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Emby can't recognise music files


DJ...
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Hi,

 

We have installed Emby server on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using the Debian .deb package without problems. Even updated to the most recent 4.3.0.30 version without hassle in the hope that this one irritation would be fixed. Unfortunately not.

 

We have created a Home Video and Photo library and then created a number of folders with heaps of photos and videos. No problems. Also created a Music Library and placed a few folders in here with a few mp3 or wma tracks in each folder. Emby can find the folders and display them correctly but it never finds any of the music files within the folders. 

 

File permissions on the server gives everyone read permission with ownership of emby:emby.

 /music/MusicAudio/U2/ Track1.wma

/music/MusicAudio/U2/Track2.wma

 

Emby will see all folder structures but not the actual music files. No problems with Music Videos (.mp4) files. 

 

Been searching for a reason for 2 weeks now and quite frustrated. Any ideas on how to proceed?

 

with thanks

DJ...

Edited by DJ...
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  • Solution
Deathsquirrel

Music should be organized by artist and album.  For example:

 

\\SERVER\SHARE\U2\The Joshua Tree\U2 - The Joshua Tree - 1-1 - Where the Streets Have No Name.flac

\\SERVER\SHARE\U2\Rattle and Hum\U2 - Rattle and Hum - 1-1 - Helter Skelter (live).flac

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"organised by artist and album".

Unless Emby knows the name of every artist and every album I think this is what we have, although our directory structure would indicate that the artist is "MusicAudio" and the album is "U2".

Reading other Forum posts indicated that it has to be a file (track name) within a folder (album)  within folder (artist), and that structure is what we have. Having another folder along with any files means that Emby will bypass those files and look only inside the folder. We originally had this but fixed that problem. 

 

Still, Emby does not show any files (music), even when changing folder structure.

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@DJ...

MusicAudio will not be treated as an artist, but U2 will be treated as an album because it has songs directly underneath. As of today Emby needs album sub-folders under the U2 folder.

 

This is a requirement we plan to remove in the near future to be able to accommodate any folder structure, but we're not quite there yet. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

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"MusicAudio will not be treated as an artist, but U2 will be treated as an album because it has songs directly underneath. As of today Emby needs album sub-folders under the U2 folder."

 

This is confusing, so what is the structure of music folders such that Emby will recognise, find and play music files??

 

I thought the requirement was that audio files (.wma, .flac, .mp3, etc) are recognised as music files so long as they appear together in a folder, and without any other folders at the same level. The folder in which these music files are located is considered the "Album Folder" and multiple album folders can co-exist together in a parent folder known as the "Artist Folder".

 

In our current case we have a couple of music files in a folder called U2 (Album folder) within a folder called MusicAudio (Artist folder) and yet Emby does not find and make available any of the music files. I don't see how changing the name of "MusicAudio" to U2 and the name of the U2 folder to that of their album will magically make Emby recognise their music. 

 

Does Emby only find music within folders (Albums) within folders (Artist) of genuine world recognised artists? So I cannot use a folder name (e.g.: MusicAudio) because it is not the name of an artist that Emby recognises?

 

Thanks

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This is confusing, so what is the structure of music folders such that Emby will recognise, find and play music files??

 

Any folder containing songs will become an album. So that's why as of today, your U2 folder becomes an album containing all songs underneath.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just updated the Emby server to 4.3.1.0 but still no difference. 

 

We have 2 audio files (.wma) in the joshuaTree folder (Album) inside the U2 folder (Artist) which is classified as a Library (music) in Emby.

Clicking on Music icon in Emby and then selecting "folders" view shows the U2 Artist and then selecting this shows the JoshuaTree Album. Clicking on the Album results in "No items found".

 

Server structure is :

/Multimedia/music/U2/joshuaTree/1- Track 1.wma

/Multimedia/music/U2/joshuaTree/1- Track 1.wma

with all folders and files owned by emby:emby

 

The Emby library for Music is /Multimedia/music 

 

So how do I get Emby to display the existence of the .wma music files and then hopefully allow playing of them through a browser?

 

How can I debug this problem. Telling me how things "should" work doesn't align with how this are (not) working.

 

Thanks

DJ...

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No other music libraries now exist. The only other library is a video/photo library and it works absolutely fine. Emby can find and display photos/videos in many different folders, including music videos. The search works fine and so do folders within folders.

Just no music. I assume that a music Library has to be created and that another type of library can't be used.

 

@@cayars

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@DJ...

 

Can you answer Luke's question?

Also, is your music files properly tagged before adding them to Emby?

Edited by cayars
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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for the delay in responding. It is that time of year when everything closes down for "Summer Holidays".

The answer to Luke's question is NO. We see nothing and thus the reason for the post. We have music files inside a folder inside another folder that is linked as a Music Library. Thus the library -> Artist -> Album -> music track. We can navigate through the Artist and Album folders within Emby but it never shows any tracks.

 

@@cayars - What does "properly tagged before adding them to Emby" mean? I haven't read anything about treating valid encoded music files in a special way before adding them to an Emby music library. The test files (as shown above) are .wma tracks (also tried a couple of .mp3 files) that come with some meta data that even Windows can read, but Emby won't even show the track let alone show any meta data or even play it.

 

thanks

DJ...

Edited by DJ...
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@@cayars - What does "properly tagged before adding them to Emby" mean? I haven't read anything about treating valid encoded music files in a special way before adding them to an Emby music library. The test files (as shown above) are .wma tracks (also tried a couple of .mp3 files) that come with some meta data that even Windows can read, but Emby won't even show the track let alone show any meta data or even play it.

What program did you use to rip this U2 album?

Typically the tracks would get names similar to:

Where the Streets Have No Name.mp3
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.mp3
With or Without You.mp3
etc
 
So the track is easily identifiable based on the file name.  Also most ripping programs will add META-DATA or tagging to the files themselves which will include information like artist, album name, track name, etc.
 
So what I was getting at is if your album has this meta-data or internal tagging.
MusicBrainz Picard is one such program that can write this information to your files.
 
Make a copy of a couple albums on your system (backup) and then try running MusicBrainz Picard on them (or similar program) by identifying  the album/artist (usually pretty automatic), allow it to rename your files and to write the tags.  Then refresh your music library and see what happens!
 
Carlo
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@cayers 

Many thanks again for the info Carlo.

 

The files were 'ripped' using Windows Media Player which simply names each track as 01 Track1.wma, 02 Track2.wma, etc.

 

I downloaded Picard and ran it on the folder Music->U2->Achtung Baby ("Music being our Emby Music Library source) and Picard recognises all music files and provides meta information in all fields, from Title through to Genre as expected. Unfortunately, although Emby finds and shows the folder structure, namely Music -> U2 -> Achtung Baby all we get is "No items found". 

 

Do we have to go through each track and give it the original name as per the original Achtung Baby album? This would mean that Emby must know the names of every track in an album. I thought that perhaps Emby gathers meta data from the track files and then looks for the files of those names. eg: Reads through folder files, find meta data of track "Zoo station" and then looks for a file of that name. But our track "Zoo station" is called "01 Track 1". 

 

Changing the names of some of the tracks to that shown in the track meta data doesn't make them visible to Emby.

 

Is anyone able to provide us with a music file that is correctly named, correctly formated and guaranteed to work with Emby, and also provide the folder structure that should hold this file so that Emby finds the track?

 

Is there meant to be some meta data on the folder containing the tracks? This would be the Album folder. I have simply created the folder structure on the server using Windows File Manager (although the server is Linux). 

 

Picard doesn't appear to re-write the files back to the disk, or at least it says that it has saved the files but the file names are not altered. File names on the disk are the same as when Picard was started. I assume that Picard has re-written the files and updated the meta data but hasn't changed the file names. Still, no change with Emby though. "No items found". 

 

I've included some images, but is there any more information that we can provide to resolve this issue? 

5e167570b6724_Picard.png

5e16758d59eaf_FileName.png

5e16761764101_metaDataManager.png

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Check the option settings for Picard.  You can select what gets written and what doesn't.

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@cayers - Just using the default options, although I have just selected the 'Change filename' option so that files are the track names as per the Picard meta data. 

Emby still can't see any tracks.

Is there any more information I can send you? Maybe this is something very basic that wasn't set up. We have another Library which is a Home video and photos library and it works fine. We did have a Music Videos library that worked great with .mp4 files but I've deleted that to see if it caused any issues. It didn't. 

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Any chance you could zip up one album and send me a PM with a link to that album?

I can check it and see if I can figure out what your issue is.

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Many thanks @cayers.

We have uploaded a zip of the Album we are using to https://www.dropbox.com/s/d07wtojp0rz3cs2/achtung%20baby.zip?dl=0

For info: it is 64MB in size, hope that is not a problem to you.

 

Apologies again for the time it is taking to resolve this problem but this is for a school and it is currently summer holidays, and thus limited hours on deck.

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Unfortunately we still have the problem of no music being accessible using Emby and have totally run out of ideas to debug the situation.

:-(

 

Any help gratefully appreciated.

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Sorry I haven't responded back to you.  The tag you used for my userid is wrong. :)  @cayars  (with an "a" not "e").

 

I'm going to send you a PM in a moment with information on another level of help I can provide.

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@@Luke, Just checked the PM sent (you're on it as well) and it hasn't been read yet. Nor any additional responses here.

I'll be able to help him when he responds to the PM or here if he still needs help.

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  • 1 year later...
Funky me

Am  Having the same problem all of a sudden, tracks not listed in folder, did you find a solution DJ?

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