Music Catalog Problem

[nospotify 184]

I am a Plex refugee and am frustrated with what seems a mysterious error in the Music catalog after importing my absolutely pristine library of music files.

I have three albums in a series, but only two are properly listed under "J Jazz" - which is (as you can see below) the only and consistent/identical artist listing across ALL three albums. Why do only albums #s 2 and 3 get listed with (and arise as serch results under) "J Jazz" - the inconsistency is mysterious and so frustrating. Any ideas?

[Luke 42080]

Hi, for the one that's under Various artists, have you checked the embedded albumartist tag of each track?

[nospotify 184]

Yes, see in the screenshot from MP3Tag, column 3. In MP3Tag I even cut-and-pasted the identical data into all track listings for all three albums, and re-saved all of them. After tons of time doing the Plex dance with my large music library (20,000+ files), my tags are pristine. Most imported perfectly to Emby (on two different machines/server installs), which is why this glitch is so puzzling. Before posting here I did yet another Refresh Metadata and Scan Library Files (which took many hours). Any other ideas?

[nospotify 184]

I now think it best to make a formal bug report. I am seeing other mysterious behavior with other artists/albums. New example: Frank Sinatra. Again, my library metadata is pristine, confirmed and resaved in MP3Tag (see attachement 1).  I have 4 Sinatra albums, all are properly listed as "Frank Sinatra" for Album Artist and for Artist on each track. Please take a look at the weird results in Emby when searching on "Sinatra." First, there is a result for "Sinatra, Frank" even though that form doesn't appear in ANY of the files (attachment 2). Then the individual albums appear correctly under "Albums" but the box set is listed under "Appears On" (attachment 3). On the Search screen only ONE of his albums shows when clicking the "Ambums"tab (attachment 6). Other attachments included for background. HELP! None of this makes sense, and literally a search on "Sinatra" does NOT yield most of the albums that other screens correctly list him on. What is going on, and how can this be fixed?  

[Luke 42080]

There are multiple id3 versions and it's possible that mp3 tag is not went writing all versions and is therefore leaving some incorrect data in the file.

I think it may have an option to write all versions, so you may want to enable that, update the files, and then run an emby library scan.

[nospotify 184]

Thanks I will try that and report back either way. Regardless, though, the Emby behavior on the search results screen seems incorrect.

Edited November 20, 2021 by wordlover

[Luke 42080]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[nospotify 184]

I think I may have found one of the problems. Similar incorrect tagging appears in this set of single-artist albums that are all in one disc directory (see image). Is it the case that all are listed as "VA" for artist - rather than what is in the properly tagged "Artist" field - because all the albums are in a main directory "Philadelphia Int'l Records"? Similarly, is the "Frank Sinatra vs. Sinatra, Frank" problem because all albums appear in a main directory "Sinatra, Frank" rather than "Frank Sinatra"? Does Emby force its own tagging based upon filename/structure, which overrides the clear, accurate MP3tags in each of the files? 

This is separate from the still apparent Emby bug whereby a search on "Sinatra" just doesn't offer as results most of the albums where that name (first, last, comma, no comma) DOES appear in the filenames and file tags. Yes?

[Luke 42080]

It only look at the directory name as a last resort if embedded data is not found within the files.

[nospotify 184]

OK, Luke, so here's what I have done, which hasn't fixed the problem with multiple artists/albums/tracks.

1. Moved all the Sinatra files from directory "/Sinatra, Frank/" to "/Frank Sinatra/"

2. Moved every album in "/Philadelphia Records/" out into their own directories named for each album artist

3. Opened ALL those files in MP3Tag and a. confirmed that the program is writing to all id3 versions, b. confirmed that ONLY the album artist name is in "Artist" and "Album Artist" fields, c. resaved every single one of those files to confirm it contains just that data

4. Returned to Emby and executed a "Scan Library Files," then executed a full "Refresh Metadata," and waited more than 3 hours for Emby to do rescan and refresh all 20,000 music library files.

And yet, STILL these files are not cataloged accurately in Emby, and STILL Emby's search function isn't working properly. If it's an extra clue to whatever is going wrong, all the artists I cited above do have their albums appear under "Appears On," rather than under "Albums." Luke, please help.

[nospotify 184]

@Luke So I even deleted and reimported the whole Music Library, after re-cleaning and re-saving all of the MP3 files using these settings in the image below: 

And yet even though Artist and Album Artist fields appear perfect (only "Frank Sinatra" not "Sinatra, Frank" and only "Edwin Birdsong" not "VA"), the Emby Library is still incorrect. What data is Emby reading? From where? Using what file protocols? Plex has no problem with this, and Windows Explorer lists correct metadata for these files - only Emby is incorrect. Please help.

[Luke 42080]

Can you please zip up one of the impacted albums and attach it here? Thanks.

[nospotify 184]

@Luke Oh, as I am zipping, I see that the albums/tracks at issue are all .flac files - does this give a clue to an issue at your end or this end (before I upload these giant zip files)? 

[nospotify 184]

@Luke Here are a couple of sample files.:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i1ayr12s87ez8ea/AAAnhLmqn7MoMscpjQeaE5D5a?dl=0

[Happy2Play 9781]

Pretty sure this comes back to same tag priority Album Artist vs AlbumArtist as these are mismatched.

Can't find the topic @Lukementioned this but will attach if I find.

[Luke 42080]

Ah, so there it is after all.

[Happy2Play 9781]

Also yes flac can be a issue also as technically they do not support id3 tagging.

But here is what ffprobe sees on the file

C:\Users\Media\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system>ffprobe -i "C:\Users\Media\Desktop\music-testfiles\14 - The Last Dance.flac"
ffprobe version 4.5.0-emby_2021_11_02-g463c71b3b3+848 Copyright (c) 2007-2021 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
  built with gcc 10.3.0 (Rev5, Built by MSYS2 project)
[flac @ 00000288d005d600] Discarding ID3 tags because more suitable tags were found.
Input #0, flac, from 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\music-testfiles\14 - The Last Dance.flac':
  Metadata:
    TITLE           : The Last Dance
    ALBUM ARTIST    : Sinatra, Frank
    disc            : 1
    ALBUM           : Complete Reprise Studio Recordings (20 discs)
    ARTIST          : Frank Sinatra
    GENRE           : Jazz, Vocal
    album_artist    : Frank Sinatra
    DATE            : 1995
    track           : 14
  Duration: 00:02:47.60, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 803 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16
  Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 200x235 [SAR 72:72 DAR 40:47], 90k tbr, 90k tbn (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

 

[nospotify 184]

So after discovering this thread, it looks like several MP3Tag settings need changing to be able to correctly see and modify tags correctly, since different programs use ALBUMARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST differently. See images below, for how to change MP3Tag's mapping and display settings. Thanks to the Emby mods for the patient help.

Edited November 22, 2021 by wordlover

[Happy2Play 9781]

Follow up

Pretty sure the order of precedence is this when there are multiple fields.

MusicBrainz Album Artist Id

MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID

ALBUM ARTIST

ALBUMARTIST

But we really need a breakdown of precedence when there are multiple tags for fields.

In the end we need to see what FFPROBE sees as that is what Emby uses.  Do not know how different Emby custom ffprobe is vs online version but I always use Emby version to check files.

Change directory (cd) to Emby's system folder (don't necessarily need all the additional switches).

ffprobe -i "filepath" -show_streams -show_format -print_format json

 

As you can see above ffprobe shows "album_artist : Frank Sinatra", "ALBUM ARTIST : Sinatra, Frank" and mp3tag shows "ALBUMARTST : Frank Sinatra", "ALBUMARTIST : Sinatra, Frank" so program mapping can be a little deceiving.

Another example from Picard

But showing extended tags in mp3tag show this

You can add the additional column if you like or add to tag panel as shown above

I modified mine

 

[Luke 42080]

@wordlover has this helped?

[nospotify 184]

Yes, thanks - that was conclusion for my post upthread, Mon at 12:36 - sorry if I wasn't clear. Still some catalog import quirks, but my metadata is now clean as a whistle and music library is pretty much perfect now.

[Luke 42080]

Thanks for the feedback.