'Group Versions' and sorting/fixing music in general

[darkassassin07 418]

What exactly does 'Group Versions' do?

I would assume it combines the selected items into one but if I select two artists then select group versions I get a loading wheel until the end of time and nothing else happens :/

 

I have been avoiding cleaning out my music library for months because emby did horrible things to it when I switched from plex to emby.

All my music is in the structure Music\Artist\Album\artist - album - title.mp3 with matching ID3 tags. Some of it isnt tagged with correct info (intentional) for example the OST's for the sonic games: artist=sonic album=<game name>. Instead of following the existing tags/info emby found the 20 or so artists involved with those sound tracks and split everything up. Yet if two songs in the same folder with one letter capitalized in the artist name for one and not the other its two different people altogether and one of them doesn't seem to exist on musicbrainz so it gets no metadata.

I also have several albums showing up in other artists like Usher and DJ Kayslay under Lil Jon.

 

 

/edit now that I have gone through and edited most of the sonic music to only have artist=sonic album-artist=sonic none of them will move. They are all still listed under 20 different artists all showing their artist to be 'Sonic'.

 

I cant fix this, nothing moves or changes. My music Is a giant mess and emby refuses to let me do anything about it, it all just stays where ever it was when emby originally scanned it and updates the text on that item alone.

 

This has been such a pain to deal with

Edited May 18, 2018 by darkassassin07

[darkassassin07 418]

Like this one:

Every single song in this album only has 'Lil jon' as an artist but there are a dozen artists listed. The only name that displays in the list of albums is 'DJ Kayslay', there is no external IDs linked to anything here, and there is no 'artist' field in the albums metadata.

 

what am I even supposed to do with this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The album 'Confessions' by Usher has one song that has Lil jon as a feat. artist that song has been edited to remove that but the album refuses to move. If you open this album and click 'View Artist' you are brought to Lil jon regardless of how you got to that album.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and this, why do I need two of the songs in this album in a separate album/item? I cant find a way to combine them. Can you see why I have dreaded fixing this? trying to sort this out is a nightmare when lacking the ability to edit so much info

 

 

 

Heres an album by Ellie Goulding listed alone under Calvin Harris. 'View artist' brings you here. To an unrelated artist with no other music. Helpfull.

 

 

 

 

and before you ask, after making changes I have re-scanned the library several times.

Edited May 18, 2018 by darkassassin07

[darkassassin07 418]

...?

[Luke 36999]

Hi, you'll get a response. Thank you for your patience.

[Luke 36999]

I will look through the rest of your questions soon, but group versions is only meant for video files. It shows up in the multi-select menu because the multi-select tool is a generic menu that isn't aware of what you've selected, although we can improve that in the future so that the menu option isn't even there.

[darkassassin07 418]

Wouldn't it be better to have it compatible with music as well? Then we can have the ability to combine items that should not be split up. I was expecting it to work the same as 'merge' in plex. It combines what ever you have selected into a single item with the metadata of the first thing you selected.

 

 

 

 

/edit, I have found the source of some of my problems: there are a few albums where I have both the regular album and the acoustic version. Emby ignores the word 'acoustic' and matches that version to the same metadata as the regular version. Thus two albums with the exact same name/metadata.

 

That still doesn't explain my OSTs though. Songs in the structure /music/<franchise>/<game>/<franchise>-<game>-<song name>.flac

split into 20+ artists and scattered with no way to correct them. The sonic games got split up like that, but Legend of Zelda was added properly with that exact structure.

 

I also have several artists split into two items with as few a one song/album each

Edited May 21, 2018 by darkassassin07

[Luke 36999]

Well I suppose, but so far we haven't really needed that kind of feature with music.

[darkassassin07 418]

Here are a few examples.

 

 

 

 

These are mainly artists that should be combined. The three sonics' as well as the 4 img-less artists in img 2 should all be 'Sonic'. I edited every song in there to have 'Sonic' as the artist and album artist. They were then displayed in the correct albums in the artist 'Sonic' but didn't get rid of the other 12 or so artists (Jun Senoue, etc). It just left them all with songs/albums they originally had now labeled with the artist 'Sonic'.

When using 'View artist' it would never take you to 'Sonic' it was always which ever artist it was listed under originally.

The sonic music is on FLAC so no embedded tags, just the folder structure.

I ended up making a change to how that music was organized (moving multi-disc albums into one album folder with 'Disc X' sub-folders) and every single song reset back to where ever it was.

 

 

 

Maximum the Hormone has the exact same albums in both artists. They are all MP3s with matching tags "Maximum The Hormone"

one has the path "Metadata\metadata\artists\Ãã­Ã-Ãã  Ã¶ Ãëâó"

 

 

 

 

 

Here Usher just is Beyonce.

Path: Metadata\metadata\artists\Beyoncé

AudioDB ID: 111339

MusicBrainz ID: ca2bdfe4-c53a-4ffe-b233-7d23d413428f

I don't even have any of her music at all..... (I'd torch my comp if I did)

 

 

 

 

I just want emby to follow the folder structure it was given.

Edited May 21, 2018 by darkassassin07

[Luke 36999]

Like this one:

Every single song in this album only has 'Lil jon' as an artist but there are a dozen artists listed. The only name that displays in the list of albums is 'DJ Kayslay', there is no external IDs linked to anything here, and there is no 'artist' field in the albums metadata.

 

what am I even supposed to do with this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The album 'Confessions' by Usher has one song that has Lil jon as a feat. artist that song has been edited to remove that but the album refuses to move. If you open this album and click 'View Artist' you are brought to Lil jon regardless of how you got to that album.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and this, why do I need two of the songs in this album in a separate album/item? I cant find a way to combine them. Can you see why I have dreaded fixing this? trying to sort this out is a nightmare when lacking the ability to edit so much info

 

 

 

Heres an album by Ellie Goulding listed alone under Calvin Harris. 'View artist' brings you here. To an unrelated artist with no other music. Helpfull.

 

 

 

 

and before you ask, after making changes I have re-scanned the library several times.

 

At the top of the detail screen we list the Artists, not the single Album Artist. This allows all of those artists to be clickable so that you can get to their detail screens.

 

I suppose we could switch this and only show the individual album artist. It just means you won't be able to click on one of those contributing artists anymore.

 

Keep in mind all we are doing here is utilizing the information embedded in your audio files.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Dear sirs,

 

I've been dealing with these music tags a lot so may I respectfully add some info?

 

To my knowledge Emby shows the "Album artist" on the beginning of the album detail screen.

The "Album artist" field can contain more than one artist and Emby beautifully shows all of them with correct links to each artist detail screen.

This works in such a way that when I change the "Album artist" on the actual MP3 file (by using MP3Tag), Emby correctly detects and honors the new content changing this field.

 

There is, though, other artist field, which can also contain more than one artist. This is the "Artist" field and Emby also shows all of them it on each track listed on the album detail screen.

 

On this picture you can see both fields, "Album artist" above and "Artist" below each track.

 

Problem is the artists below music tracks are not clickable.

Also, the track menu, enabled when the ". . ." is clicked, has an option "View artist".

This option currently leads to the first artist from the track artist's list but, in my humble opinion, this option should conceptually not exist.
It's function should be achieved by making each one of the artists below music tracks clickable.

 

This is true for both the web and Android app clients.

 

Hope my info helps.

[EduardoSantos 40]

I would also like to add that yes, when a bunch of albums are displayed Emby will show only the first "Album artist" below it's thumbnail.

You can see this on the following picture, which shows the above mentioned album (which has two "Album artists") witch only one album artist.

 

Though I would like it very much that Emby would show all "Album artists" below thumbnails, I also understand there are size limitations which could make it difficult to tackle.

 

 

I also circled the "now playing info" on the above picture just to mention that the info shown below the track name is a clickable, just I have mentioned it should be on album detail screen. But here, though artist is clickable, it leads only to the first track Artist. There should ideally be a link to each artist on the track being played.

Of course there are also size limitations here but this screen is already a summary and it has a "now playing" detail screen.
Of course the "now playing" screen should have a link to each track artist. It currently has none.

 

I really hope this helps to reach to a more functional interface.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Here are a few examples.

 

 

 

 

These are mainly artists that should be combined. The three sonics' as well as the 4 img-less artists in img 2 should all be 'Sonic'. I edited every song in there to have 'Sonic' as the artist and album artist. They were then displayed in the correct albums in the artist 'Sonic' but didn't get rid of the other 12 or so artists (Jun Senoue, etc). It just left them all with songs/albums they originally had now labeled with the artist 'Sonic'.

When using 'View artis

 

...

 

 

I just want emby to follow the folder structure it was given.

 

After reading again and again it seems to me you are thinking on folder structures reagardless of MP3 tagging.

Is this correct? Are there no MP3 tags on your audio files?

[darkassassin07 418]

All my mp3s had they id3 tags stripped then re-tagged with the exact names of the folders they are in (Music/<artist>/<album>/)

 

 

 

Most of the issues I'm seeing are on .flac files.

The mp3s are mostly being sorted correctly with a few minor errors that I am slowly managing to fix.

With the exception of usher/Beyonce... No idea whats going on there

 

 

 

 

Here's an example:

M: Media/Music/Sonic/Sonic Adventure/Disc 2/01. Mt. Red- A Symbol of Thrill ...for Red Mountain.flac

 

Both the artist field and album artist field are 'Kenichi Tokoi' in emby and its listed under the artist 'jun senoue'

The artist, album and song dont list any external IDs and it's a FLAC so no embedded tags...

 

There is no artist 'Sonic' listed at all.

Edited May 24, 2018 by darkassassin07

[darkassassin07 418]

:/

[Deathsquirrel 741]

At the top of the detail screen we list the Artists, not the single Album Artist. This allows all of those artists to be clickable so that you can get to their detail screens.

 

I suppose we could switch this and only show the individual album artist. It just means you won't be able to click on one of those contributing artists anymore.

 

Keep in mind all we are doing here is utilizing the information embedded in your audio files.

 

@@Luke if you gave me the option to get the Artist grouping off my page and only display Album Artist that crap would be off my screen so fast yer head would spin

[Luke 36999]

We probably should just go ahead and make that change.

[darkassassin07 418]

How does emby tag .flac files?

As far as I can see emby completely ignores the folder structure the file is in and finds whatever it can online. It doesn't list any external IDs for the information it found though.

 

I just want emby to follow the structure it was given. I don't want to have to scroll past a dozen artists I didn't want in the first place.

[darkassassin07 418]

eh, screw it. I just converted everything to mp3. (I don't really need hifi for the devices I actually use)

[maximumentropy 23]

Both the artist field and album artist field are 'Kenichi Tokoi' in emby and its listed under the artist 'jun senoue'

The artist, album and song dont list any external IDs and it's a FLAC so no embedded tags...

 

 

Why do you think FLAC doesn't have tags?  They definitely do, and Emby uses them just fine.  I've been tagging my collection of FLAC live concerts using the "mp3tag" program from https://www.mp3tag.de/en/ and it works beautifully.

[darkassassin07 418]

FLAC has tags? I could have sworn I read somewhere they don't.... Hmm. Oh well, I have already sorted out most of my problems by converting them.

[Luke 36999]

Yes flac can have tags.

[darkassassin07 418]

Wow... I kind of feel like an idiot now :/  

Thanks for your help guys, I really appreciate it

 

 

 

 

I have sorted out all of my problems except one:

The artist Maximum the Hormone shows up as two artists one with 'Maximum The Hormone' and one with 'Maximum the Hormone',

both containing the exact same music and neither have a reference to the other artist.

I have double and triple checked every one of the files tags, they all say 'the' not 'The', the file and folder names match that. (I have also tried the other way around, same result)

 

 

 

 

'Maximum The Hormone' has the path: M:\Metadata\metadata\artists\Maximum The Hormone

'Maximum the Hormone' has the path: M:\Metadata\metadata\artists\Ãã­Ã-Ãã  Ã¶ Ãëâó'

 

 

I have tried removing the artist folder from the library re-scanning to remove it in emby; then re-tagging and moving it back in with both 'the' and then "The". 

Both created 2 artists but emby always displayed the artist of the albums and songs with 'the'.

 

I have also tried single songs: \Maximum The Hormone\Buiiki Kaesu\Zetsubou Billy.mp3 on it's own for example. It does not matter what song or

album I use anything from that artist splits into two artists with both always containing the exact same music.

 

Nothing lists any external ID's, and the only id3 tags filled are title,artist,album,year,cd#,track#

 

Here's one of the songs you can use to test with if that helps: Dropbox

[darkassassin07 418]

Any thoughts on this last issue? Im at a loss.

 

Does anyone else have Maximum the Hormone in their music library? Did you have issues with it?

[Luke 36999]

When did you originally add that music to your library?

[darkassassin07 418]

It was added when I re-installed emby about 2.5 months ago. Im just now getting around to sorting this out.

 

I was using plex previously and had no issues at all with any of my music (at least as far as adding it to plex goes, constant failed playback with no support was why I abandoned plex).

 

 

There is an mp3 linked above to test with, but it doesn't matter what file I add, anything with the artist 'Maximum the Hormone' has this problem.