not showing files when not in folders

[Grum633 0]

Hi, new to emby, switched from Plex have to say it is excellent and best media streamer/server I've found.  Just a quick question, if I download something that is a single file not inside a folder it doesn't show in emby, if I create a folder and move the file to the new folder it shows? 

Can't see anything obvious in settings

[GrimReaper 4762]

Assuming you're talking about movies, quick read here:

 

And KB article regarding same:

Emby Movie Naming : Emby

 

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I do not have most of my movies in individual folders and everything I have that I am interested in works just fine.
You only really need folders if you have interest in things like trailers.
I also found that trying to get all my movies in individual folders makes maintenance quite a bit harder for me.
For me separate folders just makes no difference. However naming is critical.

One additional point is that TV shows really must be in a pretty constrained structure but structure is much less important for movies. I point Emby at one folder called for me "All Movies" under that I have individual folder for movies starting with each letter of the alphabet. Under the "letter" directories I have movies and additional folders like "Matrix movies"" and "Thin man movies" and so for most other easily grouped movies.

For me Emby just recursively searches the tree for actual movies and then matches them 98% correctly. The 2% Emby misses are usually very old/obscure movies or I made some mistake in the naming or the movie has two or more release years and I picked the wrong one.

The bottom line is that Emby works fine, for everything I need, for finding and playing movies without having the movies in individual folders, but it also works fine for movies in individual folders. 

I suppose if you want "extra" things to work you need individual folders. But I have never intentionally watched a trailer or any other pre-roll stuff.

Having said all that most of the time if Emby does not find a movie it is because the movie file is named poorly. The basic naming is:
Movie Name (ReleaseYear).ext   Like - The Man Who Would Be King (1975).mp4
If you really want extra stuff in the filename place it between the year and the extension and enclose it in square brackets [ ]. Emby ignores everything in the brackets. One more thing use spaces or dashes as deliminators and not periods. It is mostly fixed but, in the past, both Emby and Plex have been confused by extraneous periods.
ex, from above: The Man Who Would Be King (1975)[Any Extra stuff can be here].mp4

BTW: I also store artwork, nfo files and any other support files I can alongside the media. I do not know if that makes anything better or more reliable but I do know it makes maintenance easier.

[Grum633 0]

Hi, not really I don't think   I've probably not explained myself 

I've set my default download folder on my pc as This PC, D:Data, Videos and this is where I've pointed emby to look for media files.  I downloaded an episode of Spitting Image that came down as a file, emby didn't show this, I created a subfolder called Spitting Image and moved the file to the subfolder and emby was displaying it, therefore I assume reading This PC, D:Data, Videos, Spitting Image.

Most of what I have have come down in subfolders so it isn't an issue it only occurs if it is just the file?

[Luke 42085]

@cayars

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

On 1/1/2022 at 3:10 PM, Grum633 said:

I've set my default download folder on my pc as This PC, D:Data, Videos and this is where I've pointed emby to look for media files.

That is a mistake. Active downloads should never be where Emby can see them during download as Emby will, often, pick up partial files and complete and that will lead to all sorts of problems. You should download files to somewhere Emby can't see them and, after the download finishes, then move them to a place inside Emby's library. Emby cannot correctly analyze files that are only partial and Emby cannot know when a download is finished.
I have see cases where downloads directly into a Emby library works but those were situations where the files were downloaded with a temp extension like "inc" that gets changed to the correct one, like "mkv," "mp4," "avi" or whatever after the download is complete. Even then there are times where it screws up.

The only "partial" files Emby should see are the recordings Emby makes for live TV and Emby is designed to handle that. Emby is not designed to handle partial/incomplete files except live TV. And, even then, Emby sometimes has problems with those partial files.

[Carlo 4561]

What ^^^^ he said!

You can get all kinds of weird problems that show up from Emby prematurely scanning a file that isn't complete. Wacky timelines to missing audio or subtitle tracks to transcoding files that otherwise would have direct played just fine.

Everyone of the download style programs created for media allow you to set multiple different folders it uses during the process. At the minimum you'll have a download directory, a working directory and a finished directory. Only this last folder is a possible candidate to use.

Spend some time with each program you use like this to tune the process used after downloading.  You'll find almost all can be set to rename files to a specific pattern creating folders for you or seasons for TV Shows. Set this up to a different destination while testing and once correct then point it to your Emby Libs.

You should be able to directly match what we show here for Movies: https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159102-movie-naming
and here for TV Shows: https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159110-tv-naming