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Funky me

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Funky me

HI THERE

ON MY SYNOLOGY NAS I AM EXPERIENCING A VERY FRUSTRATING PROBLEM WITH THE MUSIC FOLDER ON EMBY, WITH ALL MY ALBUMS THEY ARE SCANNED AND UPLOADED FINE WITH ALL ALBUM COVERS ECT,

( THIS IS THE PROBLEM ) :   I HAVE LOADS OF MIXED MUSIC IN 1 FOLDER WHICH IS NAMED VARIOUS ARTIST,  EVERY TIME I CHANGE THE COVER ART IMAGE ON EMBY TO WHAT I WANT,  AFTER A RESCAN ON EMBY THE IMAGE GOES BACK TO WHAT IT WAS, THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!!! 

I HAVE ALSO ENABLED !!!!!       Lock this item to prevent future changes

ANY IDEAS PLEASE !!!!

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wanderjarra

Basically you can at least write clearly and accurately, NOT IN BOX, respect to be respected ....

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Funky me

I  CAN WRITE YES, BUT WHEN I CHANGE THE IMAGE ON THE FOLDER, AFTER A RESCAN ON EMBY, I.E   ( UPDATE FOLDERS ) IT CHANGES BACK TO ORIGINAL IMAGE

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Happy2Play

Can you go over a specific example.  What images are in the folder?

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Funky me

HI, IN MY MUSIC LIBRARY I HAVE A NUMBER OF FOLDERS, I OPEN 1 OF THEM ( EXAMPLE 70s ) THEIR ARE 8 ALBUMS WITH THE CORRECT COVERS ECT.MY VARIOUS ARTISTS FOLDER I EDIT IMAGE TO THE ONE I WANT AND UPLOAD & SAVE, BUT WHEN EMBY DOES A RE SCAN IN LIBRARYS THE IMAGE ALWAYS GOES BACK TO WHAT IT WAS ORIGINALLY.  THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
Funky me

It finds a image from that folder and puts that as the cover. It does it only when I add new tracks to the folder. I have enabled the, prevent from future changes in metadata.

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MagnusDaMan

I have the exact same problem. The steps I did was the following.

1 - On a movie (in the web interface), I choose "Add to collection". 

2 - I named a new collection.

3 - Emby decided that this collection was something else. It automatically filled the collection with metadata about some MovieDB item that was not what I had in mind.

4 - I tried to edit the metadata on the collection and saved, but it decided to re-populate the collection metadata with the same item (that I still not wanted to be there)

5 - Step 4 happened 3 times until I gave up.

6 - I then renamed the collection to something else. That way, I thought I could get rid of the problem collection.

7 - I then created a new collection the same way as in steps 1 and 2. I hoped that now when this weird collection was gone, I would be able to create a normal collection again. I gave the new collection the same name I gave the first collection in the naive hopes that the new collection would work.

8 - Emby goes haywire in the following way: the new collection automatically changed it's name to the _same name_ as the first one that I renamed. I tried this 3 more times and now had 5 collections with the same name. This may seem irrational, of course, to do this over and over again, but I wanted to see how this happened. I really do not understand this process.

9 -  I deleted all these new collections.

To make this more clear I will now use variable names to show what happened.

1, 2 - New collection is named x.

3 - Emby fills x with irrelevant metadata.

4, 5 - I edit xx to try to remove the metadata and saved the changes. Emby re-filled the same irrelevant metadata over and over again.

6 - I renamed the collection x to y.

7 - I created a new collection named x. There were now two collections both named y.

8 - I tried this 3 more times and now there were 5 collections all named y.

9 - I deleted all collections named y.

This is very confusing. I am new to Emby, so the good thing is that now I really have to learn how the system works. I started a WinSCP session from my Windows machine to look at the Emby files in the Synology system, and I could see that both the first collection x and all instances of y were visible under "/var/packages/EmbyServer/target/var/data/collections".

I started the WinSCP session with an Administrator account, and thus could copy and backup all Emby data, but the administrator does not have access to delete these silly collections, so now I have to try to find a description of how the access rights are managed, which is good for me to learn.

Is this whole process that I described above the result of a bug or a feature?

Edited by MagnusDaMan
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MagnusDaMan

I can add that even though I deleted all these silly collections from the web browser interface, the folder is still visible when I start a WinSCP session from my Win machine. The folder I am referring to now is the one I named x and renamed to y. Even though there are no movies in that collection, it is still listed as a collection.

I accessed the files with PUTTY and deleted the files and the folder altogether.

Once I tried to redo the whole process and created a new collection named x, it was displayed in the web interface as y, but listed in putty under the name x.

What is going on? It must be that somehow this information is stored also in the database and somewhere, and there is a bug that does not allow me to delete it.

Please help me solve this, it is very frustrating.

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unisoft
On 6/27/2020 at 8:48 AM, Funky me said:

HI, IN MY MUSIC LIBRARY I HAVE A NUMBER OF FOLDERS, I OPEN 1 OF THEM ( EXAMPLE 70s ) THEIR ARE 8 ALBUMS WITH THE CORRECT COVERS ECT.MY VARIOUS ARTISTS FOLDER I EDIT IMAGE TO THE ONE I WANT AND UPLOAD & SAVE, BUT WHEN EMBY DOES A RE SCAN IN LIBRARYS THE IMAGE ALWAYS GOES BACK TO WHAT IT WAS ORIGINALLY.  THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING. 

So things I found with meta data that may help you?:

  • I have embedded meta data and cover art for music files and music video files put there by a tagging app I use (Tag & Rename/MP3Tag for example).
  • I do NOT have enabled the option for getting metadata from an online provider for each of the libraries and only have thumb, logo, art enabled for the 'image fetchers' (and not tick the 'Primary' as this can overwrite cover art). This options are when you look at advanced setup under your music and/or music video library setup in Emby.
  • You have to have 'SCREEN GRABBER' ticked under image fetchers in library setup options so embedded cover art can be retrieved else it won't be and you may have blank cover art or an incorrect image from what was there historically.
  • To get the correct folder artwork to show up and re-read meta data from the information embedded in the file, I find I have to use REFRESH META DATA and tick the REFRSH IMAGES, and then do a REFRESH ALL METADATA again on the same item. If I then navigate back out and into the music album or music video again, the artwork is corrected to what was embedded in the file and display of the embedded ID3v2 tags is also shown.
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MagnusDaMan

Hello again.

No, this did not help. I notice that when I am naming the folders, I can't use a name that already exists. For example, when I want to have a collection with western movies, I can't name the collection "Western", because then Emby believes this is a TV-series or movie named "Western" and fills in the metadata and picture with that information. I solved this problem by naming the collection "Wild West Movies", which does not exist.

To remove the faulty collections I named above, I had to create them again, and then go into the collection itself, and choose "Delete". Then it disappeared.

@cayars

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MagnusDaMan

I just had another extremely irritating problem. This is on the level of "stop using Emby". But let's first check if I did a mistake or not.

I have manually edited my collection. Since Emby refuses to support dynamic file naming with a simple regular expression method, I have had to edit all metadata myself, manually.

I have a Very Large collection of movies.

To enable quick access to the movies, I want different ways of finding the movie I am looking for. One of the ways I have solved this is sorting movies in folders based by directors. I have also added a picture of each director to each folder.

After having edited all these movies manually (It has taken me MANY hours), Emby suddenly started resetting the metadata for all these folders, both the folder itself as well as all movies inside them. I stopped emby on the Synology before it was all destroyed, but the damage was extensive. The setup I have is that I made one Library named "Directors". For each director I added the folder with the respective movies to the library. I have set "Automatically refresh metadata from the internet" to "Never".

This happened suddenly without updating the Synology server or the Emby version. After it happened, I updated the Synology version to DSM 6.2.3-25426 Update 2 to avoid having uncontrolled changed happening. The Emby is version 4.4.3.0-1.

Did I miss anything in the settings? Should it not be enough to set that specific library to "Never" refresh metadata from the internet?

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MagnusDaMan

An just now there was another buggy thing happening. 

I looked at the library named "Directors", which consists of folders with director names. Suddenly they were arranged in alphabetical order, and not in the order I added them, which is fine with me.

Two minutes later I looked again and then they were back in the order I assigned to them.

What???

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MagnusDaMan

And now again!

When I was adding the photos to each director folder in the library "Directors", they were disappearing as I worked!

What the $£€$£%&¤ is happening??????

I think it is time for the Emby developer team to starte eliminating bugs! 10 sprints with "Quality improvements and bug elimiation" would be a very good start.

What should I do now to stop my metadata from being replaced???????????

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@MagnusDaMan Your issue is nothing to do with Music and the way metadata is used/loaded from them correct?  Your issue is about using Collections for Movies and how changing folders names that contain movies affects your metadata correct?

Collections names matter just like movie names matter as far as metadata goes.  BOTH get information fetched from online medtadata providers.  For example if you created a "Airport Collection" name and then put Snake on a Plane in that collection you would get weirdness because "Airport Collection" means this:  https://www.themoviedb.org/collection/33938-airport-collection?language=en-US

This is why "Western" needed to be changed to "Wild West Movies" so that there wasn't a collection by the same name in existence already with it's own metadata and meaning.  You may want to install and try the Auto Box Plugin which will take the chore out making base collections for you complete with proper naming and all metadata.  You can then add your own collections for directors or actors etc on top of them.

Not understanding how the collections worked caused you to try and "fix" this by renaming folders on your system and moving movies around.  This is NOT a good idea generally speaking as the parent folder name matters and is used to help determine the name of the movie.  This knowledge base article goes over the basics of movie naming and folder use:

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159102-movie-naming

So likely you haven't found any bugs, but discovered that Emby is trying to match things as it should based on your names (files, collections & folders) and replacing data and graphics based on your changing the names of things.

Let's step back and get some information from you not on settings or configuration YET, but on what you are trying to achieve.

Can you explain what you want to do or how you want your information presented?

Carlo

PS maybe a moderator can split this to it's own thread?

Edited by cayars
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MagnusDaMan

Thanks cayars for your very precise and clear explanation. Thanks goes to you.

What I want to do is this:

1 - Have "Collections" or whatever objects available where I can collect groups of movies such as western movies, documentaries, movies about Joan of Arc (very many made about this fascinating persona), chinese history, movies about ww2 etc. Some of these movies may occur in several "collections".

2 - Have some collection(s) of all the directors by which I have many movies (more than 6 movies as of now) available to be found quickly and easily.

3 - Use the library "Movies" to contain all movies in the collection, sorted by year, newest on top.

4 - All my files (they are many) do NOT follow the Emby enforced naming convention, but is of the format "year - director - moviename". Example: "1962 - Joanna Awesome - Pieces of Excellence.mkv"

This is what I would like to achieve.

I have googled quite a lot for guides about how to set this up, but have only found bits and pieces on how to do this.

If you have any advice I would really appreciate to hear it.

Note: I have done backups of folders Metadata and data under Emby Server, but am still not sure how to use these backups. Experience tells me it is probably not a good idea to just overwrite Emby Server data with data from my backups.

I hope this is clear enough.

Thank you!

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First step I'd recommend is following the naming guide for setting up your movies in both layout and names.

filebot is a great tool for renaming things correctly that completely agree with Emby. It can do both movies and tv shows.

The key to the above is to make sure Emby always has the best chance to identify the movie and not get mismatched metadata or the wrong graphics due to a mismatch in folder/file name, etc.

 

Next do you want to have collections for movies like all the Back to the Future or all the Terminator series created for you?  If so Emby can do this automatically for you with the Auto Box Sets Plugin.  These Box Set are a really nice touch for most systems. Knowledge base article: https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001162222-autoboxsets

Now here is where things get interesting.  For putting together lists of movies for an actor, director, producer, etc OR movies of a particular type like "Joan of Arc", "CIA/NSA" you can use either COLLECTIONS or PLAYLISTS.

If you use the Box Set Plugs you may want to reserve collections strictly for the Box Sets and use Playlists for these other unique categories which gives you a separation of functionality which you may or may not want.  Admin prerogative on this choice. :)

I personally like using Collections only for the Box Sets AND a couple hand made collections such as "Steven Spielberg Collection" or "2019 Oscar Nominations".  The "Collection" to me is things that don't change unless a new movie comes out that fits the collection.

I personally use the Playlist functionality for groups of similar theme movie but not a collection.  So I create several Playlists based on THEMES such as CIA/NSA Movies, Submarine Movies, "Airplane Movies".  So your "Joan of Arc" would be a theme just as "Chinese History" or anything else you can think of to group themed movies/shows together.

So that's the way I tend to use these features which is logical for me and my family.

Does that help you?

Carlo

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MagnusDaMan

Hi again.

Thanks again Carlo/cayars.

The biggest step for me would be renaming all movies.

If I would do that, which would be quite a huge project, how much would I gain?

The problem I am having right now is that Emby autorefreshes/deletes all metadata even though I told it not to.

If I follow your recommendations, follow through with the huge task of renaming the movies, how much better off will I be? I program a bit, and I know how hard it is to automatically match movie data. The differences are bigger than you would expect in terms of both year and naming, if you compare imdb, omdb and tmdb. My point is that I am sure I would still have to edit metadata manually for a bunch of them anyway.  So before I do all this work, I would have to make sure that I just don't loose a lot of time on nothing.

It also means I would still have to understand how to stop Emby from auto-deleting metadata.

I would guess there is some sort of event triggered that destroys the metadata, and maybe understanding what triggers these events could be of help?

I have to find some optimum here to avoid too much (more) work. I am getting depressed thinking about how much time I have lost already.

"The Hours! The Hours!"

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It need not be a huge task with the help of a good utility such as Filebot.  

You're going to be far better off especially when you can then set the libraries to save metadata locally into the movie/show libraries.

You're problem is that you're in a situation where anything done to a folder affects every video in that folder vs each movie being in it's own folder.

Send me a PM and we can arrange a TeamViewer remotes session.  You can show me your present setup and I'll help you with the best method to get this done or just help you do it depending on size of task.

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MagnusDaMan

Oh, this really sounds awesome!

To have the metadata stored locally would probably make my problems go away.

You have convinced me.

I will take a look at Filebot.

Right now I am travelling, but I will start this in two or three days, when I'm back home.

Thanks a lot for your help this far.

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Shoot me the PM before you start as I can show you Filebot pretty quickly and help you with the config and best practices to use it for YOUR system (movies and shows) that work fantastically with Emby Server along with optimal library setup based on your environment OR suggest a different tool based on your needs.  Just need to take at look at your present setup/system first.

I'll help you get your movies and shows setup using Emby Best Practices as well as create collections/Box Sets automatically moving forward.

Believe it or not this won't take long at all (maybe 10 minutes) but after getting you going, I can always leave TeamViewer loaded in the background in case you have a question so you can "ping me" for assistance for a look over or answer a question. We'll help you best we can and this really won't be much manual work at all, done correctly.

Carlo

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Paulshelling

Go into the library settings, in advanced and check the setting to save NFO metadata. This will then save all of your metadata to nfo files, which are essentially text files.

Create a backup folder, order all files in your library's folder(s) in your explorer / finder and copy and paste all the NFO files into this backup folder.

If anything like this happens again, delete all the NFO files in your folder(s) and replace with them with your backuped NFO files.

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