Migrating library from iTunes

[justwondering 10]

I'm new to Emby and wondering about the best way to migrate an existing video library from Apple's iTunes.

 

I have around a TB of movies and tv series, painstakingly labeled, with cover art.

 

Just to see, I copied a couple of movies from the iTunes library into an Emby movies library folder and let it scan them. It confidently identified them with detailed metadata and cover art, for totally incorrect movies:

 

The Little Mermaid (1989) -> Blonde Ringlet (2010)

Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave -> A Personal Journey with Martin Scorcese Through American Movies

 

Obviously I can go in and re-identify hundreds of files by hand, but there must be a better way, I hope.

 

Is there a way to migrate my iTunes library to Emby?

[Koleckai Silvestri 1151]

If the movies and television shows are purchased from iTunes, then Emby will not play them. You would have to remove the DRM somehow. Not exactly legal.  I haven't had misidentifications as long as my names were correct and I had each movie in its own folder.

 

For music, you can just point Emby at your iTunes music folder and it should add all songs that aren't DRM protected to your Emby Library. That should be most of them since music hasn't had DRM for quite a few years now.

Edited July 20, 2017 by Koleckai Silvestri

[justwondering 10]

Sorry if I was unclear. I'm talking about non-DRM MP4 video files added to iTunes from other sources, just like video files you would add to Emby. They have been manually tagged with title, year, director, cover art, etc.

 

Emby has no problem playing the files. I'm just wondering how to migrate the titles and other metadata.

[arrbee99 1697]

Bearing in mind I don't really know what I'm talking about, am just wondering if the MP4 files you tested were just movies or if they contain the metadata you added, or is your metadata in the form of separate files ? just wondering if you could try those files again after removing any embedded metadata, if of course there is any.

[justwondering 10]

In the files I only see two metadata fields: "Genre" and "Release Date". The mp4s also include subtitles and cover art. There are no separate files with metadata.

 

I guess iTunes stores other crucial information (such as the movie title) in its own database. I was hoping there would be a way to export that information, either writing it into the video files as metadata, or importing the database itself directly into Emby.

 

It seems unlikely that I'm the first iTunes user to want to switch to Emby, but I don't see any mention of iTunes at all in the forums or wikis.

[T800 9]

How are the video files themselves labelled?

[justwondering 10]

How are the video files themselves labelled?

 

iTunes automatically names the files (I think), so for the files I mentioned the names are:

 

The Little Mermaid (1989).mp4

Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave.mp4

 

My understanding is that these are acceptable within Emby's naming convention. Could the presence of the Genre and Release Date metadata fields be causing Emby to ignore the filename?

[Luke 39683]

Why do you think the file name is being ignored?

[justwondering 10]

Why do you think the file name is being ignored?

 

I'm not sure what you're asking. Emby identifies a file called "The Little Mermaid (1989).mp4" as a movie called "Blonde Ringlet (2010)", which suggests to me that it is not using the file name to make that identification.

 

Admittedly I don't know how the ID system works, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Luke 39683]

what is the folder structure? can we see that? thanks.