewrite them via mp3tag or Picard.

But your tags appear to be wrong at least according to  musicbrainz.  But in the end yes they can be customized.

Release “Éthiopiques 7: Erè mèla mèla” by Mahmoud Ahmed - MusicBrainz

Recording “Erè mèla mèla” by Mahmoud Ahmed - MusicBrainz

 

Last resort would be removing every album by that AA and do a full scan to clear the db and readd.  As your first images had it correct.

 

[wordlover 103]

OMFG @Luke . That fixed at least the ALBUMARTIST problem. As a user, I have to say that's not the best way Emby could run, if a manual rescan of the Music Library doesn't actually fully accomplish that task. Utterly non-intuitive.

Still unclear, though is why Emby is counting only some of these albums as having been added just now (I removed, did your full full scan, then added back to Music Library directory and did full full scan), but some others Emby is showing as having been added months ago (when they were first added.) See add-date sorted screens below - first half dozen are correctly listed as added right now, but then multiple screens below the others appear. What is Emby caching? Or is Emby reading/using (incorrectly) the system directory creation date instead of the actual date when these various directories were actually added to Emby's Music Library folder?

[Luke 37094]

Albums get created based on the media. So the date added value for an album corresponds to whatever the date added value is of the song responsible for creating it.

[wordlover 103]

ARGH! No, my mistake - it DIDN'T work - I was looking at wrong line. This didn't work. 

[wordlover 103]

ALL these songs and ALL these albums were literally removed from Music Library. Then I did the full full scan. Then I moved them back. Then I did another full full scan. Emby is NOT presenting or reading what is plainly even in ffpprobe.

[Luke 37094]

Just now, wordlover said:

ALL these songs and ALL these albums were literally removed from Music Library. Then I did the full full scan. Then I moved them back. Then I did another full full scan. Emby is NOT presenting or reading what is plainly even in ffpprobe.

server log?

[wordlover 103]

Steps followed:

1. Rotate Emby log
2. Full full scan (from Library page in Settings) - all files/albums are in Emby, ALBUMARTIST is displayed inconsistently with what we see in FFProbe and MP3Tag and other metatag apps.
3. Remove entire Éthiopiques directory and all subdirectories from Music Library directory
4. Full full scan (from Library page in Settings)
5. Confirm NONE of those files are in Emby - a search shows nothing that even begins with "ethio"
6. In MP3Tag, change ALBUM names to add diacritical to first character (e.g. "Éthiopiques 01: Golden Years of Modern Ethiopian Music 1969-1975")
7. Move full directory back into Music Library directory
8. Full full scan (from Library page in Settings)
9. Now all album names HAVE been changed! (screenshot below)
10. BUT... ALBUMARTIST still hasn't been changes
11. Log attached below, along with screen from MP3Tag

So does this narrow down the issue for you @Luke- seems to be something particular to how ALBUMARTIST is handled in Emby?

embyserver.txt

Edited February 6 by wordlover

[Luke 37094]

Quote

So does this narrow down the issue for you @Luke- seems to be something particular to how ALBUMARTIST is handled in Emby?

No, it's still one of the two things I mentioned before. Either:

• You have some files tagged inconsistently (regardless of what you see in mp3tag)
• Or you didn't get the artist cleared out of your database

For testing purposes can you shutdown the server and download a portable install from our website, spin that up and see what happens?

[wordlover 103]

Please take a look at the server log you requested. What does "Or you didn't get the artist cleared out of your database" mean? Emby's search function showed zero results for "ethio" before I reimported and rescanned.

[Luke 37094]

23 minutes ago, wordlover said:

Please take a look at the server log you requested. What does "Or you didn't get the artist cleared out of your database" mean? Emby's search function showed zero results for "ethio" before I reimported and rescanned.

That doesn't mean it's not still in there. I don't see the scan of all libraries in the log you provided. That needs to come after removing the library but before adding it back. What you provided is only the scan of adding it back.

[wordlover 103]

I scanned 3 times. Steps 2, 4 and 8 above.

[Luke 37094]

4 minutes ago, wordlover said:

I scanned 3 times. Steps 2, 4 and 8 above.

Yes, but the very first scan in the log is processing new media. The log does not contain the scan prior to that that I'm asking to see.

[wordlover 103]

No, the first scan was a basic scan before I did anything. As I stated in steps 1-3 above, I did the scan BEFORE removing the files or doing anything else.

Edited February 6 by wordlover

[Luke 37094]

2 minutes ago, wordlover said:

No, the first scan was a basic scan before I did anything. As I stated in steps 1-3 above, I did the scan BEFORE removing the files or doing anything else.

But look at the timestamps. Search the log for  Scan media library. In between the first execution and completion it is already importing new files.