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Looking for Suggestions - Duplicate Movie Entries


rwyarbrough

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rwyarbrough

I'll be honest - I really don't expect an solution this this other than how I select the sources, or doing away with the symbolic links, however I thought I would see if I got lucky and someone else has found a solution to this that seems to be evading my brain. Currently I point to the root folder of "Movies" and Emby finds everything OK with no issues outside of duplicating any movies that are symbolically linked to other directories underneath the Movies root directory. The symbolic links are to link related genres together without having duplicate "real" files taking up disk space.

 

The issue. For example I have a christmas classics symbolic link that points from within the classics folder to another folder in the christmas sub-directory that contains all my classic christmas movies. This causes all the movies in that symlink to show up twice in the Movie Library. 

 

I have both a linux version of Emby Server and a windows version of Emby Server. They both behave the same as I would expect them to.

 

I have a linux server where all my media is stored.

The Movies directories are set up like so:

 

├── movies
│   ├── action
│   ├── adventure
│   ├── childrens
│   ├── christmas
│   ├── classics
│   ├── comedy
│   ├── crime-drama
│   ├── disney
│   ├── documentaries
│   ├── drama
│   ├── family
 etc...
 
I have a classics folder underneath the Movies folder with a symbolic link named christmas pointing to another subdirectory of Movies (christmas/christmas_classics-Pre_1970):
 
├── classics
│   ├── adventure
│   ├── christmas -> ../christmas/christmas_classics-Pre_1970
│   ├── comedy
│   ├── crime_drama
│   ├── drama
│   ├── film_noir
│   ├── musicals
│   ├── mystery
│   ├── science_fiction
etc..
 
and a Christmas folder underneath the Movies folder:
 
├── christmas
│   ├── A_Christmas_Carol_Collection
│   ├── A_Christmas_Story_Series
│   ├── Arthur_Christmas_Series
│   ├── Christmas_Vacation_Series
│   ├── Home_Alone_Series_-_Original
│   ├── The_Santa_Clause_Series
│   ├── christmas-post_1999
│   ├── christmas_classics-1970-1980
│   ├── christmas_classics-1981-2000
│   ├── christmas_classics-Pre_1970
etc...
 
They show up in the library as follows: 
\\xxx.xxx.xx.xx\movies\classics\christmas\1945.The_Bells_of_St_Marys\The_Bells_of_St._Mary's.avi
\\xxx.xxx.xx.xx\movies\christmas\christmas_classics-Pre_1970\1945.The_Bells_of_St_Marys\The_Bells_of_St._Mary's.avi
 
Would there be a way to add an exclusion rule to avoid one of those two directories?
 
I know I can fix this by selecting each of the Movie sub categories under Movies and just not selecting any symbolic linked folders to avoid the duplicates. I can also fix this by losing out on the convenience of the link and storing the christmas classics under classics and not linking them back to christmas. - That is the easier solution of what I've thought about, but I really like to convenience.
 
Just trying to figure out if there might be another way to prevent the duplicate library entries so I can keep the sources list from getting so big and save myself all the entry keystrokes.
 
Thanks
Edited by rwyarbrough
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Deathsquirrel

Probably not what you want to hear, but stop doing this on disk and let metadata do its job.

 

You don't need a folder for adventure movies when the Adventure movies will be picked up automatically in the movie metadata and you can easily edit that value in the server UI.

 

Flattening your movie structure a bit solves this and simplifies administration.

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rwyarbrough

Probably not what you want to hear, but stop doing this on disk and let metadata do its job.

 

You don't need a folder for adventure movies when the Adventure movies will be picked up automatically in the movie metadata and you can easily edit that value in the server UI.

 

Flattening your movie structure a bit solves this and simplifies administration.

 

 

Totally agree, but it makes the back end messy and I have over 2000 movies - if I ever have to make back-end modifications directly in the directories of the movies ( which for some reason happens a lot since I'm a little OCD about things), it's nice having the structure. If I didn't have to do much back-end work - I'd be inclined to go that route. The other issue is that I still use the oldfashon method of finding missing movies, etc by using mc as opposed to Emby.

 

I'm wondering if since I named the symbolic link different that the real directory if an exclusion rule on the real directory would solve this? Going to give it a try...

Edited by rwyarbrough
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rwyarbrough

I'm wondering if since I named the symbolic link different that the real directory if an exclusion rule on the real directory would solve this? Going to give it a try...

Apparently regex folder exclusions are not an option in Emby like it is in Kodi. You must use the .ignore file inside the directory which in the case of a symlink would exclude "both" the symlink entry and the real entry. - not an option...

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Totally agree, but it makes the back end messy and I have over 2000 movies

 

Try almost 3000 movies and then 300+ series.  FML sometimes, man.

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Deathsquirrel

I'm doing this with a

 

Totally agree, but it makes the back end messy and I have over 2000 movies - if I ever have to make back-end modifications directly in the directories of the movies ( which for some reason happens a lot since I'm a little OCD about things), it's nice having the structure. If I didn't have to do much back-end work - I'd be inclined to go that route. The other issue is that I still use the oldfashon method of finding missing movies, etc by using mc as opposed to Emby.

 

I'm wondering if since I named the symbolic link different that the real directory if an exclusion rule on the real directory would solve this? Going to give it a try...

 

My collection is about the same size, it's no trouble at all this way or I wouldn't have suggested it.

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CharleyVarrick

Probably not what you want to hear, but stop doing this on disk and let metadata do its job.

 

You don't need a folder for adventure movies when the Adventure movies will be picked up automatically in the movie metadata and you can easily edit that value in the server UI.

 

Flattening your movie structure a bit solves this and simplifies administration.

I totally agree with DeathSquirrel, and would also add that a single genre is rare, as more often than not, movies have 2+ genres (dramatic comedy, horror sci-fi, etc)

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CharleyVarrick

Totally agree, but it makes the back end messy and I have over 2000 movies

The more movies you have, the more sense it makes to follow naming convention (and I'm bordering 15k).

One parent folder to search into, instead of 12.

The odds of having duplicates also increase when movies are not all within same parent folder. A drama/comedy could easily be in your drama AND comedy folders.

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