Albums in folder view

[Dragon777 1]

Hello,

I have a perfectly sorted music database and 90% of the time use the folder view in Emby to browse my library.
But for some weird reason, there are some strange albums showing up in my folder view.

I have attached screenshots of an example.
In my folder view, there is an album called 1999 showing up with a cover or the Price Batman album. You can see in the details that the path is the artist folder Prince. But the folder Prince does not appear in the Emby folder view at all! The library folder is perfectly ok and structured like every other folder in the logic  Artist > Album. But what´s even stranger is, that no such album as 1999 exists in my library. You can see the Prince albums in the 3rd screenshot - 1999 is not one of them. It seems to be the Ultimate album that has been identified as 1999. But the Ultimate album on my harddrive has perfectly clear metadata which can´t be mistaken - including the correct cover. And the cover shown in Emby isn´t even from 1999, but it´s the one from the Batman album. The Batman and Ultimate albums from my harddrive themselves are missing from the albums list in Emby completely.
What´s going on here and how can I fix this?

Btw, Twonky has absolutely no problems indexing the exact same library correctly.

Best
D

[Happy2Play 8281]

Those two tracks in the Prince folder make that a album folder instead of a Artist folder.  So Little Red Corvette make it become 1999 album.  Loose tracks need to be there own folder since Emby is not 100% embedded track metadata yet.

[Dragon777 1]

That doesn´t make much sense at all. I could understand it if there was a 1999 album popping up in the album view, with just one song in it (Little Red Corvette). But why is the Artist folder missing completely? Why is an album in folder view at all? Why are the Ultimate and Batman albums (with correct folders) corrupted? And so on.... that´s very weird.
Twonky deals with it flawlessly.

But I tried to remove both single files from the library completely and it indeed fixed the problem.

So what about single artist tracks now? I always store them directly in the artist folder. My structure is Artist > Album. Where should I put them instead?

[Dragon777 1]

Here is what happens when I put the single tracks in their own folder called "Tracks".
It generates an Album in the Prince folder of the folder view. This album holds both tracks, is called Purple Rain and the cover is from 1999.

Does Emby want me to have one folder per track? This is ridiculous.

I also have one generic folder for vaious miscellaneous tracks in the logic  Various Artists > Misc
This folder does also not show in Emby folder view.
You can see in the screenshot that all of those tracks have the album "Misc" in the metadata. But this Album Misc is not even showing up in the Album view of Emby. I can´t access this foder and album at all.

Actually, I want the folder view to do nothing else but display all my folders exactly in the folder structure I have put up. Display them with names and pictures and give me access to my own folder structure. It´s not doing that.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Dragon777

[Carlo 4330]

Hi,

Here's a way to think about it.  An Artist view contains no songs or media and is just a point to hold other data like albums which will be in a folder under it.

As soon as media is present in the folder it is treated as an album.  So yes, Emby does best with a "clean" artist folder, then an album folder under it which can contain one or more tracks associated with that album (with proper tagging).

Emby will do very well With proper tagging and a clean disc layout such as /Music/Artist/Album making sure to keep all media content at the album level.

You can technically skip the artist view and go /Music/Album but for consistancy it's best to use /Music/Artist/Album IMHO.

Here is the knowledge base article on Music Naming

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159113-music-naming

[Dragon777 1]

No, actually I am not.

My regular logic is  Artist/Album
The only thing I am doing is putting some individual tracks in the Artist folders when I don´t have the full album for them but just bought a single track. Am I supposed to put up an album folder for each single track?

My Misc folder is pretty much nothing else than a large sampler Album.
Various Artists/Misc is the folder setup and all tracks in there have "Misc" as their album in the tags. But why is neither the folder not the album showing up in Emby at all?

I also have a huge 80s tracks compilation under the folder structure Various Artists/80s and in the same logic all those tracks have "80s" as album in their tags. This 80s sampler album is showing up in both the album view and in the folder view under the folder Various Artists. But why is Misc handled differently?

[Luke 37056]

18 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Those two tracks in the Prince folder make that a album folder instead of a Artist folder.  So Little Red Corvette make it become 1999 album.  Loose tracks need to be there own folder since Emby is not 100% embedded track metadata yet.

Yes currently you need to have separate album folders. We plan to accommodate a mish-mash folder structure in future updates, we're just not quite there yet. Thanks.

[Carlo 4330]

1 hour ago, Dragon777 said:

My regular logic is  Artist/Album
The only thing I am doing is putting some individual tracks in the Artist folders when I don´t have the full album for them but just bought a single track. Am I supposed to put up an album folder for each single track?

That pretty much changes them from an artist to an album since they contain media.  Don't do that.  Put those tracks in a MISC folder or better yet the album they belong to even if just one song.

[Happy2Play 8281]

Most tagging software can structure everything for you.

[Dragon777 1]

@cayars  I tried exactly this as described above with the prince folder, but the end result was still corrupt.

And my Various Artists/Misc folder is also exactly this - even with "Misc" as Album in the file tags. Still it´s nowhere to be found in Emby.

[Luke 37056]

How are they organized now?

[Happy2Play 8281]

Basically in a /Music/Artist/Album all tracks must reside in a album folder..  Not ideal but currently single tracks can reside outside /Artist folder though (/Music).

 

25 minutes ago, Dragon777 said:

@cayars  I tried exactly this as described above with the prince folder, but the end result was still corrupt.

And my Various Artists/Misc folder is also exactly this - even with "Misc" as Album in the file tags. Still it´s nowhere to be found in Emby.

Would need to look at specific example but suspect extended tags.  I had no issue putting tracks from 4 Artists in a Various Artists/Misc folder, removing all MusicBrainz tags and tagging Album to Misc.  But other tags and image will/could me a issue.

 

Until Emby become fully tag based there are limitations.

[Dragon777 1]

@Happy2Play  Thanks for your help - appreciating it!

What kind of extended tags do you suspect? Actually I am tagging all my music in the same way - and I have done it all manually by myself throughout the years.
The only difference I can see between the Various Artists/80s folder (which works correctly) and the Various Artists/Misc (which is nowhere to be found) is that in 80s all tracks have the same cover image, while in Misc they have either no cover or individual covers. Might this cause the problem?

When is Emby going to become "fully tag based"?
My feeling is that for the time being, it´s much less hassle for me to just switch back to Twonky.

[Carlo 4330]

Hi,

It looks like you have a small library based on one of the pics above at roughly 350 albums???  If so and if you have space, why not make a copy of your music section then try running it through MusicBrainZ Picard allowing it to remove and retag as well as create the proper albums folders for everything you have.

With proper folder hierarchy and tagging you should not have any issues in Emby.

[Dragon777 1]

My library consists of more than 2.000 albums (it´s 350 artist folders) and every single one of them has been meticulously tagged by myself in the same logic for years, using MeadiaMonkey. I am very sure that my music library is properly tagged and has a proper folder hierarchy in the requested Artist > Album structure.

The only specialty is that I have a virtual artist called "Varous Artists" under which I file all my multi-artist samplers and some custom made sampler albums like the "80s" or "Misc".

What exactly should I do differently with this Picard tool you mentioned?

Twonky is simply using my folder structure and my tags - and it works perfectly. Emby is doing weird things for whatever reason.

[Carlo 4330]

Ahh ok that was the folder view with 350 artists, got ya.

I said that based on the OP post only without looking any further (but have read the thread).  You're files in your first post don't match the layout we suggest in our music naming knowledge base (very close but off enough to cause problems).  https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159113-music-naming

So I'd assume that other folders will likely have the same issue as this where their are songs at the artist level.  A tool like Picard can make quick work of setting up the folders correctly, creating albums when needed and removing old tags while writing new tags.

So typically when helping customers when we get them to try a tool such as Picard on a copy or subset of their music library, things just magically start working properly because all the tracks have been properly tagged using of course MusicBrainZ metadata as well as having the correct Artist/Album folder structure.

ideally, if I were trying to help you remotely what I'd suggest and want to try would be to make a copy of your music library if you have the room to do so, otherwise maybe just a copy of a subset to use for testing like all artists from # to D as the first letter.  Then I'd run the copy through Picard allowing it to remove old tags and do new tagging as well as move each track to a new location on the drive creating the artists and album folders.

To test with you could possibly use a portable version of the Emby Server so it would start off clean and not touch your production system.  This way you could see first hand what difference this makes and to see if it would help you.  Since you're testing with a portable version of Emby and a copy of your media you don't change your current system one bit so nothing lost or changed if you didn't like the results!

Make sense?

 

 

[Dragon777 1]

I have played around some more, reformatted, retagged etc.. Emby is pretty picky on tags and folder structure in order to work correctly.

But one thing is still puzzling me:  I have a lot of albums where Emby refuses to show the cover art embedded in the file tags. The cover is in the tracks, but Emby is not using it to show it in folder view when displaying the artist folder. Works most of the times, but sometimes not.
And then there are other files with embedded covers, where Emby doesn´t even use the cover in playback for the file itself.

This is also a strange behavior as all tagging software and Twonky are showing those covers without problems.

[PenkethBoy 2063]

Emby does not use the embedded images in songs for the album artist - that comes from MBz or Audiodb or fanart depending on your settings for the music library.

Emby uses ffmpeg/ffprobe to get tags and metadata - so do the songs that dont show an image have something in common - can you see the image referenced in an output from ffprobe?

Could the files be corrupt - just because they play does not mean the files are OK as some players are very tolerant of issues? What type are they? it might also be the type of tags etc ID3v2.3/2.4? APE? - makes a difference

If you open the album with these file in Mp3Tag does it show the image for each track? 

MP3Tag will also tell you what type of tags they are - although not in the screenshot above

 

Some things to try and check

 

[Dragon777 1]

Actually, I am really tired of fiddling around with all kinds of stuff only to make it work in Emby.

Those file covers have all been tagged in the same way with MediaMonkey (different JPGs, though). All covers show correctly in MediaMonkey, in Twonky, in VLC, on my PS Audio Streaming DAC etc. - just not in Emby.

I have now downloaded some different covers, removed the old ones and embedded new ones and most of the time this seems to fix the problem.

But the bottom line is, that Emby is really really picky with tags and covers. Once a tag is a little bit off (and I can´t even explain what Emby doesn´t like), all kinds of strange things happen. Other tools are much more sophisticated in this regard.

[PenkethBoy 2063]

Emby like any software has requirements and standards - Emby is strick - yes - but it means that it works when these are met

if you conform to how emby wants it - then you will have very few if any issues

and if you have it working in emby the other apps you may use will also work

Your choice - i dont have issues with emby music it actually works well once you get past the "errors" in your file structure and/or the metadata of the files.

And if there is a genuine bug - it usually gets addressed relatively quickly.

[Luke 37056]

Have these answers helped?

[Dragon777 1]

Hi Luke,

yes, kind of. But my bottom line is that Emby is very picky in many regards.
I had to completely reconfigure my Blu-ray concerts library in order to make them work in Emby - while my old Zappity setup had zero problems with the library.
Now I have to re-tag and re-structure some of my music library in order to make it work in Emby - while my old Twonky setup had zero problems with the music library.

In addition to that, there are still many problems with DLNA casting (see my other threads).
As much as I want to like Emby, but I am not willing to go premium until these issues are fixed.

 

[Luke 37056]

We plan to make the music folder structure more flexible in future updates. thanks for the feedback.

[thelanranger 11]

Not to hijack, but I've been going through similar things.

I went so far as to completely remove the entire media library and read things a little bit at a time and I've had a crazy time with things that are 'various artists' or things like rap albums where there are multiple artists listed on a track.

The folders I have added are perfectly tagged but weird things happen like you will get multiple folders for 'Various Artists' (currently I have about 10 'Various Artists' album artists) and if you view them they'll have a single album that will link back to the 'main' album artist that has 100 albums in it. 

Actually...while composing this and digging around this might have something to do with .m3u files within the directories....I shall investigate. Perhaps OP is having a similar issue?

[Luke 37056]

Yes m3u playlists are supported, so it will pick up those.