Emby for Kodi - Server upgrade caused library "doubling"

[Lewpy 3]

Initial apologies: this is a retrospective post about an issue I have already resolved, so I can't do any debugging. However, I felt it was worth raising in case it was an unknown issue, that might cause problems later.

 

History (skip if boring!)

I've been an XBMC/Kodi user for quite a few years (I have an original LCD-modified XBox on a shelf not far from me now   ).

My media files are stored on a NAS (was Thecus, now Synology), and accessed via SMB over LAN.

After years in the wilderness with WMC, I switched back to XBMC/Kodi full-time at v11 (Eden) on a Windows HTPC under the telly (big lump of an mCubed HFC Classic heat-sink box, full size motherboard, etc.)

Cut forward a few years, and I bought an Amazon FireTV Stick. And within a month I ditched it and bought an Amazon FireTV (Gen 2) full-size unit with LAN connection and my buffering issues went away.

I then installed Kodi on to my Amazon FireTV, and switched over to using that (always-on convenience, less Windows maintenance, etc.).

Cut forward to now, and I've been testing the new Kodi v18 Leia builds, and struggled with a few issues (not a relevant story here), so started switching between Android and Windows builds for testing.

The issue I then hit was keeping the two Kodi libraries in-sync with each other. And the solution I chose was Emby 

 

Configuration

So I first started using Emby Server and Emby for Kodi plugin only a month or so ago, with "Direct Path" access to the media files stored on my NAS.

And all was good 

I have a "passwords.xml" file on my FireTV to gain access to the NAS over SMB, which is how I operated pre-Emby (my Windows PC has near-seamless access, as expected).

And the library sharing between the platforms was faultless 

I was running

• Emby Server for Synology [DS1513+]: v3.5 (latest stable)
• Emby for Kodi: v3.1.36a (latest beta)
• Kodi: v18 Leia RC2

But I had just one or two small issues with accessing flat-file ISOs (VIDEO_TS structure) via the Emby library, which had worked fine in direct Kodi library.

So I took the decision to go "Full Beta", as I was already running beta Kodi and Emby for Kodi.

 

I got hooked up with the beta build of Emby Server for Synology (thanks to solabc16), and promptly upgraded my Emby Server to v3.6.0.81-beta

 

I checked both my Android and Windows Kodi clients, and they connected to Emby Server normally after the update.

 

Issue

While I was still in the Emby Server GUI, I triggered the "Scan media library" task ....

Once the media library scan completed, I went back to my Android and Windows Kodi clients, and found that all items in [at least] the movies and TV shows were now showing double    This included any movies that were half viewed.

I tried reboots of the clients, and this didn't fix the issue.

So I used the "reset local Kodi database" [sp?] option in the Emby for Kodi plugin, and re-downloaded the library data from Emby Server, and this did resolve the issue.

My Android/FireTV installation then broke and wouldn't access any files on the NAS. So I completely uninstalled it and reset it up from scratch (with the same manually-added "passwords.xml" file), and it was then fine    [I think this issue was not an Emby issue though, and more Kodi].

 

 

Has the "doubling" of the local Kodi media libraries been observed before, when changing from Emby Server v3.5 to v3.6 Beta?

Again, I apologies for not having a "broken" setup to analyse as I got stuck in and resolved it, just concerned that this could happen for all Kodi for Emby users when v3.6 is properly released.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Lewpy

[Angelblue05 4130]

It’s normal. When you upgraded from 3.5 to 3.6, it rebuilt your library from scratch with different ids to accommodate the new changes in 3.6. In Emby for Kodi, you’ll need to do a database reset and resync your libraries.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Angelblue05