Album art not updating

[RedKong 1]

Problem:
- the album art displayed in emby for mp3 files is not updating after I edit/substitute files
 
Steps:
- I have an album already added in my library, the album art is extracted from the ID3 tags and displayed correctly (the image was added via mp3tag)
- I change the embedded Album Art (again with mp3tag) OR I swap the files with another version (higher bitrate, for example) that has a different embedded image
- I refresh the metada
    - of the entire library (new and updated files)
    - of the single album (new and updated files, replace all metadata and replace existing images)
- I delete the image from the emby library view (right click on the album, edit images) and after that I refresh via the steps above
 
- Tried chiecking if the image has changed with different browsers (Chrome and Firefox, firefox with a clean cache/history), and with the phone app
 
I still see the old image

 

EDIT: "an album" is just an example, right now it is happening with 3 albums, in the past I have encountered the same problem numerous times and "solved" it by deleting the library in emby and recreating it,
 
I hope to have been sufficiently clear, please tell me if that is not the case.
Personally I suspect the image extractor is not running again after the first time.
 
Thank you for your help.

embyserver.txt

Edited April 30, 2019 by RedKong

[Luke 36997]

Hi, currently we don't re-extract in this situation because we don't store enough information in the database in order to be able to determine that the image has changed. This is something we can look at handling though. Thanks for reporting.

[RedKong 1]

Hi, currently we don't re-extract in this situation because we don't store enough information in the database in order to be able to determine that the image has changed. This is something we can look at handling though. Thanks for reporting.

 

Thank you for your answer!

 

I understand, I hope something can be arranged in the future, maybe a way to force it? manually run the extractor on selected files perhaps?

 

 

As for now, is there a work-around other than re-creating the entire library?

[Luke 36997]

Well you don't have to do the whole library, you could also do it just by removing and re-adding the specific album.

[RedKong 1]

I might be doing something wrong then because I have tried that and it did not work

 

I just tried it again:

 

- moved the modified album folders out of the emby library folder (from E:\music\ost to my desktop on drive C:\)

- rescanned the library in emby, the albums did not show up, as expected

- moved back the folders

- rescanned the library again

 

- the albums show up with the old images, unchanged, also the individual songs have the old images

 

What am I missing?

 

 

Tell me if there's any additional info you need, and thank you for your help.

 

 

EDIT:

I tried the process again while keeping an eye on the folder where the cover art is stored, inside AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\metadata\library\35

 

Once I removed the album and rescanned the library, said folder was deleted.

 

I re-added the album, rescanned, a new folder was created inside \metadata\library\35 and inside there was still the old image.

 

I am sorry I don't know where to look further to discover where that image comes from.

 

EDIT2:

I think I completely misunderstood how the metadata folder works, I have found multiple copies of the album cover art in different folders... anyway I am going to leave this here just in case

Edited May 5, 2019 by RedKong

[Luke 36997]

This is something we can look at improving. thanks for the feedback.

[benmoses 4]

I am currently having this issue as well.  I got into this scenario by accidentally saving incorrect album art into some of my mp3's using Musicbrainz.  I'm having no luck trying to change the art.  I've gone through the steps that RedKong has outlined above almost to the letter, also to no avail.  

 

I don't want to give up though.  I'm trying to understand how to manipulate the image files I see in AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\metadata\library\XX

 

I don't understand the organization... yet, but I can view thumbnails of all the images (all 9,000-some-odd of them).  Is it ok to just go ripping out the unwanted images and then let emby re scan and hopefully re-extract images the new images that are embedded in the mp3 files?  (So there's an image extraction process that takes place??)

 

BTW, I have verified through two tools, Musicbraniz and VLC, that the embedded image is correct (i.e. the one I want, which is different from the image I'm trying to remove from Emby)

 

I'll post my goings-on here if anyone is interested.

 

Thanks!

[benmoses 4]

Is it safe to delete all of the ..\XX folders within the .\library folder?

Or is it better to rename the library folder to something like library2 to effectively remove it from sight of Emby to see if Emby will rebuild library?

[Happy2Play 8238]

Is it safe to delete all of the ..\XX folders within the .\library folder?

Or is it better to rename the library folder to something like library2 to effectively remove it from sight of Emby to see if Emby will rebuild library?

 

I guess I don't understand the issue entirely, since a Refresh Metadata/Replace All w/ replace images does exactly that the same as nuking your /library folder.  But nuking this folder affects all actor/people images also depending on the age of your installation.  This could affect your entire system depending on your settings per library also.

 

If a Replace All w/ replace images does not work then we will need to see that server log.

[benmoses 4]

Thank you for the response!

I'm working on it now.  I just discovered the /replace all images option, so I'm trying that now!

 

The issue is that I embedded the wrong images for an album, (James Taylor in Bob Seger) using Musicbrainz.  And even though I have since gone back and replaced those albums/images with the correct ones using Musicbrainz again, Emby still show James Taylor art for Bob Seger.

 

I'm trying the /replace all images option now and it's taking a long time so I'm hopeful.

 

Thank you for your help!

[RedKong 1]

Thank you benmoses for bringing this topic up again.

 

I want to confirm that running Replace All with Replace Images does not refresh the album art.

 

The cause of the problem, as stated above by Luke, seems to be that "[...] currently we don't re-extract in this situation because we don't store enough information in the database in order to be able to determine that the image has changed."

 

As I intend to use only the Image Extractor (which I guess will not be triggered to run even in the case of "replace all and replace images") this means that the only way to update/refresh an album cover image is to delete the entire library from emby and adding it again, which is really not a solution but a tedious and time consuming work-around.

 

I had already tested this at the time, but just to reiterate, deleting/moving only the modified album/files from the library, scanning, then adding them back does not update the cover art, Emby still shows the first one that Image Extractor got.

 

 

About the server log, which specific file do I have to attach?

 

https://i.imgur.com/J23LXnh.png

Edited November 5, 2019 by RedKong

[benmoses 4]

Yeah I'm seeing that.  Man I was really hoping the /replace all switch would work.

  

It's difficult to troubleshoot since I don't really know exactly what Emby is storing, how, when and where.  For example, does Emby store information about folder name and perhaps attach a cached image to that?  I was going to try changing the folder name slightly and re-add the folder with the changed name and see what happens.

 

It would be awesome if there was a manual way to run the "extractor" for a selected file or folder.

 

When I'm looking in a music library at the "Folder" view I don't know how Emby is determining which art image to show for each folder  Each folder will have one or more sub folders with albums (the deafault way Musicbrainz writes the folder structures).  So in my Bob Seger Folder I had three albums, one of which was tainted with the wrong art.  Does Emby just pick one of the albums within each folder?  Is it he first one within each folder?  Does that somehow get "assigned" to the higher level folder as the image to show at the "Folder" level of the music library?

 

I hope that though process wasn't too confusing. LOL

[pwhodges 1521]

If I don't like Emby's choice for the outer folder I just drop an image that I prefer in there, and that image is then the one I see.

[Happy2Play 8238]

Folder view is a totally different topic.  It will inherit usually from the first item in the folder.

[pwhodges 1521]

Folder view is a totally different topic.  It will inherit usually from the first item in the folder.

 

What do you mean, a different topic?  I use folder view, and drop images in the folders at each level to get the view I want when the inherited view chosen by Emby is not to my liking.

Edited November 5, 2019 by pwhodges

[Happy2Play 8238]

What do you mean, a different topic?  I use folder view, and drop images in the folders at each level to get the view I want when the inherited view chosen by Emby is not to my liking.

 

Folder view it treated totally different as it uses images within the folders, where say Artist/AlbumArtist will not use that Artist folder image.  But this is about structure also.

[pwhodges 1521]

The post immediately above my first was also talking about folder view - but now I see the rest of the thread isn't.

[benmoses 4]

Folder view it treated totally different as it uses images within the folders, where say Artist/AlbumArtist will not use that Artist folder image.  But this is about structure also.

 

Ah!  Now I know a little more than I did before.

 

I like the folder view because it shows a typical image of a CD cover I'm used to seeing.  I don't really want to have to manually save images for previously "incorrect" and now "fixed" album art.  I'm not opposed to blowing away the library and rebuilding it with what I believe to be "corrected" album art.  I'd rather do it that way.  The latter seems like the most right way to do it.  I'd like to think that using the UI of Emby is the also the most right way to do the library blow-away (as opposed to ripping out the rug in the filesystem).

 

And yes, I would agree that this does have to do with folder structure as much as anything else.

 

So it would appear that there is a cached image for the folder in the "Folder" View?

 

What's also throwing me off is that in the "Suggestions" View, the "Recently Played" art is incorrect for Bob Seger (showing James Taylor) there too.

 

To be continued...

Just want to say thanks for everyone's and anyone's input

[benmoses 4]

Ummm... this question just occured to me, should I have not embedded any artwork into my mp3's using Musicbrainz and Emby would have taken care of all of the artwork downloading and assignment (of course assuming that all of my Musicbrainz ID's are correct in the tags)?

[Happy2Play 8238]

Really is should not matter, unless the track images are different then what the provider is giving Emby.  But I guess that could depend on what providers you have enabled. 

 

I have not had any issues changing album art.  So can we go over a specific example of where the issue issues and the enabled options in the library setup, content in the album folder.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Happy2Play

[RedKong 1]

Thank you all for the suggestions and input.

 

Regarding the folder view, that is a better work around than re-creating the entire library, but for a number of reasons I want my folders to only contain the music files, nothing else. And I still would like to use a correct album view.

 

Regarding the option of not embedding any image and then using what Emby's providers fetch from the internet, again that is not a solution. More often than not (way more often than I am willing to accept, especially in the case of original soundtrack albums) the images would be missing, low resolution or simply wrong. Then I would have to manually correct them, which Emby would not pick up, leaving me where I started.

I curate my collection by assigning all the id3 tags, covert art included, even creating it in photoshop from promotional materials/artwork when there is no official cover or it is simply too low resolution.

 

Another reason is that Emby is not the only media manager I am using, but it IS the only one with this problem of not updating the cover art from the embedded file.

 

 

Really is should not matter, unless the track images are different then what the provider is giving Emby.  But I guess that could depend on what providers you have enabled. 

 

I have not had any issues changing album art.  So can we go over a specific example of where the issue issues and the enabled options in the library setup, content in the album folder.

 

Which specific example can I provide?

 

I feel I have tested this behaviour thoroughly in the old posts in this thread (First post and Fifth), but I will try again, no problem, I really want a solution.

Edited November 6, 2019 by RedKong

[benmoses 4]

Regarding the option of not embedding any image and then using what Emby's providers fetch from the internet, again that is not a solution. More often than not (way more often than I am willing to accept, especially in the case of original soundtrack albums) the images would be missing, low resolution or simply wrong. ...

 

So you are saying that the effectiveness of Emby's application of artwork from online sources (i.e. Musibrainz) is less than stellar?  Sounds like in a comparison of Musicbrainz's own app vs. Emby, the Musicbrainz app probably does a better, more accurate job?  I might still experiment by taking a chunk of my library, copying it out to another folder, using an app to delete the artwork from the files and importing that into Emby as a new music library and see what happens.

 

I think Happy is looking for an example of where art is not being updated in Emby.  I might be able to put something together on that, it may take a bit of work capturing screen shots and such.

[benmoses 4]

Disregard this.  This was just a test to see if I could upload an image file.  I haven't uploaded an image to a web forum since the late 90's when you used to have to upload an image to  your own web space and provide a link to it in the web forum LOL.  Jeez I'm old.  Back then not all web forums accepted images uploads.

 

Just a test

Edited November 7, 2019 by benmoses

[benmoses 4]

Ok, here we go...

 

Here's an exmaple of needing to change art work, trying to change it and having it not work.

 

Behold, the "Alice in Chains" folder.  Notice the "Def Leppard" art work.  This is due to the art work being wrong in the first place, as we will see in the upcoming screenshots.

 

 

Interestingly, if we look inside the "Alice in Chains" folder we do see proper artwork there.

 

 

Continuing...

I open the offending "Alice in Chains" folder/album in a file manager and drag it into Musicbrainz.  As you can see this track (and the other two tracks for the Dirt album) all have 63 images each embedded into them!  These are the states of the these three files as they have been imported into Emby.  No wonder why Emby is showing the wrong art!!  As you can see here Musicbrainz knows the art is wrong and wants to correct it by showing me a sort-of before and after shot here with the "Original Cover Art" Vs. "New Cover Art"

 

(Def Leppard happened to be number 36 or 63, not sure if that's significant in any way)

 

 

Note the timestamp of the file is Nov 3rd, 7:5Xpm

 

 

Now, highlight at the Album level in Musicbrainz, then I click "Save" to write/overwrite the files in question

 

 

Now the timestamp shows Nov 6th, 3:33pm.  These files have been overwritten with new files containing only one image.

 

 

Back at the ranch, I'm going to go to my music library, right click and choose "Refresh Metadata"

 

 

1. I select "Replace all metadata"

2. Check "Replace existing images"

3. Click "Refresh"

 

 

Wait for updated to take place

 

 

After updating, Folder is still showing wrong art.

[Happy2Play 8238]

When it comes to FOLDERS the image will be inherited from something within that folder.  Are you saying nothing within that folder contains that image?  Music is odd enough as it is.  But the folder should contain the artwork for the named folder.

 

 

Just a test

What is this suppose to show?

 

 

 

Does the correct album art show in the Albums tab?

 

Folder view if you right click edit image and delete that image, does the same one return after a library scan.

 

But if you expect a certain image in folder view you must assign it.

 

Overall music library structure does play a factor also.