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Direct Folder/Files Access


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No_Username

It would be really nice if we could have direct folder access to our media.

 

Sometimes Emby doesn't detect files correctly and they dont show properly, or they are identified incorrectly. I dont realize this until the last second (when I/other users are about to watch the episode).

 

If there was an option to show users the media library folders in a file explorer-like format, this situation would be easily bypassed. Originally, this is what I thought the "Folders" view would have done.

 

 

I would greatly appreciate this, and I'm sure it would be useful to others as well. I hope it won't be difficult or take much time.

 

 

 

If you have any questions regarding specifics, don't hesitate to ask.

 

Thanks!

Edited by No_Username
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bfir3

This is actually so confusing to me. I've seen posts about similar issues regarding the Folders view, and it never seems clear what purpose the Folders view serves if it does not display the actual folder hierarchy. 

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  • 1 month later...

I am having this same issue with Emby. I am new to Emby, and I like it a lot. But this issue with the absence of the ability to view music in a folder hierarchy is a major problem with the way I have my music collection organized. I would like to explain the feature that I hope will be incorporated into Emby:

 

My music is stored in a folder hierarchy in which there is a folder containing each band's albums. For instance, I have a folder for Pink Floyd. Within that folder are several different folders (albums), and within each of those folders are all of the songs for that particular album. I would like to have a view option in Emby so that I may see each band folder (and only the bands, not the albums within each folder), and then when I open a band's folder, I am able to see only the folders (albums) for that particular band. The top level of the hierarchy contains all of the bands or artists, the next level displays each band's or artist's albums, and the final level is the individual songs from that album.

 

The folders option is definitely useful, but when I view my collection in that way I see all of the albums from all of the bands in alphabetical order (by album name, not by artist) in one vast collection. I would rather be able to browse my collection by bands. If I view my collection by artist or album artist, each artist's songs are listed in one collection without any indication of which album each song is from.

 

I appreciate all of the work that has gone into this software, and it is great. I was previously using Subsonic for my music collection, and I would like to move to using only Emby. But until I am able to view my collection by band or artist names and navigate to each individual album, Subsonic works better for my needs.

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Deathsquirrel

I don't understand your example @@jekopsch.  I use the same folder structure I believe.  For example, the song Back in Black is found at \\server\music\MB3\AC-DC\Back In BlackAC-DC - Back In Black - 06 - Back In Black.flac.  Each band has a folder, each album has a subfolder in the artist folder, and all the album tracks are stored as files in that album folder.  Is that the same as you?

 

In Emby if I want to browse by band I click Album Artist and I see all the bands.  If I click a band I see a list of albums by that band.  If I click an album I see a list of tracks on that album.  What's the change you're looking for?

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 I would like to have a view option in Emby so that I may see each band folder (and only the bands, not the albums within each folder), and then when I open a band's folder, I am able to see only the folders (albums) for that particular band. The top level of the hierarchy contains all of the bands or artists, the next level displays each band's or artist's albums, and the final level is the individual songs from that album.

 

This is exactly what we do by default. You should be seeing artist -> album -> song. How did you set it up in Emby library setup?

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jekopsch

I don't understand your example @@jekopsch.  I use the same folder structure I believe.  For example, the song Back in Black is found at \\server\music\MB3\AC-DC\Back In BlackAC-DC - Back In Black - 06 - Back In Black.flac.  Each band has a folder, each album has a subfolder in the artist folder, and all the album tracks are stored as files in that album folder.  Is that the same as you?

 

In Emby if I want to browse by band I click Album Artist and I see all the bands.  If I click a band I see a list of albums by that band.  If I click an album I see a list of tracks on that album.  What's the change you're looking for?

 

I wasn't getting that type of behavior with my collection until after I made my post. When I browsed "Folders" I would get a list of every song for that particular artist. Now it seems that most of my collection is being displayed the way that I would like, but there are still examples of the problem I was explaining. For instance, for the artist Aphex Twin, the folders and files are located on my system as follows:

 

/var/music/Aphex Twin

/var/music/Aphex Twin/Classics

/var/music/Aphex Twin/Come To Daddy EP

/var/music/Aphex Twin/I Care Because You Do

 

When I browse through "Folders" through the Emby web interface, selecting the Aphex Twin folder results in a display of all of the songs from all of the albums, rather than showing the three album folders contained within the Aphex Twin folder. The same thing is happening with many of the other artists' folders. However, since I made that post, I have been going through and editing the default "Title" by using the context menu, and I think that corrects the issue once Emby scans for changes. It seems that the initial scan picked up a particular album name and applied one particular album name to the "Title" field to many of the artists' folders, and removing that from the "Title" for a particular artist might be fixing that problem. It seems that many of the artists' folders now contain each album, rather than all of the songs in one long list.

 

I appreciate your response, and I think I may have at least found a work around. I noticed that on both the Aphex Twin and Pink Floyd folders, there was a particular album name appended to the artist's name in the "Title" field. I have removed that information from the field in both of those cases, and I will see if that corrects the issue the next time the collection is scanned. It seems that the work I did over the past couple of days on other artists have corrected that issue. So I think the issue is related to how Emby scans the collection, rather than the behavior of the Folders option.

 

Thanks again.

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jekopsch

This is exactly what we do by default. You should be seeing artist -> album -> song. How did you set it up in Emby library setup?

This is how many of my artists are displaying. But I have confirmed that the problem is still happening for certain artists, even after modifying the "Title" field. This is since my last update in response to @@Deathsquirrel . I updated some of the titles for particular artists, and after a manual scanning of my library, Emby seems to be picking up and appending album titles or overwriting the information I am manually typing in to the Title field when I modify it using the "edit info" function.

 

Certain artists are updating properly after a manual scan, but others are (presumably) getting album info from the (presumably) metadata and inserting it into the Title field. This seems to be happening with artists in which a particular album has special characters in the name of the album. An example of this is my folder for The Beatles, in which I have a folder (or album) named (The White Album) - Disc 1. The same thing is happening with any songs, albums or artists that contain special characters in the file names. I am going to try to edit the file names and remove any characters other than letters, and I will see if that corrects the problem. So it seems to me that this problem occurs due to the way Emby interprets the metadata or filenames when scanning the library.

 

Thanks for your time.

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jekopsch

can we see screenshots of the folders? thanks.

Attached the first page in Folder view, as well as two of the artists' folders that are problematic.

57f551e8d0d2c_201610051.png57f551ffa7df8_201610052.png57f5520f16256_201610053.png

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jekopsch

can we see the corresponding file system folders? thanks.

 

I decided to clean up the artists' folders for both artists, in hopes that this would correct the problem. I moved all of the individual files that were not in album folders into a new folder named "Misc" for each of the artists and took the parentheses out of the names of the White Album folders. I am waiting for a library scan to complete to see if those changes make any difference.

 

Fixing the naming conventions for my entire collection is not the ideal solution for me, but I will do that if necessary. As I mentioned in a previous post, Subsonic manages to keep my collection nicely organized in its current organizational structure. I know that this software has options (preconfigured) to ignore or account for special characters in folder or file names. I'm guessing that it is those special characters that cause the problem in Emby.

 

I will let you know whether this made any difference after the library has been scanned.

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jekopsch

I decided to clean up the artists' folders for both artists, in hopes that this would correct the problem. I moved all of the individual files that were not in album folders into a new folder named "Misc" for each of the artists and took the parentheses out of the names of the White Album folders. I am waiting for a library scan to complete to see if those changes make any difference.

 

Fixing the naming conventions for my entire collection is not the ideal solution for me, but I will do that if necessary. As I mentioned in a previous post, Subsonic manages to keep my collection nicely organized in its current organizational structure. I know that this software has options (preconfigured) to ignore or account for special characters in folder or file names. I'm guessing that it is those special characters that cause the problem in Emby.

 

I will let you know whether this made any difference after the library has been scanned.

 

This did the trick, at least with those particular artists. I am now seeing each of those artists in folder view, and the individual albums are listed when I view the each artist's folder. I would prefer to not have to do this to my entire collection, but at least I know that this will do as a workaround.

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bfir3

It's weird that Emby offers a "Folders" view that doesn't actually correspond to the real folder hierarchy on the hard drive. I've always wondered why the Folders view doesn't work for people as expected, and the posts about it never seem to really resolve much. Such a shame.

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jekopsch

We're going to improve this and get folder browsing resolved, thanks.

 

Thank you for working on this issue. I wanted to update you on how I got things working to my liking.

 

I ended up moving any songs that were not contained in an album folder into a new folder (within the artist's folder) named Misc. By moving these songs that were not part of any of my existing album folders, I was able to get the folders view to display each and every artists' albums correctly. It seems that there are still some issues with songs that contain parentheses in the filenames and/or metadata, but placing all files into folders for each artist allowed me to get the view that I wanted. I am now able to browse my entire collection by artist or band in the folder view.

 

I really appreciate the efforts the developers are putting into this software. I am currently paying a monthly fee for the software, until I decide that I want to commit to using it as a replacement for all of my multimedia needs. I still like using Subsonic better for playing my music collection, but Emby seems to be far superior to Subsonic for playing any video files. I intend to pay for a lifetime software license for Emby once I have worked out all of the kinks and feel confident that it is a viable option for accessing my entire multimedia collection.

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