Anime Plugin anidb no metadata on episodes

[draic 0]

I have contemplated switching to emby for my media. Anime is a very big part of that so good anime support is a must for me (used Plex with HAMA plugin before).

 

I have added a bunch of shows to emby to test metadata recognition. One rule that I personally follow is that I do NOT and will not rename files in any way, ever. For anime this means I only deal with absolute numbering and splitted shows.

 

Now to my problem:

The actual show I tested gets added to emby and recognized (example: Overlord and Overlord 2. Two separate folders, absolute numbering for each folder; I tried a buch of different shows, same results).

 

The second show (ex.: Overlord 2) is found and properly linked with its anidb ID. The description is correctly downloaded, but there are no episode information grabbed from anidb. So episodes do not get any info or pictures attached. As the show is properly recognized I was wondering if the anime plugin is not downloading those metadata (anidb listing has the infos emby is missing, I checked) from anidb at all and is only relying on tvdb matches for this?

 

 

 

additionally:

Because the anime plugin does not handle any links to the tvdb page if absolute numbering is used, only images hosted on anidb are available for every other "season" than the first one (the first offers available pictures from tvdb). Is there a workaround or is it just not possible?

 

 

Are my assumptions correct that my issue has to do with limitations of the plugin, or am I missing something to get this working correctly? I do not understand why the plugin is so reliant on tvdb, when tvdb has little anime support. I do like emby so far, but if anime support is that lackluster, I just can not do the switch. HAMA for plex has none of these issues.

 

 

 

EDIT:

The plugin description states that for absolute numbering you should split by folders as different shows and do not use seasons, as it should be for anime imo. But as stated above, this structure is not really working. This should be reflected in the plugin description, which currently is just false

Edited January 14, 2018 by draic

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

[...]I have added a bunch of shows to emby to test metadata recognition. One rule that I personally follow is that I do NOT and will not rename files in any way, ever. For anime this means I only deal with absolute numbering and splitted shows.[...]

 

As a long-time Emby user who obsessively watches anime, I hate to say this, but given your self-imposed restriction, Emby is sadly unlikely to work all that well for you, barring a lot of effort setting up sym-links, etc. Emby really only works well for anime if you're willing to organize your media according to the TVDB structure: The anime plugin has been a patch-work effort for some time now, and while it will pull series metadata from AniDB and fill in the rest from TVDB assuming you have everything organized according to TVDB, the reverse doesn't really work. Episode metadata also isn't pulled from AniDB because up until recently, AniDB was incredibly sparse when it came to that, and the core features of the plugin were developed back when that was the case.

 

I originally intended to use the AniDB/official series structure for my collection as well, but found it to be all but impossible to get it to work with Emby; the most effective combination for your needs would probably be using Shouko (formerly Japanese Media Manager) with Kodi - Shouko actually hashes your individual files to match them to AniDB, so no renaming required ever, and has its own system to pull additional metadata from TVDB etc where AniDB is lacking. It's built from the ground up for anime, and as such is much more accommodating. I tried it for a while myself, but while the metadata part was great, in the end, I found I greatly preferred Emby's UI, to the point where I am willing to take the time to rename/reorganize all my files to make it work.

 

In my case, I use the AniAdd AniDB UDP client to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of renaming files and folders - to use your example of Overlord 2, my episodes end up like this:

 

X:\Media\Anime\Overlord [GroupName] [www, 720p]\Season 2\Overlord 2 - s02e01 [GroupName] [www, 720p, AAC] [3f095c87].mkv

 

It's definitely more work, but it's the most reliable way I've found to maintain my anime collection on Emby. If you're deadset on not renaming your files, you could use renamed sym-links to the original files, although that would definitely involve even more work.

 

Anyway, whatever direction you decide to go in, I wish you the best of luck!

[draic 0]

If that is the case the emby anime plugin should try to learn a stuff or two about how the hama plugin for plex handles anime:

https://github.com/ZeroQI/Hama.bundle/blob/master/README.md 

 

and its scanner:

https://github.com/ZeroQI/Absolute-Series-Scanner/blob/master/README.md

 

There is zero effort involved on my part and files get recognized as I want them to (no renaming required; correct structuring supported ;p). It is not that anime naming schemes are not standardized, they just conform to different standards than US tv. Basing everything on tvdbs bad structure (in terms of anime productions) is simply lazy.

 

But now that I know that I was not just missing something, but that emby is lacking proper anime support, I will just stick to plex. Thanks for clearing that up.

Edited January 14, 2018 by draic

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Believe me, I understand your frustration with how TheTVDB (and on another level, the West as a whole, really) handles anime, arbitrarily breaking some series into seasons while shoving other series together as seasons of a single entry. I recently had to reorganize over 800 episodes of a series because someone decided to change the season breakdown on TheTVDB.

 

I stick with Emby because, while other platforms handle anime metadata far better, I far prefer Emby for actually watching my media. I tried Kodi again a few months back, but no matter how much I customized it, the UI still drove me nuts. I haven't used Plex since it was originally in Beta (back in 2008), so maybe I should give it another try, but after using Emby for around a decade, I get the feeling anything else will just feel wrong.

 

If that is the case the emby anime plugin should try to learn a stuff or two about how the hama plugin for plex handles anime:

 

The biggest issue is that the original developer of the Emby anime plugin stopped working on it a couple years back, and no one has taken his place since. There have been a number of awesome people since that were willing to dedicate their time and skill to bring it back from the dead when compatibility issues stopped it from working altogether, but that just kept it on life-support. There hasn't been any actual active development on it for a long time, and there were a lot of features that were either only partially implemented or still in the planning stage when development stopped. 

 

Unlike some of the other media-server platforms, there aren't really currently any major anime-nuts amongst the devs, so there hasn't been anyone with both the technical skills and the raw enthusiasm for the medium necessary to seriously adopt the plug-in as a long-term project; until someone like that appears, it's kind of stuck :-/

 

Anyway, just thought I'd give you the run-down as to why the anime situation is what it is with Emby - wish you all the best.

[Luke 37008]

Yea the plugin still functions without any errors, and I am helping out to keep it up to date with server changes. But as far as actual anime development goes, we are hoping a new community member will help out. The source code can be found here:

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Plugins.Anime

 

Thanks !

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Yea the plugin still functions without any errors, and I am helping out to keep it up to date with server changes. But as far as actual anime development goes, we are hoping a new community member will help out. The source code can be found here:

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Plugins.Anime

 

Thanks !

Sadly, any serious work on the plugin it is still beyond my limited coding skills, and health issues combined with an increased workload at my job recently is doing its best to keep it that way.

 

I intended to try and fix some issues that arose from changes on the AniDB end (Fetching Average Series Rating vs Weighted Series Rating, which is often 2-3 points lower; Fix fetching AniDB Genres/Tags, which were merged into a single variable type a few years back), but only got about 70% of the way before I came down with a bad case of pneumonia, and before I knew it it was 3 months later.

 

The Rating fix was simple and works, but the Genre/Tag fetch fix ended up being more complicated due to having no way to automatically differentiate between Genre/Tag-categories and Genres/Tags themselves - the last version works but requires a large GenreCleaner filter to remove the junk-elements (I know there was an integrated part of the plugin meant to handle that sort of thing, but after manually going through the 1.5k+ AniDB Genres/Tags, I ran out of time).

 

If you're interested in checking it out, you can find it here (including the GenreCleaner file):

https://github.com/purposelycryptic/Emby.Plugins.AnimeFix

 

Nothing is particularly complicated code-wise, since I spent half my time just figuring out what did what, and the lion's work was pairing down the Genre/Tag list to something closer to what AniDB's old Categories (which the plugin tried to use) were composed of. I tried to document most of what I was doing in the Readme and commits. I'm not entirely sure what got updated in the official version since then, but it still runs in the latest Beta version of Emby Server - the AniDB Genres/Tags are important for me, so I've refrained from upgrading.

 

Anyway, all the best, and, as always, thanks for all the hard work 

[Luke 37008]

Interesting, thanks !

[acmby 1]

Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, but I recently noticed an issue with metadata on Anime shows that I believe is tied to this plugin also.  I recently noticed that the series descriptions are being shown in German.  I changed the metadata language setting to specifically choose English but it is still showing in German.  Episode metadata (if there is any) is still in English though.

 

I then uninstalled the Anime plugin and the series descriptions are back in English.  Re-installed Anime plugin and if I refresh metadata, they go back to German.   Is it possible something changed recently with the plugin and/or server where the plugin is not able to get the metadata language setting and defaulting to German?

[Luke 37008]

Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, but I recently noticed an issue with metadata on Anime shows that I believe is tied to this plugin also.  I recently noticed that the series descriptions are being shown in German.  I changed the metadata language setting to specifically choose English but it is still showing in German.  Episode metadata (if there is any) is still in English though.

 

I then uninstalled the Anime plugin and the series descriptions are back in English.  Re-installed Anime plugin and if I refresh metadata, they go back to German.   Is it possible something changed recently with the plugin and/or server where the plugin is not able to get the metadata language setting and defaulting to German?

 

hi @@acmby, the only changes that have been occurring in the plugin are compatibility updates for new versions of Emby Server. The plugin is a community contribution and we are seeking community help to add new features and updates. The source code for the plugin can be found here:

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Plugins.Anime

 

Thanks !

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, but I recently noticed an issue with metadata on Anime shows that I believe is tied to this plugin also.  I recently noticed that the series descriptions are being shown in German.  I changed the metadata language setting to specifically choose English but it is still showing in German.  Episode metadata (if there is any) is still in English though.

 

I then uninstalled the Anime plugin and the series descriptions are back in English.  Re-installed Anime plugin and if I refresh metadata, they go back to German.   Is it possible something changed recently with the plugin and/or server where the plugin is not able to get the metadata language setting and defaulting to German?

 

Hey,

 

While I'm not part of the development of the official branch of the plugin, the last time I checked the code on GitHub, it looked like the primary changes being made were integration of AniList and a large expansion of support for German-language metadata; I'm pretty sure development on the latter may have accidentally hard-set something to pull German metadata only.

 

I'll have to take a look at the code to see exactly what happened, but in the meantime, you could either temporarily downgrade to an older version, or use this one, until the issue is fixed:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14Ry7oLFtn4g3LSPMBWiG_duhkUcmUjiw

 

It's a version of my branch of the plugin (based on an older version), modified to remove the unfinished AniDB Genre grabber mechanic (for details, see here). Just drop it in the "%appdata%\Emby-Server\plugins" folder and overwrite the file there (make a copy first, just in case). Note that due to the version number used, you will have to manually update to a new official version when it comes out.

 

Hope that helps, and all the best!

[acmby 1]

Hi @PurposleyCryptic

 
Thanks for your help.  Well it makes sense now why everything is in German with the latest update.  I tried your version of the plugin, and while it did fix the language, it seemed to fetch the wrong description.  See attached for example (1st one is with your version, 2nd is no plugin):

Edited January 27, 2018 by acmby

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, but I recently noticed an issue with metadata on Anime shows that I believe is tied to this plugin also.  I recently noticed that the series descriptions are being shown in German.  I changed the metadata language setting to specifically choose English but it is still showing in German.  Episode metadata (if there is any) is still in English though.

 

I then uninstalled the Anime plugin and the series descriptions are back in English.  Re-installed Anime plugin and if I refresh metadata, they go back to German.   Is it possible something changed recently with the plugin and/or server where the plugin is not able to get the metadata language setting and defaulting to German?

 

Hey,

 

I downloaded the latest official version, and was able to replicate your results by setting AniSearch as the top series metadata fetcher (In Library > Metadata > Series > Metadata downloaders). This fetcher specifically uses anisearch.de, which is a German-language only source. I would check to see if it somehow ended up in the top position of your series metadata fetchers, and if so, lower its priority. If the issue persists, try disabling it entirely (should not cause any issues for anyone not looking for German metadata anyway).

 

If the issue still persists, I would double-check  the plugin's configuration (Plugins > Anime), and making sure the Title Language field isn't set to German - this is separate from the Library > Metadata language setting. 

 

If it is still giving you trouble, try deleting the MediaBrowser.Plugins.Anime.xml in "%appdata%\Emby-Server\plugins\configurations", restarting Emby, and resetting the plugin's configuration to your preferences.

 

Hopefully one of these will do the trick for you - I looked over the code, and couldn't find anything there that would be causing the issues you are experiencing (Although admittedly, my skills are limited in that field), so a configuration issue is the only thing I could think of.

 

Best of luck, and let me know if any of the above worked for you!

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Hi @PurposleyCryptic

 

Thanks for your help.  Well it makes sense now why everything is in German with the latest update.  I tried your version of the plugin, and while it did fix the language, it seemed to fetch the wrong description.  See attached for example (1st one is with your version, 2nd is no plugin):

 

Wow, I honestly have no idea where that description came from (I looked up all the possible sources and found nothing like it). For comparison, this is what I get:

 

 

And these are the settings used:

 

 

 

Not entirely sure where that description came from... The only thing I modified for the version of the plugin I posted was to remove the function that pulls AniDB tags as genres, because in my current version, it requires a large Genre Cleaner script to filter out all of the junk tags. It's possible that might have had unintended side-effects although I'm not sure how.

 

You're welcome to try the version I'm actually using atm (found here), although I'd only recommend it in conjunction with the Genre Cleaner plugin and the included configuration XML (Either as is, or if you already have Genre Cleaner configured, merging the contents of it with the existing one), as AniDB has A LOT of series tags that don't work as Genres.

[acmby 1]

 

 

I downloaded the latest official version, and was able to replicate your results by setting AniSearch as the top series metadata fetcher (In Library > Metadata > Series > Metadata downloaders). This fetcher specifically uses anisearch.de, which is a German-language only source. I would check to see if it somehow ended up in the top position of your series metadata fetchers, and if so, lower its priority. If the issue persists, try disabling it entirely (should not cause any issues for anyone not looking for German metadata anyway).

 

 

 

 

This was it!  "proxer" and "anisearch" were added to the Metadata downloaders at the highest priority and they only provide German metadata.  I disabled those two and refreshed metadata and everything was back to English.  Thanks again for your help.

 

When I get more time I'll try out your version again to see if I can get it working properly.   BTW, have you had any luck getting metadata for anime movies?  I could never get it working correctly for movies in the same library as TV series, especially movies that also have TV series of the same title in the same library.   I ended up having to move all anime movies into a separate movie library to get correct metadata.

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Glad I could help 

[...]   BTW, have you had any luck getting metadata for anime movies?  I could never get it working correctly for movies in the same library as TV series, especially movies that also have TV series of the same title in the same library.   I ended up having to move all anime movies into a separate movie library to get correct metadata.

 

I've had the same issue, since Emby treats TV series and movies as separate categories - I know you can set a library as 'Mixed', and it will recognize both, but AFAIK it comes at the cost of disabling certain other library features, like the 'Next Up' listing and the Upcoming Episodes tab (it's been a while since I last tried it, so this may have since changed). I currently have my anime movies separately in a movie library as you do, until a better solution presents itself.

[Luke 37008]

Great news. The beta server now has support for DVD & absolute episode ordering:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/56616-3305-dvd-absolute-episode-ordering

 

Enjoy.

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

Great news. The beta server now has support for DVD & absolute episode ordering:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/56616-3305-dvd-absolute-episode-ordering

 

Enjoy.

 

Shiny! 

 

Great timing, too, I'm right in the middle of organizing a duplicate copy of all my anime according to the Japanese release structure AniDB uses, for testing with Shoko (formerly JMM); while the majority of that still won't be compatible with Emby due to the lack of the manually-assembled custom linking between AniDB series entries and TVDB's seasons/specials/etc that Shoko uses, this will definitely greatly come in handy for keeping long-running series like One Piece from breaking during a metadata refresh because someone has decided to reorganize the season structure yet again (Having to rename and reorder the files/folders for an 800+ episode series every 6 months or so gets old really fast, not to mention it wrecking any attempt at maintaining order in terms of info like date added, etc).

 

I definitely look forward to giving it a shot once my restructuring is complete - the link you posted mentioned requiring the TVDB agent at top priority for both series and episodes, but would I be correct in assuming it should work with the Anime agent in the top series position as well, given all the episode info (most importantly, I guess, Absolute episode number) are pulled from TVDB?

[Luke 37008]

 

 

but would I be correct in assuming it should work with the Anime agent in the top series position as well, given all the episode info (most importantly, I guess, Absolute episode number) are pulled from TVDB?

 

At minimum tvdb must be the highest priority episode provider, or the anime provider must be updated to support these settings as well. 

 

As far as putting another provider at the top for the series, I really can't say as I haven't tested it, but I would think it should be OK. I would anticipate in the future though re-working these settings to just pick for TV in general rather than choosing individual per series, season, episode.

[PurposelyCryptic 31]

For better or worse, there isn't much episode metadata the Anime plugin could grab from AniDB even if we got it working perfectly - aside from the episode name and number (and more recently, episode summaries, but only for shows streaming on CrunchyRoll), AniDB's episode metadata is all focused on the individual release files themselves. That's why even Shoko, which solely exists for anime, gets episode summaries and thumbnails from the TVDB. It's essentially the only game in town.

 

I do hope you'll continue to keep these settings toggleable on the series level - at least in my case, I don't see a need for anything lower-level than that, but it would be all but impossible for me to organize my entire library using TVDB absolute episode numbering, especially given how arbitrary the TVDB's absolute episode numbering is for a lot of anime released as individual series. For those where it works, it should be a great help, but for all the rest...

[Luke 37008]

This should help users of the anime plugin to avoid having it mess with non-anime series in your library:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/57274-3317-metadata-settings-per-library

 

Thanks.

[RagingBokky 0]

Sorry to ask I've only just got into Emby due to I have no idea how to get my Plex working after changing my router to pfsense with pfblocker and snort. But I am impress with Emby as it feels more like Netflix in its own way and customization seems slick.

 

I have Emby as a plugin in Freenas 11.2

 

I am trying to install this anime metadata but in the link I can't find instructions of how to install it let alone know if it works with FreeBSD base Emby servers

 

Could I get some assistance with some instructions please?

[Luke 37008]

@@RagingBokky

 

We have the anime plugin in the plugin catalog, but i would first start without it and see if you can use tvdb metadata. If you name them like regular tv series, then this really should be fine.

 

Does this help?

[RagingBokky 0]

Thanks for getting back to me. I did try the catalog and didn't get any success until later today I thought i look at my pfBlocker on pfsense and found it was blocking the URL to the plugin list. Once I suppress or whitelist everything is now sweet!

[Luke 37008]

Thanks for the feedback.