Thank you! Thank you so much for v4. Well Done!!!

[serendrewpity 0]

Sorry in advance for the length. This is only a thank you post.

 

I have been using Emby for a few years now. It runs on a Qnap NAS and I have about a half-dozen Raspberry Pi 3B+ running Kodi and the Emby Client. I also have a docker host running, Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Jackett and Deluge. On a good day, this setup works very well. They all integrate very well with one another. Feeding me a regular stream of new media.

 

On the other hand, when things goes bad, It was a pain in the butt to get it back up and running. I have over 1200 movies and 2300 episodes [Just over 5TB]. So, the Kodi/RPi3B+ clients took forever to perform an initial sync, They almost never sync'd to completion. They'd often get > 80% done and then freeze and reboot. I adjusted the number of threads used for sync and the number of items per request. Thinking they were crashing due to overheating, I even put one in the freezer. [They're $35. I didn't care] ... But, ... I proceeded to forget it was in there and 4 hrs passed before I remembered. Surprisingly it booted up but it still froze and crashed. [This RPi3B+ is still running surprisingly] If I kept banging away it, it would eventually complete. It was a brutal process.

 

I recently got a notification that Emby Server had an update. v3.5 or something. When I searched for the upgrade, I ended up with three different versions. Then next update for my version of Emby, a beta version and then v4.1.0.2. Naturally I chose v4 but I think that upgrade path screwed something up. I noticed issues right from the start. To investigate, I shutdown Emby Server to inspect logs. With Emby Server shutdown, I was still able to access the WEBUI. This was baffling. I decided I needed to do a fresh install. I had a backup from 2 days earlier. I also had the backup/restore procedure [previously downloaded]. With a minor edit of the SQL Statement required for UserDatas, I was able to get backup and running. [*** See notes below ***]

 

[in retrospect, I think I was looking at a cached copy of Emby server that my browser had]

 

Next was the Kodi cleints.  As I stated I previously installed a beta version on one of the RPi3B+. When I booted this one up, it immediately detected a newer update to the Emby Client for Kodi. [v4.0]. I updated and all looked fine, but when I opened the 'Collections View' I saw movie poster images for actors rather than the posters for the movies that were highlighted. 

 

:::SIGH::::

 

I wiped the local kodi database and reset it. I used ssh to clean up after myself. I then reinstalled Emby client. It started to sync and it finished completely in 45 mins. It previously would take more than an hour and crash before completion. Navigating the UI and viewing movies was snappy and responsive. The Kodi build I use will show the poster image and in the background it would rotate through 2-4 or more background images for the movie. Often, this would not show any background image. Other times just 1 image. It was hit or miss. This was working perfectly now. I can actually use the page-up/page-down buttons to scroll through movies and the images keep up. I spent the next hour looking for some noticeable lag and couldn't.

 

I am extremely pleased. Well done, guys. Well Done!!!!

 

Note: The manual backup/restore process documented here has an sql statement that may need to be updated to include cases where users are going from 3.0.something to 4.0. I had to change this...

REPLACE INTO NewDB.userdatas SELECT * FROM userdatas 

...to, 

REPLACE INTO NewDB.UserDatas 
     SELECT main.UserDatas.key,
          main.UserDatas.userId,
          main.UserDatas.rating,
          main.UserDatas.played,
          main.UserDatas.playCount,
          main.UserDatas.isFavorite,
          main.UserDatas.playbackPositionTicks,
          main.UserDatas.LastPlayedDateInt,
          main.UserDatas.AudioStreamIndex,
          main.UserDatas.SubtitleStreamIndex
    FROM main.UserDatas

The number of columns in the v3 database table is one greater than the v4 version of the table [10 -v- 11]. This statement leaves out the extra column and only imports the columns that exist in the destination table. The extra column is LastPlayedDate [not LastPlayedDateInt].

Edited January 27, 2019 by serendrewpity

[Luke 37064]

Thanks for the feedback !

[serendrewpity 0]

So where will I see the Rotten Tomatoes ratings? 

[Luke 37064]

You'd need to enable the omdb metadata provider for your movie library and then refresh metadata on existing titles. Then you'll see it in just about every emby app.

[serendrewpity 0]

Outstanding. That worked!