(Another) Collections question

[Archigos 7]

I saw this recent post but it's different enough from what I want to know that I figured I'd write a new topic instead of posting there and risk getting yelled at for hijacking it.

Setup:
iMac: macOS Ventura 13.6.3
Emby: 4.8.0.80 (but I don't think that matters for this)

I've been using Collections for years and have a lot of custom ones I've made. Over the years I've had some system crashes on my NAS, lost all my media (more than once) and had to get it again, but thankfully Emby running on another computer still had the collection info and they would automatically reappear if I added that specific media back at some point. With the introduction of the Collection Library item, I now have Collection data in two different folders:
 

~\.config\emby-server\metadata\collections\
~\.config\emby-server\data\collections\

In the past I would manually place the custom images I use into the folder and they would update on the next scan. Lately some of the sets have been 'changing' on their own, for example the Disney Movies "Z-O-M-B-I-E-S" (1,2&3) between the 2 directories above have 4 different collection folders (with only 1 showing in Emby's interface):
 

Z-O-M-B-I-E-S
Z-O-M-B-I-E-S Collection
Z-O-M-B-I-E-S Collection [boxset]
Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (Disney) Collection

Each folder has different poster images, 2 have backgrounds (fanarts) and the collection.xml is different for each.

What I would like to do (if it won't mess things up)... make a back up of both collection folders listed above, temp shut down Emby, delete both collections folders, start Emby (probably run a scan) and see what, if any, collections get recreated. If I do this I assume only 1 of the 2 folders above would be recreated and if that happens, could I manually add the folders and images back to that specific folder to have them work proper on next scan?

Ideally, even if the above works or not, what is the recommended way currently to create custom collections (and not manually selecting 1 or more movies/shows and "Add to Collection" than manually changing/adding the artwork?

[Luke 37071]

Hi, collection information is stored in the nfo files for the items within the collection. Have you enabled saving metadata to nfo files? That is the best way to back this up.

[Archigos 7]

I haven't changed it, so it 'should' be saving them.  There's a lot of overlap between the two folders (slightly different names in most cases, but the same 'set' nontheless).

I'm just trying to clean it up a bit and remove whichever folder isn't actually used.

Edited February 9 by Archigos

[Happy2Play 8282]

The data\collections folder is obsolete (was migrated to metadata\collections in previous versions).  

But no info about what items exist in a collection in that nfo anymore.

Item metadata ie the <set> node in the nfo creates said collections now with from manual recreation or provider creation if enabled.

example from item nfo showing custom and provider collection

  <set tmdbcolid="8091">
    <name>Alien Collection</name>
  </set>
  <set>
    <name>1 Multi-versioned</name>
  </set>

With the information in the item nfo Emby will create these collections again on a rebuild or relocations of media.

 

[Archigos 7]

I did just check, the Collections Library item was set to read NFO but not save them, so I just turned that on. I hope running a manual full scan will write those files out.

Thank you Happy for letting me know which was which...

So, my current guess, since metadata\collections is the legit folder, I'll leave that alone and only delete the data\collections folders that have identical names.

I just happened to randomly notice early this morning that a handful (maybe 5 or so) collections in Emby had those autocreated images that annoy me (I customize each one)

[Archigos 7]

So, things aren't working out well... I was busy so I just got to messing with this and thankfully tested 1 collection instead of deleting the entire data/collections folder.

data/collections/Wonder Woman Collection [boxset]/collection.xml (and images)
metadata/collection/Wonder Woman Collection/collection.nfo (and images)

I had both of the above and deleted the data version. On the PC (Windows) web interface, it still showed my custom poster, but if I entered the collection all images were broken (poster, logo, fanart). I verified these images did exist in the metadata version of the folder. It's obvious it was still using the data versions, so I went to manually edit the images for the collection to select the proper ones, but could not remove the broken/dead images to replace them. I ended up deleting the collection (in the Web interface) in hopes that a library scan would detect the real one, but after about a minute it turns out it deleted the metadata folder for the collection (and the data version had already been deleted). I do have a backup of all the images and nfo, but it didn't recreate the folder.

I don't dare mess with this anymore tonight without advice on the best way to fix this... (if the answer is "Don't mess with it" I'm fine with that since the metadata/collections folder is only 1.68GB and the data/collections is 196.31MB so it's not like I'm wasting a buttload of space).

I'm also guessing that I'm going to have to manually recreate the Wonder Woman folder since it didn't recreate on scan, but I guess that's fine for now.

 

--Edit--

It was a quick fix for the Wonder Woman collection... I just selected both movies created a new Collection, overwrote the NFO in that new folder with previous one (folder named the same) and it didn't break after a rescan with all images working.

Edited February 10 by Archigos
Quick note at the bottom

[Luke 37071]

@Archigosdo you still have issues/questions?

The collection.xml files are no longer used. They haven't been used since Emby Server 4.6.

[Archigos 7]

I have to reread my messages above since I don't remember. But it's late and I'm going to bed soon. I do know that I had copied both mentioned folders to my laptop as a backup.

At some point after those posts I decided to 'update' my workflow for my media and renamed all my movie folders to have the TMDb id in the folder name and when it rescanned the movies it created a lot of 'bad' collections for single movies (I have it set to not auto unless it's a set of 3 or more)... I had assumed that meant I have 3 or more of the movies that belong to that set available for the set to show, but after all the useless collections that were created I'm wondering if it just means 'hey, this series has 3+ movies in it' no matter how many you have? However that doesn't fully answer the question as some of the groups that were made (again, I only had 1 movie) but to my knowledge that series only has 2 total in it. For example Beetlejuice got it's own collection (which I would have manually made after the new one comes out this year).

The only reason this is annoying to me is that I make custom collection art for all my collections and I happen to go watch a movie and there was like 9 or 10 new collections (all with pretty bad art or that generic auto-created image that is the movie posters tiled in 4 for the 'poster').

[Luke 37071]

OK thanks for the update.