All non-movie collections are gone after server update

[Mr_Scumbag 8]

I have done everything that has been suggested. I have rebooted/restarted the server multiple times. Manually scanned each library as well as scanned all libraries multiple times. I have verified that the collection directories/files still exist. I have refreshed metadata. Nothing works. They do not return. They don't appear under the collections tab, but all of my movie collections are fine. I suspect because these are done by autoboxset.

I also re-installed the server. Nothing has worked.

I only just got everything grouped into collections a couple of weeks ago and it took a long time, so this is very concerning.

 

Edited May 25, 2021 by Mr_Scumbag

[MBSki 1025]

Shockingly, @Lukestated in another thread that some of the other media collections were not migrated. I don't recall this being discussed during beta, but it's very disappointing.

[Mr_Scumbag 8]

4 minutes ago, mbarylski said:

Shockingly, @Lukestated in another thread that some of the other media collections were not migrated. I don't recall this being discussed during beta, but it's very disappointing.

All of my missing collections are music-based so I hope this isn't the case, or Plex will start looking a lot better all of a sudden.

[MBSki 1025]

@Mr_Scumbag Take a look at Luke's response at the end of this thread. 

 

[Mr_Scumbag 8]

Well that settles it, then. Time to decide whether to spend hours and hours re-building the collections that I've just spent weeks making or to go back to Plex.

The problem with this is that if it's happened once, it can happen again. I've lost a lot of trust in Emby.

[MBSki 1025]

Yea, it's infuriating when Luke changes an in production feature and doesn't say anything until after. It's unacceptable IMO. He did the same thing with playlists about a month ago, but fixed it relatively quickly. I don't know how this one could be fixed though. Maybe the collections could be pulled in from a backup?

@Luke @cayars A response would be appreciated.

[Mr_Scumbag 8]

All of the collection files are still there for me, which means that it's still possible for a "fix" even though destroying collections is now apparently "working as intended". This is entirely a 'We could have made this work, but threw it on the "too hard/not worth it" pile and now you guys have to deal with it' issue. Given that the devs control the source, there's no reason why carrying them over would be impossible.

 

I couldn't agree more with your comment about the dev not mentioning that this would be an issue before the patch. I don't want to come off as entitled, but Collections (along with playlists) are the two parts of Emby that people can spend the most time curating. To have them essentially disappear with no warning is absolutely unacceptable, especially for those of us paying for Premier.

If I had have known the update was going to nuke hours of my work, I wouldn't have installed it. I would have hoped that there would have been enough of a backlash afterward that there would be a fix. I'd still like to see a modification/"fix" so that Emby Server can re-integrate the collections. Failing that, an external conversion utility would be good. none of these solutions should be impossible.
 

Like I said before, not being able to count on things like collections and playlists surviving updates is a borderline deal-breaker for me. The fact that this has happened once does not fill me with faith in the devs to not do it again.

[Carlo 4330]

This of course wasn't done on purpose. It was never reported during the beta cycle that I remember seeing, as likely none of the beta testers were using collections like this.

Do these manually created collections for non movie types have a folder/xml file in the old collection folder location?

[Mr_Scumbag 8]

Just now, cayars said:

This of course wasn't done on purpose. It was never reported during the beta cycle that I remember seeing, as likely none of the beta testers were using collections like this.

Do these manually created collections for non movie types have a folder/xml file in the old collection folder location?

Yes, they do. All of the folders and .xml's and custom graphics still exist. The contents of the .xml files are also unchanged. The data is still there, just now incompatible.

 

Going by the link to another thread that @mbarylski posted, @Luke has posted acknowledging this and doesn't appear to have any plans on fixing it:

"From 4.5 to 4.6 there was a database migration for collections, but unfortunately for albums and audio books, these objects are recreated in the database due to the new music scanning, and as a result collections for them will be lost and need to be recreated. Apologies."

I'm kind of impressed by how easily he's able to hand-wave away a potentially huge amount of manual curation with "You'll just have to re-create it all from scratch".

 

 

[Carlo 4330]

I personally don't know if this could be fixed in a hotfix or not but it doesn't sound like it.

What I would do is make a copy of the old collection files just for safe keeping and since they are small files this won't use much storage and will be fast to copy.
You could then remove all the movie box sets leaving only your custom collections to make working with easier.

Then you could open each remaining xml file to see what was part of that collection and use this information to manually create new collections which will now live in the database moving forward.

I know this is a manual process but is likely your best option right now.

[Chyron 238]

If you recreate a collection using a now-defunct collection's name, Emby will reach out and instantly find the old cover art again.

So you do have to manually recreate the collections, but you don't have to re-add the art.

[pünktchen 1259]

For the brave of you, here's the promised plugin: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/98353-migration-plugin/

[Luke 37180]

Apologies for the disruption. Because music scanning was rewritten in 4.6, music albums are different objects in the database now and that's why this happened. We'll look and see what can be done but as the other user mentioned, if you recreate them with the same name, the artwork is still there and will be used.