How to remove internal metadata after media has been deleted?

[stephen_hill 46]

Hi

It appears that, even after removing media from disk, internal metadata is kept, even between reboots. Is this true, and if so, how do I remove it?

I have an album that, no matter what I do, splits itself into an album per disk (3 disks -> 3 albums). My hunch is that Emby is remembering some metadata internally and this is overriding the MP3 tag metadata. I've tried many reboots, many rescans of the media, recans of the metadata, modifying the nfo files, vacuuming the database. Nothing is working to combine the discs into one album.

Cheers
Stephen

[stephen_hill 46]

I still would like to know the answer to the above question, but I've discovered some more information.

The album is question is "Gatecrasher Classics 2" and each disc is picking up a different musicbrainz album ID, in disc order they are:

1. 93aeff51-bf93-4e40-a6c0-273e133c6ac7
2. ceca6a0a-339f-4bfd-9c0a-0ea3ead90c02
3. fcc2c71b-4377-4fa1-b3f9-5660f2b6ccda

However, what you'll notice is that 2 and 3 redirect to 1 on the musicbrainz website.

To me, it looks like the Emby musicbrainz metadata downloader is not following redirects, if it was, it would have resolved all 3 discs to the same ID, which is hasn't.

 

[Luke 42083]

Hi, can you try unifying them to have the same embedded musicbrainz id, rather than the redirect? The metadata download process does support the redirect, but the grouping occurs at a much earlier stage where the only information available is just that id value

[stephen_hill 46]

Hi Like

When I do this nothing happens. It appears that changing the MusicBrainz Album Id at the album level does not change the individual tracks within the Album.

This is the edited metadata for the "Disc 2" album entry

And this is the metadata for the first track in Disc 2

Of course I could go through all the individual tracks using the metadata manager, but that wouldn't fix whatever is the underlying problem.

Should Emby apply changes to album meta data to all the tracks?

When you say "the grouping occurs at a much earlier stage where the only information available is just that id value" what exactly do you mean? (I'm a senior web developer so you can get technical if you like)

Is emby getting the music brainz id from an internal cache? If not, why is it not resolving the redirects before grouping? Clearly musicbrainz has decided to de-duplicate multiple entries of this album.

Many Thanks for your help so far

[stephen_hill 46]

Hi Luke

Just a quick follow-up. I decided to see what happens on a completely clean install of Emby, and the same thing happens. Album is split into 3.

Like above, the musicbrainz album ID is different for each disc. Changing the musicbrainz id's at the album level make no change.

 

[Vicpa 611]

Hi @stephen_hill

Are you changing the tag in the UI or in the actual tracks with a tagger like Picard or MP3Tag?  I have found that changing the tags in the tracks works best, it ensures consistency of tags.

-vvicpa

[stephen_hill 46]

Hi @Vicpa

I've carefully tagged the MP3 files with Mp3tag. See screenshot below.

All of my Gatecrasher albums have been tagged in the same way, it's only this albums that is not working correctly.

Cheers
Stephen

[stephen_hill 46]

I wanted to see what happened on a clean install with the metadata downloaders turned off before adding the album to the media (and I made sure there were no .nfo files).

Turns out that Emby populates the musicbrainz fields regardless.

Settings

Album Metadata

Cheers
Stephen

 

[Luke 42083]

4 hours ago, stephen_hill said:

I wanted to see what happened on a clean install with the metadata downloaders turned off before adding the album to the media (and I made sure there were no .nfo files).

Turns out that Emby populates the musicbrainz fields regardless.

Settings

Album Metadata

Cheers
Stephen

 

The values are likely embedded in your audio tracks.

[stephen_hill 46]

@LukeWhat mp3 field would that be in?

IIRC I did not use musicbrainz when I ripped these from CD. I was also under the impression that Emby does not write metadata to the files?

[Luke 42083]

Quote

I was also under the impression that Emby does not write metadata to the files?

it doesn't, but you may have pre-existing information embedded into the files. Or perhaps the information was downloaded from musicbrianz and then you disabled the internet metadata after that, which (as the help text indicates), will not change anything with already imported content.

Regarding tags, there are:

MusicBrainz Album Id
MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID
MusicBrainz Album Artist Id
MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID

 

[stephen_hill 46]

@Luke

OMG! Thank you very much. I had no idea that MP3's could store custom fields.

That has fixed the issue, the album is now showing as one.

I've checked all my other Gatecrasher albums and that was the only one containing musicbrainz metadata.

Thank you again!!

Edited September 21, 2022 by stephen_hill

[Happy2Play 9783]

Yes in mp3tag you would need to look at extended tags unless you have added column for all MBZ fields.

But in the end it is what ffprobe sees on each track.

[stephen_hill 46]

I'm going to write a feature request in a minute which will hopefully help other in the future.