Emby "Collections" not showing up in kodi "Sets"

[MarcusJ 18]

I need a little guidance regarding emby-for-kodi...

 

I'm running emby server on a fairly robust Windows 10 tower. I have about 3,500 movies being stored on a Synology NAS, and included in my emby movie library. I also have 97 emby "Collections" set up on the emby server.  I set all of them up the same way - by selecting the individual movie posters and manually added them to the appropriate collections using the context menu.

 

For front-ends, I'm running kodi android boxes on each of three TV's. I have the emby-for-kodi add-on installed on each of the kodi boxes and it seems to be working essentially fine, with one minor issue. When I open the emby add-on in any of my kodi boxes, and then select "Sets", NONE of my 97 movie collections initially showed up.

 

I then ran a "Manual Sync" on the emby-for-kodi add-on, and afterward, only about one-third of the collections show up in the kodi "sets".

 

I then ran a database repair within the emby-for-kodi add-on, but again, afterwards the exact same collections were shown as "Sets" as were after the manual sync.

 

To troubleshoot, I then ran the same series of actions an a different kodi box, and the results were identical, which would seem to rule out any kind of problem with the kodi boxes themselves.

 

I've also gone into the emby server metadata manager and looked at the metadata for several of the collections, trying to identify differences in collections that show up in kodi vs those that do not show up, but I was not able to find any differences that were obvious to me.

 

Can anyone help or at least suggest why some of these collections show up in kodi as sets, while others do not?

 

Thank you!

 

[Angelblue05 4131]

Tags would cause this oddity. To test, check Videos > Movies (Kodi shortcut). Do all your collections show up there? Let me know.

 

Note, titles can only be assigned one set in Kodi, unlike in Emby.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Angelblue05

[MarcusJ 18]

Inside kodi, I opened the emby ad-on and looked under Movies. I saw all of the movies, even the ones that belong to Collections that are not showing up in sets.  For example, one of the emby Collections that I created that is not showing up as a set in kodi is the "Saw" collection. When I look for the individual Saw movies, they are all there, but there are no collections under the Movies heading.

 

I hope that's what you were asking.

[VanillaXtract 3]

I'm fairly new to emby, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

I believe when they movies are imported into Kodi, it uses the nfo tags. If the movies are not being identified as sets via the tmdb set tag (verify in emby metadata manager), then they will not be imported as sets into Kodi. 

 

Do you have the emby Auto Box Sets plugin?

[Vidman 590]

Auto box sets is not required, user created collections as per the op should work fine , this goes for tmdb tag also which is what the autoboxset plugin uses to do is thing

Edited August 8, 2016 by Vidman

[MarcusJ 18]

Here is some additional info, in hopes that it may provide additional insights...

1. Within the emby Metadata Manager, about a third of the collections show up as having locked metadata.  I did not consciously lock any of them, so their showing up as locked was a surprise.  This is probably unrelated, but I mention it only to be as complete as possible. See attached.
2. I have the option selected for displaying collections as one item. This again, seems to be working fine for the most part. However, when I scrolled down to the "Paranormal Activity" collection, 5 of the 6 movies (1 thru 5) appear both as members of the collection, but ALSO as individual movies. Even more confusing, the images associated with the individual movies do not match.  For example, Paranormal Activity 2 shows as a member of the collection, but has icons indicating a missing backdrop, but it also shows up as an individual movie with no missing images at all. Paranormal 6 is the only one that appears correctly.  I have attached a screen shot of this to better show what I am trying to describe.

Any ideas?

 

Anybody?

Edited August 8, 2016 by MarcusJ

[VanillaXtract 3]

Have you clicked on both Paranormal Activity 1s to check that the paths are the same?

[MarcusJ 18]

Yes, I did. Paths are identical.

[MarcusJ 18]

More info...

 

In the emby metadata manager, all 98 of my collections (I added one) are listed in the "Collections" folder, but many of the collections are NOT listed in the "Movies" folder.  I am attaching the screen shots to illustrate the point.

 

Is there anything I can or should do to fix this or is this?  I'm happy to work with anyone via phone or chat or even provide remote access to investigate my system directly.

 

Thanks!

[xnappo 1600]

There are several 'different' movie folders.  Can you try going in through:

 

Video->Video Addons->Emby

 

And see if you see anything different in there?  You may see more than one 'Movies' folder - look in both.

 

xnappo

[MarcusJ 18]

I went into the Video Addons>Emby>Movies>Movies and I can see all of my movies, but there are no collections listed (that I could find).

 

The other folder I looked in was Video Addons>Emby>Movies>Sets. In that folder I can see 55 of the 98 emby collections.

[Angelblue05 4131]

Do you have the Kodi setting enabled, by the way? In Kodi settings >  video > group movies into sets?

[MarcusJ 18]

Angelblue05, thanks for the suggestion.  I did NOT have that option turned on in kodi.  I made the change, and it did affect the way the MOVIES are presented in kodi.  It no longer lists every Rocky movie, for example, it only shows one listing for Rocky now which is the Rocky box set.  Unfortunately, it did not change the listing of "Sets".  It still only shows the same 55 sets (emby collections) in the kodi Video Addons>Emby>Movies>Sets folder.

[MarcusJ 18]

So, does anyone else have any suggestions on this topic? The issue(s) remains unresolved. Kodi still only recognizes 55 of the 98 emby "collections" as kodi "sets".

 

There are also many inconsistencies in the emby metadata with regard to "Collections" - all 98 of my collections show in the metadata "Collections" folder, but are not consistently shown as collections when looking at the same movies in the metadata "Movies" folder.

• I am running emby on a Windows 10 tower.
• The browser is Microsoft Edge. 
• Movies are stored on a Synology NAS.
• Front-ends are kodi-android boxes.

I'm happy to make whatever changes are necessary, even if it involves a considerable manual effort.

 

Thanks again everyone!

[VanillaXtract 3]

In emby, is real time monitoring enabled?

 

Can you compare the metadata of a movie that appears in a collection and set with one that is only in collections? See if some fields are populated while others are not?

 

Can you compare the nfo files of the same two movies as well? If you are creating them that is.

Edited August 9, 2016 by VanillaXtract

[MarcusJ 18]

Thank you VanillaXtract for your thoughts.

 

Yes, the real-time monitoring is on.

 

I just looked again at the emby metadata for several of the movies that appear in kodi as sets, and several that do not show up in kodi. There are no discernable differences in any single movie's metadata.

 

I'm not a programmer, so I don't fiddle with nfo files, but I would look at them if I knew exactly what to look for (or copy and send them to someone for examination).

 

I'm confident that the issues are with the emby server (not kodi), and here is why I say that...The way the "COLLECTION" metadata is shown in the "Movies" folder is completely inconsistent with the very same "COLLECTION" metadata shown in the "Collections" folder. The "Collections" folder seems to be 100% accurate as far as I can tell, but the way the "Movies" folder stores and shows metadata for movies that are supposed to be in collections is waaaay different and not at all consistent from one collection to another. These are simply observable facts. WHY it is happening is the real question. If all of the metadata for movies that are in collections and the metadata for the collection (box set) itself were all consistent in their treatment within emby, I have to believe that kodi would then treat them all the same.  The inconsistency within the emby metadata would appear to be the obvious villain here.

 

I created all of the collections manually, by right-clicking on the individual movie posters, and selecting "Add to Collection". I did this for about 500 movies - grouped into 98 "Collections". It took most of a day to do it. I am not using any automation tool (plugin) to create the collections as I wanted to be somewhat creative in assembling the collections, such as adding the "Alien vs Predator" (AVP) flicks to both the "Aliens" and "Predators" collections.  I know kodi doesn't support that feature (movies belonging to two different sets), but I don't believe that has anything to do with the problem since I only did that on a 3-4 films and the problem I'm seeing involves hundreds of movies across nearly 50 collections.

Edited August 9, 2016 by MarcusJ

[xnappo 1600]

Do you see anything interesting in:

 

Settings->Reports->Collections?  Are they all there?

[MarcusJ 18]

Yes, I can see all 98 of them in the report.

[Angelblue05 4131]

Best thing to do would be to focus on one collection that's not in Kodi but in the webclient. Can you maybe try to recreate it? Then try a manual sync in emby for Kodi, to see if that makes it appear?

[Angelblue05 4131]

A manual sync won't show collection sync unless there's a modification done to the collections. But again, why would there be missing collections (not all).... They must simply not be returned in the api. But a log, at least to see what is pulled from the server.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Angelblue05

[Angelblue05 4131]

It will only show if the collection is not already in the Kodi database, but is returned in the api. That's how the logging was always set since we keep track of collections in the emby database.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Angelblue05

[Angelblue05 4131]

Yes I rewrote it a while back. When we moved everything to the emby database, and started keeping track of collection instead of recreating them every time there was an update. If I remember correctly, the issue was removing existing movies from the boxset. This is why I had to rewrite it. But have a look, although I would probably wait until a log or something. Chances are the issue are located server side.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Angelblue05

[MarcusJ 18]

Here's some add'l info.

 

I can fix individual collections by opening the collection (clicking on the collection poster), and then individually removing the movies from the collection one at a time.  Once they are all removed, I go back into Collections and delete the collection. Then I start over by going into Movies and adding each movie manually into a new collection (same name). THAT particular collection then shows up normally in the metadata as a proper collection.

 

The issues I have found:

1. Multi-select simply doesn't work for adding movies to a collection. I have tried it several times. I select all of the movies I want to add to the collection, hover over one of them and right-click and select Add to Collection. When I then look at the collection, it only has one item in it - the movie that I had hovered over.
2. Continuing on from point # 1 - SOMETIMES, the movie added to the collection shows up in the collection as a Movie, while other movies show up as "Other Items" - NOT as a movie. After adding multiple movies, one at a time, to the collection, I then open the collection (clicking on the collection poster), and see some movies shown as "Movies", while others in the series show up below the movies as "Other Items". See attached screenshot.
3. Continuing on from point #2 - While still in the collection, I then right click on one of the movies that show up as a "Movie", and select "Edit Info". What shows up is the metadata from the movie (as expected). However, when I do the same on one of the movies shown as an "Other Item", the metadata that shows up is different from the metadata from the actual movie. It's truly odd. It shows incomplete metadata (overviews, genres, people, keywords, images, etc...) than the metadata from the actual movie (which is very complete as I do each one in copious detail).  I have attached screen shots to help illustrate the point.
4. Finally, and continuing on from point #3 - In the metadata shown for a movie listed as an "Other Item", not only is the metadata content different, it also has an additional field at the very top called "Content Type" with the selection of "Inherit". I tried changing it to "Movie", but it didn't help anything. See attached screenshot.

I have restarted the Emby Server and the symptoms remained.

 

I have re-booted the PC, and the same symptoms remained.

 

To repeat an earlier post describing my environment:

• emby server running on a fairly robust Windows 10 tower
• Running Edge as my browser
• Running multiple kodi/Android front-end boxes
• Movies stored on a Synology NAS

 

I apologize for the length of the post, but I am trying to provide as much info as possible to help you understand what's going on.

 

Thank you again!

Edited August 11, 2016 by MarcusJ

[xnappo 1600]

Does the highest log level still return all the server call data?

[Angelblue05 4131]

Yes it does, but the log will get big fast.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Angelblue05